2020 has left us all stuck indoors for most of the year. But with the whole family indoors all the time, their safety is still at risk if there are firearms around the house. Either these are for home protection or recreation purposes like hunting wildlife, proper gun storage is a must.
Storing your guns properly can protect your family from unwanted accidents. Since we have all the time in the world at the moment, here are effective, imaginative, and safe gun storage ideas to look through as well as its importance.
Why invest in gun storage?
First of all, we need to discuss the importance of proper gun storage. Children are usually the victims when it comes to improper storage of firearms. To further protect them, you can check out these gun storage ideas.
There is a lot of unintentional shooting and suicide cases in recorded history with guns that are not stored properly. Just this January of 2020, a three-year-old child from Louisiana stumbled upon a loaded and unlocked firearm. Unfortunately, he accidentally shot himself and got himself killed. Another case happened just a day before that tragedy. Another child, a five-year-old, also discovered a firearm and accidentally shot his hand.
In a study taken, 73% of children aged 10 and below are living in homes that had guns in them. This number of children reported that they knew where their parent’s guns were stored. 36% of them admitted to actually, and alarmingly, handling these weapons. For these kids, most of them handled guns without their parents knowing. And almost a quarter of the parents never knew that their kids have access to their firearms. So to protect the millions of vulnerable children around the country, who are now at this time, spending more time indoors, the practice of safe gun storage is important.
Having a secure firearm storage
Depending on the owner, the options of the locations and styles of storage can vary greatly. The kind of lifestyle the owner has will also factor in and affect the outcome of the possible options for gun storage.
A responsible weapon owner must be able to assess what their needs are and which methods would be able to meet these needs. For starters, we can begin to take a look at the basic aspects and objects: a cable lock. Cable locks come in every new gun when bought. When properly utilized, this cable will be running through the gun’s mechanics, making it inoperable.
So how do we keep the children protected?
Here are a few tips for keeping firearms away from kids:
One of the easiest and fastest ways to make sure that a hidden gun will not be hot is to store firearms unloaded and locked. With that, even if the weapon is somehow unlocked, it wouldn’t be operable at all. It will just be a heavy object that might hurt a toe or two when dropped. Not at all life-threatening.
As a standard, you must also brief your kids on what to do. If your kids ever find a gun or see it somewhere, you must make them remember to both keep away from it and to tell you immediately. It will avoid unnecessary problems of them fumbling around with a gun. The extra part here is to be able to store the ammunition of the gun at a separate location. Yes, this might make loading a weapon during an emergency take time but making sure that the gun you bring at home won’t be hurting the wrong people is more important.
There are a lot of options for storage and safety devices available today. Just choose a gun storage system that will fit your home well. These safety storages and devices would mostly range from gun locks, trigger locks, and lockboxes. Keep the firearm stored in these at all times. But also, hide it where children won’t be able to reach it. Kids are surprisingly creative when trying to snoop around the house. As a parent or gun owner, you must be able to predict their behavior and be steps ahead of them. That comes in handy for when hiding a gun and its lockbox, for example, in a location that they, the very children we’re protecting will never be able to find.
There will most likely be a key or a combination of lock boxes and gun safes. Never share the key or the combination itself to the box or gun safe. Unless your children are already trained and at an age where they can handle a firearm, never share access to where the gun is. If you do safety sweeps of your house, gun safety should always be a part of it. Same as you would secure poisons and medicines around your house. Since you have a firearm there, this is, of course, an essential thing to remember and include in your routine. Always lock up and secure your gun to avoid unwanted accidents and danger.
Additional Tips To Protect Your Kids
The next tip might be a bit, but this would be a saving aspect for the safety of your child. Whenever your child visits another house, wherever it is, no matter how far or near, ask or find out if that house has guns stored there. And how they are stored. Are these weapons far from the reach of children? Are these things all locked up in secure locations? Make sure that they are to make sure that the level of safety in another house is the same as it is in your own home.
Never have loaded and unlocked weapons inside your car. Guns are acquired for self-protection and self-defense. But if they’re inside an area that’s small enough that even kids can look through every nook and cranny, that’s a problem. Keep guns away from your loved ones and store them away safely. Firearms are there to help you protect them, not injure them.