By Andrew Scott, A&A Ammunition, CEO
Tucson AZ – -(Ammoland.com)- As reported by Guns.com on May 21st, a bill is moving through the Louisiana State Congress that would allow schools to teach basic gun safety to children through the NRA’s “Eddie Eagle Gunsafe” and similar programs.
It passed through the House with flying colors, with a 93-3 vote after minor changes were made to the original bill.
It now moves on to the Republican controlled Senate and then to Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, so it’s looks like the bill stands a good chance to become law.
As well it should. The “Eddie Eagle Gunsafe” program isn’t about teaching children how to properly handle a firearm, instead it teaches children that, if they ever come across one, to “stop, don’t touch, run away, tell a grown-up”.
Basically, this is about the most non-partisan message surrounding guns possible, and yet there were still 3 representatives, all Democrat, who voted against it.
Rep. Barbara Norton was one of them. She said “There any many parents who don’t even allow their children to touch a gun or even see a gun” as her reason for voting against the measure. I did some research to see if I could find any comments from the other 2 representatives, Regina Ashford Barrow and Katrina R. Jackson, to no avail. I did find an interesting comment from one Peter Cook, author at the “Louisiana Education Legislation Update” website. He echoed Norton’s thoughts, saying “…we should keep guns as far away from the classroom as possible. If parents want to teach their kids about gun safety, more power to them, but they can do it at home.”
Why does that sound so familiar? I’ll change one word in Cook’s statement, and you’ll see why:
“…we should keep sex as far away from the classroom as possible. If parents want to teach their kids about sex safety, more power to them, but they can do it at home.”
It is literally, word for word, the argument used for keeping sexual education out of classrooms!
Last I checked, Democrats as a whole were pretty against this type of “just ignore it” approach when it comes to sex, so why would they embrace it when it comes to firearms? The “Eddie Eagle Gunsafe” program is, at worst, the equivalent of abstinence-only education, but they don’t even want that taught to children.
Guns are in 1 out of every 3 households in America, so unless your kid is hooked up to an iron lung, chances are they will encounter one or two in the course of their lives. How on Earth would one think that the best educational approach to teaching kids to handle that situation is by instilling absolute ignorance in them?
Now I’m about as pro-2nd Amendment as they come, but we have to be responsible here and admit when we have a problem. Kids hurting themselves and each other accidentally with firearms is a tragedy any where in our country. Unfortunately, exact number of times a child accidentally or unknowingly pulls a trigger and hurts/kills someone else aren’t known, but we do know that in 2011, 102 people under the age of 18 were killed as a result of firearm accidents. Half of those were under the age of 13.
I would think that the best, easiest, most non-partisan and effective way to prevent these accidents is through education. The NRA’s message to children to not touch a firearm unsupervised and to report what they’ve seen has been proven to be effective. In a [not to pro gun] 20/20 special titled “Young Guns” Diane Sawyer tested this out, having one group of children put into a room with unloaded firearms without any education or training, and a second group receiving the NRA “Eddie Eagle” training, which was reinforced by a police officer, before going into the same room. While some boys in both groups handled the pistols, the group of boys that received the “Eddie Eagle” training had their rate cut nearly in half from the control group (60% of boys handled the pistols in the control group, 37.5% in the group that received training). And keep in mind that this was the result of just one session, think about how the results could improve if these lessons were taught regularly over multiple years.
It’s clear, from both common sense and practical testing, that teaching kids how to handle an unsupervised firearm encounter is an effective means of protecting them in that situation. But apparently Peter Cook, Sandra Norton, and their anti-gun counterparts would rather institute the “don’t ask, don’t tell: ignorance is safety” methodology, and pretend as though the problem doesn’t exist.
But not for sex education, that of course is absolutely ludicrous, but it makes perfect sense for gun safety. Somehow…?
Andrew Scott is the Founder and CEO of A&A Ammunition, an ammunition manufacturing and sales company located in Tucson, AZ that specializes in reloading high quality training ammo. He is also a Veteran currently serving in the Arizona Air National Guard, and has previously worked in numerous industries ranging from food prep to stock trading.
For more of his writings, visit the A&A Ammunition website at www.TrainHardAmmo.com/blog