Storing a gun loaded w/kids in the house

[ByblosHex]

I have two daughters.

I have firearms.
I have reinforced my doors.
I have security lights and a camera at each door.

I also have an alarm system that gives me advance warning that in turn allows me time to retrieve my gun from it's locked box in the walk in closet. If the outer door was breached, there is still another interior door to be busted open before they would be into the living area, then they would have to be able to make it upstairs before I'm armed.

When my girls are home, guns are not kept within arms reach at night while sleeping. I personally have been awakened in the middle of the night by a 4 year old standing at the foot of the bed whimpering about a stomach ache.
While I was startled, I never jumped up for a gun, but that is a chance I'm not willing to take someday if I'm not awake enough to make out who exactly is standing there.
If the alarm goes off, that's different, I'm awake right now.
Is it fool proof, probably not, but neither is leaving a loaded gun in an area that a kid, no matter how well "disciplined" on guns they are, could get at.

Just me, you guys do what you want, you're adults and your decisions are yours to make and live with.

Harbor Freight sells cheap door/window alarms if you cannot afford a system.
And lastly, going on some of the posts in this thread, I'm glad I don't live where some of you guys do.

Some interesting and strange posts in this thread.

You can actually get those things at the dollar store... and they're quite effective. As a matter of a fact, I may just get some this weekend.

[PaBimmerGuy]

I think you may be misintepreting my intended meaning of "cool parent".

i think that i did. my brother had a couple friends with cool parents like you describe. oddly those friends spent all their time at our house because we had strange things like food.

my interpretation of cool is whether my kids and their friends are willing to spend time with me.

my parents werent cool under your meaning and my father certainly wasnt cool under my meaning.

i always figured that the cool parents were the ones who did some things with their kids but gave them enough room to go off and explore life a bit on their own.

[PaBimmerGuy]

I have two daughters.

I have firearms.
I have reinforced my doors.
I have security lights and a camera at each door.

I also have an alarm system that gives me advance warning that in turn allows me time to retrieve my gun from it's locked box in the walk in closet. If the outer door was breached, there is still another interior door to be busted open before they would be into the living area, then they would have to be able to make it upstairs before I'm armed.

and people call me paranoid. i have a door with a deadbolt. no dog. no alarm.

do you have the official masaad ayoob expanding metal gate in your hallway and kevlar reinforced sheetrock?

[Gun]

The 1911 has never been 100% reliable, and it will no longer be doing nightstand duty.

As for the comment about whether I "really" know how to use my 1911 or not, I'm not sure what the point of that comment was...

What you said in your opening, about your 1911.

[ByblosHex]

What you said in your opening, about your 1911.

Are you saying 1911's are 100% reliable?

[Gun]

Are you saying 1911's are 100% reliable?

Are saying there is a firearm that is 100% reliable?

Please reread the original post, and what I had to say.

[39flathead]

and people call me paranoid. i have a door with a deadbolt. no dog. no alarm.

do you have the official masaad ayoob expanding metal gate in your hallway and kevlar reinforced sheetrock?

Paranoid?
Hardly.
Prepared?
Yes.

I reinforced my door frames with some 2X6's and some 1/8 steel plates that we had in the scrap bin at work. I have 4 long slide bolts on the front and back door, 2 each on the latch and hinge side that go through the steel and into the 2X6's. These doors are the outside doors on my enclosed porches, my inside doors are standard solid wood interior doors.

The security lights should be standard for any home IMO.

The cameras were old units from my previous job that were going to be tossed when they upgraded. They come in handy when there are religious types knocking on the door wanting to hand me flyer's and for when the doorbell rings when I am otherwise occupied upstairs...


I work hard for my possessions and this is one way I figure to help keep them.
I have emergency supplies that I hope I never need, and if I do need them, I plan on keeping them.

Philly has been having problems with mobs of criminal youths as have other cities. While I don't live near Philly, I do live not too far from Pittsburgh and right next to a university town.
I live in town, not down some hard to find backwoods road. Heroin and drug use in general is up in my area a couple hundred percent each year the last few years. The local paper police blotter always has a few B&E's daily in it.
We do not have a full time police dept and the state police are usually a half an hour away.

I have the door and window alarms so I do not have to keep loaded firearms lying around the house, your house might be filled with step-ford children that are obedient little tike's, however, mine are not.
While my girls know about guns and have never touched them, that is a chance I do not want to take.
Like I said before, your house, your rules and decisions, I decide to not leave guns lying around.

I grew up learning about survival, not Ruby Ridge survival, but how to be prepared. We lived in Florida so hurricanes were a possibility and we went through 2 of them, we also lived in Quebec where getting snowed in was a real possibility in the winter and also a few other places with weather worse than we have here.

I am prepared, not paranoid.

Oh, and paranoid is sleeping with a gun under your pillow.

[PaBimmerGuy]

I am prepared, not paranoid.

Oh, and paranoid is sleeping with a gun under your pillow.

does any paranoid person believe that he is paranoid?

[the1jeffy]

There's been some good things in this thread, but the idea that a heavy trigger pull is even remotely a deterrent to a child is laughable if it wasn't so deadly serious. The pictures attached are a cute example of how a child deals with a trigger that they cannot manage.

The only safe way to deter a child from a loaded weapon is to bar access. There are a few methods for doing this, and none should be used in a vacuum.

1) Education. Children should be given age appropriate teaching on firearms, from the time they can walk. For me, this takes the form of teaching her, the sign for and the word, "HOT!" She learned this by trying to grab a lemon out of my wife's hot tea. Now anything I tell her is hot, like my coffee mug, the oven, my gun, etc, she backs away from and/or tells me, HOT HOT HOT. In fact, she frequently tells me things are hot in such a way that I think she is trying to warn me. Once she is old enough to understand better, I will teach her that firearms are dangerous and should never be handled without me around. I believe another poster mentioned something similar, in that satisfying natural curiosity about guns by allowing them to safely handle them in your presence, while drilling the basic safety rules. Then teach them that if a friend or classmate has a gun without an adult present that she should leave immediately and call the police (This should never happen, as I will screen her friends carefully, but it's something I should prepare for). Lastly, take them shooting and the education should be complete. (My kid is about 2 BTW).

2) Lock box. Pick your poison, ease of access or security level. If I lived in an area with a non-zero violent crime rate, I would by the quick access safe and keep my gun condition one. As it stands now, my firearm sits up high on my PC stand next to the bed, well out of reach with 2 full mags next to it. Unloaded. Not the most effective security, both from a ready to use mentality or a retention level. Right now my daughter is NEVER unsupervised, but as she gets more independence I will get a quick access safe, rather than the keyed safe I have now.

3) Gun vault. Typically a fully locked, thermally insulated, heavy-duty deep storage unit. This is child proof, as long you never open it when they are present. When I have the house I am closing on, I will have my guns stored in one. Loaded. That way my hand gun gets me access to a larger arsenal if needed. Right now, my shotgun is not loaded; it's kept in a hard case with my SD shells, leaned up in a corner between a dresser and bookshelf. This is not accessible to a 2 year old as the furniture is retained to the wall with screws. But, if I need it I can cover my wife as she gets it an loads it or vice versa. Again, I live in a remote area of Zelie, so a rabid coyote is more likely than a home invasion, but that doesn't mean I want to go unprotected.

I think we are all in consensus that these methods, when used in conjunction are the proper way to address loaded firearms in the house. Your mileage may vary, of course.

This is where the points of contention in this thread stems from. Each person needs to manage the risks of life to the best of their knowledge. Find your acceptable risk level and weigh it based on your kids maturity, crime rates in your area, other security in your house, how quickly you come fully awake from a dead sleep, etc. I hope this WoT was helpful.

[camper]

Two. Innate curiousity tends to be dispelled after the first time at the range.

How old are they?

You found your dad's guns and you screwed around with them. I never even looked for them, I knew where they were and I never, ever even thought about screwing around with them. maybe instead of hiding the guns your Dad should've taught you about them.

You're obviously not me, and I'm obviously not you. We're not the same. And my father DID teach me about them, he was a NJ Firearms instructor for the state police, and stopped trap shooting in PA when they stopped using live birds because the plates were too predictable. My dad would also use his belt on us when necessary (and it often was) and 'spanked' was something other kids got--because it couldn't have hurt as much as what we got. Ever have to go out to the woods to cut your own switch off a tree?

Even with ALL this and knowing what would happen if I got caught, I still did what I wanted to do because I was a persistent little shit who would rather take the chance of getting away with something than sit on my hands like a good little boy.

If your kids are playing with power drills than either you didn't tell them not to do it which is your fault, or they don't care what you say, which would also be your fault. Im not telling anyone how to be a parent, but a little knowledge goes a long way with little ones. I know it did for me growing up and I see it working every day now that I'm an adult giving the advice and warnings to other, little kids.

Yeah...really curious to know how old your kids are, if you're the step-dad, or if you're with them every single day or you're the 'cool-see-you-on-the-weekends-only-so-we'll-do-everything-you-say-because-you're-the-fun-one-we're-not-with-every-day' dad.

There is a huge difference in how kids treat step parents and natural parents, and kids that split their time around multiple homes. On top of the individuality that makes up every single child.

They may sneak a marker in their room and colour on shit, but they don't sneak into the kitchen and play with the stove. They can differentiate the severity of consequence in those situations, and they can do that because they know better, and they know better because someone taught them better.

Do this experiment and get back to me: Put something 'off limits' that interests them--like a drill--in their reach and tell them "Now, don't touch that" and leave them to it for an hour or so. Let me know how that goes.

My kids could care less about the stove. They could care less about my knives. They don't even care about the antique trains I have. But the drill? They want to 'help', and they want to 'surprise' daddy with just how good a helper they can be.

If your 3yo child can pull the trigger on your factory stock 642, you should put him in pre olympic training. Most 3 yo's would not even be able to hold the gun and even reach the trigger.

I would like to see that video, actually. For my own curiosity.

Obviously I do not want to encourage the "Here...pull daddy's pistol trigger for youtube" behavior, so that won't happen.

My word will have to be good enough, unfortunately.

However, I think I have an old pull-scale somewhere (or not...don't remember if it got tossed out) and I'll be happy to do a comparison.

BTW: Old metal cap guns do not have anywhere near as heavy a trigger pull as most real DA guns. They're also smaller than most revolvers and by design are more friendly to small kids hands.

I got them at a local hardware store near my old house. A lot like these:

http://www.amazon.com/Lawman-Die-Cas.../dp/B002Y2DB9E

Very heavy, sturdier and bigger than the little ones which they also had (but broke). They're actually heavier than my (unloaded) airweight, and really not much different in size.

Granted...if I had a full-size S&W 357 revolver I'd agree with you, but the 642 is a light-weight .38 snubby that can fit in my pocket discreetly. No doubt my 3 year old (almost 4 now) can pull the trigger, the kid is as stubborn and determined as I ever was.

camper