Air Force veteran Skylar Gerrond discusses the best practices for having a handgun for self-defense in a home with kids.
When it comes to gun safety in the home, there are smart ways to protect your loved ones and then are other ways that are less so. If your go-to weapon for home-defense is a .44 Magnum that you keep in your bedside table, you might want to rethink that. Know your target and what lies beyond it, right? If you’re trying to stop a bad guy from doing you harm, you can probably get the job done by using a smaller caliber weapon. You really don’t need a hand cannon that can punch through walls.
That being said, it’s less about the firearm and more about the individual who uses it.
Task & Purpose sat down with Skylar Gerrond, an Air Force security forces veteran with experience in law enforcement, for some tips on smart home-defense safety.
Gerrond served as a security forces officer for seven years before leaving the service in 2007 as a captain. He and Matt Barido, a long-time friend from his time in the Air Force, are the founding members of Veri-Fire and together they created the Guardian, a biometric lock for handguns.
During his time in the Air Force, Gerrond provided nuclear security for intercontinental ballistic missiles — which are nukes for those not in the know — for two years. He then served two and a half years in Germany doing traditional law enforcement, what Gerrond jokingly called “Hill Street Blues” work. Afterward, he went to San Antonio, Texas, where he worked on rapid prototyping for deployed personnel at the Force Protection Battlelab, which is where he got his start in defense development.
In particular, we asked Gerrond to help us lay out how gun owners can safely have a handgun in the home for self-defense when they have kids.
When Gerrond’s eldest son was 4 years old, he had to start thinking about gun safety in a way that he didn’t have to when it was just him and his wife, he said, adding that this instance was the genesis for the Guardian biometric lock.
“When they hit that age — 3, 4 years old — I started asking how am I going to store my handgun?” said Gerrond, who has two sons, ages 10 and 7. If a child walks into the room where you keep your handgun — let’s say, the bedroom — is there really a place you can put it where they won’t find it?
As of 2009, there were an estimated 113 million handguns in the United States, according to a 2012 report on gun control legislation by the Congressional Research Service.
Read more: A Security Forces Vet Offers Gun Safety Tips For Keeping Your Home Safe
Related article: How Do I Stay Safe at Home? Security Tips (Part 1)
Related article: How Do I Stay Safe at Home? Security Tips (Part 1)
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