Salanis wrote:Rusted_Busted_Spit wrote:I am fairly Liberal too and also have a couple of guns in the house. I think the best way to keep children safe when it comes to guns is to teach them the right way to handle them. One of the best things I have gotten out of my 16 years in the Military has been firearm safety, it is way better than some of the Cops I know.
My oldest turns 8 on Sunday and we have already been out shooting BB guns, the real thing will have to wait a couple of more years.
My dad has an interesting philosophy on BB guns. He started me with a real gun (.22 rifle) before letting me use a BB gun. His thinking is/was that a BB gun trains kids to handle and think of guns like they're toys. Start a kid with a real gun and train them to handle it properly. Then, every time they see a real gun or something similar, they will instinctively handle it safely. Start a kid with a BB gun and let them get used to lazy handling, and when they first pick up a real gun, they will handle it like the BB gun they're used to and not be concerned about safety.
Resulted in very obvious differences in how my (older) step brothers and I handle guns. I nearly beat one of my step brothers for pointing a gun at me that turned out to be a BB gun that was just modeled to look like a real pistol (he'd picked it up while stationed in Korea). He laughed at me trying to rack the slide and check it because "it was only a BB gun".
My buddy has the same theory with bikes. If you start with a powerful 1100 or something, you will respect it more. But if you start with something small that you can whip and toss around, you might find yourself in trouble on a bigger, more powerful bike.
Joey
