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FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Program Teaching Kids About Guns Draws Fire

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Five-year-old Jeff Jagels, of Bakersfield, Calif., is just starting school in Kern County, but he already knows what to do when he sees a gun.

And other 5-year-olds in his neighborhood are about to learn what Jagels knows, too.

"Stop, don't touch, leave the area, tell an adult," is what the youngsters are told by cartoon character Eddie Eagle.

The Eddie Eagle Gun Safety Program is a free National Rifle Association project that teaches kids what to do when they see a gun.

The ideas behind the Eddie Eagle gun safety program are very simple. If you see a gun, you stop - you don't touch it, you leave the area and tell an adult. It's simple, memorable, easy to understand.

The fact that we're teaching a child not to touch a gun, to walk away from it, to tell an adult about the gun, that's going to make a child safer,” said Superintendent Larry Reider.

Yes - it's simple safety education, on a par with 'don't run out into the street after a ball' and 'look both ways before crossing the street' - it's stuff that's so self-evidently a good idea (unless you're into population control via systematic 'accidents') that it's hard to figure out a reson to object to it.

But of course, someone does.

But others disagree. Local emergency room doctor Art Kellermann has treated his share of juvenile gunshot victims. He’s skeptical of any plan that puts the burden on a young child to make a critical judgment about firearms.

“Nobody should trust Eddie Eagle to make their child any safer than before they took the program," Kellermann said. “Rather than try over and over again to gun-proof our kids, I think we ought to child-proof our guns."

You street-proof a kid by teaching him not to run out into the street. You gun-proof a kid by teaching him to leave the gun alone and tell an adult. Does he really not see any equivalence here? If he had a rash of kids being hit by cars when they run out into the street after a ball, would he be advocating making the car safer or banning balls?

The Kern County superintendent will be sending Eddie Eagle tapes out to the district next week — but says it will be up to the individual schools whether to use them.

Let's hope they do. It's the smartest, cheapest, and quickest way to make sure kids are safe.

J.