Last night I noticed my brother-in-law's gun safe was open [View all]

[phantom power]

I'm interested in people's thoughts on this. I'll share mine below.

My wife, daughter and I were over baby-sitting their twin boys (5 years old). Later in the evening, I was checking out his gun-smithing bench in his office, and noticed that his larger gun safe was open, with five or so AR-15 rifles inside, in various states of customization. It inspired me to see if he had his ammo properly locked up, and I noticed that in fact he had several boxes of rounds sitting on his workbench, a few feet away from the safe. (this stuff resides in his house, in his office room, it's not out in a garage or out-building)

I generally think of my BiL as the stereo-typical Responsible Gun Hobbyist(tm). He had training in the military, he's a smart, level headed guy, he always took what I considered to be comprehensive safety precautions when transporting and operating his weapons, etc.

I was a bit shocked to see ammo and weapons just laying around his office unsecured and unsupervised. I can tell you his twin boys are damned smart, and clever in the way that causes kids to get into stuff and figure out how to operate it just well enough to cause hilarity. I've watched them figure shit out, and even as kindergarteners, I consider them capable of loading a gun and firing it, by trial and error or otherwise.

At any rate, it's one of those things where it could happen 1000 times, and nothing at all would go wrong, but then that 1001th time we'd get a horrific phone call, or see it on the news. Or maybe something could have happened last night, with my family involved too. I had no idea that stuff was laying out, and I can tell you my eye was not on those kids every second by any means.

As I said, I'm interested in other people's thoughts. Personally, my opinion of his gun safety credibility dropped a notch last night. I worried about his sons and gun safety in a more abstract way before, but now it's a bit less abstract.