Hey, good news! Obama recognizes the American public school system isn’t performing up to snuff, and believes in school choice.

I mean, as long as you can afford $20,000 - $30,000 in annual tuition, he does.

Man, I’m sure glad we didn’t get evil old John “Seven Houses” McCain as POTUS. Really dodged a bullet there. It’ll be great to have One Of Us Folks in the White House!

Now, I’m off to look under the couch cushions for some quarters… I have about $390,000 to come up with so I can send my kid through K-12.

We’ve been mulling over this one for a while, and I thought I’d throw it out there for the brain trust.

What do you think is the best way to deal with kids and guns in the same house?

We’ve been an adults-only household (both residents and visitors, 99% of the time) for as long as we’ve been a gun-owning household, so adjustments will have to be made. I cannot get behind the lock-’em-all-up mentality, as I think it’s just as irresponsible to deny the adults of the household speedy access to our means of self-defense as it is to leave the children of the household easy access to tools they do not properly understand. And I likewise think it is irresponsible (and against our ideology, anyway) to make guns a forbidden fruit, so I believe in exposing children to them while constantly reinforcing safety.

So, here’s where I’m at (with full recognition this may have to vary to respond to the particular personalities and maturity levels of our kids) -

Guns in the household must be in one of three states:
- Loaded and secured on our persons; i.e. holstered pistols
- Loaded (condition three?) and behind a locked door; i.e. home-defense shotgun secured in locked bedroom
- Unloaded and stored separately from ammo, both out-of-reach of kids (or locked up); i.e. extraneous guns and ammo high on a closet shelf, in a safe, etc.

Firearm theory will be approached as follows:
- Four safety rules drilled into kid’s brain… from birth ;)
- Eddie Eagle approach: STOP! Don’t touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult. …BUT…
- Guns aren’t bad. While there should always be adult supervision, all they have to do is ask and we will allow them to examine/handle firearms. (Hat-tip to an Arfcom dad for that one, who said it worked very well with his kids.)
- Proper adherence to the rules and demonstrated respect for firearms will earn the first BB gun… Responsible use of the BB gun will lead to the .22LR… and so forth.

Again, I recognize that this may totally vary from kid to kid. If we have a lock-picking monkey-child, we may have to rethink it. I don’t have arbitrary age limits in mind, either, so earning responsibility is going to be a big deal.

Here’s one I’m kind of hung up on, though: How do we approach toy guns? Philosophically, I’m not opposed to gunplay (a la cops and robbers) and I recognize kids will make a stick into a gun. I’m most concerned about mixed signals - don’t point a gun at anything you don’t intend to destroy… unless it’s pretend? Stop, don’t touch, etc…. unless it’s a toy? Do you disallow play with lookalike toy guns completely? Do you tell the kid they have to treat every gun like it’s real until they get an adult’s confirmation it’s a toy? How do you drill home that the cap gun that goes “SNAP!” is okay to “shoot” at their friend but the BB gun that goes “psst” isn’t okay to shoot at anything they don’t want to destroy?

Yeah, yeah, I realize I haven’t even birthed the kid yet, but I tend to plan (way) ahead. Plus, it’s a big deal to us to be good ambassadors for firearms - as always - so I’d like to have a gameplan in place that we can relay to others… both gun-owners and not.