You can teach them how to properly handle firearms. That way, when the dufus kid says "let's play with my dad's gun", your kid will say no. If the dufus kid pulls it out anyway, your kid can say "Wait, let me check to make sure that it is not loaded" and he will know how to do so.
How terrible... you have my most sincere sympathies. :( You can help protect your own families by being prudent about your own guns, but what can you do to protect them when they go to a friend's house?
Until we can ban idiots, there's nothing that can be done to make the world completely safe.
The only gun control I'm for is controlling the safety of your kids when they are out of your sight.
An admirable goal, but one that just doesn't work in the real world, I'm afraid. Life can be filled with the sh*ttiest of events. What happened to the shooter?
Make sure they know the basic gun-safety rules. Enroll them in an NRA class. My kids go target shooting so much, guns have lost their fascination. Safe gun handling has become second nature for all of us.
Keeping our kids ignorant about basic gun safety is not doing them a service, instead, being uneducated is what leads to accidents.
While "education" is always stressed as a preventative measure in our liberal schools, it is very interesting that this is the one area that children are left purposely uneducated. Proposed gun-safety classes are fought tooth and nail in the local school districts.