You Have a Duty to Secure Your Weapons

Video Transcribed: My name is Brian L. Jackson, and I’m a Tulsa Father’s Rights attorney.  Today, guys, this one’s for those of you who like to hunt, and maybe you like to take your kids along hunting.

To somewhat authority question though. Anytime you’re talking about hunting and weapons if you’re going to keep firearms in the home, what is the appropriate way to store firearms in the home and avoid any potential legal entanglements as a result of having firearms in your home?

Let’s start with the basic rule that if you’re dealing with a minor, that is your minor child, you cannot give them unfettered access to a firearm. So you do have a duty to secure your weapons. However, Oklahoma Statutes don’t necessarily prescribe a specific way in which you need to secure your weapons.

Under Title 21, the rule is essentially you can’t just give minor unfettered access to a weapon, especially a handgun. However, it doesn’t say anything about, “Well, do you need to store it in the locker? Do you need to store it in a safe?”

It simply says you can’t give them access and there’s a whole bunch of exceptions to that rule. You can allow them to, if you’re out hunting with a hunting license during hunting season, then they can have a firearm for that purpose.

If you take them to a public range or a commercial range where they’re going to target shoot, you can give them access for the purposes of target shooting, and that includes a handgun by the way.

Where it gets a little trickier it’s like I said, if you’re keeping it in your home, the main thing is that if they’re going to have access, they have to be supervised. That’s a big deal under the law and they have to be supervised and appropriately so.

So what should you do? Well, probably good practice is to keep your guns locked up. Also, if you are dealing with a unique situation, you do want to make sure you talk with a lawyer. There are some circumstances where you really do need to be careful about having weapons in the house.

If you have a kid who has a juvenile record, you can’t have weapons lose in the house and you need to have a locked container or have them offsite. And that’s where you do need to talk to an attorney about your specific circumstances.

Another situation where you probably want to talk to an attorney about your specific circumstances is if you’re in a situation where you are dealing with custody litigation or some other kind of scenario where your state is your visitation or custody of your child is an issue, especially if the child’s mother has a different opinion than you about weapons and firearms.

And you definitely want to talk to a good lawyer about that, who can advise you how to handle that situation in a manner that doesn’t compromise your rights and your right to… If you want to introduce your child to hunting, target shooting, or anything else weapon or firearms-related.

How you can do that and not end up with a problem later in court? And it’s very circumstance specific so you definitely want to talk to a lawyer in that situation. So the long and short of it is there are some basic ground rules you probably want to follow, but if you’re dealing with circumstances that are unique like what I talked about, you want to get a good lawyer involved just so they can advise you, “Okay, do this, don’t do that.” Because some of those things can get real fact-specific and you don’t know until you know.

My name is Brian L. Jackson and I’m an Oklahoma father’s rights attorney. We have been talking about your kids and introducing them to hunting or other firearms-related activities. Thank you very much. Have a great day.