Originally Posted By: bacpacjac
Second, re the Ayoob quote, why wouldn't you do both?

That's exactly what I said. You probably didn't notice that part:

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When my kids were younger, all firearms were religiously locked up. But the kids were educated in firearms alongside that, and taught to shoot safely and responsibly.

My point was, simply getting rid of guns in your house IS NOT ENOUGH. You must educate and train your children as well. Because you do not control all the situations they will find themselves in.

My personal choice was to lock up my guns (in addition to training my children). I did not feel the need to get rid of them. But I was not chastising Mike for making his choice that was different than mine. As a matter of fact, I specifically said:

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However, it made you feel better to get rid of the guns, so that is worth something to you. I am not knocking that.

My point was, and still is, getting rid of guns from your house, or locking them up, IS INSUFFICIENT. Lockup or banishment is one thing that you should do ("hiding" does not qualify - every parent knows you can't hide something from your kids). But the other thing that is required is to educate your kids. So that they can keep themselves safe if they wander into a friends house and find a gun sitting out unsecured. Even though your house may not contain any firearms, your neighbors house might, and your kids should be able to deal with that possibility safely.

The only reason I responded to Mike's original post on the kids/guns/rid_the_house concept was because he was maybe a bit remoreseful that he got rid of his firearms, evidenced by his use of *sigh* in his post. And I was just co-miserating with him about that. But after that, I tried to point out to others that simply getting rid of your guns, as Mike did, is not enough to protect your children IMHO. It is only ONE step that you can take. You should add other steps too. Whether Mike additionally trained his kids about firearms or not is unknown to me, and irrelevent to my point (because his kids grew up safe and sound by whatever he did). I was targeting my statement at OTHER PEOPLE who might currently be in the "young kids at home" stage of their lives.