Now that it’s summer, parents know that there will be more time when their children are playing in other children’s homes.
For this reason, the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence urges all parents to ask other parents about the presence of guns in the homes where their children play.
In Illinois, nearly one in four households with children also has at least one firearm.
Certainly no parent expects that his or her child would play with guns in his or her home or another child’s home. But the reality is that hundreds of American children are killed every year in unintentional shootings in which a child came across an unsecured, loaded firearm.
Illinois parents can take some comfort in the fact that, in our state, it is unlawful for adults to leave guns loaded and accessible in homes where there are children under the age of 14.
It would be foolish, however, to think that everyone knows about or follows the tenets of this law, even the law-abiding gun owners.
The best way to ensure your child’s safety is to ask whether there is a gun in the home before your child plays there, be it the home of a friend or a relative. If the answer is no, then you have one less concern as a parent. If the answer is yes, then you need to make sure that any guns are unloaded and inaccessible to those children.
It may seem like a difficult question to ask at first, but it makes more sense to ask the question now than to wonder why you didn’t ask after a preventable tragedy has occurred.
