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Tragedy points up need for instruction
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Tragedy points up need for instruction
The tragic death of a Mesa teenager from an airgun pellet Monday underscores yet again the need for youngsters to be instructed in gun safety - even if they never intend to hunt or own a gun themselves. That's "gun safety" in its traditional meaning of "learn to respect guns and handle them properly," not in its hijacked meaning of "restrict the wicked things as much as possible."
There are quite a number of gun safety rules, but all of them may be distilled into four basic ones:
1. All guns are always loaded. Always. Never assume that one is not. Never.
2. Do not allow the muzzle of a gun to cover anything you are not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger outside of the trigger guard until you are ready to shoot.
4. Be sure of your target, as well as what is behind it.
It is depressingly evident that the boy who inadvertently killed Oscar Granillo was in gross violation of several of these rules. Possibly he had never been instructed in them.
It is also doubtful whether he had ever heard of the rules the National Rifle Association, through its "Eddie Eagle" program, has been promoting to kids who might find themselves in a situation where another kid is fooling with a gun: "Stop! Don't touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult."
This is a deficiency that can and ought to be corrected in the schoolroom. We need not go so far as to put every youngster through the Arizona Game and Fish Department's excellent Hunter Education Course (as good an idea as that would actually be), but we could certainly expose younger kids to Eddie Eagle's four safety rules and older ones to the aforementioned "Basic Four."
That might well elicit opposition from gun-control partisans who equate genuine gun safety instruction with the promotion of gun ownership (which the Eddie Eagle program, despite its NRA origin, does not do). In 1999, the New York State Assembly passed a bill directing the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to set up a firearm accident prevention program for elementary school kids using the Eddie Eagle character and his four rules.
But despite the fact that such programs have been honored by the National Safety Council and adopted by the FBI for the instruction of agents' children, New York Gov. George Pataki vetoed it under heavy pressure from New York City liberals.
The prospect of ill-advised opposition ought not to deter the Arizona Legislature from making sure this state's kids are exposed to at least a modicum of genuine gun safety instruction. As the bumper sticker says, and as this week's tragedy so painfully proves, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." http://www.aztrib.com/opinion/edit10531.shtml
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
The tragic death of a Mesa teenager from an airgun pellet Monday underscores yet again the need for youngsters to be instructed in gun safety - even if they never intend to hunt or own a gun themselves. That's "gun safety" in its traditional meaning of "learn to respect guns and handle them properly," not in its hijacked meaning of "restrict the wicked things as much as possible."
There are quite a number of gun safety rules, but all of them may be distilled into four basic ones:
1. All guns are always loaded. Always. Never assume that one is not. Never.
2. Do not allow the muzzle of a gun to cover anything you are not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger outside of the trigger guard until you are ready to shoot.
4. Be sure of your target, as well as what is behind it.
It is depressingly evident that the boy who inadvertently killed Oscar Granillo was in gross violation of several of these rules. Possibly he had never been instructed in them.
It is also doubtful whether he had ever heard of the rules the National Rifle Association, through its "Eddie Eagle" program, has been promoting to kids who might find themselves in a situation where another kid is fooling with a gun: "Stop! Don't touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult."
This is a deficiency that can and ought to be corrected in the schoolroom. We need not go so far as to put every youngster through the Arizona Game and Fish Department's excellent Hunter Education Course (as good an idea as that would actually be), but we could certainly expose younger kids to Eddie Eagle's four safety rules and older ones to the aforementioned "Basic Four."
That might well elicit opposition from gun-control partisans who equate genuine gun safety instruction with the promotion of gun ownership (which the Eddie Eagle program, despite its NRA origin, does not do). In 1999, the New York State Assembly passed a bill directing the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to set up a firearm accident prevention program for elementary school kids using the Eddie Eagle character and his four rules.
But despite the fact that such programs have been honored by the National Safety Council and adopted by the FBI for the instruction of agents' children, New York Gov. George Pataki vetoed it under heavy pressure from New York City liberals.
The prospect of ill-advised opposition ought not to deter the Arizona Legislature from making sure this state's kids are exposed to at least a modicum of genuine gun safety instruction. As the bumper sticker says, and as this week's tragedy so painfully proves, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." http://www.aztrib.com/opinion/edit10531.shtml
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878