Have a gun in your home? Here’s how to help reduce the risks for kids
“A key takeaway from this is that we have a responsibility as gun owners to ensure that guns are not being accessed by teens and youth who may be unsupervised. Guns are exceptionally lethal,” said Cassandra Crifasi, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy. “I hope that — while this is a terrible tragedy — parents who have decided to have guns in the home with their children will take this as a warning.”
Since kids are naturally and exceptionally curious, impulsive and defiant, just hiding your gun isn’t a sufficient precaution, experts say.
“Their brains are developing,” said Crifasi, who is also an assistant professor of health policy and management at the university. “That same curiosity that can inspire them to pick up a book and want to learn how to read can inspire them to go looking for a parent’s gun.”
People “greatly underestimate the probability of risk of their behaviors. And they overestimate the effectiveness of their communications that they’re warning to their children, and their children’s understanding of them,” said Linda A. Teplin, the Owen L. Coon Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
Even children as young as 2 or 3 can be strong enough to pull a gun’s trigger, said Dr. Lois Lee, an associate professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School.
The risks kids face
“You tell kids, ‘Hey, don’t do something,’ they’re going to think, ‘Hmm, maybe that sounds like a good idea to try,'” Crifasi said. “Even if we teach them the right way to handle a firearm, or even if we teach them not to touch them if we’re not around — if kids could be totally trusted to make good choices for themselves, they wouldn’t be living with us until they were 18, right?”
Safe, accessible gun storage
Access codes, combinations or the location of keys should be kept preferably in your head, or somewhere else your kids wouldn’t find it, Crifasi said. Only gun owners should know the codes or location of the keys.
Concerns that safe storage means not being able to quickly defend your family during invasion emergencies is valid, Lee, who is also a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Boston Children’s Hospital, said. But studies have shown that in homes with guns, the risk of someone in the home dying from gunshot is significantly higher than the likelihood of a home invasion and having to defend yourself from the invader, she added.
What you can do is get a quick-access safe, Crifasi suggested. “I have one bolted to my bed frame; I can access it in a matter of seconds if I needed to,” she said. “But I know that it’s safe and secure because it’s got a key code and it’s bolted down so people aren’t going to be able to walk away with it.
Some quick-access safes have fingerprint security so that you can instantly unlock it, but sometimes technology fails, Crifasi said.
What your kids should know
Teach your children gun safety: “Guns are tools, not toys, and you wouldn’t go and touch the chainsaw without permission,” Crifasi said you could tell your children.
Be honest. Explain that the gun violence they often see on television, movies and video games is not real, the AAP says. Say that in real life, guns are dangerous weapons and must be respected for what they can do, Teplin said — the Oxford High School shooting is one example you could use.
As with anything else, children are always observing their parents’ behaviors, so model the behavior you want to see, Crifasi said. Don’t joke about guns or let a kid take a turn shooting while you’re hunting or doing target practice. Before setting your gun down, unload it, the AAP says.
“Talk to them about never pointing your gun at something they’re not willing to destroy, for lack of a better term, because if it was loaded and discharged, you would likely destroy whatever that gun was aiming at,” Crifasi said.
Dealing with other parents
If your children are going to visit the homes of people who might have a gun, add questions about gun safety to your playdate checklist, the AAP recommends.
“People can feel awkward about it, but really, when it comes down to the safety of our kids, we have to have those conversations,” Crifasi said. “If your child has a peanut allergy, would you be uncomfortable asking the parents of your kid’s friends to not give your kid peanuts? No, that would be something you’d absolutely do because it puts your kid at risk.”
Tell the parents you want to talk about home safety: Do you have any guns in your home? Can you tell me how they’re stored? If the other parents don’t want to have those conversations, suggest their kids come over to your house instead, Crifasi said.
“I would not allow my child to visit a household that had guns in the home that were not locked up,” Teplin said.
CNN’s Amir Vera, Taylor Romine, Kelly McCleary, Mallika Kallingal and Sandee LaMotte contributed to this story.