School Fits Gun Education Into Curriculum

Now this is quality education.

Alphecca comments on a school in Juneau Alaska that is teaching sixth-graders proper firearm safety and handling. The original article is from the Casper Star Tribune.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Tom Milliron figures Juneau school children are going to encounter guns one way or another, whether venturing armed into nearby wilderness or visiting the home of a friend.

Better they learn how to handle a firearm safely than to hurt themselves through ignorance, he says.

Milliron is principal of one of Juneau's two middle schools. Sixth-graders under his care last month completed an outdoor education course that included instruction in safe handling of guns and firing rounds from .22-caliber rifles. For some children, it was the first time they'd touched a gun.

In gun-happy Alaska, teaching children how to safely handle firearms is just common sense, Milliron said.

"Kids ought to be approached from a solid educational perspective and not discover guns on their own," Milliron said.

I have long been an advocate of bringing firearms training into our public school systems. As we have the right to keep and bear arms, we have the responsibility to teach our children proper firearm safety. Along with firearm safety, comes marksmanship. I would very much like to see competitive shooting re-introduced as a high school sport.

Milliron used to teach in Cube Cove, a logging camp on Admiralty Island. Outdoor education was crucial in such a wild setting, he said. He took the job at Juneau's Floyd Dryden Middle School eight years ago and found volunteers who wanted firearm education in public schools, including Tom Coate.

More than two decades ago, Coate had taught his 10-year-old son, Tobin, how to safely handle guns before they went waterfowl hunting. Then his son's friends wanted to go too. They were "dumber than a brick" about gun safety, Coate said.

He helped promote hunter safety programs in a 4-H club, then at rural village schools, and starting in 2000, at the Juneau middle school. About 1,200 students have taken the course.

The program has provided a counterbalance to the portrayal of guns on "the idiot tube," Coate said.

"What we're trying to do is mitigate the onslaught of very bad habits that cause needless deaths and needless accidents," Coate said.

Guns are simply a way of life in Southeast Alaska, Milliron and Coate said...

...As part of their outdoors education, students take the standard state of Alaska hunter safety education course. After safety lessons, they take a "shoot-don't shoot" field course, deciding whether it would have been safe to discharge a weapon at an animal simulated by a silhouette.

They also must demonstrate proficiency in firing a weapon, shooting 20 rounds from .22-caliber rifles at Juneau's indoor firing range.

This sounds similar to a program we had in my elementary school. We went to sixth-grade camp. It was a week of cabin camping in the mountains that included crafts along with outdoorsmanship activities. This included archery and .22's. This camping trip was held during the regular school year and was a part of sixth-grade. I'll bet that you would never guess what state this was in...

California

Read the rest of the article here.