Wow the Brady Campaign are dicks. Days of our Trailers points out those pricks are jockeying for more gun related deaths by opposing the NRA’s Eddie Eagle program while offering nothing as a replacement. Why are they doing this? Simply because they don’t like the NRA. Seriously I’m not even exaggerating this:
When I look at the full record of NRA activities, it’s difficult for me to believe that the NRA leadership is serious about gun safety for children or anybody else.
But let’s look at their arguments:
Yet there is absolutely no evidence directly linking the use of the Eddie Eagle program to a decline in children’s deaths by guns.
That’s probably true, I haven’t heard of any such study. Of course the number of children killed by accidents involving firearms has been on a steady decline so the Eddie Eagle program certainly isn’t hurting anything.
In fact, a study published in 2004 by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that children could memorize Eddie’s simple advice about avoiding guns, but that advice went unheeded when children were put in real-life scenarios and asked to role-play a response. Indeed, not a single child out of 11 in the Eddie Eagle program study “used the skills in a real-life situation.” The authors noted, “Studies have found that when children find guns, they often play with them,” and concluded: “Existing programs are insufficient for teaching gun-safety skills to children.”
Of course the linked study is only an abstract and you need to pay to read the entire thing. So I have no idea how the study was conducted and Helmke doesn’t seem willing to provide those details so let’s move on:
Another study published in the late 1990s by the Violence Policy Center (VPC)
That’s all I need to say there. The Brady Bunch referencing the Violence Policy Center is the same as the NRA referencing Gun Owners of America. It’s a bias study where a goal exists and anything will be done to ensure the conclusion reflects that goal. Oh and I love this one:
Children in the United States die from gunfire at a higher rate than in any other industrialized nation, underscoring the need for gun safety education. But the responsibility for protecting children from these lethal weapons should not be dumped on already overburdened teachers and fiscally-strapped school districts that have limited instruction time. The responsibility belongs to parents, gun owners, and gun manufacturers.
This has to be the only time we’ll see Helmke state parents need to take responsibility for something. Because every time a child dies in a gun related accident he goes blames the gun. I just wanted to preserve this moment in history since it’s more rare than people who fully understand quantum mechanics. This is also golden:
When you consider the heart-ripping tragedies that mount every day in the form of accidental gun deaths, gun suicides, and the alleged gun homicide of a three-year-old by his sibling, one has to ask why. Why does the NRA continue to stand in the way of adult education and child safety laws that could stem the carnage?
So the NRA should stop the Eddie Eagle program to education children on gun safety but should not stand in the way of adult education (here’s a hint they don’t stand in the way, they actively try to educate adults as well as children). Likewise the NRA doesn’t stand in the way of child safety laws, they stand in the way of gun control laws which do not make children safer in any way.
You know I think the only play Helmke gets anymore comes from gun bloggers linking to his dribble and pointing out the lies and lack of logic.