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For me, the issue is not so much "are there guns in the house", but what's the character of the people whose house I'm letting my son go into. Fortunately, it hasn't really even come up as DS prefers not to be inside someone else's house.

I personally don't care if there are guns in the house - if so, I'd like to know that they're locked up in an appropriate fashion when children are present. (I should say that if someone said "yep, I've got guns and I just leave them out and around", of course, I wouldn't allow DS to go over there.) However, I feel that the most important thing we can do is to educate/inform DS of what to do and how to handle himself so that *he* will respond appropriately if/when faced with a situation. Those things include notifying an adult that someone has a weapon out, leaving immediately, so on and so forth.

We can't always control what other people do or don't do, but hopefully, some education and common sense will help to keep DS safe even in a potentially unsafe environment.