Children and Guns: Tips for parents

MONTGOMERY, AL (WSFA) - Alabama is one of the top states where children are more likely to be killed by a gun. So we took a fake gun we found in the toy section of a store, a toy that looks very much like a real gun, and hid it in a room where children were playing; their parents watched to see what their child would do.

Our gun was tucked away in a chair, but it took less than 30 seconds for four-year-old Hudson to find it, and not long for him to fire it. He's the son of WSFA 12 News anchors Bethany and Judd Davis. Bethany watched from a room next door.

"He's shooting his friends with it," Bethany said as she watched.

His friend, three-year-old Weston, picked up the gun after Hudson put it down and started to play with it, himself. Weston's parents say they've had many talks with him about gun safety.

"We have a lot of guns in the house that we keep in a safe," Jimmy Adams told us. "I actually take my boys hunting so we actually taught them at a young age about gun safety. So, it's good to see how he actually reacts."

While our experiment was a staged scenario, scenes like it play out all too often.

A new study reveals nearly 1,300 children die each year in gun violence, another 5,700 are wounded. That's 19 children a day.

A child in Montgomery is now part of those statistics. He was gunned down inside a home on Coral Lane. Police say his 11-year-old brother pulled the trigger.

"Once you squeeze that trigger off and that round comes out of the barrel, you can't bring it back," said Montgomery County Sheriff Derrick Cunningham, who believes shootings involving children, whether intentional or accidental, can be prevented with gun safety.

"Your number one priority is protecting your children," he tells parents.

If you have a gun in your home, Cunningham says lock it up and store the ammunition separately from the gun. He says putting it in a place you feel is out of reach for your child, like the top of a closet, isn't enough.

"You don't know pressures that your child is going through," the sheriff cautioned. "Why not secure your weapon to make sure your child, if they accidentally get it or intentionally get it, you know they can't use that weapon?" he says.

Cunningham added that parents need to have serious conversations with their children about guns. He suggests telling your children that if they see a gun:

STOP
DON'T TOUCH
LEAVE THE AREA
TELL AN ADULT

That's exactly what another group of children we tested did. One boy cautioned his cousins to "step away, don't touch it!"

Both Bethany and Weston's dad are having another conversation with their children about gun safety after our experiment.

Speaking to Hudson, Bethany said, "You know if this was not a toy it would be super dangerous?"

"It wasn't a real gun," Weston told his dad.

"How did you know?" Jimmy questioned. The reply? "It didn't shoot bullets out."

"You can't go to a gun and just test it out like that," the little boy's dad explained. "There's no way to look at a gun and tell it's not real!"

Here's a cheap solution Sheriff Cunningham recommends: a gun lock. He also suggests asking other parents if they have a gun in the home. If they do, ask if that gun is locked up. If you don't feel comfortable with the answer, don't allow your child to go to that friend's home.

You can read more about steps to protect your children and statistics about kids and guns at https://www.safekids.org/safetytips/field.

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