#6 in a series of information leaflets from The Stentorian, www.stentorian.com
(C) 2001, William A. Levinson. Permission is granted to print, copy, and distribute hard (non-electronic) copies of this page freely and without royalties of any kind, provided that it is not altered in any manner.

Handgun Control Incorporated, the Million Mom March, and the Violence Policy Center oppose gun safety education: gun accidents are good for their agenda.

"Our cause has been aided by the deaths of all these children in all these schools, and in other settings. And I think we should pay tribute to them." --William Jefferson Clinton. ("President says he's pushing gun safety, not control." Michael Romano, Denver Rocky Mountain News Washington Bureau, 4/13/2000)

Handgun Control Incorporated (HCI, http://www.handguncontrol.org/chldgns.htm) and the Violence Policy Center (VPC, http://www.vpc.org/fact_sht/eddiekey.htm) condemn the National Rifle Association's Eddie Eagle gun safety program as "Joe Camel with Feathers"- a comparison of the Eddie Eagle safety mascot to the tobacco Camel. They claim that Eddie Eagle is a firearm marketing tool, and that the safety program's primary message to children who discover an unattended firearm- "Stop! Don't Touch. Leave the Area. Tell an Adult"- places the onus for gun safety on children, and not on adults where it belongs. Contrary to VPC's claim that Eddie Eagle is a marketing tool for the gun industry, "Eddie Eagle is never shown touching a firearm, and he does not  promote firearm ownership or use." "Just as Smokey Bear teaches children not to play with matchbooks, Eddie Eagle teaches them not to play with firearms" (http://www.nrahq.org/safety/eddie/index.shtml) UPDATE (2/21/2001): The antigun Million Mom March put Eddie Eagle in its "Time Out Chair," with the same so-called logic of HCI and the VPC.

From Handgun Control Inc.'s own Internet page (shown above): "In the United States, young children die or are badly injured because their parents or other gun owners don't store their firearms properly, and children find loaded guns and use them unintentionally on themselves or other children.  Older children are more at risk from horseplay with available guns, while teenagers use guns for impulse suicides and for crime." But HCI and VPC don't want Eddie Eagle to teach children what to do if they find an improperly-stored gun. They don't want Eddie Eagle to tell children what to do  if a friend who hasn't learned firearm responsibility starts playing with a gun (or if an irresponsible adult like Senator Dianne Feinstein poses with her finger inside the trigger guard of an AK-47 semiautomatic rifle in public, with the muzzle probably pointed in an unsafe direction): "Stop! Don't Touch. Leave the Area. Tell an Adult."

Why?  Incidents in which one child shoots another (or himself) with a firearm are good for gun control legislation. When a child who has learned firearm safety from Eddie Eagle (or a parent or shooting coach) averts a tragedy by "stopping, not touching, leaving the area, and telling an adult," that's bad for gun control legislation. It shows that even children can learn to be responsible about firearm safety. My conclusion is that HCI, the Million Moms, and the VPC are quite content, if not downright happy, to have children killed in firearm-related incidents, because that helps them promote their agenda. Eddie Eagle does to gun controllers what the Salk polio vaccine did to the iron lung. This is why they don't want Eddie Eagle to "immunize" children against gun-related accidents and gun misuse. Think about this the next time HCI argues for more gun control laws to protect "the children."