BACK TO BASICS WITH JEFF GONZALES: FIREARMS IN THE HOME

Transcript:

Jeff Gonzales: Hi, I'm Jeff Gonzales, president of Trident Concepts. I'm here for back to basics with CCW Safe. Today, we're going to talk about firearms in the home. In the last several months, we've seen a tremendous amount of firearms being purchased by folks that are considering self-defense as a personal responsibility. Fantastic. Congratulations. Great step. It also means that we have to introduce and talk about subjects that maybe are not familiar or even comfortable to talk about.

Now we have to talk about bringing a firearm into the home and the fact that now we are an armed parent or armed parents. What does that really mean? The bottom line is that you've made a choice to carry a firearm or to purchase a firearm for a reason. There was a reason behind that. Whatever that reason is, it's probably very valid reason. As an armed parent now, we need to approach things from a little different perspective.

For instance, most likely you've already had the conversation with your spouse or your significant other, so we can move past that. The next group that we need to talk about are our children. Do we bring the subject up with children or do we avoid it? This is a personal question that has to be discussed with family members to figure out what's the best course of action. First, I will tell you that whatever conversation you have with your children needs to be age appropriate.

A question that you might hear from your kids a lot is, "Why do you have to have a gun?" It's a legitimate and reasonable question because children are now a little bit concerned about their safety. "Why do my parents need to have a firearm? What do they know that I don't know?" Probably the most important thing that you need to do is reassure the children that everything is okay, and this is just a precaution. A good way to go about that is a fire extinguisher.

We have a fire extinguisher in the house for the off chance we have a fire in the house, have a firearm in the house for the off chance that we have a burglar, or crime, or something along those lines. Use that as a guide, if you will. Once we make the choice to bring a firearm into our home, most important thing that we do is that we ensure that we have established safe protocols for how that firearm is going to be secured.

What I mean by that is that you need to make sure that you secure that firearm so that you deny unauthorized access. That's the most important thing. Deny unauthorized access. We're not just talking about children, we're talking about anybody else that does not have a legitimate reason to have access to that firearm. It doesn't matter who they are. Once we have talked about all of that, one of the reasons why we have a firearm is because we are acknowledging that there is evil in the world and we potentially could be subjected to that evil. I always try to start a conversation off by asking people, who here knows somebody that's been the victim of a violent crime? Surprisingly, more people raise their hands than you might think. Violent crime reaches out and touches us more than you might think. Then, the next thing we talk about is, let's develop a defensive plan. What are we going to do?

I have this firearm, what are going to be the reasons why I need to gain access to that firearm? Why do I, as the armed parent, need to have access to that firearm. What are some of the reasons? Talk about it. What if somebody is beating down my door? What if I come home and I find an intruder? What are some of these reasons why you might need to have access? Because those reasons are going to make up why you need to create your defensive plan. There's a lot of things that go into creating a defensive plan.

The very first thing is to start to understand the why. Why do I need to gain access? What are some of those reasons? That's also going to tie into knowing the law, understanding deadly force, things of that nature. One of the other things that we talk about when we talk about bringing firearms into the home is the choice of carrying those firearms on the body. If you were to think about it from this perspective, securing a firearm inside of some ready access locker is great.

It's awesome. It's not on your body. It may not be that easy to get to in a true critical incident. However, having a firearm on your body does make it a little bit quicker to access. The other point that I make about having a firearm on your body is that you control that firearm. Unauthorized access is almost non-existent anymore because, by keeping that firearm on your body, you're denying access an unauthorized access to anybody else.

As we start to move into this new landscape about bringing firearms into the homes, I feel like one of the things that helps people to overcome some of the emotional connection to carrying a firearm in the home, or having a firearm in the home, is just an acknowledgement that we're making a choice, and we're using an educated process to figure out what's in our best interest about carrying a firearm in the home or securing a firearm in the home.

These are just some ideas to think about, helpful tools to navigate through these waters. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them down below. Until then, I'm Jeff Gonzales. Take care and stay safe.

Reposted from CCW Safe

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