Our kids, they are well drilled in their school’s “lock-down” procedure. They all file into a bathroom and stay there, “to keep away from bad guys.”
Our daughter, she built a castle out of wooden blocks today. She closed up the windows and the doors, to “keep the bad guys out.”
You know who the bad guys are?
Some 20-year-old kid with mental health problems who had access to guns from his own now deceased-by-his-hand mother? Certainly.
You know who the other bad guys are?
Hard to say, I guess. Do you own a gun? Why?
I think you may be a bad guy, whether you mean to be or not.
Diary of a Corporate Wife 
I remember a long time ago watching a pediatrician on Oprah talking about gun violence. She said she wanted every parent to ask every other parent when taking their child to a play date, “Do you have any guns in your home? And are they secure?” She said to apologize if you have to but to blame your pediatrician (think of her — doc on Oprah — in your head and blame her), but ASK. And this has always been on my mind. How does one do that and not insult the parents or seem like a whackadoo? OTOH, how does one not?
Only one of my kids (sadly) has ever gone on an unsupervised play date. I did not ask this parent but she was someone who I knew really, really well. What to do when (if; please, universe) one of them does get invited?
I don’t have children who will follow the directive of the Eddie Eagle program, or any program: If you see a gun, don’t touch it! and go and get an adult! My kids (unfortunately) would look at a living, breathing rattlesnake and pick it up and play with it. So a gun would, most certainly.
Where does this leave me? Hoping desperately for my kids to make some friends…and not knowing what to do if they do.
Since we’ve moved to this town in the Southeast, I’ve learned that too many people I know own guns. I now just assume that here, there’s a higher likelihood that there is a gun in a home than there is not. I will always host a child. Rarely will our children be left at another’s home, unless that other is somebody I know personally. And even then, I’m not entirely comfortable with it. I’m thankful our kids are so happy playing with each other.