Whatever your reason may be – hunting, personal protection, sport target shooting – if you own a gun and keep it in your home, you likely know the safety rules and how to safely handle and store your gun in and around your family.

Here are some reminders to help reduce the risk of something going dreadfully wrong while helping the rest of your family properly respect any weapon.

If a gun owner, you have a direct parental responsibility with kids. Any parent who owns a gun must begin early in a child’s life to train that child on gun safety and gun respect. Of course, what you teach and show your child depends on the age of your child. As he gets older, there should be more discussion and demonstration of safe handling and storage of a gun.

Early on, kids need to develop proper etiquette around guns. You can start with a toy gun at an early age by explaining how a gun really works and how to treat a gun properly vs. the misguided handling of guns seen on television and movies that are purely designed for entertainment and, for the most part, could never be used the way they are depicted on the screen.

As your kids get into pre-teen years, perhaps you will get them a b-b gun. Explain that this type of gun is already designed to kill – hunting small game, birds, etc and must not be ‘played’ with the same as the toy guns. Target practice is great, but they must also know if the target becomes a living creature, they could end its life.

If hunting and that is the intent, explain that. If target shooting and suddenly we find ourselves trying to hit moving targets, such as birds, they need to know ahead of time the consequences if they actually hit that target.

At this stage, this allows you as the parent to again discuss more in detail about guns, the fact that you always treat a gun as if it is loaded, and how to properly carry, secure, and store a gun.

If you hunt and decide one day to take your child with you, be sure to explain about how, where, and when to point a loaded weapon and don’t carry it loaded through the wilderness where you can have an accidental shooting.

When you as the parent decide your child is old enough to actually move up to a ‘real’ gun – a hunting rifle or larger caliber handgun, you need to go with them to a gun safety course and perhaps go to a shooting range a couple of times to reinforce proper handling.

Certainly when storing them at home, don’t keep guns loaded or accessible to the kids. Use trigger locks and keep any gun in a safe place, out of kids’ reach. When away from home, ensure your weapons are secured.

These suggestions will help you and your family remain safe at home!