Concealed weapons. Yes or No ???

[Stearns]

Originally Posted by Zora77

After continuing to read this discussion I have moments where I feel proud to be German - which is a first!

Where to start - or continue? It makes shiver to read "growing up around guns". Every year there are thousands of children and teenagers who get killed as a result accidents involving guns. Apparently those law-abiding citizens do not all come with good parenting skills or the little bit of imagination it takes to figure out what could happen when your five year old gets his or her hands on the gun under mum's bed.

Zora, when people in the U.S. talk about growing up around guns, they don't just mean that their family had one in the house, stuck up in the closet somewhere or in a nightstand drawer. They mean that guns were essentially a part of life - used regularly for hunting, for shooting poisonous snakes in the yard or on the farm, for shooting predators of their livestock, etc. The children have been taught a healthy fear of and respect for the power of guns. They're not viewed as toys and we were not allowed to use or treat them as such. You were taught how to shoot them, under what circumstances you could shoot, and how to clean and take care of them. The worst mistake a parent can make is to have a gun in the house and think they're hiding it from their kids and, as a result, never teach their kids about it. Children know what's hiding in their parents' closets and drawers and they will be fascinated by and drawn to a gun. If the family is open and instructional, it takes away the fascination away and, therefore, the temptation to get it out to 'see how it works' and feels in one's hands.