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The big gun control grifting operations are out in force in the run-up to the holidays on social media. The big thing they want to frighten people with this time? Visiting family and friends for the holidays. Even on some of the best days of the year, these people think we should be extra afraid (and, more importantly, we should be donating money), but they’re working hard to instill some extra paranoia for the most wonderful time of the year.

In fact, they think we should be afraid of guns enough that we should start hassling the friends and family we’re visiting about their guns. Are all of their firearms in safes? Are there trigger locks on all of them? Is the ammunition stored separately? Is the safe behind a locked door, inside of a safe inside of another safe like a Russian nesting doll of safes?

After all, even one gun that isn’t rendered at least 30 separate steps from being operable is a deadly threat to The Children™. And a child, by the way, is anyone under the age of Joe Biden. Also, it’s better to be extra safe and store your ammunition on another continent.

Yes, I know that’s something of an exaggeration, but what they’re really advocating for here makes guns virtually useless for personal defense. But the bigger problem is that their approach can give parents a false sense of security. Even if you do as they say and bother everyone whose house you visit, there’s still a chance that your kids could come across an unsecured gun.

There are several ways that could still happen. The obvious one is that someone would just tell the anti-gun twatwaffle wine aunt who’s hassling them what they want to hear just to shut her up. But even honest people who genuinely want to please Aunt Karen might still have a gun laying around.

Some people have old stuff lying around not knowing what may be inside. It’s not that far-fetched. It’s even happened with live grenades. Maybe grandpa passed away a while back and grandma couldn’t bear to go through his things yet. That Luger he brought home from the Big One may still be in his closet, loaded. Or, somebody’s teenage son joined a gang without his parents knowing and is hiding a pistol under his mattress.

Bothering your relatives wouldn’t catch any of that kind of stuff.

The reason harassing your relatives, passing more gun control laws, and other such measures don’t work is that you can never really hand off your personal responsibilities to other people. As a parent, it’s my job to keep my kids safe. It’s not my parents’ job. It’s not my grandparents’ job. It’s not Aunt Karen’s job. Sure, I can try to pawn my responsibility for my kids’ safety other people, but at the end of the day the buck stops with me as a parent.

Instead of demanding that the whole world change to absolve me of my parental responsibilities, I choose to educate my kids. In the event they come across an unattended firearm, they know what to do instead of being left to do whatever comes to mind.

When my kids were really small, they were taught the Eddie Eagle way. Yes, those cartoons are pretty awful, but for small children being trained to not touch it, back away, and tell an adult about a gun…it works. It’s the age-appropriate way to get the message across so your kids know how to handle the situation.

For older kids, more training is appropriate. Every parent needs to make that call depending on their own feelings, the maturity level of the kid (which doesn’t always track with age), and other factors. But as they become teenagers, they can almost always learn the basics, including knowing how to clear a weapon and make it safe, what some of the relevant laws are, and how to contact parents or the police themselves should they come across one in a place where they might get in trouble for having it.

However you choose to approach it, training your kids in gun safety actually protects them. It doesn’t depend on anybody else doing “the right thing” in order to ensure your kids stay safe. It doesn’t depend on criminals being responsible. It doesn’t depend on anything but your kid doing the right thing at the right time and that’s something you have a reasonable amount of control over.

56 COMMENTS

  1. My sister and brother-in-law won’t speak to me because I own guns. What’s even funnier, during the “mostly peaceful” BLM riots of 2020, my sister called me and said I had a duty to send her a gun through the mail so she could protect her family (they live in El Cerrito, across the bay from San Fran Sicko). When I told her it was illegal, she said I should do it anyway.

    I haven’t spoken to the b* since. And her husband is a big fat pu$$y.

  2. “Harassing Your Friends and Relatives About Safe Gun Storage Won’t Keep Your Kids Safe”

    Maybe not, but it feels really, really, good to shoot down every argument of theirs and watch the blood *boil*. 😉

    (And I’m saying that as 2 of them are sitting in my living room right *now*…)

    • Even better solution. Don’t invite anyone with crotch goblins to the house. Just in case that twatwaffle that couldn’t get a real man to breed her, still tries to shriek and harp about guns, I open the front door and invite them to leave.
      As in, Hie thyself away and fornicate thyself, and the equine upon which thou didst arrive!

      • Why does every one want to abuse the horse? He ain’t got a say in who owns him. Animal slavery is an ugly thing. And then to make it worse by sexual abuse of the poor critter.

        • The horse is likely the only thing that the harpy could force to have sex with her.

          I do apologize to the horse.

  3. Safe storage of emu is a thing.
    I put 7 .45acp’s in a crate of 9mm’s by accident and the next day all the 9mm’s were dead.

    • This is a good warning. I’ve been loading .45acp for years, but I’m just starting to build 9mm emu. I’ll be sure to separate them.

    • Emu is the next step after creating a turduckin if you have a big enough oven to cook it in. if you want extra credit that yellow bird from sesame Street could be the final step.

  4. Don’t have any of either. Family was raised with firearms in the home and the ‘NO Touchy Rule’, with appropriate consequences. As needed. Anyone who tries to tell me how to store my firearms. Is certainly not a friend or a further acquaintance.

  5. I had some anti family once upon a time who would’ve been Gifford’s target audience for this sort of harassment/slacktivism but over the years they’ve changed their tunes considerably.

    Yes, they’ll all still vote straight-D every time but in the ways they live their lives they are increasingly small-gov minded and at least pay lip service to the value of individual liberty. They’ve gone from blaming every newsworthy shooting on the guns and gun owners to making statements in front of others like “it’s always a known individual” or “more people need to carry more places.”

    They’re mostly still young, in their 30’s, with grade school kids but the changes I’ve seen over the years are substantial.

    Real life like kids and bills and retirement planning has a funny way of highlighting the utter pointless stupidity of arguing over chromosomes and jumping through hoops to make martyrs out of woman beating, drug dealing career felons.

  6. I was just going to invite Taylor Lorenz over and then sneeze in her face when she starts blathering about how well masks work.

    • “I was just going to invite Taylor Lorenz over and then sneeze in her face”

      I swear, that slag re-defines stupidity…

    • Oh, be nice. She’s “disabled” now, dontcha know.
      I’m not sure how profound mental retardation makes one more susceptible to having a bad COVID reaction though.

      • Even though I’m not much of the personal story type, here’s a related story you’ll like, Shire-man. It’s about Covid and wordplay.

        During mUh PaNdEmiK! the university wanted everyone to be fully jabbed for in-person stuff to resume. Pretty much everyone in the MCD (Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Bio) department said “Fuck that, there’s no way in hell something with the described mechanism is safe” (this was often followed by a bunch of immunology talk most people can’t fathom).

        But the university was pretty freewheeling with exemptions. Religious, conscience and medical. Pick your poison. The first two, for me, would be a lie but I was willing to take the second if there was no other alternative. Might as well take a stab at the third one though, because it does apply.

        So, I go to see my doc who’s a younger guy as doctors go, around 40, who also had an undergrad degree in molecular biology. I told him my concerns and we nerded out about molecular mechanisms of several things for like 20 minutes. He also noted in my chart that, outside this thing, I’m one of the most vaccinated people on the planet.

        Anyway, he takes the medical exemption form, fills it out, signs and stamps it and writes “Vaccine reaction” in the reason box.

        I give him a look and ask why he’s written this since it has nothing to do with what he discussed. He says the following:

        [Pretty damn close to verbatim from our conversation]

        Doc: “Look, they can change the meanings of words and therefore who qualifies and who doesn’t at will because this is political. They’ve already done this. If we put down what we’ve talked about then they can change it later and then the university can revoke your exemption if they like. The one thing they can never change is if you’ve had a negative vaccine reaction and for them to try to do that and revoke this exemption would require rewriting a lot of law at the state and federal levels.”

        Me: “OK, but if I haven’t had a shot how can I have a reaction to it?”

        Doc: “You heard that there was a new vaccine, but having had Covid, and understanding the proposed mechanism you know that there’s no reality where this can be said to be close to safe. This has caused you to not want the shot because you view it in a negative light.

        That’s a reaction to the existence of this particular shot, and because it’s not “I want that” we’re not lying if we say it’s negative. That’s a negative reaction. Put them together and that’s a “negative vaccine reaction”.

        The fact that they interpret that as you having had a dose and had side effects isn’t your problem and they’re not allow to ask you questions because of HIPAA. So, just keep your mouth shut and let them believe what they want to believe”.

        Me: LOL!
        ===
        Amusing side note: A professor who’s a 55-ish white lady went the “religious” route and declared herself a Rasta to avoid the jab. Now, I have no idea if Rastafarians are against the jab or not, but she didn’t get one and no one asked her shit. But she was kinda dedicated to the story, she also changed the music in her office to pretty much all reggae for the next year.

        • I was ambulanced to the hospital for a serious infection. High fever. Blood pressure bottoming out. First thing they wanted to do at the ER was give me a covid test. I told them no. I had already had it and knew this wasn’t it. While I was in icu they kept badgering me about it. I told them no.

          Because I insisted they keep that shite away from me I wound up in an ‘isolation’ room. Had a room all to myself. Didn’t have to share.

          Never had the jabs. Never trusted their bogus claims. I wear a full beard. A paper mask on a full beard is protecting nobody from shite. I never wore a mask. Even in places that had signs up requiring them. Nobody ever said boo to me about it.

          My sister died of a stroke. She’d had stroke before. We knew what they looked like. The doctor said it was a stroke. Her death certificate said covid.

          It is a lying sack of shite, this covid scandemic.

        • “The doctor said it was a stroke. Her death certificate said covid.”

          That was a fiscal decision by the doc performing the official post-life examination.

          For each death ‘attributed’ to the virus (and not TTAG’s own esteemed Vyrus), they got a stack of cash from the government, so they exploited it as far as they could…

        • I’m not surprised.

          We had a freak hunting accident here where a guy tripped carrying a loaded rifle up a mountain, shot himself under the chin, bullet came out the top of his head and hit his buddy in the back. Both roll down the hill a bit and their corpses fell off a small cliff.

          The Medical Examiner wrote it up correctly but the county still recorded them as Covid deaths. The ME lost his shit and went public. Hilarity ensued trying to explain this “clerical error” which, as Geoff points out, came with a financial incentive.

        • I got one covdshot and regret that. I blame it on my Dad( deceased1992). He said one of these days they’re going to bring a disease back from outer space they cant cure. I thought this might be it. Pharmacy called a couple weeks later telling me time to get the booster. Nope the only jean modification I want is cutoffs.

      • @jwm, Due to the fact that I volunteer regularly in my community and especially during the Chinese Disease hoax. I worked with the local health department at Covid testing and vaccination clinics. I was required to be vaccinated, as was the Mrs. Her mother lives with us and absolutely refused any vaccination. Even after being double shot, both myself and the Mrs. got Covid. Her mother not so much as a sniffle. The after effects of the shot were considerably worse than the so called disease.

        • DM. I never got a shot. I’m an old, fat type two. I got the covid. I made it through. Went to the ER and they said it was covid but they had no more room for me so I went home. Probably saved my life.

          Its the flu. Shutting down an entire world over the flu was beyond criminal.

  7. “I choose to educate my kids. In the event they come across an unattended firearm, they know what to do instead of being left to do whatever comes to mind.”

    This.

    You can’t kid-proof guns. You must gun-proof your kids!

    • Yeah, people also need to teach their kids fricken boundaries, if they are in between bedding looking for stuff something else is going on. Like most of us here I grew up in around firearms and also respecting other peoples space.

      • It’s called the ‘NO Touchy Rule’. which must have the implementation of serious consequences, for failing to adhere to it.

  8. “… demanding that the whole world change to absolve me of my … responsibilities …”

    That right there, ladies and gentlemen, is the siren call and national anthem of all True Believer Pr0gre$$ive Democrats.

    • The last close relatives home we went to was my brother last year. Extremely Pro-gun. Not worried about his kids or grandkids finding anything(he locks it up). Ditto my best friend who has his grandkids over often. My granddaughters live 700 miles away. Not an issue. Oh & EFF ILLannoy🙄

  9. If it’s that much of an issue with any family member or friend then there is no reason for me to be there. Why should I willingly spend time with someone that is likely to kill me? I see no reason for anyone else to do that either. None of this makes any sense. This is just stupid craziness.

    With that said. I know plenty of people that own firearms. That fact alone doesn’t mean anything at all. Everyone has knives too so what’s the diff? I’d bet that every single person that reads that Giffords message has knives.

    • You know it’s strange, Karen always says how dangerous guns are. but I’ve hurt myself way more times with knives.

  10. From my earliest memories, there were guns throughout the house. None of them locked up, of course. Loaded guns, here, there, everywhere. We got “Don’t touch” lectures at an early age, then a “Want to touch? Let me show you. Never touch unless Daddy tells you to!” then “Here’s your own gun – it’s to stay in the gun rack unless your Daddy tells you to get it!” By age 12 or 13, we were deemed competent for daily use of pistols, rifles, and shotguns without supervision. We ran traplines, and hunted after school.

    I raised my own kids the same way.

    All guns are loaded, unless and until you personally clear them. If you leave the room to get a drink of water, when you return to that room, all guns are loaded AGAIN, unless and until you personally clear them.

    This is gun safety in my world.

  11. I’ve been on the receiving end of this nonsense, twice. My response was the same both times…”Come visit…or don’t. It’s your choice, and I’m good either way, but how and where I store anything in this house is none of your damn business.”

    They opted out both times…and I’m good with it.

  12. Not meaning to be disrespectful, but, once upon a time, kids were taught to keep their paws off everybody else’s stuff.

    • No kid behaves all of the time. It’s great to teach them the no touch rule as well as all safety rules, but don’t count on that always working.

  13. A: This is none of your G.,D business.

    2: If you don’t like it the door is right over THERE.

    Zero ships given.

  14. This is a great opportunity for counter programing. “Yes these pears are delicious aren’t they. My good friend Nikita from the Skeet club dropped them off yesterday. I need to send him a thank you note and find out where he got them.”

    You just let the cat out and it aint’ going back in the bag. Don’t dwell on it. If the kid ask any follow up questions just talk about what a great guy and shot Nikita is and keep it light on details. Be THAT Uncle.

    Merry Christmas

  15. My sister is anti-gun. My wife doesn’t like them either (but tolerates mine). My brother and his first son are hunters. My two kids and I all own guns. I have no grandchildren to worry about, but if and when I do, I am going to have to gather up “a few” unsecured and fully loaded handguns sitting around. Meanwhile…
    I have heard a rumor that California passed a new law about securing firearms, but the only detail I have is a requirement to secure firearm left in vehicles, which I hate to do anyway.If they passed a law like San Francisco that requires all firearms not on one’s person to be unloaded and secured, well then what they don’t know won’t hurt them–or me. I am not about yo put my home security arms out of immediate reach.

  16. Its about 5:15 AM Christmas morning as I post this. I had to get up at 3 AM for a couple of Christmas related activities – one of which was dropping off food stuff for our local group of gun owners annual meals thing for local organizations who serve the homeless and less fortunate. The other was to deliver presents to a friends house, he stored the two Christmas present AR’s for his two sons over here so as to keep it a secret. The twin boys turned 18 on November 16th. Up until now they have been shooting mom and dads guns, since they were about 6 years old and didn’t have their own personal guns.

    But on the subject of the anti-gun idea of ‘relatives talking to us over the holidays about the’ ‘importance of safe gun storage’ …

    The anti-gun assume every gun owner just leaves guns laying around the house and that’s not true. In reality, collectively, the biggest threats to kids or others over the Christmas holiday season by more than 1,200 times greater is (not ranked in order of severity) : fire, food poisoning, violent criminal, car accident, falls, defective glass table tops (collectively, over 23,000 extremely serious injury accidents from defective glass table tops annually, ~9,000 deaths as a result of these accidents during the Christmas holiday season). Of those collective threats, each one individually is, during the Christmas holiday season or at any other time of the year, over 182 times more likely to happen than a suicide or accident with a gun that is not in ‘safe storage’ – except for car accident when ‘car accident’ is defined as a car striking a pedestrian in which case a pedestrian-person (e.g. walking, jogging, bike riding) near a roadway/street at any time of the year is more than 1,100 times more likely to be hit by a car than they are to commit gun suicide or have an accident (including death) with a gun that is not in ‘safe storage’.

    But just as a further, collective, (yet incomplete) reminder list of things that are more likely to happen annually than a person committing gun suicide or having an accident (including death) with a gun that is not in ‘safe storage’ (note: direct-result deaths only in list below, there are thousands more in each category that are ‘injured’ to various degree, most of them serious injury, but don’t die as a direct result):

    Lawnmowers = ~70 deaths annually
    Bees = ~100 deaths annually
    Ladders = ~150 deaths annually
    Auto-Erotic Asphyxiation = ~160 deaths annually
    Deer (collisions on roads) = ~200 deaths annually
    Constipation = ~270 deaths annually
    Hit by bus = ~264 deaths annually
    Falling out of bed = ~737 deaths annually
    Riding bicycles = ~1000 deaths annually
    Swimming pools = ~380 deaths annually
    Falling TV’s = ~29 deaths annually
    Ice skating = ~17 deaths annually
    Diabetes = ~80,000 deaths annually
    Strokes = ~142,000 deaths annually
    Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases = ~154,000 deaths annually
    Cancer = ~600,000 deaths annually
    Heart Disease = ~635,000 deaths annually

    Anyway, on to our own Christmas day activities now…and I wish all of you a Merry Christmas 🎅

    • Enjoyed your survey. I could really use citations for the numbers. There are a number of people I would like to present with a Christmas present of information you assembled.

  17. Harassing Your Friends and Relatives About Safe Gunm Storage:
    You bet I do, WTF is all your gunms doing locked up and the emu is in Kattookyville?
    Ohhhhh No! What if Boogiedahboogieman bust in your door to steal the cranberry sauce? What yah gonna do?
    9-1-1
    Please hold, all our lines are busy at this time.
    Please stay on the line for the next available representative.
    You can get faster service by going to our Website
    [email protected]..
    ,,,,
    401 website cannot be found. If this is an emergency dial 9-1-1

  18. When my kids were like 5yo, I started letting them steer the car by sitting on my lap through the Christmas lights, then they started learning to drive the country roads, at ~15 they started more formal training to drive the car, why, b/c I wanted them to understand the rules of the road, how to be safe and to take responsibility. In fact, I do the same thing with my garage tools. Does anyone let them run a skill saw w/o some training and oversight….

    If we take the same approach with firearms, won’t they be better off for it? Teach them the rules, insist they respect firearms and others and when you take the mystery out of them, they become tools and not something to “play” with.

    It isn’t rocket science

  19. Good article Jennifer.
    Question I have is what are the twatwaffle’s children doing going through parts of my house they have no right being in? Does the twatwaffle not teach her children respect, manners? And if they are too young to understand those ideas, why is it my job to monitor the twatwaffle’s spawn? Shouldn’t the twatwaffle be doing it? twatwaffle, dont come into my house and expect me to babysit your spawn while you lecture others and drink my wine.

  20. Everyone in my family knows that my gun is safely stored on my hip. More than half of them probably have their own. Even the ones who don’t carry have a gun at home. Of the others, well, they were all around during the OC movement here in PA back in the late 2000’s. If they have a problem they are not vocal about it.

    Last night the left wing of the inlaws stopped by my MIL house for their traditional Christmas Eve visit. The only mention of guns was my reluctance to cross the NJ, MD, or DelaWhere? lines. Nothing negative was said. it was a good Christmas/Hanukah visit.

    Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukah everyone. I pray you all get what you need, even if it isn’t always what you think you want.

  21. My wife & I have a No-Politics No-Preaching Rule when we’re with our family & friends.

    We have NO arguments or ruffled feelings and everyone usually has a good time. A few fanatics squirm & fidget, but the rule is inviolate. Attempts to start an argument are quashed immediately.

  22. Each year on average 1,300 children are killed by loaded guns left lying around the house unattended. Every one of them died needlessly.

    If one feels threatened one can carry a gun on one’s person but when one puts down that gun it should be locked up or have a trigger lock put on it. It only takes less than a second to unlock a gun. I practiced what I preached for 18 years when I had children at home so I know it can be done and done effortlessly.

    And when a child is killed that came over to visit or if you were babysitting a child you will be sued for every penny of your wealth if that child is killed or crippled for life so think about the reality of the situation before tragedy strikes because it can happen to you.

  23. The best thing conservatives can do is to take over the schools. Just like the Muslims are taking over the schools in Michigan and, with the Christian immigrants in Southern California. Then put shooting teams and 2A education back into the schools.

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