Gun-safety programs for kids don't work, report finds

Star Tribune ^ | Jul 18, 2002 | H.J. Cummins

[wallcrawlr]

Gun-safety programs meant to teach youngsters to avoid risky exploration of the weaponry don't work, according to a report released today that calls instead for stricter gun-sale and product safety laws.

"Children, Youth and Gun Violence," from the nonprofit David and Lucile Packard Foundation, says that in experimental research settings youngsters who've been through "gun-avoidance" programs are just as likely as others to find and play with guns.

[cmak9]

""It should be harder to get your hands on a gun any kind of way," Dunn said. "I feel we need all the controls we can get." "

I'm sorry this woman's son and nephew were killed (perhaps they needed a gun to defend themselves with?), but if she would stop "feeling" and start "thinking", we would all be better off.

[wjcsux]

You are 100% correct. David Packard (of Hewlitt-Packard fame) is a big time anti-gun type. Any "study" conducted or funded by The Packard Foundation ought to be immediately suspected of being left bias.

[ArrogantBustard]

If a kid gets shot, that's bad. If a kid gets ripped to pieces with a dull knife, that's 'choice'. Liberalism seldom makes any real sense.

[Ohioan]

What do we know, first, about how this study was conducted?

Second, about what sort of gun training program the subjects being studied, had been subjected to?

Until, we have a better understanding of those subjects, one can only conclude that the Packard Foundation is just another example of an Educational Trust being corrupted for Leftwing purposes. One suspects that while there may have been gun accidents on the American frontier, where all members of the family grew up quite familiar with that very necessary tool, they were not significant in comparison to the benefit--a chance to survive and protect what was yours--which those readily available guns provided. Even if the "study" found some avoidable accidents, it does not sound like it seriously explored the price of avoiding such accidents. That is a subject that does not exist for the anti-gun nuts.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[Redcloak]

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation is one of the sponsors of the "Legal Community Against Violence" and their "local ordinance project". This project encourages localities to violate the civil rights of their poorer citizens by outlawing inexpensive firearms. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation finding that gun safety programs are ineffective is like Bill Clinton claiming that oral sex leads to good governance. Both are rather predicatable outcomes given the sources!

[Robert A Cook PE]

"20,000 youngsters are killed or injured by guns every year in this country ...

Yeah - Sure. Right.

55 kids PER DAY is what this "report" is claiming.

Please give me their names for, say, the past month. I'm sure the writer who repeats this lie has those 1,666 names immediately available.

Right? After all, he repeated the claim and verified it. (Because we "know" the fair and unbiased national press corpse "always" thoroughly investigates every claim made on every press release that a liberal faxes.)

Right?

[gc4nra]

This works out to 55 kids injuried or killed every day by the negilent handling of firearms.

What liberal BS!

[hattend]

Let's see:

Pro-abortion...check
zero population growth...check
population growth = declines in natural resources...check
putting "habitat" off limits to people...check

If it smells like a lefty it probably is a commie, pinko, watermelon lefty

"The Foundation provides national and international grants, and also has a special focus on the Northern California Counties of San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Monterey.

All you need to know

We do not accept proposals to benefit specific individuals or that serve religious purposes."

Except the religion of Gaia.

[TheRedSoxWinThePennant]

this is dribble. when I was a kid my gun safety program was very good instruction from dad and the fear of god instilled in me if he caught me playing with his guns when he was not around. I fear I would have been better off shooting myself in the jimmy then have him catch me being irresponsible with a gun

[Richard Kimball]

Haven't been through the whole post, and I'm sure it's been posted a dozen times. Raise your kids and teach them to handle firearms safely. Gun avoidance is ridiculous. This is what a gun can do. This is the end that goes bang. Don't point it at anything you don't want to die.

[ArrogantBustard]

"local ordinance project".

I'd rather see a "Local Ordnance Project". Something like all the decent, peacable folk in my locality get to keep and bear all the ordnance they want.

[TheBattman]

Well, of course, when these liberals take the total figure for gun deaths of "children" (actually include up to the age of 20 or 21 - I don't remember which) and includes all the gang-banger deaths and other criminal deaths as well, of course you could see how gun education would "fail".

Unfortunately, the liberals won't remove the un-controlable portion of the statistics, which I believe would actually proove that firearm education DOES work.

AFter all - take a gang-banger and teach him firearm safety, he is just less likely to shoot himself on accident.

[Redcloak]

Are you tying to make David and Lucile ruin their Depends?!?

[wjcsux]

I am a hunter ed instructor here in NM. These kids that we have come through the program take it very seriously. Our criteria on "passing" these kids through the program is simple. If ANY of us instructors is unwilling to have a kid as OUR hunting partner, he doesn't pass.

[gc4nra]

You beat me by that much!...but only because I stopped to e-mail Cummins to ask if he really believed this stuff and if he could back it up with facts.

[BikerTrash]

but the "study" is meaningless until we know what they did ...

On a recent trip to the local hospital to visit a loved one I noticed smoking was not allowed anywhere on the premises. I also observed that most of the people there were either sick and/or dying.

Based on my findings, I immediately had a cigarette upon leaving the place.

[That Subliminal Kid]

It should be harder to get your hands on a gun any kind of way," Dunn said. "I feel we need all the controls we can get."

What a blithering idiot. And to think I work in Plymouth.

[Magnum44]

"gun-avoidance" programs are hardly gun education and training programs. You teach people to respect weapons by education, training, and familiarization through firing, not by "avoidance".

[gc4nra]

I can relate! My Dad was a rifle instructor in the Nat'l Guard(Fighting 69th, NY) before being joining the Army Air Corp in 1942. He would have broken my jimmie if he ever saw me being unsafe with a firearm.

[ArrogantBustard]

make David and Lucile ruin their Depends?!?

Where there's stink, there's ... a Packard Foundation sponsored 'study'.