Essay On Gun Safety

The depiction of gun safety for children is a much needed in the home. According to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, over 1,600 kids were killed by guns alone and another 9,718 were injured by one. A high percentage of these deaths came from children playing with guns that were loaded while the parent was not present ("Gun Violence: Facts and Statistics | Violence Prevention Initiative"). Increasing crime rates in our society is influencing more citizens to go out and purchase a gun to protect their family and property. One-third of every home has a gun and just about every home has kids in them which make it very dangerous for the children. If you own a gun or not, it is very important that you talk to and teach your children about gun safety because most guns are not properly stored away or have a lock on the firearm. Often children learn about guns from their friends, cartoons, and other places and then they pretend to play with guns.

Therefore children need to know about guns and when they see a gun, do not touch it and immediately tell an adult.
I remember when I was younger and my grandfather would pick me up in his red pickup truck and would always have his gun placed in between the seats.

When people have owned a gun for some time they often forget that they still have to take precautions for their safety and other people’s safety. In order to teach minors about gun safety, you must educate yourself on the use of firearms and firearm safety. With the increase of gun purchases, the majority of them are inexperienced and uneducated buyers.

On the opposing side, children should be around guns in the first place because they should be locked away and stored in a safe place away from children’s reach. For older children, you have to take even better precautions because they tend to know more since they have been exposed to more and are able to understand much better than a toddler. But you can’t keep everything from children because they are not always in your own eyesight or under the same type of supervision that a parent would give their own

child.
Before you purchased a firearm there should be a mandatory gun safety course you have to complete. There are many private organizations that offer gun courses today but you have to pay for the classes and they are not required. The gun courses should included properly handling of the weapons, how to fire the gun when needed, how and where to store the gun when not in use in a car or home. The course will not only educate the owner of the handgun but will help them also educate their children about guns and gun safety. If you're not educated on safety rules, how can you teach your kids gun safety rules? You simply can’t.
In the course, you will learn about storing the gun inside of the home. Where should you store your gun? When storing a gun inside of your home it should always be out of reach and sight of children. It is safer to buy a lock box to put your weapon in especially if you have very small children. Make it as safe as possible because children are very curious and are always looking for something to get into. According to Region, Eight New’s experiment where they did an experiment where they hid a gun that no longer worked in a playroom with children to find just to see what the children would do with it. The children that had been taught gun safety rules didn’t touch the gun and notified an adult immediately. The kids that had no knowledge about gun safety picked the gun up and evenc went as far as looking down the barrel with their finger on the trigger (Ricket). In my own opinion, it is better for a young child to know what to do in the situation of coming in contact with a firearm than it is not to know. We as people tend to do better if we knew better.
There are gun safety programs provided for children to learn about the well-being of guns and what to do if they come in contact with a firearm. One in particular is the NRA Eddie Eaglr Gunsafe program. It doesn’t focus on the fact of guns being good or bad but moreso of assisting with guidance and safety of children. The rules mainly focused on are stop, don’t touch, leave the area and tell an adult ("Guns & Your Children"). Teaching your child not to touch a gun is very important.
Guns are very dangerous to children because they don’t really know the harm that a loaded gun can do to them. For this reason, we must teach our children to about the importance of how dangerous it is to touch a gun and what to do if they come in contact with a gun. A child can be introduced to a number of things when their parents are not around. A child can see a gun and if they know nothing about it that gun could easily end up in their book bag and brought to school around other children.