Gun Play Despite The Danger Of Guns In Homes Some Parents Avoid Asking Loaded Question

Though I was taken aback by the question, part of me was delighted that it had been asked.

“Do you keep any guns in your house?” inquired the father of a boy who had come to spend the afternoon with my son.

“Guns? No. No guns in this house,” I answered, halfway tripping over my surprise.

Polite conversation between parents, despite its abundance, often tiptoes around vital territory. While most have no qualms about requesting that their child wear a seat belt while traveling in someone else’s car, they rarely ask about guns. It’s easier to talk about toy weapons than real ones.

Yet gunshot wounds are second only to motor vehicle accidents as a cause of fatal injury in children and rank second as the cause of accidental death among 10- to 14-year-olds. In most cases, children who accidentally kill themselves or other children with a gun find the gun in their own home.

Most safety conscious parents are careful to keep electrical outlets covered and poisonous cleaning agents and potentially harmful medications stored safely away from the curious hands of kids. These same parents insist that their children wear helmets when riding bicycles. Yet more children die from gunshot wounds each year than from electrocution, poisoning or bicycle accidents.

Why is it then that with 40 percent of homes containing one or more firearms, parents don’t talk to one another about guns?

One factor is that gun ownership is a loaded issue, conversation about it tending to be political, not polite. Friendly parents handing off a kid for an afternoon of play are not likely to venture into an oh-by-the-way query about guns in the house. Rather they go on gestalt and hope for the best.

Were it possible to set aside political leanings and agree that a gun kept unloaded and locked away from children is a gun that can do no immediate harm, parental parties on both sides of the issue - at least where small children are concerned - could feel good about what should be a logical conversation:

“Do you keep a gun in your home?” one parent might reasonably inquire.

“Yes, my husband hunts occasionally,” the other parent could respond without feeling defensive. “Rest assured that it is unloaded and locked away, separate from the ammunition.”

The story of the father who last year fatally shot his teenage daughter when she jumped out of a closet to surprise him is a sad illustration of the dilemma. The notion that one can be prepared for an intruder requires keeping a gun “handy,” and a handy gun is by definition a deadly one, especially where children play.

As children get older, storage of a gun in a home becomes more dangerous. Adolescents, in part due to pressure from peers to engage in risk-taking behavior, have the capability to confound even the most well thought-out safety arrangement. Again from Camosy’s article: “In a study of Seattle high school juniors, 34 percent of boys reported that they had easy access to handguns. While the availability of handguns was strongly associated with problem behaviors, it was not restricted to any one socioeconomic or ethnic group.”

Camosy goes on to underscore the importance of an adolescent’s emotional status when considering whether it is reasonable to keep a gun. “A case control study that matched adolescent suicide victims with suicide attempters and never suicidal teens yielded disturbing results. Guns were twice as likely to be found in the homes of suicide victims than in the homes of suicide attempters or control subjects. There was no difference in the methods of gun storage in homes among the three groups. The mere presence of a firearm appears to increase the risk of suicide …”

Despite the danger they present to children, firearms are not likely to disappear from homes any time soon. In the meantime, Camosy suggests that children, from an early age, be taught what to do if they ever find a gun: “Teach them to remember the following words: ‘Stop! Don’t touch! Go away! Tell an adult!”’

Perhaps if children learn a no-nonsense approach to guns, adults will have an easier time addressing the subject. It’s something to talk about.

Graphic: Young guns

MEMO: Karen Engberg, a writer, pediatrician and mother, lives in California. You can write to her c/o: The Philadelphia Inquirer, Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101.