The serious child safety issues most frequently not addressed at neighbors’ homes are gun and pool safety. I have recently addressed pool safety in previous columns, so today I will focus on gun safety.
The prevalence of guns in homes and accidental shootings is higher than you might think. On average, one child in the U.S. dies every day in an unintentional shooting. A high percentage of these result from children playing with firearms. Additionally, more than one in four homes contain firearms and more than half of these are stored unlocked. Perhaps most frightening of all, one in six guns is stored unlocked and loaded.
Whether in your home or a neighbor’s, firearms should be kept out of sight, unloaded, locked and stored separately from bullets. Locking firearms can be achieved with gun locks, gun cases or gun safes; hiding the keys is obviously essential to making the locks effective. Free gun locks are available upon request in many communities through law various enforcement agencies or from the Safe Kids Coalition.
Equally important is to teach your children what to do if they see a gun. Instruct them to not touch it and to immediately find an adult. This is a very important lesson that you will need to reinforce with your children frequently.
Finally, it is our responsibility as parents to ask our neighbors about guns in their homes before we have our children play there. It is appropriate to ask whether guns are present and whether they are unloaded and locked. You can’t guess which of your friends and neighbors have guns; you have to ask. Although, it may be a little awkward to do so, remember it is your child’s life that you put at risk by not asking.