The best way to reduce gun accidents is for everyone, not just gun owners, to learn the basics of gun safety. Yet those in favor of “reasonable gun laws” object to any discussion of including the topic of gun safety in K-12 education, because those most qualified to give that instruction are certified by the NRA, and are therefore The Devil. Houston just pulled the plug on using the Eddie Eagle safety program in schools for political reasons, even though the Eddie Eagle program is lecture only, does not advocate gun ownership and includes no hands-on time with firearms of any kind. Invariably those objecting to the teaching of gun safety in school are the same ones that insist that sex education and giving out free condoms is essential because “some of them are going to have sex even though we tell them not to, so they need that instruction”. By the same logic, kids should get gun safety training, since “some of them are going to handle guns even though we tell them not to”.
- Karl Rehn
I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, saw one of those “your friend commented on a post” listings, it was Karl and some sort of “gun control” article, and the above is a copy/paste of one of the comments he made there.
It is very curious that guns are a topic people choose to be ignorant about, and promote willful ignorance of. Sure, you don’t have to be an encyclopedia like the TXGunGeek, and you can certainly hate guns and promote gun bans all you want. But just like abstinence-only education, you kinda have to know something about your topic if you wish to 1. talk about it with any authority (and be taken seriously), 2. to know what it is that you’re abstaining or avoiding. It’s why so many people cannot take priests seriously when they talk about sex or marriage… so you wonder why “pro gun folk” don’t take “anti gun folk” seriously when they talk about guns?
Some knowledge of basic “what to do if you find a gun?” is useful for everyone. Eddie Eagle teaches one simple thing:
- Stop
- Don’t Touch
- Leave the Area
- Tell an Adult
That’s it. The whole program is about impressing that mantra into a child’s head so when (if?) they run across a gun, they are going to know what to do: stop, don’t touch, leave the area, tell an adult.
If the child encounters a gun and doesn’t know what to do, what are they going to do? Who knows! That’s the problem. They might leave it alone, they might pick it up. If the child has no idea what to do, this is not a time for them to figure out how to fill in the blank. Or worse, should their idea of what to do with a gun be what they learned from TV? from movies? from YouTube videos? from your stupid redneck uncle? Can you honestly find fault with that 4-step mantra, and say you would not want your child — any child, every child — to know, practice, and enact it? Or are you too blinded by your hated of guns and the NRA?
They keep saying they want to save lives. That if it saves the life of just one child, then it’s worth it. Well, here’s your one:
A very well-informed fifth-grader at Oak Grove Elementary School reportedly followed procedure when he found a loaded gun on the playground at the school Friday.
[...]
Deputy Jay Lawson, the school’s Resource Officer teaches students throughout the year by using the “Eddie Eagle” safety program.
[...]
Just after 10 a.m. Friday, the fifth-grader found a loaded .22-magnum pistol laying near the swing set area on the playground at the school.
[...]
“He went straight down the line. The student identified the weapon, told others to get back away from it and yelled for a teacher,” Gault said. “One, two and three, just what he had learned.”
The gun was on the playground. It was loaded. The article reports it was a .22 Magnum American Arms, which are little derringers without a trigger guard — that is, if the child picked it up, likely he would have fired it. If the child had to tell others to back away, that means there were lots of kids out there playing (recess, I suppose). Yeah… it’s well likely a child could have tragically died that day, but thankfully at least this one child wasn’t suffering from ignorance. Worth it.
If the kids are older, or even for your adults, then a short course like the NRA’s Home Firearm Safety is more appropriate. It’s a classroom-only, non-shooting course. You learn about gun safety, you learn about the primary causes for gun accidents (ignorance, carelessness), a little bit about guns themselves (parts, nomenclature), how to safely and securely store guns, and probably most important — how to safely unload a gun. Consider the teacher on that playground, wouldn’t this knowledge be useful for them?
Please. If you care about “saving the children” as much as you claim, if you want to reduce the number of “senseless gun deaths”, then don’t accept nor force the children to be ignorant. You can campaign for gun bans. You can hate guns and the NRA all you want. But by the very nature of your fight, you will come in contact with guns, and the best thing you can do to keep from being one of the very statistics you wield is to learn how to be safe with guns.
Filed under: Education, Guns, Kids, Politics Tagged: Education, Guns, Kids, Politics Image may be NSFW.
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