Should I talk to the neighbours?
I'm just getting into shooting. I've got an application underway for an R-PAL. Interested in target shooting, maybe IPSC or IDPA if I get good enough.
Here's the question... I have two kids, 4 and 7. The neighbours' kids, around the same age, are frequently in our house playing. We're on good terms with all the neighbours, but I have never talked to any of them about guns before, so I have no idea whether they have any opinions on the subject. Some people have nutty ideas, especially as regards some kinds of guns that people see as inherently evil.
Would it be a good idea to tell the neighbours about my plans, and reassure them that there is no reasonably foreseeable chance that their kids will ever find a gun, especially a loaded gun, lying around the place? I intend to be as responsible a gun owner as you'll ever find anywhere. Would it be reasonable to talk to the kids themselves, just in case I somehow failed to secure a gun properly (maybe I got struck by lightning while cleaning it)? I would warn them that if they do somehow happen to find a gun that looks real, then it probably is real, and they should not touch it, just tell an adult.
If I ever take my own sons shooting, and I expect I will, then there would seem to be a fairly high chance that the neighbours will hear about it anyway.
But maybe bringing it up at all is just asking for trouble.
Yeah. I know it's a necro thread...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
blacksmithden
For some brain washed reason, you're looking for approval from your neighbors for your hobby. If you bought a fast motorcycle, would you do the same ? If you bought a riding mower, would you seek their approval for that ? I don't need my neighbor's approval for stuff that doesn't effect them. My neighbors should be no more concerned about my guns than they are about my fishing rod. If there is ever a question about it being dangerous, ask them straight out...in a non-apologetic way, what rational reasoning they used to come to believe there was the slightest question of safety. The news ? The news sensationalizes every damned thing to the greatest possible extent, up to and including inventing complete fabrications, and calling them facts, to make their story get one more hit on the internet. Any neighbor who would blindly believe what they read on the internet or see on the news as absolute truth is a moron who isn't worth my intellectual time.
Dude... I grew up around guns. Always in the house. I also grew up around fishing rods... you could throw a rock of my childhood deck and easily hit the ocean.
I've been hooked hundreds of times including one pretty darn close to my eye. I've seen dogs, children, old people, birds and anything else you can think of hooked. It happens.
How many shootings have I seen or how many times have I been shot? Zero.