Gun and Game Forum banner

How did children, homes and guns coexist before gun safes and locks?

4K views 29 replies 20 participants last post by  Dragunov 
#1 ·
In Walt Disney's Old Yeller, the Coates family homestead muzzle-loader was always hanging over the front door to their cabin in the Texas countryside. This gun was always loaded to boot.

Modern times have your youngsters living in a bubble.
 
#5 ·
#4 ·
If I were to have children in my home, I would design a custom nightstand drawer for the handgun. One secret button behind the nightstand would be pushed to open the drawer. No child would discover this secret in a million years. There would be a false lock cylinder in front of the drawer.
 
#8 · (Edited)
When a child gets to an age where he can reach a top shelf he is on the precipice of being able to defeat any reasonably priced lock or safe I might get. So the key is that kids are parented and properly trained to DEAL with life and the tools that we use to live life; whether it's a gun, wall outlet, bus bar in an electrical cabinet (yes, I routinely opened the then fuse boxes and later circuit breaker panels--sometimes to the wiring inside--when I was very young), gasoline, matches, a power saw, or any other tool that can be dangerous if misused.

We always (and still do) have a shotgun over the mantle (in fact, I've had shotguns and rifles in open racks in my room since I was just over a decade old). And ready guns in an appropriate condition where they need to be (accessible for someone competent immediately).

"Feel good" measures of locking stuff up just makes it worse and a mystery or verboten item to a kid--items that they will always go out of their way to get their hands on. Now, at a very very young age comprehension of dangerous stuff isn't there yet so you need to have SOME mechanism to keep things out of wandering toddlers hands (a high shelf might do this; then again some kids can climb. Few have the strength to cycle a slide but some have the strength to depress a Glock or smith autoloader trigger). The key is that kids are trained at a very young age by parents with firearms and that they become an integral part of the home toolkit.

Weak minded people have often said 'ya need a safe' -- most less than 1K safes can be breached in a couple of minutes (they can provide significant fire protection though and perhaps some can provide enough time lag to get the cops there if you have a fast reaction policing force AND an alarm system but it'd probably be close for a crook who knows what he's doing). Problem is a safe identifies WHERE many valuables may be so can center a 'smash and grab' type crook on getting the valuables rather than having to toss the house.

I can't speak to the sheer idiocy that has befallen our nation with attempting to place everything in a bubble (ranging from manuals made incoherent due to compete drivel written by lawyers telling me if I do something stupid I can hurt myself to ineffective and feckless mandates and 'lockdown' insanities reacting to the WuFlu. Guess what; life has risk and America wasn't made great by people hiding in bubbles). This never trains a person to DEAL with threats and hazards. So you got a bunch of adults running around with the mentality of little kids hiding under a bed when someone farts.

I can't fix most of this; what I CAN do is take the position on MY property that there are no bubbles (and the entire area is a 'safe space' or not a 'safe space'--depending on how you look at it--rife with plain language, firearms, and other really cool stuff) and if you do something stupid you may well get hurt or killed. And if you don't know what something does ya better not touch it until you receive training on its use (which I'm more than happy to provide).
 
#9 ·
There are no secrets in a home with children.

I raised two in a home where firearms are treated just the same as they have been for 200 years. It is MINE. It IS loaded. It is NOT a toy.

Sure you can see it, you can hold it, you can shoot it if you want. It is no different than a hammer or a chainsaw. JUST COME AND ASK AND WE WILL GET IT OUT and use it where it is suppose to be used and HOW it is suppose to be used. It never was a mystery or magic, it just is.
 
#10 ·
We kids were shown what a gun can do if it were fired at someone at a very early age. Mom and Dad took us out to shoot melons to show us the affects the bullet would have when shot. We were also allowed to handle them, clean them and we were taught gun safety and not to point them at people. We were also told never to touch or handle them unless Mom or Dad brought them out.
I did the same with my children and it worked out fine. I believe it took the mystery surrounding guns away which took care of the curiosity kids have as well.
 
#11 ·
yep.
all mine had their own guns at an early age and they knew what could happen if they pointed it at a person or the dog or whatever.

right now the G-Boy [3] gets to look at his BB gun sitting on the shelf next to the TV as a reminder that his toy guns are not for sneaking up on and shooting the dogs.

he knows what guns do, he has got to shoot a couple of ground squirrels and a grouse with my shotgun and has seen other bigger stuff get shot.

thing is, he is 3, and needs those small reminders.
 
#14 ·
I think it’s just different times. Growing up, most of the people I knew who owned guns, also hunted. Their kids also hunted and knew what damage a gun could do. We did have a couple of guns loaded, but that was more for varmints than anything else. We also knew if we didn’t treat a gun right, it would be taken away for awhile. That was worse than a whooping to a country boy.

But over the years people bought guns who didn’t know jack squat about them. All they knew is what they saw in the movies. I wonder how they felt when they learned you actually have to reload them, lol.

I think safes are a good idea. They will protect your guns from some thieves. Living in a state with high humidity can be a bummer. But being able to store your guns in a somewhat climate controlled place is a plus.
 
#17 · (Edited)
I think safes are a good idea. They will protect your guns from some thieves.
I was talking about this with a couple of local officers and another customer one day. We have had multiple people come in to have me watch out for guns of theirs that have been stolen.

Something that happens way more than you would think is that guns left out of the safe are left alone, while the safe itself becomes the sole focus.

Here are a few stories:
1. We have a regular who collects American militaria and weapons, and rarer German WWII weapons. His collection is worth, conservatively, hundreds of thousands of dollars. He was doing an inventory of his collection and had them spread all over his living room so he could take pictures for his insurance company.
He and his wife went to church and out to eat, and while they were gone, someone broke into the house through the living room door, passed a veritable treasure trove of firearms, and went straight to the walk-in safe.
The door to the safe had been busted open and everything in it had been stolen.
All that was still in the safe was the junk this guy didn't care about; a Hi-Point, a couple of Glocks, a .22 Cricket, and some Zamac Saturday Night Special revolvers.
He was more mad about his destroyed safe than he was the guns.

2. We had another customer who had a rack full of guns in his living room. His burglars destroyed his bed looking for guns, then destroyed his locked metal gun cabinet/safe, and tossed every drawer and closet. They ignored the guns on display altogether.

3. One of the officers was telling me about a case where the owner had forgotten his combination after doing a collection-wide deep clean, and had laid every gun he owned on top of his large gun safe. Then he forgot to put them back away for a few days. Not a single one of those guns had been touched, but the safe had been broken into, and the burglars left empty-handed.

4. The other officer chimed in to tell me about a guy who had one of the electronic safes where the keypad had gone bad. The guy had been opening and closing the safe with the backup key, and had forgotten and left the key in the safe. His house was burgled and the people that broke in spent who-knows-how-long trying to pry the safe door open - not realizing they could have just opened the door. He thinks that when his wife came home they got scared off and left empty-handed. He had a loaded M&P Shield sitting atop the gun safe that wasn't touched.


I have other stories, but I have already been long-winded.

Anyway, I almost wonder if the best thing to have is an empty decoy safe and then a really good hidey-hole elsewhere.

Then again, maybe the criminals just wanted junk they could boost easily and intentionally disregard historical and hunting guns. Still doesn't explain cases like that 4th one.
 
#15 ·
Dad taught me about guns early on, took me shooting and hunting as a kid. The shotguns, .22 rifles and his .22LR revolver weren't locked. Long guns were in his bedroom closet and the HS Doublenine (always loaded) was "hidden" in his sockdrawer. When I became a teen, the shotguns and 22 rifles were in my closet, then later in a gunrack I built in wood shop. The big box of shotgun shells were in my closet.
I never shot them without Dad's permission, never even thought of taking a gun to school. When another kid tried to bully me, I settled him by hand. Being a head taller and a good twenty pounds heavier than any other kid meant I had few bully problems.
Hunting showed me what the guns could do.
 
#23 · (Edited)
When minors bully others violently, law enforcement should intervene. Minors who beat up the innocent should go to juvenile detention for a while. If I were to have a child bullied at school or other places, I would seek the long arm of the law. I was jumped by three boys coming home from school at age ten. I had to strategically walk over the hill along a fire trail to avoid them in the street. I had to go out of my way to not get beat up or bullied to or from school. At school recess, I would hide in the library often to avoid getting bullied on the playground. I was no athlete or karate black belt by a dam sight. I would also sometimes encounter aggressive unrestrained neighborhood dogs to and from school and had to side step those as well. I would often fantasize having a gun or a guard dog for my protection against bullies. But I had to instead cowardly devise safer routes of travel or seek places of retreat from bullies. I'd prefer to deal with things civilly if it can first be done that way. I'm a non-violent person by nature. Take alternate routes of travel. Retreat if it can be done safely. Beating the innocent up is the crime of battery. Criminal battery should be countered with a weapon of some kind or a trained security dog. If you are a martial arts expert, fine, protect yourself by hand and foot if you can. Remember, a defense weapon is a SHIELD to protect your body from physical harm by others. Not all citizens are Kung Fu experts.
 
#16 ·
I look at it this way. If you have kids and you are a hunter or firearms owner then expose your kids to them young and teach them. Show them safety and safe handling and let the shoot at the range. If not then they will not know and get curious and may play with them when adult is not present. I let my kids touch and shoot at a very young age. Kept going over safety and handling and checking them even to see if loaded. Also always handling in a safe manner and aiming away from people even when unloaded. Kids that are kept in the dark is not a good thing. My one son even took a black powder rifle to school when he was in Elementary school. They had a costume and Halloween Parade each year. He was Daniel ?Boone. Can you imagine a kid walking into his school these days with a black powder rifle.? Would not be good. This is an example how quick things have changed for the worst.
 
#21 ·
I grew up in a house where the guns were either hung on the wall, or tucked inside the corner of a closet. I had the fear of God put into me from my dad, and taught guns were a tool not a toy. I was allowed to use these tools at a very young age, and respected what they could do, as well as what my dad would do.:eek:

I can remember pick up trucks with gun racks / shotguns in the back window in our high school parking lot. (we also had drive your tractor to school day) I'm sure growing up in a rural area where everyone had a gun didn't hurt either.

My kids grew up in a house from day one with firearms. They were allowed to see, touch, handle and I would explain the function whenever they asked. They also learned that guns are tools not toys, and I think a good bit of respect or fear. (you would have to get their opinion on that)

All 3 of mine started shooting trap in 4H at the age of 9 or 10 years old. 4H helped to reinforce safe gun handling and a respect for the tool. Our local club had a great advisor, who really stressed safe firearm handling. He made wooden firearm replicas, and the kids were required to use that on the shooting line until they demonstrated safe handling 100% of the time.
 
#25 ·
I've been thinking about it and I can't recall where dad kept his guns when I was young. When we moved into town he came across a deal on an old storage locker with a hasp style lock and outfitted that to put them in. My brother is not safety minded or mentally stable. I was 9 by then, which would have made my brother 4.

He took me out to the woodshed when I was still a small boy, probably the year before we did the hunter's safety class together. He set up several blocks of wood and put a huge tech manual he had left over from his Air Force days in front of them. Then he blasted it from about 30 ft. with a .30-30 to show me the power of a rifle.
 
#26 ·
No kung-fu expert, me. Just big. One bully tried me once. I lifted him over the second floor railing and dropped him.... onto a sticky bush. Never had a problem with him again.
A couple others, gay guys making it obvious (simply not done in the early 1970s), and trying to pick on me. I managed to slug both with one blow. They were lucky, as I was literally seeing red, from their abuse. Takes a whole lot to make me mad, they did it. No more trouble from them. I tended to befriend the nerds, so I let the bullies know they were under my protection too. I really hate bullies, to this day.
 
#28 ·
Discipline and responsibility instilled early beats locks and safes with the little ones.

There was a deep freeze tot the side of my reloading/work bench. I'd sit back there and clean guns and give the little tooters guns to clean. They got beyond the novelty of guns from the start. We had not a moment's trouble out of our two sons growing up with guns.



The top M1 Carbine in this photo was my lesson leaving guns alone. At three or four years old I merely opened my dad's closet door just to peek at the Carbine standing in the corner. I already knew it was hands off. Got caught by my mother and received a good hiding just the same.

At six years old, I got to shoot the Carbine, the first firearm I ever shot. Well, I snuggled up to it and pulled the trigger. My dad was actually holding it. I thought I was big stuff though. That was in 1963.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top