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I don't have kids so I really don't have a dog in the fight but I do have plenty of nieces and nephews who came around my place as kids. While one set of parents was very firearms friendly and taught their sons firearms safety from a young age, my other sister and her husband were fairly anti-gun so anything I taught was not reinforced when my nephew went home.
When he was old enough to hold an intelligent conversation and comprehend things, we would go over firearms safety and we would both sit down and clean guns, take them apart, put em together, clear them and talk. I'm pretty up front and down to earth so there was no BS. Explain that they're tools, like drills, saws and hammers and like all those things they're dangerous if you don't respect them.
We had those talks pretty regularly for a few years. I'd take him shooting (started with an air gun) and reinforce the talks with demonstrations. I'd correct him when he did something wrong and he began to take pride in doing things the right/safe way. He felt like a grown up and thats how I talked to him.
I wanted him to be comfortable and proficient enough where if one of his buddies pulled out dads .45 and my nephew was not able to immediately leave (the first option he was told to use), he would be able to render the weapon safe if the kid passed it to him.
I think the biggest thing is not to make them (firearms) an item of mystery which only invites curious attempts to find out what they are. While growing up, we had several guns in the house and most were loaded. All 5 kids knew where they were and we knew what they were. We had the opportunities to shoot them with supervision and knew that drastic consequences awaited us were we to touch them without dad being there. Too bad times have changed and growing up like that isn't as common these days
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