Ensuring Safe Access to Firearms for Children

Ensuring the Safety of Your Children

Hello, my name is Brian L. Jackson. I am 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. It’s a somewhat thorny question, though, anytime you’re talking about hunting and weapons.

If you’re going to take your kid, 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? I’ll 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 a minor unfettered access to a weapon, especially a handgun. However, it doesn’t say anything about, well, do you need to store it in a locker? Do you need to store it in a safe? It simply says you can’t give them access. There’s a whole bunch of exceptions to that rule.

Exceptions to the 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 is, 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.

Best Practices and Unique Circumstances

So what should you do? Well, probably a good practice is 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 loose in the house, and you need to have a locked container or have them off-site.

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 status, like your visitation or custody of your child is at issue, especially if the child’s mother has a different opinion than you about weapons and firearms.

Consultation for Your Specific Situation

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, you know, 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.

Take Action – Low-cost Strategy Session

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.

Once again, my name is Brian L. Jackson, a father’s rights attorney. You can reach out to me at Dads.Law where fathers are not disposable.