Do you ask if there are guns in the house before you let your child go on a playdate? If you have guns, do you offer that information when you invite other children over?
Are you squirming at the thought of having a conversation like that? Yeah. Me, too. But I think the time has come to be honest. Not mean. Not judgmental. Just honest about whether or not you have guns in your house. Here’s what I’m saying on the subject over at Babble:
What I haven’t seen is much frank parent-to-parent talk about who owns guns and how they store them.
I read somewhere that the risk of being killed or injured by a gun increases 22 times if there is a gun in the home. As a non-gun owner, that statistic makes me breathe a little easier; the mere fact of not owning a gun means my kids and I are safer than people with guns in their home. But…but what if my kids are at a house with a gun in it?
My friend Jen, known as TheNextMartha on Twitter wrote a provocative post on her blog The Martha Project about parents asking other parents about guns in the home before sending kids over to play. It’s a subject I’ve thought of before. I’m distinctly uncomfortable with the idea of guns and children being in the same place and I have sussed out friends about gun ownership before, though never as directly as I really should if I’m to be true to my personal convictions. As it happens, most of my friends are of a similar mindset on guns and simply don’t own them. Even my friends with military backgrounds don’t keep guns in their homes.
Click on over to Babble Kids for the whole post!
Thank you for sharing and continuing to open the conversation. I hope others will follow.
I do, actually, ever since we moved to NoVA from California. There are so many military and police homes here, so guns are often there and locked away, but I’d rather know than wonder. And we’ve talked to our three kids many many times about what to do if they see a gun or someone shows them one at someone’s house.
I don’t. We have guns in our home as do a lot of our friends. Our children are well educated in gun safety, they are quizzed often also. They know to never touch a gun and to assume all guns are loaded even if clip isn’t in it. They know to leave a room if they see a gun and tell the adult in the home they want it put away.