Whether you own firearms or not, your kids are going to encounter them eventually. At a friend’s house, at a grandparent’s house, on TV, in a video game, in a movie, on a field trip to a museum, in a hunting story from a classmate, somewhere. Pretending guns don’t exist doesn’t make them disappear from a child’s life — it just makes you not the one explaining them.
This is the conversation we wish more parents had with their kids, regardless of whether there’s a gun in the house. It’s not political. It’s not scary. It’s not complicated. And it might be one of the most important conversations you ever have.
Here’s how we approach it.
Start by not making it taboo
This is the part most people get wrong, in both directions.
Some parents treat firearms as something kids should never hear about, never see, never discuss. The idea is that ignorance equals safety — if my child doesn’t know guns exist, they won’t go looking for one. The problem is that ignorance isn’t always bliss. A child who has never been told what a gun is, what it does, and what to do when they see one is exactly the child who, when they find one at a friend’s house, will pick it up to see what it does.
Other parents treat firearms casually — leaving them accessible, showing them off, not building a clear framework around them. We don’t agree with that one either. A child who sees a gun treated like just another object on a shelf doesn’t learn that it requires special respect and special caution.
The middle path was the right one for us: talk about guns openly, calmly, and matter-of-factly — and back the conversation up with secure storage. Knowledge alone isn’t safety. Storage alone isn’t enough either. You need both.
When we started carrying, we sat our then-five-year-old son and six-year-old daughter down at the kitchen table, with the firearm unloaded in front of us, and we explained it. What it was. Why we had it. Why it wasn’t a toy. Why they were never to touch it without us. Why we kept it locked up. We made it ordinary and serious at the same time — the same way you might talk about a hot stove or a busy street. Not scary. Not exciting. Just real.
Then we showed them the Eddie Eagle videos from the NRA, which are made specifically for young children and teach a simple, four-word rule:
Stop. Don’t touch. Run away. Tell a grown-up.
That’s the rule. That’s the whole lesson for a small child. If you see a gun anywhere — at a friend’s house, at the playground, in a relative’s drawer — Stop. Don’t touch. Run away. Tell a grown-up. Four directions a four-year-old can remember.
You don’t have to be an NRA member, or even a gun owner, to use that script with your kids. It works. Use it. The videos are free, still accessible on YouTube, and still cute enough to keep most small kids’ attention.
The conversation looks different at different ages
A four-year-old needs the Eddie Eagle rule. A fourteen-year-old needs something different. Here’s roughly how we’d think about it.
Ages 3-7: The Simple Rule
At this age, kids don’t need explanations of mechanisms, calibers, or use cases. They need a clear, repeatable safety rule. That’s it.
- Show them Eddie Eagle videos (free on YouTube)
- Practice the rule out loud occasionally, the same way you practice “stop, drop, and roll” or “look both ways”
- Be matter-of-fact about it. No drama, no fear, no excitement
- If you have firearms in the home, they should know there are “grown-up things” in the house that are off-limits, locked up, and only handled by grown-ups
Ages 8-12: Context and Curiosity
Now the questions get bigger. Why do we have it? How does it work? What’s it for? This is the age where kids absorb mechanical and procedural information well, and where their curiosity needs honest answers — because if you don’t give them, they’ll find answers somewhere else (the internet, friends, video games), and those sources aren’t always accurate.
- Answer questions honestly and matter-of-factly
- Introduce the four universal safety rules if they’re old enough to understand them:
- Treat every gun as if it’s loaded
- Never point a gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy
- Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot
- Be sure of your target and what’s beyond it
- Continue to reinforce: knowledge does not equal access. Even kids who understand firearms aren’t allowed to handle them without a parent present
- This is a good age to take them to a range with you, if they’re interested and if your range allows it. Supervised exposure builds respect. (Small note here- we hear LOTS of stories about the parents who take their kids or wives or friends to the range and immediately hands them the heaviest caliber they own as the first thing they fire. That’s… really not cool. Don’t do that. Everyone who hears that story who ISN’T that guy really doesn’t like that guy. Especially the kids, wives, girlfriends, and friends on the other end of that joke.)
Ages 13+: Participation and Responsibility
Teenagers can begin to participate more directly — at the range, in cleaning and maintenance, in real conversations about responsibility, storage, and the legal and ethical weight of firearm ownership. They’re also at the age where peer environments matter most, and where the conversation about what to do at a friend’s house becomes critically important.
- Have an explicit, age-appropriate conversation about what to do if they’re at a friend’s house and a gun comes out — even casually. The answer: leave, and tell you
- If you’re a hunter or a shooter, this is a great age to invite them into the activity in a real way if they’re interested
- Storage rules don’t change. A teenager who has been trained on a firearm still shouldn’t have unsupervised access to it. These are tough years, you don’t know what their friends have been (or haven’t been) taught about firearms, and a million other reasons this is a bad idea I won’t list off here.
What to do about other people’s houses
This is the question we get asked most often, and it’s the one most parents are most worried about: “What if my child goes to a friend’s house and there’s a gun there I don’t know about?”
The honest answer: this is a real concern, and you have two tools to address it.
Tool one: know the people whose home your child is going into. This one wasn’t important when I was a kid, and half the people my age can tell you stories about why it’s important now. It was not uncommon to have zero knowledge about the adults in the homes of our friends when I was growing up. This is another one of those “million reasons why this is a bad idea” topics. Know the adults. Know their names. Do you even like them? Does your child like them? Would you have wanted to spend time with them when you were a child?
Tool two: teach your child the rule, every time. No matter how thoroughly you’ve vetted a household, the only true safety net is your own child knowing what to do. Reinforce Eddie Eagle. Reinforce the four safety rules. Make sure your kid knows that the correct response to seeing a gun at a friend’s house is the same as it always is: stop, don’t touch, leave the room, find a grown-up — and tell us when you get home.
There is no embarrassment in that response. There is no overreaction in that response. That’s the response that keeps kids alive.
Knowledge is not enough — storage is the other half
This is the part of the conversation that gets undersold in a lot of gun-owning households, and we want to be very direct about it.
Educating your child about firearms does not mean you should leave firearms accessible to them. Those are two different conversations and they are both necessary.
Our kids knew about our firearms from the time they were five and six years old. They could tell you what was in the house. They could recite the safety rules. And every single one of those firearms was still locked up, secured, and out of their access at all times.
Why? Because kids are kids. Kids have bad days, curious moments, friends over, dares to navigate, brains that are still developing impulse control. The whole point of secure storage is to make sure that on the worst day — the day when knowledge alone isn’t enough — the firearm simply isn’t reachable.
A few storage principles we’d recommend regardless of how well-trained your kids are:
- We kept the ammunition inaccessible too so they don’t end up in pockets, at school, or anywhere else that could get them in trouble or injured
- A quality safe or lockbox, biometric or combination — not a “hidden” location
- Defensive firearms in a quick-access safe if needed for home defense (these exist; they open in seconds for you and never for anyone else)
- Trigger locks as a backup layer for safe queens, not as a primary security measure
- Check storage regularly. Lockboxes get bumped. Safes get left open. Make sure the system is actually functioning
If you’d like specific recommendations on safes or storage solutions for your situation, that’s exactly the kind of conversation we love having at the shop. Stop by, tell us about your home, your kids’ ages, and what you’re trying to secure, and we’ll point you toward what works.
A few things you don’t have to do
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by this conversation, here’s what isn’t required:
- You don’t have to be a “gun person” to talk to your kids about firearm safety. Eddie Eagle is for every kid, gun-owning home or not
- You don’t have to have one perfect, formal conversation. Safety conversations work better as ongoing, low-pressure check-ins, not One Big Talk
- You don’t have to have all the answers. If your kid asks something you don’t know, “I’m not sure, let’s find out together” is a perfectly good answer
- You don’t have to make the conversation political. Firearm safety is not a left or right issue. It’s a parenting issue.
The bottom line
Talk to your kids. Not once — over time, in small pieces, in calm voices, in language they can understand. Teach them the rule. Reinforce it casually until it’s second nature. If you own firearms, lock them up — every time, every day, without exception. Ask other parents about their homes. And trust your kid with the information they need to make a good decision when you’re not there.
The goal isn’t to make your child afraid of firearms. It’s to make them informed, calm, and equipped to make safe choices in every situation life puts them in. That’s true whether they grow up to be a hunter, a competitive shooter, a casual range-goer, or someone who never picks up a firearm in their life.
It’s just one more thing we teach our kids about how to navigate the world safely.
A program we’re proud of: Oliver’s Safety Squad
We can’t write a post about kids and safety without mentioning what we’ve built ourselves. Oliver’s Safety Squad is our children’s coloring book series, starring our shop dog Oliver and his lamb Clover. Each book covers age-appropriate safety topics in a calm, story-based format for kids ages 4-8 — outdoor hazards, holiday safety, the responsibility of caring for an animal, and the underlying habit of stop, think, check with a grown-up before doing something uncertain.
The books aren’t a substitute for the conversation in this article. They’re a companion to it. Kids respond to characters and stories in a way that pure rule-recitation can’t reach, and Oliver has become a quiet bridge between parents and kids on topics that can otherwise feel hard to bring up.
Pick one up next time you’re in the shop. They’re free, and we’d rather a copy be in your kid’s hands than on our shelf.
If you need help having this conversation
We’ve talked a lot of parents through this — whether they own firearms or not. If you’re not sure how to bring it up, what to say, what age to start, or what storage solution makes sense for your household, come by and ask. No purchase necessary. No pressure. We’re parents too. We get it.