Well, now that I have a son (3 months old -- whee! , I have to start thinking about how to handle the whole gun issue. My wife (who also has an LTC-A) and I have been talking about it and we've come to the following preliminary conclusions:
How have you guys handled these issues?
- We will have him go through something like the Eddie Eagle GunSafe teaching of "if you see a gun, Stop! Don't touch it! Leave the area! And tell an adult RIGHT AWAY!"
- We won't let him have toy guns. Not because we're against the concept of people with guns (obviously) but because play with toy guns violates all the gun safety rules (point in a safe direction, finger off trigger until ready to fire, etc.) We don't like the idea of the toy gun leading him to develop habits which are incredibly dangerous with a real gun.
- Here's the part that might be controversial for this forum -- we don't think we will tell him that we have guns until we believe he is old enough to handle keeping that information to himself (of course we have a gun safe, but it's not obviously a gun safe, especially to a young child). Why? Because we don't want our son to end up in the situation where all his friends' parents tell their children "you're not allowed to play at Johnny's house any more" because our son blurted out something about our owning guns. Given that we live in Arlington, which despite having an amazingly sane police chief is more Cantabrigian blue by the day, I think that's a very realistic outcome. I imagine some people here will tell us "move to another state" or "find your kid some new friends", but the first isn't an option and how realistic, really, is the second, especially since I bet the odds are that most of any friends he might make will have hoplophobe parents.
- Once he is old enough to be circumspect, we plan to tell him about the guns, take the proper gun handling safety classes, and encourage him to get involved in youth shooting and hope that he'll take an interest in it.
How have you guys handled these issues?