[bigbubba]

You do not need to teach young children how to use a gun if you instead teach them to never, under any circumstances, to touch the gun. This is not hard to do, though many irresponsible people neglect to do so. And none of this goes out the window even in fantasy "shit hits the fan" scenarios; the rules for how to handle (or, to not handle) guns remain the same. The rules keep you safe when you follow them dogmatically. As soon as you start making 'common sense' exceptions to the rules, that is when you put yourself in danger. A lot of people have gotten hurt after thinking "I know I shouldn't point the gun at myself, but I KNOW I just unloaded it so logically there is no danger..."

(And anecdotally, I've personally witnessed no correlation whatsoever between military service and taking gun safety seriously. YMMV.)

[r00fus]

Great points. I agree that military service and gun safety are orthogonal.

If one can't make these dogmatic safeguards, a firearm may pose more of a danger than what it protects against.

Sometimes the best way to solve a complicated problem is to avoid the source of complication in the first place.

[8note]

If abstinence education was effective, there would be few unwanted children in red states.

A shit hits the fan scenario is when you're black out drunk or something where you're in a bad mental state, not society collapsing. Following rules does not help in a situation where you're unable to follow rules

[bigbubba]

If 'gun abstention' weren't effective, there would be a whole lot more kids with gunshot wounds in red states. The fact of the matter is that telling kids not to touch guns generally does work.