A new study published in JAMA Network Open found that about 32 million children in the United States live in homes with firearms. Researchers estimated that nearly 7 million of those kids live in homes where at least one gun is both loaded and unlocked.
That number is supposed to be alarming, and it is, but honestly, considering there are more guns than people in this country of close to 350 million, it almost sounds low to me.
America has spent decades building a culture where guns are treated less like dangerous tools and more like extensions of personal identity. Under those conditions, it’s hard to believe that only one in five households with both guns and kids leaves at least one gun ready to fire at all times.
The study also found that parents with younger children were more likely to keep their guns locked up and unloaded. Once kids get older, especially after about age 13, many parents start leaving their guns less secure. This is completely backwards thinking.
Teenagers are exactly the age group where secure storage becomes even more important. This is the age where depression, suicidal ideation, and fascination with violence can all start colliding at once. These are also the years when school shooters tend to emerge, and in case after case, the gun used in those shootings came from inside the home.
Yet too many parents seem to hit this stage where they stop viewing their teenager as a potential risk and start viewing them more like a junior adult who understands “gun safety.” Meanwhile, teenagers are still teenagers.
They are emotional, impulsive, angry, insecure, online all the time, and often far better at hiding what they are thinking than their parents realize. The idea that this is the age where people should start leaving guns loaded and accessible is insane when you really think about it.
Personally, I think a lot of this comes down to the ‘home invasion’ fantasy. There are many gun owners who genuinely believe that one night they are going to hear glass breaking downstairs, grab their pistol from the nightstand, and save their family from a home invasion.
That fantasy has been sold to Americans for decades through movies, television, political rhetoric, and the gun lobby. The ‘good guy with a gun’ myth is so deeply entrenched in American culture that some people build their entire identity around preparing for this moment that almost certainly will never happen.
And let’s be honest. When many of these gun owners imagine the home invader, they are probably not picturing a clean-cut suburban white guy from the local country club. A lot of American gun culture is wrapped up in fear and racism, whether people want to admit it or not. But, I digress.
The source article I used for this post also touched on smart guns, biometric safes, and smart holsters as possible solutions. On paper, those ideas sound great. In reality, how many self-described ‘responsible gun owners’™ are actually going to seek out technology that slows down access to their weapon by even a fraction of a second?
The entire mindset behind keeping a loaded gun unsecured revolves around immediate access. They do not want friction between themselves and the ability to shoot someone in their house. That is the whole point.
Even if some of these people accidentally buy a smart device because their spouse talked them into it, how many are actually going to enable the smart features? A decent percentage will probably disable them immediately because they are terrified the technology might fail during their imaginary midnight gunfight.
The irony is that their teenage kids are probably far more capable of bypassing or disabling the technology than the parents are. Modern teenagers can figure out parental controls, phone locks, Wi-Fi restrictions, and software exploits in about fifteen minutes. People seriously think a fingerprint safe is going to stop a determined teenager who has unrestricted internet access and all afternoon alone in the house?
America talks endlessly about responsible gun ownership, but responsibility usually seems to stop right at the point where the gun becomes slightly less convenient to access. The fear of not being able to instantly shoot an intruder outweighs the very real possibility that their child could use that same weapon on themselves, on classmates, or on somebody else in a moment of rage or despair.
(Source)
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