We grew up with loaded guns in the house, but that was a different time in East Los Angeles. Most homes were well armed, as it was just a few years after the cessation of WWII, and those returning from war felt naked without having a gun or two around.
My dad had a revolver, a shotgun, and a rifle close at hand. But we knew the difference between our cap pistols and the real thing, and also knew the real guns were absolutely off limits, unless my dad was cleaning them and we could ask how they worked and that sort of thing.
Of course, our media was vastly different. Shows like The Rifleman, Sky King, Lone Ranger, Fury, Roy Rogers, even Lassie had no shortage of both good and bad gun usage. The bad gun usage was usually accompanied by a black hat.
It wasn’t unusual to see kids with BB guns walking down the street on their way to a field to go plinking. Dads were supportive, moms would usually wring their hands and worry about shooting an eye out. But no one called the cops. Now a similar event would elicit SWAT teams rappelling from black helicopters in full battle gear.
I took my own two kids to the range when they were about 9 to learn the basics of safe gun handling with bolt action 22s. They both turned into good shots. And one became a Marine, the other works retail in San Francisco.
I don’t worry about either one where firearms are concerned.
Same deal when we were kids. Everybody had cap guns then we graduated to BB guns and about age 11 supervised .22 rifles. I still have the bolt action single shot .22 I learned on.