Originally posted by anonymous
if you took every kid at maybe age eight or nine and showed them what a bullet does to a target maybe have them shoot a watermelon through a car door say you'd have kids with a bunch more respect for what a bullet downrange can do.
this is exactly what I did with my kids (5-6 yrs old at the time).
in our case there was an old dump area not far from the house. someone had dumped of a whole case of home canned beets (can't say I blame them). they were the perfect example, very bright and stained everything they touched.
set a jar up on an old couch and had him watch it closely while I shot it.
then you walk the kid down range and tell him to put the jar back together just like it was before.
when he says he can't, you give him the explanation of how he owns that bullet until it comes to a stop. how he's personally responsible for it and every thing it passes through or ends up in. how whatever it hits will never be the same again and there is no going back and making it different after the fact, firing a gun is a permanent kinda thing and you need to make sure you really want to hit what your aiming at and there is nothing you don't want to hit in a dangerous position.
IMO this is absolutely crucial in raising a kid, if you don't own guns ask a friend who does to help you educate you're kids.
it's the only way to fight the crap they see on TV. when my kids were young it was 'the A-team', these guys fire full autos into crowds of people and somehow miraculously, nobody dies or bleeds, these magic bullets just knock down bad guys and apply handcuffs (and never hit a bystander).
I kept my collection small and all of the guns locked up until my youngest was old enough to be educated. now there is no need. they all fully understand gun safety and practice it. the mystery is gone, there is no temptation, they know how each of the guns is loaded and fired, any questions they have are answered and they can just ask and be allowed to fire any gun I own.
I find this much more effective than the people I know who go with the locked-up and out of sight method- where they think their kids don't even know they own a gun, because they keep it safely hidden where their kids will never find it (with the porn collection and the keys to the liquor cabinet and dirt-bikes).
