The paramount purpose of foster care is to keep children safe. I am not debating gun "rights." Everyone has a right to have sex in the kitchen, too, but not with a foster child in the house. As for protocol for a foster parent owning a gun, if they want to ACTUALLY keep children SAFE, then the protocol is to get rid of it.
The op asked if it "would be good enough" to have certain setups, a tricky case (for "little fingers"; what about pubescent or older?) or locked case or whatever, to secure guns in her house.
I took the question to mean would it would be good enough to keep children--foster or her own for that matter--safe.
I stand by my answer. NO. "NO" is the only true and correct answer to whether she can
keep children safe in a house with guns.
NO, she can't. Period. This is not debatable, it is not an opinion, not a theory, it is a fact based on enormouse amounts of evidence and obvious common sense.
No child is safe in a household with guns:
Firearm-Related Injuries Affecting the Pediatric Population -- Committee on Injury and Poison Prevention 105 (4): 888 -- AAP Policy
If, however, she is not interested in how to actually keep children safe but is only interested in the much more limited information as to what her own state or local agency policy to mitigate but not eliminate the risk is, then she should ask her licensing worker. And then abide by the rules, whatever they are, not rely on the notion that "I do not think anyone is going to do a search of your house."
And Sdirector, yes, you owe alex9179 an apology for your baseless presumption. More importantly, I really, really wish you would think on the fact that, far more likely than not, these good people thought everything, said everything, and did everything you have thought, said, and done regarding gun safety and still this terrible thing happened.
We live in a rural area. I always ask if there is a gun in the house when my children are invited. For my child to be in your home, you must not have a gun. THE ONE TIME I trusted the mother's assurance that all was locked and hidden away and the kids had been taught never ever to touch, was THE ONE TIME my daughter, who had also been warned thoroughly and taught to immediately get a grownup if she so much as saw a toy gun, came home and said that her friend had opened her (adult) brother's gun safe (combination--now how do you suppose she figured that one out?) and showed her the guns.
You can drill it into them over and over and over but when faced with that temptation, it is nearly impossible for them to resist.
Children are shot every two hours around the clock in this country. Thirty percent of child suicides are committed with a gun, nearly all with a gun from the household or other family member. The odds of a home invasion, by an armed intruder yet, are astronomically low compared to the odds of a child gaining possession of a household gun, locked away or not.
Again, the paramount purpose of foster care is to keep children safe, not endanger them.