Firearm safety at home: 5 tips to keep your kids safe with guns in the house

A 1-year-old toddler in Tallahassee picked up an unattended gun and shot and killed another 1-year-old in September. Five days before that, an 8-year-old accidentally shot and killed his 14-year-old brother. A 3-year-old boy died in February after shooting himself with a handgun near DeLand he found in a nightstand.

Last year in Pensacola an 8-year-old picked up a gun, killed a 1-year-old and wounded a 2-year-old. A 3-year-old boy in Gainesville shot and killed himself with a gun he found in a couch console. A 12-year-old Lakeland boy died of an accidental gunshot after finding a loaded gun in a car in a friend's garage.

The CDC reported that in 2020 firearm-related injuries surpassed vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents for the first time in 60 years of reporting. The numbers have been slowly rising in recent years but they spiked during the pandemic, when both gun sales rose 64% in 2020 over 2019 and unintentional shooting deaths by children surged by nearly a third, according to Everytown.

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Can a child pull a trigger?

They can and they do.

"Children as young as 3 years old may be strong enough to pull the trigger of a handgun," according to the nonprofit organization Safe Kids Worldwide. A 1995 study testing 64 commercially available handguns found that 25% of 3- to 4-year-olds, 70% of 5- to 6-year-olds, and 90% of 7- to 8-year-olds had a two-finger trigger-pull strength of at least 10 pounds.

At the time, 40 of those 64 handguns required trigger-pull strength of less than 5 pounds.

Many gun owners try to strike a balance between a lighter trigger pull (better for accuracy and speed of use) and a heavier one (cuts back on accidental discharges, can be less accurate, less convenient). There isn't a standard trigger weight for all commercial weapons and owners can use after-market triggers to adjust them. Target shooters and hunters may use a trigger weight as light as 1.5 pounds, although these weapons often include multiple safeties to prevent accidental discharges.

And three out of four children living in a home with a gun know where it is, Safe Kids Worldwide says, whether their parents or guardians think they know or not.

Responsible gun owners know that if you're going to keep firearms in your house, especially with children present, you can't rely on physical inability, lack of curiosity or knowledge that guns are dangerous to keep them safe. Here's how.

Never store or handle a loaded firearm in your house or vehicle

Never point a firearm at anyone, loaded or unloaded. When handling or cleaning weapons, always assume they are loaded. Accidental shootings are just that, accidents caused by people who didn't think anything would happen.

Keep your guns locked and locked up

Keep a trigger-locking device on your firearms and keep them locked in a secure location, ideally a gun safe. If there is a reasonable chance a child under 16 can get access to your loaded firearms, you must keep it locked up per Florida law. Keep the keys or local combination concealed from children.

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Keep weapons and ammunition stored separately

Firearms and ammunition should be locked in separate locations to reduce the chance of accidents.

Teach everyone in the house about firearm safety

Never assume a child won't find your weapons (no matter how well hidden), or "knows better" than to play with them, or won't be strong enough to pull a trigger, or that they know the difference between a real weapon and a toy. Even if you don't have a firearm in your home, your child may spend time at a friend's or family member's home that does, or a friend may sneak one out of their parents' hiding place to show it off.

Make sure everyone in your house knows that guns are not toys and that if they find one they should stop, don't touch it, move away from it, and tell a grown-up.

The National Rifle Association offers the Eddie Eagle Gunsafe program to help teach children firearm safety and there also may be firearm safety classes for children in your area. Talking to your child about guns can help remove the mystery about them and reduce curiosity.

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Consider removing weapons from your home

One way to drastically reduce the chances of accidental shootings in your home is to remove all firearms from it. That's a decision you'll have to make based on your relative risks.

Can I go to jail if my kid finds a gun in my house?

Aside from the potential for devastating tragedy, keeping an unsecured, loaded firearm in your home is a second-degree misdemeanor. Florida law requires any firearm in a location where a minor is likely to find it must be kept in a secure locked box or container or secured with a trigger lock.

If someone is shot and injured or killed with a weapon you were responsible for, you also may face charges ranging from culpable negligence to aggravated manslaughter.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Gun safety and children: How to keep kids safe in gunowner homes