As a hunter, your gun is an essential tool. Even when you practice firearm safety to a "t," it's important to understand that your gun is still dangerous -- especially if you have a child in your home. To ensure there are no accidents, follow these tips for gun safety when you live at home with kids.

Keep the gun in a safe.

Keeping the gun in a locked cabinet or a hidden cubby may be okay for some adults without kids, but as a parent, you don't want to take even the smallest risk. Invest in a  gun safe -- one with a combination entry, such as from Southern California Security Centers. Then, memorize the combination. Do not write it down anywhere (except perhaps in a password protected document stored in the cloud). You don't want to risk your child, or one of their friends, coming across the combination and using it to open the safe.

Store ammunition separate from the gun.

No single safety measure is 100% effective. On a very rare occasion, safes fail, you may forget to lock yours, or your child may somehow figure out the combination. You'll further decrease the risk of an accident if you store the gun unloaded -- and with no ammunition in the safe. Store the ammunition somewhere else entirely. It may not even be a bad idea to keep it in your garage or at a friend's house so there is even less chance of your child being able to fire the gun if they do come across it. When hunting season comes, you can just grab the ammo on your way out the door, and then return it to its storage place when you get home.

Educate your child about firearm safety.

Chances are, you are eventually want to teach your child to hunt and shoot. Before they are even old enough to actually hold the gun themselves, you can start teaching them firearm safety to prevent accidents. Talk to them about how you keep the gun locked up for everyone's safety. Point out that you always walk with the gun pointed downward, and that you use a device called a "safety" to prevent the trigger from being hit accidentally. Watch YouTube videos on gun safes made specifically for kids, too.

If your child grows up knowing that guns are something to be treated with the utmost respect and caution, you won't have to worry nearly as much about accidents. 

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