Looks like Ohio is about to find out!


By Anna Guido
Enquirer contributor

COLUMBUS - Timothy Grendell is adamant about teaching gun safety to kids.

In rural areas like his native Geauga County, he says, gun safety is often taught in the home and gun accidents are rare. But that's not the case in urban areas, which is why Rep. Grendell, R-Chesterland, worked for three years to get House Bill 95 passed this summer to fund gun safety education in Ohio schools.

"We teach sex education, we teach drug education - I think it's appropriate that we also teach gun safety education," Grendell says.

Ohio thus becomes the first state to fund gun safety education in public schools.

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/11/16/loc_wwwloc1gun.html

I've been saying the same thing for years. Kids who are properly taught about firearms and learn that they aren't some mystical thing like they see on TV don't have accidents like the kids who act like their toys. The only problem will be how they teach them. Gun safety education changes with age and experience. At very young age the proper education is DON'T TOUCH. But as they get older they can be given more responsibility towards handling them supervised, and then un-supervised. I have a feeling the schools will end up anlays teaching them like they were small children. Could be good could be bad.

In 5th grade PE, we were shooting daisy air rifles IN the gym.

In our 8th grade PE class we had one of the local cops (who happened to have a kid my age) come in and do a gun safety class.

Both of these were KC area schools, two different districts.  8th grade woulda been around '94 for me. (either began in '94 or it ended in '94, don't remember which, but thats about the time period).

Do I remember much specifically from those?  Yup.  Learned the fundamentals there.  Somewhere I think I still have those targets from shooting pellet rifles in 5th grade....I wasn't a half-bad shot then, either.  

I think this is a good idea, and its WAY overdue.

I shudder to think what the liberal bastards that run our public schools will try to pass off as 'Firearms Education'.

This could be a very bad thing ...

As long as they teach them how to handle guns when they are older as well(i.e. how to use them) then it is a great idea.

However, if they only teach them to run away from guns when they see them, we will end up with a much larger "guns = icky" percentage of the population.

If you read the linked article, you will see that the training is aimed at the K-3 set and that it is the NRA's Eddy Eagle program.

I don't have any personal experience with the program but have heard many good things about it.