Female Speaker: Like many parents Beth Milkovich and Jean Kremer understand the dangers of having a gun in the home and can't imagine putting 8-eight-year old Keyla at risk.
Beth Milkovich: I would feel very uncomfortable having a gun here. I just think the curiosity factor with kids even if you try to hide it, even if you try to hide a key they are going to find it.
Jean Kremer: The likelihood of my using a weapon to protect the family seems much more remote than the likelihood of there being an accident or it being stolen.
Female Speaker: Although many parents will argue that keeping a gun in the home will help them protect their families. Research shows that a gun kept in a home is 43 times more likely to kill someone known to the family than to kill someone in self-defense.
Phyllis Agran: If you can imagine the tragedy of a child finding a gun and shooting a friend or shooting another adult, or another relative, you would not want guns in the community.
Female Speaker: Fortunately, Jean and Beth are in the majority, 60% of American households with children do not have guns, but that leaves 40% that do. What about those parents?
Tom McCabe is a 15 year veteran of the Palm Beach County police department in Florida. Before he and his wife Debbie had their son Liam, she was also a police officer and kept her own weapons in the house.
Debbie McCabe: We're just the two of us, and we never had children in the house. So we would just, it was nothing other than putting them on the closet or you know put them on the kitchen counter, and because we need, we are going to go to work in a little while.
Female Speaker: But then came Liam, and his younger brother Shawn, and suddenly firearm safety became a very big issue.
Tom McCabe: It wasn't something I thought about, now it's very much something that I am very aware of and cognizant about it.
Female Speaker: When it comes to child proofing a home, there are simple precautions parents can and should take to protect their children from covering electrical outlets with plastic plug inserts to installing protective safety guards near stairs. But, a gun in the home presents a whole new level of risk. Is there any way to truly keep it safe?
Phyllis Agran: To say a firearms safe is an oxymoron, but if a family feels that they need own a gun or if the parent is in a profession which requires a gun such as a police officer, we advice those parents to lock the gun high and out of reach of the child where the child doesn't know where it is and to keep it unloaded and lock up the ammunition separately from the gun.
Female Speaker: By the time a child is old enough to defeat this system, you may think gun safety would no longer be an issue. But, know this, of the more than 3,000 children who died in the year 2000 in the US from a firearm injury; more than 2,600 were between 15 and 19 years old. Nearly 900 of those deaths were due to suicide, the fact is, having a gun in the home increases the risk of successful suicide by 500%.
Whether or not you own a gun, talk to your child about gun safety. Explain that the gun violence he or she sees on TV is not real, and that in real life children are hurt by guns everyday. Tell your child to stay away from guns wherever he or she may find them.
Beth Milkovich: Kids get into guns and they are curious, and all kids are curious. Sometimes mama says, Keyla! Don't go over here, because something is there that I don't want you to see and what's your first thought?
Keyla: To go over there.
Beth Milkovich: Absolutely! To go over there, and that's exactly what happens with guns.
Female Speaker: To further reinforce your gun safety message, keep playtime free of toy guns. They are barred from the McCabe's home.
Debbie McCabe: Because we want them to understand a gun is never a toy, a gun is very serious, a gun is something that you have to have respect for, because it can hurt.
Female Speaker: As a police officer, it's Tom McCabe's job to protect the community in which he works. As a father, it's his duty to protect his children. That's why, no matter how close at hand his children are, gun safety is never far from his mind.
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