For information about the Montgomery Police Department's Firearms Familiarization Course for citizens, contact our Training Bureau, 334-240-4811.

Keeping Firearms at Home

The decision to keep a firearm in the home is very serious and one that must not be made lightly. If you choose to keep a gun, you must become fully informed about the risks of firearms to your family and others who visit.

The risks to our children of unsafe firearm storage practices are significant. Without any exaggeration, the way a gun is stored can be a matter of life and death for our children. Tragedies occur daily involving unlocked firearms easily accessible to young people, either at their own homes or the home of a relative or neighbor. These tragedies might very well never have happened if the adults in these children’s lives had unloaded and locked their firearms and ammunition, so that the children could not have such easy access to them.

National research shows that 40% of households with children have a firearm in the house, and one in four of these guns is kept loaded. In addition, in a majority of accidents and suicides and in many of the homicides, the firearms that were used were found at home.

It is vital that guns always be locked up and stored unloaded. Children never should have easy access to guns without parental supervision. This is especially true for handguns, because they are much more likely to be kept where children can get to them.

To ensure the safety of children, all gun owners should:

• unload and lock up their guns
• lock and store ammunition separately
• hide keys where kids are unable to find them