iowa middle school gun safety training
courtesy Guns Save Life
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The gun industry, gun rights orgs and America’s 100+ million law-abiding gun owners know that teaching children how to safely handle firearms is the surest way to prevent accidents and tragedies. While the goal, as always, is to prevent unauthorized access to guns, as rational, thinking adults, we know that no everyone is as careful as they should be. Kids will come across firearms.

A child who is trained to handle the situation has a greatly reduced chance of hurting herself or someone else. Now, two Iowa middle schools have recognized that fact and are doing something about it.

From the Des Moines Register:

Students from the Clarksville and North Butler school districts will learn how to safely handle a gun during a physical education course focusing on hunter safety.

But Joel Foster, the superintendent for both districts, said he hoped the course will prepare students to react in the event of an active shooter situation.

“We’ve done everything to make (students and district employees) as safe as possible at school with cameras … locks,” he said. “We would like them to be able to deal with a situation that comes up.”

What a great idea! Why haven’t America’s gun owners done something like this before?

Oh wait…they have. And they’ve been doing it for decades.

There are industry programs like Project ChildSafe and Eddy Eagle. There are books like Safety On and There’s Only One You. And there are dozens, maybe hundreds of independent programs all across the US designed to teach kids how to responsibly handle a firearm (check out the Guns Save Life summer camp here) and what to do if they find one.

During the course, students will use inoperable guns with replica ammunition.

They will learn how to load and unload ammunition and hold and care for firearms, Foster said. They’ll also learn how to safely carry a gun and how to recognize when a firearm is loaded.

“We know not all kids are going to hunt,” he said. “This is an alternative to sitting on your hands and not doing anything. It’s being proactive to handle things the best manner as possible if something occurs. Through education, kids know guns aren’t toys.”

You might think that training school-age children in safe gun handling with the goal of reducing accidents would be applauded by the so-called “gun safety” operations (don’t laugh). You know, the organizations that work to restrict Americans’ gun rights at every possible opportunity? Yeah, them. Surely they’re for anything that keeps kids safer, right?

Perish the thought. When the Brady Campaign heard about the Iowa schools’ gun safety training, they tweeted this:

Nice straw man there.

We’d point out to the hysterical hypocrites at Brady that “safe storage” has nothing at all to do with the program in Iowa or with teaching children what to do if they come across an un-attended gun, but we won’t waste the electrons. They already know that. Just as they probably know that opposing the kind of training that these schools will provide could very well cost some children their lives.

But they don’t give a damn. Seeing children learn to be responsible around firearms isn’t part of the narrative they push every day. In fact, it’s directly counter to it. 

Maybe it’s time drop the pretense and finally stop calling the Brady Campaign, the CSGV, Giffords, Everytown and the hoplophobic harridans at Moms Demand Action “gun safety” organizations. They’re civilian disarmament advocacy operations. Always have been, always will be.

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85 COMMENTS

  1. I thought the Partridge family was off the air, wow, I always thought that the Brady bunch was a little femmey anyway,

      • You are wrong on this point. Attempts to dress up reality with placation stinks of apologia, because that’s what it is. Diversity is not a solution, it is a symptom of weakness. The audience that is interested and willing to learn is, like America, predominately white. Pretending otherwise is the problem.

        • What’s wrong with a little diversity? And besides, the trend of America being predominantly white is in a pretty steep decline.

        • A little progtard intent – effect. Dems owning blacks has not had its desired result. They have decided need to import more problems/dem voters. And get the black felon vote out of jail.

      • What’s wrong with the photo reflecting the reality of its subject? If there were minority children present, and they were asked to step out of the photo, I’d have an issue with that. Just like I’d have an issue with minority students being asked to stand in the photo just for the sake of artificially presenting diversity.

        I wish programs like this were offered in every school in America, regardless of the demographics of the school. Don’t knock these kids just because their school happens to be predominantly (or entirely) white. That’s just the demographics of rural Iowa, not racism.

  2. The Brady Bunch and their fellow travelers want only one message to be taught to children vis-à-vis guns. That is: Guns r bad, m’kay. It doesn’t, and won’t, matter how well conceived and/or executed any gun safety program is – they will oppose it.

    • A word of caution. Today’s kids are not the kids of yesterday. Yesterday’s kids had a clue; for most part, today’s kids don’t. Teaching today’s kids requires much more intensive training. i wonder if it is worth it. First thing I learned about horseback riding, you had to be able to get your foot into the stirrup.

      • So the previous two generations fucked up and now it’s beyond repair so just don’t bother?

        Wow. Just fucking wow. Lazy and stupid is one potent combination.

        • That statement right there shows just how stupid modern adults are. If people like this guy have bred we are in bad shape. My grandchildren are very young and have been taught proper gun safety and they are typical children.

    • Did you read their whole release? I can’t bring myself to click through right now. I just washed up.

      Do they have a citation? Or do you have any idea what they’re referring to?

      I’m aware of nothing that supports that claim of theirs. Indeed, various “No guns for you!” groups have had observe, flee n report training for kids from time to time. That didn’t work? For what value of “work?”

      • The “research” on gun safety is irrelevant, because like a gun in a home supposedly increasing risk of criminal violence in that home, it does not control for a gigantic variable that inverts results: Is that gun owned by a criminal domiciled in the home or is it owned by a lawful gun owner.

        In the totality of the data, not controlling for that variable, homes with firearms are more dangerous. Yet households with firearms — and no criminal domiciled — are safer from violence victimization than homes with no firearms.

        The issue is simple. About 4% of firearms “owners” or about 4% “households with firearms” involve illegal guns owned by criminals, often active criminals, or gang members et.. Yet that 4% are over 90% of firearm murder perpetration, and also over 90%of bad outcome child access to firearms. Examples: a drug addict dating the child’s mother and nodding off with the gun on the coffee table with a four year-old playing with the gun, an armed drug dealing boyfriend staying in the home and a drug buyer or other drug dealers attempting a robbery of the home and a kid in the crossfire.

        Take Washington DC. Since 2008 Heller there is no requirement in DC to keep your gun in a gun safe even in the presence of your own kids. If you have an 8-year old and a 10-year old, you can legally keep a loaded gun on top of your nightstand and your bedroom door unlocked — including when you are not home.*

        Yet now going from no legal gun owners in 2007 with strong storage laws requiring it be disassembled and in a safe; to that law REPEALED and a growth to over 10,000 legal non-law-enforcement gun owners today (with about 20,000 firearms) — firearms accident injuries have decreased. Brady and gun control lobby owned researchers at Harvard, Johns Hopkins etc all waiting for CDC money hate data from Washington DC because we have the data on relative illegal gun ownership vs legal ownership and outcomes

        DC has had about 50 incidents of minors illegally carrying guns into schools in the past five years. In every case except one, illegal guns owned by criminals, and in the single case of a legal gun – a police officer’s gun, in fact a police lieutenant’s son carrying his father’s service gun into a school.

        The fac tis that DC gun murder rate, and DC accidental gun death rate of adult and minors, all have varied with one variable over both time and jurisdiction: The proportion of released felons on the streets, and in homes, at a given time, moving either with incarceration rates, gentrification, or both. This is also the case nationally. No one in gun control advocacy or gun control advocacy “academic” research wants to come within a mile of that simple fact.

        Now to be sure they want the rare anecdotal case where the gun is legally possessed to stick in our minds. That is why a mother getting shot by a kid who reached into a purse and pulled out a legally possessed carry gun in a Walmart gets a thousand repetitions in the national news media, when in the next day/i>a 6-year-old running over their sister with the family car does not get any national coverage.

        Brady is fighting this not for the sake of children but to protect the base fundamental fallacy of all their efforts. They desperately want guns to be looked at differently than cars, power tools, hammers and other modern levers. They want irrational fear of guns to grow. They want the gun to be seen as something that has its own animus and animation. In drama and fiction there is a theory, a maxim, called “Chekov’s gun,” which states that: if a gun is introduced in a play or film, it will be used to shoot someone. They want your children to believe this is the case in real life when all the data for the 400 million guns says that is patently false.

        * DC child access and safes/trigger locks, locked door etc law ONLY refer to minors where a guardian has not given permission. Ironically DC requiring people to know gun laws means gun owners there actually know there are NO requirements to keep a gun in a safe in DC in the presence of your own kids.

  3. Is it OK to say that just about anything that appalls the anti-gun mafia is probably an indication that you are doing the right thing?

    • I’m appalled by everything the anti-gun mafia does, but not surprised. Anything but virulent response to anti-gun attacks is seen as weakness by the anti-2A commie-traitors.

    • Yes Sam, I agree “just about anything that appalls the anti-gun mafia,” is the litmus test of what would actually work.

  4. Gun control groups are predominantly made up of lobbyists, they are effectively just bean-counters… They only care about _their_ beans…

  5. It’s just the Brady bunch reacting to children having firearms normalized. They might even see guns as fun and want to own a few someday! The horror! They know if they can treat guns and gun owners as a fringe, they can in the future drop the giant ban hammer and nobody will care. It’s why people that are not affected by control laws, have very few issues voting for or having those laws passed.

    • “It’s just the Brady bunch reacting to children having firearms normalized.”

      This, again and always. “Politics is downstream from culture…”

  6. I love this. Should be teaching kids in all schools about gun safety. Films about usage…have cops and criminals come in… military and doctors. Actual usage is great as well but maybe not mandatory.
    Knowledge is a great thing .

  7. Research shows that ignorance is much safer than having knowledge and and responsiblity? What works for gun safety should also work for sex ed, amirite?

  8. You teach people how to be safe and they’re APPALLED? I’m appalled that there are fellow countrymen so frigging stupid. If one is opposed to drunk driving do you fail to teach automobile safety?

  9. I prefer the term, “Anti-civil Rights Organization”.
    Put those bigots firmly in the same category as the Klan, Black Lives Matter, Nation of Islam and other groups of bigots.
    🤠

  10. This is a surprise, why? They don’t want anyone, child or adult, to know that there is nothing wrong with firearms. That they can be fun. Especially that they can be essential.

  11. Soooo… teaching kids gun safety doesn’t work. But…when it comes to crafting laws to “enhance” gun safety we need to listen to the children…

      • ” in response to strych9:”

        “Soooo… teaching kids gun safety doesn’t work. But…when it comes to crafting laws to “enhance” gun safety we need to listen to the children…”

        “Ironicatbest”

        Irony? What irony? We don’t need no stinking irony.

        There is nothing ironic or illogical about not teaching children about gun safety. Guns bad. Gun owners bad. There is nothing worth while about either that is worth the risk of having children believe that bad things (and people) are “normal”. We don’t want children to have anything to do with bad things, or bad people. All children need to know is that if they see a gun, or a person who has guns at home, the children should runaway, and tell their parents/teachers/guardians. If there are no parents/teachers/guardians close by, the children should find a phone, dial 911 and tell the police that there is a person with a gun who is likely to harm themselves or someone else. Children should then hide in a closet (or classroom) and wait for the SWAT team to arrive.

        Nothing ironic or illogical about any of that.

        See how it works?

    • {Brady Campaign statement}

      “Research shows that child safety programs don’t work.”

      Yet they teach driver’s ed and sex ed in high school.

      Come to think of it, they taught bike safety in my elementary school when I was a kid.

      (Probably shouldn’t have used that last example, considering last month’s ‘entertainment’. That lesson didn’t sink in as well as it should have…)

      • Do you think the Lefties realize that they just gave up their entire argument on the topics of the Department of Education, teachers pay, school funding, property taxes etc?

        I mean that darn “education” thing doesn’t work so there’s no reason to keep funding it, eh?

        • “Do you think the Lefties realize that they just gave up their entire argument on the topics of the Department of Education, teachers pay, school funding, property taxes etc?”

          Actually, you are seeing the superior intellect of the leftists at work. They aren’t against teaching things, they are just against teaching things they don’t like.

          Isn’t that perfectly elegant thinking?

          Imagine you were an idiot. Now imagine you were a Leftist.

          Sorry for the redundancy. (and apologies to S. L. Clemens)

        • “Imagine you were an idiot. Now imagine you were a Leftist.”

          Just when I was thinking it couldn’t get worse you toss in another short sentence.

        • “Just when I was thinking it couldn’t get worse you toss in another short sentence.”

          We aim to please, so you aim, too, please.

          “And all. that. jazzzz”

    • Not to mention empoering gov’t sponsored education showing kids how to put on condoms, contact PP and nurturing, if not outright advocating gay and other alternative (yeah- I said it) lifestyles.

  12. I can’t decide which notion they’re more trying to stifle:

    – That guns are just an agency — a power — you can wield, or not as you choose.

    – We hold the power to maim, to kill, or worse, among the people around us every day, all the time. (Without guns.)

    – What is done with the power you wield is on you. And what is not done.

    Training delivers the notions better than words. The ideas seep in, formed for yourself from the experience. When the guns don’t fly about possessed on their own, when what happens or not follows from what you do, when how much risk to whom follows from your choices … you might conclude for yourself other than what the anti-people pitch.

  13. In the 21st century its come down to “Information Warfare”. Our side has to do a much better job of teaching children about their American gun heritage. Because the gun grabbers will not. When I wrote my paper last year I did not include using replica guns. They cost $$$ money. And I wanted to give examples that would cost a teacher or a school district no money. Most Physical Education instructors are men. Health and safety instruction does fall under their PE “wheel house”. I hope “outsiders” don’t ruin this.

    “Firearm Education: Teaching the Second Amendment in Kentucky school system grades K through 12”
    http://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/bis437/149

    • Man, I had a couple of female teachers I would have *loved* to have gotten some ‘extra credit’ from, back seat or when the hubby was away…

      • Hah! When my brother was a senior, he tried to convince a student teacher from the local college that he had been held back a couple years to put himself closer to her age. He probably should have asked for private tutoring after that.

  14. Happily, the ignorance that The Brady Campaign adores and wallows in, and would inflict on the universe, is not to everyone’s liking. Some educators actually have the guts to display their displeasure, and to take real action against said ignorance.

  15. Of course the Brady Bunch doesn’t like it. It teaches people to be self-reliant and competent, the exact opposite of what the Liberals want everyone to be. After all, if young people grow up realizing they don’t need the Democrats to nurture and support them, we might actually get American back to what the Foundling Fathers intended it to be.

    Personally, I’m old enough to remember BSA summer camp and shooting on the range every summer from the age of eleven to get my Shooting Merit Badge. Does the BSA even still have a Shooting Merit Badge?

  16. Don’t wait for the government or the state to solve this school shooter problem because it will either not happen or will be something stupid. This is the way to be safe and independent, tell the liberals to go pound sand. This training will reduce future accidents which is great and they will also learn that guns are not evil, it’s people’s intentions that may be evil.

  17. Teaching children gun safety at a young age is a great idea, and the importance of the Second Amendment, and why it is there in the first place just makes it that more difficult for gun grabbers. Which is never a bad thing. People in the Brady campaign should move to London. It would be more to their liking and they would feel sooo safe in knowing that guns are banned, and that everyone is disarmed. For their saaafety, of course. Oh, wait. I just read that London surpassed New York City for violent crime rates, and their acid attacks are off the charts. Whoops, guess that gun control worked really well-for the criminals. And did not Gabby Giffords get her face blow off in a gun-free zone, while her hypocritical husband went and bought guns after the incident? Maybe someone can correct me if I am wrong on this one.

    • As I recall, the Giffords incident was one of the very few mass shootings that *didn’t* happen in a “gun free zone.” She was outside a grocery store shaking hands.

      Other than that, right on.

  18. But if children are taught to be safe around firearms, the Brady “people” won’t have as many dead children to use as justification for their agenda. They can’t allow that!

  19. I don’t see the Brady Bunch up in arms (pun intended) about teaching children driver safety and driver’s Ed. classes where they (God forbid) actually get to drive cars, machines that kill.
    Citizens for Responsible Automobiles, Zeugmas Yucked (CRAZY)

  20. Let’s turn the Brady strawman on its head.

    If teaching young people gun safety is such a danger, then teaching young people about sex is promoting sexual assault, right?

  21. they dont like it because they know indoctrination when they see it
    that is to say they dont want us undoing what theyve already done

  22. Yeah, child safety programs don’t work.

    Generally why children and infants are taught to swim so they don’t drown in pools.

  23. Important!!
    The Brady Campaign is referring to GAO-17-665
    “The safe storage educational materials that we identified were all directed to adults…”
    “Our review of the studies relating to safe storage approaches (device distribution and physician consultation) found that providing a free locking device to study participants influenced behavior to store firearms more safely and physician consultation generally did not….other recently published research supports this conclusion as well.”

    “An additional four studies analyzed the effectiveness of interventions to promote safe behaviors in children when they come across an unsecured firearm.”

    These “four studies” on promoting “safe behaviors in children” around guns included one of 4 to 5 year olds. They didn’t retain the training well (Duh).

    A study of 6 to 7 year olds found excellent retention of the gun safety training. Yet the GAO report complains that it took “intensive training” consisting of 3 or 4 rounds of practice for the kids to retain the skills. All of them. 100% retained the safety skills. The control group, with less intensive training, “only” hit 88% retention of safety skills. So the child safety programs were not aimed at teaching safe storage, but safe behaviors around guns. And the program of 6 to 7 year olds worked well. Only one study with 4 to 5 year olds did not work (again, Duh).

  24. Notice of typo in first paragraph:
    “we know that no everyone is as careful as they should be”

    Should be:
    “we know that not everyone is as careful as they should be”

    No need to add this to comments section.

  25. Yep, lets teach paranoia rather than safety, cite as many lies as possible and sell it to the MSM to over hype to the public.

  26. Me with my first pair of revolvers in 1947. Brady and the bunch can kiss my heavily armed ass.

    [img]https://i.imgur.com/WJyzyqO.jpg[/img]

      • Not really. Just a run of the mill armed (cap guns of course) 3 yo back then. Didn’t get my first real gun till I was 6 or 7. A .22 bolt action. Progressed from there to much bigger and better firearms today. 🙂 Amazingly, I’ve never shot anyone that didn’t deserve it.

  27. “Research shows” safety programs don’t work. If you want to appeal to hollow minds, preface your “facts” with “research shows.” It has now lost all significance. Has the same ring as “common sense gun laws.” So let’s drop Driver’s Ed., First Aid, CPR, fire safety, fire drills, and anything else disguised as a program designed to educate and promote safety.

  28. When it comes to sex ed the left wants to expose children to all aspects of sex as early and as often as possible. When it comes to guns the left wants them locked up and hidden from the children. Slap a chastity belt on that gun

  29. I’d love to share this article, but you misspelled “appalled” in the headline (one “p” instead of two). Is it too much to ask that you do a spell check? This makes us all look bad.

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