What would you rather a child pick up and hold?
 

Let's say around age 6.

A gun with the safety on or an unsheathed knife?

I'd rather have the child with the safety'd gun. I have a feeling though that gun bias will push the results toward the knife.

This isn't political, this is a life question, and a question about potential bias. This post isn't for or against anything.

edit: woops, I meant to put this in either Life or General. Not tilted weaponry.

Demonstrating your own bias?

I'm a fairly good cook with very nice knives and the skill to use them. I'd be more comfortable discussing knives with a 6 year old.

No man is without bias.

The gun with the safety mechanism is far safer than the knife which has no safety mechanism.

The knife here is inherently dangerous than the gun simply because it has an exposed sharp edge.

...

That and I would rather be shot by a 9mm than stabbed by a 4" knife in the hands of an expert.

I've stepped in the rubber knife ring with a knife guy and was absolutely destroyed in seconds.

Other:

Plasma rifle in 40 watt range.

Is the gun unloaded? Is the knife sharp? If so, how sharp? Does the gun have a DA/SA trigger with safety? Is it a 17lb rifle? Is it a pistol? How heavy is the trigger?

Anyway, if you have children, you should probably safety up your firearms and lock them away in a safe, until they're old enough to understand what guns do and how to properly handle one (i.e. age 5 if you want).

Pfft children can't handle the 40 watt range. Start em off with 10 watts.

The gun is obviously loaded or there wouldn't be much of a dilemma. The knife is very sharp.

As for the gun, assume the average. I'm thinking of pistol. But I'm not stopping you from imagining a rifle (there I bet you just did right? And now again? OK I'll stop. One more time, RIFLE!) :D

You say "child" so I'm gonna assume you mean one too young to grasp the full import of the situation.

I'd rather they held the unsheathed knife. It will teach them to be careful and instill respect for the tool / weapon.
Handling a gun with the safety on shows them there's nothing to fear and they can pull the trigger with no danger to themselves or others...

I guess its harder for a 6 year old to take the safety of a pistol and shoot himself or someone else than to badly cut himself with say a meat cleaver or chef's knife.

I wouldnt exactly be thrilled in either situation, but I would guess a gun is the lesser of two evils.

That said, Ive never held a real pistol, so I dont know how hard the safety mechanism is to knock off.

There isn't an option for "neither". I'm the father of a 5-year old. He's barely allowed to use scissors. Any parent/guardian/caretaker that allows either to happen needs their own "timeout" to think about how they managed that. This is how kids get unnecessarily dead, and one of the reasons why there's a bias against guns in the US.

I'm assuming that you mean unsupervised, loaded, sharp, etc. So, yeah, it's an awful scenario as a parent.

I have a 3" partially serrated folding knife that I keep (kept) clipped in my back pocket. I was sitting on the couch, got up, and a few minutes later my 2-year-old asks me "Daddy, what's this thing?" I look over, and she's got it opened, held by the handle, and is curiously looking at the serrations on the blade.

I carry it in my front pocket now...I'd moved it to the back to avoid it being in the same pocket as my cell phone, but I'd rather have a scratch cell than a sliced daughter.

I checked "pistol" because, even with the safety off, she doesn't have the finger strength to pull the trigger on any of the guns I have yet. She can't even use nerf guns that aren't specially modified for light pull!

...not that I would do such a thing. I mean. Hmm.

Oh, and it's a good thing momma isn't on this forum, as she hasn't heard the knife story yet and never will from me.

The gun scenario is obviously less immediately dangerous, but it's horrible to think about the things that children do with objects, especially younger children who are 12 to 18 months old. Most things go immediately into the mouth and the safety could get switched if the child focused on picking at the switch or pounding the gun on the floor, which some children seem to delight in doing with objects. Either scenario is a nightmare, basically.

The knife. A 6 year old has better chances of understanding its dangerousness, my bias tells me.

I started learning the correct/safe use of firearms at the age of 3.5 years (with a .22 rifle), and carried my own folding pocketknife everywhere I went by the time I was 6. I wasn't allowed to take my .22 out by myself until I was 6 or 7 years old; before that my Mom was alwaya with me. I started learning handguns and shotguns at 10 or so. Any safety violation, any at all, ended shooting for the day. It isn't hard to gun-proof a kid if it's done properly. For instance, I was never allowed toy guns growing up, because it might inculcate bad habits/thought processes. Likewise, I was first taught correct handling of firearms with an unloaded rifle under strict supervision, then taught to shoot off a bench under equally stringent conditions. Only after I had consistently demonstrated that I not only could but would handle a.gun or knife safely was I allowed unsupervised acess to it.

The only time I was ever beat as a kid was when I chased my sister through the kitchen with a knife. That didn't happen again...

I didn't grow up with guns, but I would think a safety wouldn't prevent a 6 year old from firing it accidentally.

Neither option is good, but I would rather have a 6 year old come after me with a knife than a gun.

This question is really dumb, because the first thing I'd do as soon as I saw a child holding either would be to instinctually lunge and take it from them. I'm not sure it would matter which I "rather" they picked up, as I'd react the same way to a child holding them.

I arbitrarily picked knife because I think the understanding of sharpness is learned before the understanding of projectiles. Those extra milliseconds help me take it from the child harmlessly.

I would go for the knife. My kids love to help in the kitchen so they have good knowledge about handling sharp knives. This friday my 5 year old sliced the potatoes with a fairly sharp knife.

A gun on the other hand would freak me out - even with the safety on and the magasine removed. We're not used to handling guns, and I assume any gun is loaded with safety off on the rare instances I handle one.

There's no reason to give a gun for a child to hold. With a knife s/he can learn to carve and knives are needed in kitchen chores.

Well this is a theoretical situation in which a child has his first experience with knife or gun. The only difference being that the gun has a safety(s) on and the knife is unsheathed. Obviously unsupervised.

Even if you don't have guns I've seen guns shot and held by 8 year olds. (which isn't specifically bad so long as the have proper instruction).

Do you have children of your own?

No, but I had a knife and gun by age 8.

I'm going with the knife, because my own daughter (who's 5) has been heavily supervised with knife use in cutting her own food at the dinner table. She knows she can get hurt with an edge, so she's careful.

On a related note, she's handled some replica blank-firing guns of mine (also under heavy supervision) and her comment on how heavy they are made me think about the possibility of how easy it would be for her to drop one of them...

...which brings me to a final point: as far as I see it, both are dangerous but if a child manages to disengage the safety and drop the gun (or worse, pull the trigger "to shoot the bad guys") there is no controlling the damage.

Just my two cents' worth. :)

knife 10 times out of 10

a little kid might see a gun as some sort of contraption with no idea as to what it does whereas there seems to be something instinctual saying: "be careful with sharp shit"

Check it: Kids are morons.

Humans don't have instincts. The knife is 100% more likely to cause injury to a curious child.

Didn't you ever stick your finger in a power outlet or burn your hand on the stove as a kid?

To me the question is about which one would i call children protective services on you faster.

Answer, I would call in either case.

i just think that accidents involving little kids with knives are usually less lethal than with guns. yeah they might end up with a cut on the arm or leg but it beats a hole through the body any day

Looks like some people have trouble with the hypothetical question. There are two options, either they have the loaded gun with the safety or they have the knife. You pick one, then justify it. Jeez.

This is a classic question of lower risk, greater consequence vs. higher risk, lesser consequence. The gun represents a lower risk because the safety is on, but if fired represents greater consequences. The knife is unsheathed, meaning there's a higher risk, but the consequences are less than the gun. I'd probably say the gun simply because the safety isn't always obvious (to someone unfamiliar with a gun), and doesn't strike me as being as interesting a lever as the trigger. Still, in a nonspecific hypothetical situation of low risk/greater consequence vs. high risk/lower consequence, I'd usually choose the latter.

Interesting thread, Zeraph.

The knife.

The gun represents the worst case scenario. I would rather my child face a greater chance of a non-lethal wound than even a minuscule chance of a lethal one.

Besides - children are naturally curious; the safety would be off in a very short time. Kids are always thinking, "Hmmmmm . . . what's this thing do?"

One is no more or less dangerous than the other. Both are tools capable of inflicting great harm. When I was 6 years old, there would have been absolutely nothing dangerous about handing me a knife or a gun in any condition. I was also taught how to safely use power tools at around that age.

A parent has to guage their own child's maturity and abilities, then teach them accordingly. Not all of the kids in my family were handling dangerous items of any kind at the same exact calendar age.

Slightly off-topic, but have you tried letting her pull the trigger without your direction? For instance, if you put her hands in place and tell her to pull the trigger the way you would when carefully aiming it, it'll be with one finger on the trigger. If she picks it up on her own and one finger doesn't do the job, she might make Jeff Cooper roll over in his grave and wrap both fingers around the trigger to try to get it to pull. Something to think about anyway.

No kidding.

What determines the lethality of the wound, or any wound at all for that matter?

for me its called risk management

knife=high risk of small injuries, low risk of large injuries
gun=high risk of small injuries, high risk of large injuries

i'd choose neither. but if i had to i'd choose a knife because of the lower risk of major injuries or death.

kids need strength to cause significant major damage with a knife. a 6 year old can fire a gun without a lot of strength and in the case of a gun the child doesnt control the speed of the projectile.

the question is, at what age is it ok to start introducing these sort of weapons to your child?

i dont see why a 6 year old needs to be carrying a knife or gun around at 6 unless it was for educational purposes. even then, id probably start them off whith videos rather than the real thing.

If forced to pick one, I'd say knife (and voted such). The way I look at it, a knife can't kill someone by accidentally being discharged through the drywall.

Also, a knife can certainly do horrific damage, but it starts to hurt as soon as it breaks the skin (most of the time), and so pressure is removed, or the knife is dropped. A kid COULD work out how to switch off the safety, or even do it by random fidling, and if the trigger is pulled the bullet doesn't go slower simply because the shooter was not intending to kill.

It would be far more difficult for a 6-year old to kill himself with a knife than with a gun.

Severing an artery or puncturing the brain or vital organ would be next to impossible for a 6-year old to do accidentally; it could be done quite easily with a bullet.

the possibility for that wound to cause death. for example, if the toddler in question is running about and trips, the knife is far less likely to pierce the skull/sternum/ribs than a gunshot would. i don't think its possible to put numbers or percentages that would contribute to a 'lethality factor' for any sort of wound because people are hesitant to ask questions about that topic even if they are interested.

can you imagine some statistician asking a parent "so on a scale of 1-10, how lethal did you think the wound was when your child shot himself in the leg?"

dammit YKH, you beat me to it. but thats exactly what i was trying to say. +1 for brevity