Kids can be taught to respect firearms for what they are and what they do.
If you have firearms in your home, teaching them is the right thing to do to quell their inquisitive nature. Naturally, you keep things locked up tight when you're not around to supervise. If you do give a kid a gun, it should match their size. My wife's grandfather gave her a little .22 saddle rifle when she was six and he taught her how to hunt with it. Those lessons came in handy when she hit her teen dating years and a boy took her out to the woods to try and scare her. In the end, she wasn't the one who was scared.
That little rifle is in our gun cabinet still. Along with two .303's, several shotguns and a revolver. She knows how to use them all if the need arises.
No, I ain't skeered. I even gave her cast iron cookware.
