For about 2 months now I have become quite active in the open carry movement. I was until then completely unaware of what was going on regarding this issue, especially in my own state until I happened upon opencarry.org. In this time I have read a tremendous amount of fact, laws and happenings in my state and others who do or do not support this.
For those of you who don’t know open carry is the ability to carry your pistol out in the open on your body without the need of a permit to conceal and carry. Indecently a right granted to us under the Constitution of the United States and a right that 6 states forbid you from exercising.
So that being said; how about the kids? What do kids have to do with this? Well recently this has come to light because a mother of 3 chose to exercise her right, chose to exercise her right to protect her family and she did it while watching her kids play soccer in a park. This has sparked all kinds of praise and hate towards her. Parents think that a park is no place for a gun, and that because they never have crime there that she doesn’t need to protect herself or family. As she says in the defense of her actions “When seconds count the police are minutes away”, “no expected the need to protect themselves at the Amish school” and “no one expected to need to protect themselves at Virginia Tech”. Just because a crime has never taken place in some particular spot don’t mean you shouldn’t expect it or that it will never happen.
A lot of the skeptics claim that the presence of an openly carried firearm scares the kids and gives them the wrong message (what ever that message is). Many parents say that it’s not needed and it’s unsafe for them to be around the kids.
The fact of the matter is that the kids directly react how they should solely due to how they are thought about things in the home by their parents. If a parent hates guns and continues to tell a child it’s a bad thing, then when that child sees it they will think that person who has it is bad. Another thing is parents say it causes too much curiosity in a child and draws them to it. How many times did mommy or daddy tell you not to touch something and you did it anyway? You did it because they said don’t and the allure of a forbidden thing draws you to it out of curiosity.
We are told that it is irresponsible for us to have such an item around kids. I think it’s irresponsible for us not to teach the kids about firearms. We teach them about everything else. We tell our kids to stay away from strangers, to not play with knifes, to not play with matches, not to smoke and definitely tech them the bad things that drugs and alcohol can do to them. Why not firearms? Isn’t drunk driving just as bad as teaching them about guns? Actually there are more kids killed in drunk driving accidents then kids killed by guns.
Let’s use my son as an example. He is 8 years old and I and his mother both do everything we can to protect him from harm, we teach him about all the bad things out there like what I mentioned before. Why stop at a firearm? When my son was old enough to crawl and grab onto things I began making the firearm a familiar thing in the house, not something hidden and forbidden. I didn’t leave them lying around the house but I did wear mine all the time. When he was old enough to talk and asked me for the first time what that thing was on my hip I explained to him what it was. I explained to him and continue to explain to him that it is a tool. A tool to defend oneself from the bad people in life (sounds corny I know but effective). I took him out and taught him how to shoot, how to respect its power and what it can do.
Do I trust my son around guns? YES! I continue to test him to see if my teachings are still stuck in his little brain. I have an old Co2 pellet pistol that’s resembles a .357 revolver that no longer works, it can’t be loaded and all the seals have been removed so it can’t be pressurized. I will leave it sitting out so when my son comes home from school he will see it. He does exactly as he is taught to do. He comes to me and tells me “daddy, there is a gun sitting on the kitchen counter. You know you’re not supposed to leave that out.” I will ask him sometimes if he touched it to which he answers no (I know he didn’t because unbeknown to him I’m watching him and his reaction to it). Sometimes I will ask him to bring me the gun to which he replies “no, it’s loaded and I’m not supposed to play with loaded guns.”
Now if you were really reading this and paid attention you would notice that I stated the gun was unloaded and that my son told me that it WAS. Why is this? Why would my son lie to me? He lied because he has always been taught that no matter what he does, what he sees, what he thinks, the gun is always loaded and to never expect them to be otherwise. He knows never to pick up, touch, or play with a loaded firearm.
So is it that difficult to teach your kids about guns when you teach them about everything else that might accidentally kill them? I choose to protect my family. I choose not to be a victim. I most certainly choose for my son not to be a victim curiosity.
