Beginning at Grade IV, children ought to begin learning firearms safety. This is for several reasons.
For a start, parents are told often to lock up their firearms lest their children get ahold of them and shoot someone. While this is a very real and possible danger, I do not believe that locking up all of one’s firearms is the best option. Certainly, the majority of a household’s firearms ought to be stored away properly — in their proper cases and hidden away, or locked in a safe, and certainly not propped up in the back of a closet. Especially when everyone in the house will be out, all firearms ought to be locked away to be protected in the event of a burglary. These guns must also be stored unloaded, and all ammunition must be stored in a dry, cool area. The problem with locking up all firearms, however, is that whenever someone is home, at least one firearm ought to be within reach in case of an emergency such as a home invasion. In such events, seconds matter, and one will not always have access to the firearms that are stored away.
Instead, I propose that the solution to children getting their hands on firearms is to teach them safety—safety and respect.
As with everything, education must begin with the parents. Children who express an interest ought to be permitted to play with toy guns, such as Nerf. They need to be supervised by their parents, who can teach them how to aim a firearm and to identify objects that are safe to use as targets. For example, I, regrettably, did not get to play with Nerf growing up; I had but one toy crossbow which shot foam darts (this toy may have been a Nerf product, but I do not remember, and it would be my only experience with Nerf if it was), which I aimed at my stuffed animals. Some Nerf toys are also safe to shoot at other people, so if your child has friends to play Nerf with, they ought to.
Some parents are adverse to letting children play with toy guns and letting them “shoot” other people, as it encourages violence. To those parents, I understand your concern, and I know it is not my place to compel you to raise your children a certain way. I only wish to offer my own ideas of how to raise them, coming not from a parent, but from someone who only stopped being a child a few short years ago. And I say, I do not think prohibiting toy guns will stop your children from being interested in firearms, or even violence.
To begin with, children are interested in things their parents do not approve of. Some children, like myself, let their fear of consequences stop them from doing those things, but this is not always the case and you mustn’t count on it being so. There were still times I did not think about, or I underestimated, the consequences of my actions, and did things I knew were wrong. Moreover, I have even heard people say that their parents banned real and toy guns in the house, and so they bought their first firearm as soon as they turned 18.
Furthermore, many children—some girls, but mostly the majority of boys—enjoy aggressive and sometimes destructive play, from wrestling to smashing toy cars together, and the classic smashing baseballs through windows (this last one is, of course, most often accidental). Shooting guns at breakable targets, such as clays or beer bottles, can be a healthy way to let off some anger and aggression—certainly more so than punching holes in walls or smashing game console controllers. When a person is angry enough, they want to break something. I have been known to kick an empty trashcan or bucket that was in my way, wanting it to break (though it does not, of course), or throw a wrench. Perhaps chopping wood would be healthier, or throwing tomahawks, or punching a bag, or shooting. The key is that, when we have the anger to destroy something, it is better to break something inexpensive, such as glass bottles, clay targets, or wood, than to break something expensive, such as videogame hardware or drywall, or to hurt another person or an animal.
And violence need not be the only end for which one uses firearms. Many firearms sports exist that do not involve shooting live targets. Certainly they are based on shooting live targets; all clay shooting sports are based on bird hunting. But there are many people who shoot clay target sports competitively, who do not hunt at all.
Now, as far as the use of toy guns goes, it will be necessary, and it will benefit them later on, to teach kids to understand and to respect the difference between toy guns and real guns, and to understand that pretending to shoot daddy when he comes home from work, or shooting their friends in a Nerf war, is different from shooting someone with a real firearm loaded with live ammunition. They must be taught to respect firearms and to respect human life.
Children must also be taught safety regarding real firearms. Ideally this will start with the parents teaching them how to handle their toy guns as though they were real. Let us say the parents have a firearm which the child has an interest in, or that the child wants a BB gun for Christmas; it’s up to the parents to take them to a range or another safe area with that gun to show them how to safely handle, load, and shoot the gun. Parents do not have to wait until the child is 10, although before that age, children are not big enough to handle certain firearms. I personally would suggest teaching them archery, followed by rifle before shotgun—as shotguns are typically heavier and have harder recoil, and are more often used for moving targets—with pistols used later (when my 4-H club considered adding pistol instruction, it was going to be limited to members aged 15-18, as pistols are smaller and more maneuverable than rifles and shotguns), as well as crossbows, which require more careful handing than a recurve bow. However, using their own prudence and discretion, parents may begin teaching their children sooner, whenever they believe the child is old enough and big enough to safely hold a gun or other tool by him or herself.
I am also aware that not all parents have the time or the firearms training to properly teach their children. My parents knew little about firearms, and thankfully our county had a shooting sports 4-H club, which they put me in. Ours offered archery, rifle, and shotgun education. Some clubs also offer pistol and crossbow instruction, along with instruction in other tools. Of course, some clubs are better than others; a friend of mine was only in his county’s club for a year or two, while I stayed in mine for seven years despite the fact I was getting less and less out of it each year. I would suggest to parents looking to put their children into 4-H shooting sports that in general the first two or three years will be the most educational for your child, as not all clubs will have the capacity to work with the more-experienced members on more advanced topics in shooting sports.
Beyond that, not all counties have a 4-H shooting sports club, which is why I wish to secure children’s shooting education with school. Among other things, shooting sports is one thing that was once, but is no longer, taught in Physical Education. As I have written in the beginning, I believe the best year to begin will be Grade IV, when most children will have turned 10 by the end of the year. I have chosen this year from personal experience, for I joined 4-H in Grade IV, and, having a summer birthday, I was already age 10 at the start of the year, and thus older than most of my peers.
They ought to begin, of course, with classroom instruction on safe handling. When I was in 4-H, we had six meetings each dedicated to archery, rifle, and shotgun, so I would say six classes at minimum ought to be sufficient for each of these. On the other hand, since these meetings were two hours long, and at least at my school, each period was 40 or 41 minutes (Period II was 42 minutes), if schools wanted to spend the same amount of time in hours rather than days in training, it would take 18 days to reach 12 hours of Phys. Ed. time [6 two-hour days of meetings totalling to 12 hours, convert that to 720 minutes and divide by 40 of class time for 18 days], so 54 days of the school year dedicated to all three tools. Each grading quarter at my school was 9 weeks, so roughly 45 days. That makes for 180 days. 54 days is only 30% of the school year, so this ought to be manageable if we are to balance it with the rest of what I consider to be the ideal Phys. Ed. curriculum, which will be discussed in a later section.
At least one of these should be taught each year; teaching only one or two may be more practical anyway, if Phys Ed. becomes a semester class. At my school, Gym class was one of the classes — as were Art, Music, going to the Library, etc. — which we only had once a week from Kindergarten to Grade IV, then in Grade V, we had Gym one day then Music the next for the entire year, and from Grade VI on it was a semester class, and we only had to take one semester of it in high school. This I wish to be changed, but that is for a later section, and until it changes, I am willing to allow only one shooting sport being taught per year. That said, it must change each year; as in, if a Grade IV class is taught archery, I expect them to be taught rifle in Grade V, and shotgun in Grade VI. Throwing tools, such as tomahawks, shall be added later in middle school, and I would add pistol and crossbow in high school.
I also believe Physical Education teachers ought to be certified firearms instructors. This would be best enforced by schools on their own asking that candidates for the job have gone through instructor training, though legislation for it may be passed if need be. An alternative may be bringing in someone outside the school if the teacher is not qualified. When my Grade V gym class was taught archery, the school brought in the mother of one of our classmates, as she was certified in archery instruction, though she was not entirely “outside” the school, as she was a teacher in another building, which should be another option: if another teacher is certified, they may be allowed to teach the class if they are willing to give up their time, which I believe a good teacher will be.
The bare minimum I want our children to be taught for firearms is basic safety:
Though it looks like a lot, anyone who has taken a firearms class of some sort can teach it. My reason for requiring that it be taught by certified instructors in school is for C.Y.A. purposes. They also need to be taught how to load and aim firearms.
I also want to see children being taught about the sports they can compete in with these tools. There are various organizations they can join, including SCTP, SASP, ATA and others. Some of these are team-based, and schools may establish their own teams.
Later years ought also to involve learning the disassembly, maintenance, and cleaning of firearms, and perhaps how to reload munitions. Students ought also to be taught how to use firearms to defend themselves. Contrary to the misconception of those who have never taken a concealed carry class, concealed carriers do not shoot first and ask questions later, nor are they taught to just unload their guns on others, they are instructed to deescalate and escape, and only when both are impossible to shoot the aggressor. Of course, the question remains where are schools to teach their students? That is a difficult question, especially because the answer will vary for each school. My school set up archery targets in the gym. As for firearms, and all tools in general, I would have to suggest schools set up their own range somewhere on campus, or find someone nearby with enough land, who is willing to host classes on their property.
The ends for providing so many opportunities for children to handle firearms are to satisfy their curiosity in a safe environment, and to educate as many citizens as possible. Firearms training is not legally required before obtaining a firearm, and on one hand, I want to keep it that way. No one needs a license to exercise their Amendment I rights, or to attend law school before exercising any of their Constitutional rights. Yet, at the same time, all rights come with great responsibility, and perhaps no right creates more destruction when abused than the right to keep and bear arms. I’m not saying firearms training will reduce the number school shootings or similar premeditated crimes, but when our children are taught how guns work and to respect them and human life, firearm accidents, at least, will be reduced, and perhaps we can empower our children to stand up for themselves and others, in order that they may one day stop tragedies from happening if, God forbid, they ever find themselves caught up in a dangerous situation. And if even after all their education, a young citizen refrains from becoming a gun owner, they will at least know how to handle these tools if they should ever need to for some reason.