Introduction material for Children?

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Robert J

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This may seem out of place, but I am sure some of you have delt with similar cases in the past so comments are appreciated.

My daughter is still a bit young (6) for us to actually have handling anything firearm related and everything has been stored in the safe since her birth. I guess I did not give much thought to teaching her about firearms for a few more years (except the current drill of don't touch, tell a parent if seen).

My problem is I have just found the school is training her not that guns are tools and can be dangerous if mishandled, they are stunningly far down the road of guns are evil and anyone who owns a gun is bad. Not positive where the source was, but someone told her to tell a teacher if there were guns in the house and only bad people had guns.

It has been many, many decades, but I seem to recall "safety owl" or some such thing in comic book format when I was a kid.

Can anyone point me to a resource so I can start countering the classroom trend? I looked at the NRA library materials and did not find anything that seemed youth related, did I miss it?

Thanks for any leads.
 
Eddie Eagle...

I've been working with my kids since they were able to talk and have a small grasp on them. I think that it depends on your kids...but five and six might not be too young.

I'm getting ready to start working with my 5-1/2 year old with a BB gun. She's been around firearms, and I let her sit with me if she wants when I clean them. She knows not to touch, but she also knows that she can talk to me about them anytime that she wants.

I have a chipmunk that I got her when I found out that my wife was preggo. My daughter will look in the safe and say, "That's my gun daddy, but I can't touch it until I'm older." She knows...and she knows that they are only as dangerous as the person holding them.

She's got the same respect, if you can call it that for her age, as she does for the kitchen knives in the block on the counter.

It's all about presentation, and taking away the mystery.

But Eddie Eagle has a great program for starting it off with kids.
 
Robert J said:
This may seem out of place, but I am sure some of you have delt with similar cases in the past so comments are appreciated.

My daughter is still a bit young (6) for us to actually have handling anything firearm related and everything has been stored in the safe since her birth. I guess I did not give much thought to teaching her about firearms for a few more years (except the current drill of don't touch, tell a parent if seen).

My problem is I have just found the school is training her not that guns are tools and can be dangerous if mishandled, they are stunningly far down the road of guns are evil and anyone who owns a gun is bad. Not positive where the source was, but someone told her to tell a teacher if there were guns in the house and only bad people had guns.

It has been many, many decades, but I seem to recall "safety owl" or some such thing in comic book format when I was a kid.

Can anyone point me to a resource so I can start countering the classroom trend? I looked at the NRA library materials and did not find anything that seemed youth related, did I miss it?

Thanks for any leads.
Click to expand...

Its a hard spot there, you don't want to drop the hammer of god on the teacher for telling your child to report a firearm to her..its the same thing you teach your kids, being leave the area and tell an adult.

The danger here in her approach is that shes telling your kid to narc on you and thats out of line with your household since your child should tell her parent first. The teacher doesn't know the household environment, like if you were a hunting/outdoors household so her advice is way off base.

As others stated the NRA has the Eddie Eagle program.

For yourself, introduce her to firearms as tools. If you can carry around the house or find some other method to introduce the firearm as just another object in the drawer thats for adults like knives for example you should be on the right path.

My kids are both young but understand not to touch them, or talk about them. But I've also taken my overcoat/sweater off for years now and the gun on my hip is nothing more special than the cellphone clipped to my pants. They are used to the them and someone attempting to convince them that its evil and daddys a bad man will get quite the quizzical look from them. This is my experience and is not obviously a carbon cutout solution, but its what certainly worked for me, so I thought to share it with you.

Good luck and a tip of the hat for approaching this as a responsible parent.
 
P-14 said:
It's what's wrong with this picture:
Click to expand...

That's out of control...and brainwashing. Kids logic would tell you that the good people should get guns also so that the bad people don't make them dead. Can't defeat kid logic...and that picture isn't it.
 
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Robert J said:
...It has been many, many decades, but I seem to recall "safety owl" or some such thing in comic book format when I was a kid.
...
Click to expand...

You must mean "Doc Owl", which is almost the same thing as Eddie Eagle.

I'm in the same boat. I just tell the kids that guns are a tool, a piece of metal, and are neither bad nor good, but it is the people who use them which can be good or bad. Yes, I think our girl has said guns are bad also. She and the boy have both "shot" the air gun a couple times (more like stood between my arms while I held it for them) and enjoyed it. The boy has a pop gun and a cap gun and space guns and they both have squirt guns. I may yet talk to the teacher and pediatrician, but haven't really had a chance yet.
 
Nothing anyone puts out that is pro or anti gun is going to be as effective as what mommy and daddy tells them about guns.

My oldest daughter, now 28, was a curious child a little beyond her years. When she was very young she put 2 and 2 together and figured out that that thing daddy carried on his right side and kept locked up in a high place was a gun, a model 13 S&W to be exact.

At one point she said something she shouldn't have said, I forget exactly what, but my wife and I decided that the time was upon us that we had to teach her right from wrong. I think she was 6 at the time.

I took the gun down from its hiding spot, unloaded it, handed it to my daughter and asked her if she had any questions. As she was trying to handle the sheer mass of the thing she said no. Her curiosity was satisfied. She was re instructed that nobody was to know we had guns in the house, or carried one. She was told not to touch one if she found one, and to leave ours alone. She was also told never to point a gun at anyone,

I never ever had a problem with her and guns.
 
Eddie Eagle is really inadequate for this situation. It's designed entirely as a child safety program and makes absolutely no normative statements about guns or their usefulness. It's entire message is simply a repetition and reinforcement of "Stop, Don't tell, Leave the area, Tell an adult." While that's a great message for kids who can't be expected to absorb and retain more, it doesn't even pretend to address your problem. It's perfectly consistent with either an "All guns are evil" message or a "Guns are useful tools with potential dangers if misused" message.

What you need is to use the Eddie Eagle message to first put yourself, rather than the teacher or some school administrator in the position of the "adult". Then start showing her why this message is important, and how guns, like all tools, can be employed for either good or bad purposes, depending on the person using them. Bad people can use them for evil purposes; good people can use them for good purposes. Don't directly contradict the teacher, but agree with her. Just point out that she's only started to teach the lesson and there's more to it than has been taught thus far. Then your daughter won't feel conflicted between your message and that of the teacher, but rather feel good that she now is ahead of the rest of the class and knows the other part of the lesson.

Then start seriously showing her about the good side of guns. The self-defense part is completely obvious to young kids: if bad people can use guns against good people, it follows that good people can use them against bad people. Focus on the safety part and on the fun that can be had with guns. If you've got a .22, she's old enough to break balloons, knock over cans, or blow up tonic bottles full of water. (Put a teaspoon or so of flour in the balloons before inflating them to make it more dramatic.) She may nor get into it immediately, but let her watch you doing it and see the fun you're having until she wants to join in. Whatever you do, don't try to push her any faster than she wants to go.

Ken
 
Wow, they are really accelerating their training. 20 years ago, they did not lay the "guns are evil" thing on the kids until they were around 12 years old.

Never the less, in today's society, you can not leave guns around the house with kids. Even IF you trained your kids thorougly, you can not be sure of your kids friends. They have seen countless movies, video games, rap singer videos, etc with people pointing guns at each other all the time. You do not want them doing that in your house.

What you need to do is make sure your kid knows how to handle the guns. That means you take them to the range (or if your range gave up on today's youth and will not allow them there until they are 14) to the woods, and teach them how to shoot stuff. At first, you have to really watch them. They will go 2 hours safely plinking away, and then thoughtlessly swing around and momentarily point a rile at you without thinking. That is the sort of thing you have to drill in them--you neve point a firearm at anybody unless you want to shoot them. Another good thing to teach them is that there is no such thing as an "unloaded" weapon--treat every firearm as if it is loaded. A 3rd thing, be sure of what you are shooting at and what the backstop is.

After some time, shooting at paper targets is going to get boring. So make things more fun. The indicating targets, the ones that turn yellow when a bullet hits them, are a big hit. Metal targets that go "ping" when you hit them are good for kids too. Tin cans hanging on strings are good.

Eventually, it would be good to involve some of their friends in the shooting fun. Obviously, you need the right parent to go along with such a thing. But my teenage kids loved trap shooting with their friends.

I have not looked, but I am sure there are training programs for youth and shooting available nowadays. Check out goal, boy scouts, etc.
 
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