Project ChildSafe Launches "Many Paths to Firearms Safety" Videos

The National Shooting Sports Foundation's Project ChildSafe has launched three safe storage educational videos titled "Many Paths to Firearms Safety."

We are excited to share the new “Many Paths to Firearm Safety” video series! The videos highlight the importance of safe storage no matter your lifestyle: https://t.co/8UWdVtr7qp pic.twitter.com/5DyrVJyb43

— Project ChildSafe (@ProjChildSafe) April 16, 2019

The videos are portrayals of three different gun owners and their stories of ownership, along with the steps they took to make sure they would handle and store that firearm safely when not in use.

 

The series reflects that more Americans – especially women – are buying guns for many different reasons, ranging from personal protection to target and sports shooting.  The central message is that while there are many different reasons why someone would choose to buy a gun, the common thread among them must be a commitment to store firearms responsibly when not in use so they can't be picked up by a child, stolen or accessed by someone who may want to harm themselves.

Funded by a 2015 award from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, NSSF has been doing an enhanced version of their firearm lock distribution program in three cities - Oklahoma City, Memphis, and Cleveland, that also includes two public service announcements and the video vignettes.

NBC: Gun control group targets firearms owners with new ads, seeks common ground

NBC News has a report on a new ad campaign by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence titled "End Family Fire." The term "End Family Fire" refers to "accidental shootings of children and other family members in homes across the nation".  The campaign attempts to reach gun owners with a message of safe storage, but massively fails at the attempt as it uses misleading statistics to try to make the point that 8 kids a day die (that's almost 3000 a year) each year from improperly stored firearms.

It's not surprising that this Public Service Announcement (PSA) campaign would take this approach as the campaign is produced by the AdCouncil, which was also responsible for a "safe storage" PSA campaign funded by the Obama administration and produced in collaboration with the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC).  That series of ads included kids saying, if you store your guns safely "I won't be scared."  Based on numbers from the National Safety Council Injury Facts 2014 Edition, the total number of unintentional firearms related deaths in 2012 was only 600 - that 's total, not just children.  So to get anywhere near the number that the "End Family Fire" campaign uses they must be including suicides in the total.  Suicide brings a completely different set of issues with it besides just the availability of firearms.

VSSA supports NSSF's Project ChildSafe initiative which encourages gun owners to store their firearms properly when not in use.  It's successful and the record low numbers of unintentional firearm related fatalities is proof.  Brady and Ad Council should leave the messaging of safe storage to people who know guns and gun owners.

Update: NSSF has a blog post pointing out how the Ad Council and Brady have mis-fired in their new ad.

Toys, Tools, Guns & Rules: A Children's Book About Gun Safety

That's the title of a new book for children about firearm safety by Julie Golob.

Besides being a World Champion Shooter, Julie is a strong advocate for the Second Amendment, appearing in a series of ads for the NRA, a lead trainer in NRATV's Love at First Shot series, as well as helping promote safe storage through the National Shooting Sports Foundation's Project ChildSafe.  She also is a great advocate for getting shooters involved in competitive shooting sports.  Julie's YouTube page describes the book like this:

There are hundreds of millions of guns in the United States alone. Despite how polarizing the media and politics have made the topic of firearms, we must talk with our children about guns and firearm safety to protect them and help prevent deaths and injuries. World-champion professional shooter, firearms instructor, and mother Julie Golob helps you start a conversation about firearms with young children. Toys, Tools, Guns & Rules helps parents break the ice with kids on this taboo topic.

Colorful and realistic illustrations inspire essential conversations about guns by:

• Comparing firearms to other potentially dangerous adult tools.
• Exploring the different types of firearms and what can they look like.
• Educating curious minds about how firearms work and the most dangerous parts of a gun.
• Identifying adults children may know who safely and responsibly use firearms.

Golob also provides a useful guide for parents on how to make the most out of Toys, Tools, Guns & Rules, so that you can answer the questions and establish your own family rules when it comes to firearms. Don’t let the fear of guns or their potential danger keep you from talking about them. Gun safety is for everyone.

Learn more at kidsgunsafetybook.com

Oh,  Julie's also running for the NRA Board this year.  You can find out more about that here.   If she wins, don't expect her to be a celebrity board member that doesn't show up.  She has a passion for the shooting sports and firearm freedom.

Help Spread Project ChildSafe Message and Get Entered for Chances to Win Prizes

Kicking off this past Monday, Project ChildSafe, with the support of the National Shooting Sports Foundation and its partners, launched the third annual Friends and Family campaign! Over the course of the next four weeks, NSSF/Project ChildSafe will be giving away amazing prizes from their partners to help spread the message of safe storage and responsible firearms ownership.

Share Project ChildSafe resources, messages and gun safety tips for your chance to win. There are many ways to enter, check out the campaign page today and get involved. Terms and conditions apply.

The first two prize winners were announced on Friday at 3 pm EDT.

Congrats Bill Edmonds & @MarkLaGambina on winning this week's F&F Campaign prizes! You can still enter to win: https://t.co/Q85QqlWWEi pic.twitter.com/2TmVnBiyr6

— Project ChildSafe (@ProjChildSafe) June 2, 2017

Enter for your chance to win during the remaining weeks of the campaign!

Campaign Week 1: May 30 - June 2, 2017

• Prize 1: .22LR AR Conversion Kit, Bravo, w/3 Magazines, courtesy of CMMG Inc
• Prize 2: Crimson Trace CMR-205 Rail Master Pro Universal Red Laser Sight, courtesy of Crimson Trace

Campaign Week 2: June 5- 9, 2017

• Prize 1: Nikon's BLACK FORCE1000 Riflescope, courtesy of Nikon
• Prize 2: Nikon's MONARCH 7i VR Laser Rangefinder, courtesy of Nikon

Campaign Week 3: June 12 - 16, 2017

• Prize 1: ShotLock Shotgun 200M Solo-Vault, courtesy of ShotLock
• Prize 2: ShotLock Handgun 200E Solo-Vault, courtesy of ShotLock

Campaign Week 4: June 19 - 23, 2017

• Prize 1 & 2: RFiD Hand Gun Safe, courtesy of Winchester Safes

Campaign Week 5: June 26 - 30, 2017

• GRAND PRIZE: Bandit 9 Gun Safe, courtesy of Winchester Safes

Winners will be announced on Facebook and Twitter each Friday during the campaign period at 3 pm EDT and followed-up with via email.

VSSA is a proud supporter of Project ChildSafe.

Unintentional Firearms Deaths Fall to New Lows While Sales Reached New Highs

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) has the story here:

Good news on the topic of fatal firearms accidents. The National Safety Council’s “Injury Facts—2017 Edition ” shows that the number of fatal firearms accidents dropped 17 percent from 2014 to 2015 to 489, the lowest total since record-keeping began in 1903. That’s about three-tenths of 1 percent of the 146,571 total accidental deaths from all other listed causes, which are up 8 percent from 2014 to 2015. It should be noted that the decrease, which was the largest percentage decline of any category, came in a year that saw record firearms sales to many millions of Americans.

More evidence, as NSSF states in their post, that gun owners are responsible when storing their firearms.  It's also due to efforts of firearm safety training and programs like NSSF's Project ChildSafe.

NSSF recently released a new public safety announcement from their Bureau of Justice Assistance funded Project ChildSafe Communities initiative, Safety is a Habit.  The numbers prove for gun owners, it's a true statement.

NSSF Launches Project ChildSafe Communities

Yesterday, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), along with Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, Oklahoma City leaders and law enforcement officials, launched Project ChildSafe Communities in Oklahoma’s Capitol, kicking off a national initiative designed to encourage responsible firearm ownership with an emphasis on secure firearm storage. The event marked the launch in Oklahoma City – the first event in the nation under the initiative – starting a year-long, community-led effort that is, among other goals, “Aiming for Zero” firearm accidents.

Project ChildSafe Communities is supported by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and NSSF, which has sponsored Project ChildSafe since 1999. BJA awarded NSSF a two-year, $2.4 million grant to help promote additional firearm safety efforts on a national level by creating Project ChildSafe Communities in key cities around the country.

The initiative is also partnering with several local organizations representing conservation groups, mental health and suicide prevention advocates, veterans, retailers and hunting and shooting groups to help share messages and information about responsible firearm storage.

Their collective efforts will be backed up by community-wide messaging that that will appear in social media, in an upcoming public service announcement on TV and radio, and on billboards around the Capitol City region.

Through partnerships with more than 15,000 local law enforcement agencies and more than 3,400 organizational supporters, Project ChildSafe has helped educate firearm owners on the importance of gun safety, while distributing more than 37 million free firearm safety kits—which include a free gun lock—to communities in all 50 states and the U.S. territories.

For more information on Project ChildSafe Communities and how to get involved, visit projectchildsafe.org.

With Unintentional Deaths by Firearm Historically Low, NY Times Attempts to Imply Otherwise

Today's New York Times has this article with a headline meant to make it sound like "accidental" gun deaths of children are on the rise.  It should be noted that what they go on to describe are actually negligent deaths, not accidental, because the firearm owners in the story do not take the proper steps to secure the firearm. Complete with talking points from Everytown for Gun Safety, the article is intended to make their case this is proof we need more gun control:

They are the most maddening gun deaths in America. Last year, at least 30 people were killed in accidental shootings in which the shooter was 5 or younger, according to Everytown For Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group that tracks these shootings, largely through news reports.

With shootings by preschoolers happening at a pace of about two per week, some of the victims were the youngsters’ parents or siblings, but in many cases the children ended up taking their own lives.

The Times is hoping that the "two per week" is what grabs the attention of the reader without them stopping to do the math.   If you do, that averages out to be a little over 100 in a year - too many for sure, but clearly no epidemic.  Let's look at the trends as reported in the 2015 NSSF Firearms Related Injury Statistics NSSF for perspective.

Typical of the Times, they use Everytown's death numbers for the article which are much higher than what the CDC numbers as reported by NSSF.  But we all know how suspect Everytown's numbers are when they report statistics.  This is all done to promote mandatory storage laws but you can't legislate stupidity.  Each of the cases in the article were preventable if the owner of the firearm had taken the appropriate steps.  Steps like those promoted by NSSF's Project ChildSafe that talk about storing firearms in a safe manner that fit your individual needs go a long way in preventing the type of tragedies like the ones in the Times article.  Yet rather than mention what works, they push more restrictions.

Study Indicates Programs Like NSSF's Project Childsafe Help Prevent Unintended Firearm Deaths

It is said that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then. So it also seems Bloomberg's mouthpiece, The Trace, stumbles across the truth now and then. The gun ban lobby's favorite online news source has this story about a new study indicating programs like NSSF's Project ChildSafe are effective, because, according to the study people were much more likely to comply when provided with a free device to secure their firearms. Project ChildSafe has distributed millions of free firearm locking devices since the early 2000s. The Trace notes:

To conduct the study, Rowhani-Rahbar and his colleagues Joseph Simonetti and Frederick Rivara combed through electronic databases for research on safe gun storage intervention methods. They focused exclusively on studies that used randomized or quasi-experimental trials — two of the most sound methods of conducting research — and ended up with seven studies that met their selection criteria. Six of the studies used safe storage programs that incorporated counseling on the risks of having unsecured guns in the home, and two of those also provided firearms owners with a free gun lock. One program studied provided whole gun cabinets to participants in rural Alaska, but no counseling — only instructions to lock household firearms in the cabinet and keep its key in a secure location.

The intervention programs that gave participants free storage devices were decidedly more effective. When subjects were given counseling and a cable lock, the share practicing safe storage increased by 9.7 percent. In the program where participants received a free gun cabinet, only 35 percent of the intervention group reported having unlocked guns in their homes in a follow-up report, compared to 89 percent of the control group. Among the programs that provided just counseling, only one produced a significant improvement in storage practices.

“If they didn’t actually give the device to participants — even if they provided a coupon or discount to buy a lock — the interventions didn’t work,” Rowhani-Rahbar says.

Of course the article had to go back to that tired talking point that there is a "dearth of firearms research" something that has been debunked but overall the results of this study that the U.S. Department of Justice made a good decision when it awarded a grant to NSSF last year to support Project ChildSafe.

Department of Justice Awards NSSF 2.4 Million for Project Child Safe

The Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance has awarded the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) a cooperative agreement in the amount of $2.4 million to provide firearm safety education messaging and free gun locks through NSSF’s Project ChildSafe program.  From the NSSF press release:

We thank the Department of Justice for its recognition of this important program,” said Steve Sanetti, NSSF’s President and CEO. “We’ll work to build on previous efforts and further raise awareness of the simple precautions gun owners can take to store firearms securely when not in use.”

It's nice to see that the USDOJ has awarded taxpayer money to a group that actually knows something about outreach to gun owners.

Gun Watch Blog on the NCPC "Lock it Up" Billboard

Last year, this blog reported on the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC)/ Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)/AdCouncil public service announcements that are suppose to encourage gun owners to properly store their firearms when not in use.  BJA is one of the grant making bureaus at the U.S. Department of Justice and the Obama administration found $1 million laying around in 2013 and directed BJA to give the funds to NCPC to produce these ads.  Setting aside the obviously anti-gun bias of the ads in question, the fact that public service announcements for the most part run on TV and radio when no one is likely to hear them, they are probably the best way to waste taxpayer money.

Probably for that reason, the radio and TV ads have not garnered much attention from either side of the issue.  But over the weekend, Gun Watch blogger Dean Weingarten noticed one of the billboard ads in Yuma, Arizona and wrote about it.

What is wrong with the above picture?  Everything.  First, it gives the impression that small children gaining access to firearms is a big problem in this country.  It isn't.  The number of children under five that die in firearm accidents each year is in the single digits.  Most of those are shot by an adult.  In a country of 313 million people and 347 million firearms, that is a remarkable safety record.

So why the picture of a 4 year old with a revolver?  Simple.  Shock propaganda value aimed at the non-gun owner, and an attempt to demonize guns more than they already are.  If you dig into the campaign further, the attempt is to push gun owners to lock up their guns when "not in use".   The ad is couched in terms of in terms of "gun safety", pushing the idea that guns should be "locked up".

This happens to echo the latest push for gun control by the left, the San Francisco ordinance that any handgun in the home, that is not being carried on the person of an adult, "must" be locked up, which is now being echoed in a proposed Los Angeles ordinance.  

Weingarten's comments echo those posted on this blog last June when the campaign was originally launched - that far from simply being a campaign asking people to voluntarily secure their guns, the very images created for the campaign were developed to demonize firearms and promote the idea that guns are bad and should be locked up.  A far more effective campaign is NSSF's Project ChildSafe.

Bloomberg's Gun Safety Fail

Michael Bloomberg's Moms Demand Action gun ban group, which likes to think of itself as a "gun safety" group, has come up with a new project that appears to borrow from two well known programs, NRA's Eddie Eagle and NSSF"s Project Childsafe, as well as the Brady Campaign's Ask campaign, but in the end misses the target. 

Known as the Be Smart campaign, it brings former child star Melissa Joan Hart out of mothballs to appear in a new video as the spokesperson for the program.  Hart, who was associated with conservative messages during the 2012 presidential campaign has taken small steps into the gun ban movement. She appears to have jumped head first into the movement with this project. Bob Owens of BearingArms.com gave his thoughts on the video yesterday.

You may have noticed that the video title, "a conversation about kids, guns and safety" is similar to this one:

But that is where the similarities end.  Bob mentioned via Miguel at the Gun Free Zone blog, some of the technical issues with the Be Smart video, like, what's up with the NYPD police officer locking away the ammunition in the safe but leaving the handgun out, even if it is secured by a cable lock?  Most importantly though, unlike the NSSF video above, the Be Smart video includes no discussion with kids about gun safety.  The NSSF approach of fully engaging your children in the process is what really works.  And, having someone who actually knows something about firearms and gun safety like NRA Mom and World Champion shooter Julie Golob doesn't hurt either.

In the end, the Be Smart campaign isn't really about gun safety, it's about telling people if they have kids, they should not have guns.  With the public's attitude toward firearms shifting dramatically toward the pro-rights side, Moms Demands' new campaign is likely to fall as flat as their annual protests of the NRA Annual Meetings and Exhibits.

Have a Conversation With Kids About Firearm Safety

NSSF's Project Childsafe released a new video earlier this month featuring champion shooter Julie Golob that offers some tips for parents who may not know how to talk to their kids about firearm safety.  It starts out with how to talk to young children and progresses to talking with teens.

NSSF Shot Show State of the Industry Address

In the event you did not see this last week:

Project ChildSafe launches S.A.F.E. Summer Across America Campaign

VSSA is proud to partner with  Project ChildSafe and the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) to promote the “S.A.F.E. Summer Across America” campaign. The campaign will focus attention on the importance of safe firearm storage—particularly while children are home from school and more likely to be unattended.

NSSF is implementing S.A.F.E. Summer to further spread the message of Project ChildSafe and help prevent firearm accidents, theft and misuse. "S.A.F.E." serves as an acronym for Store your firearms responsibly when not in use; Be Aware of those around you who should not have unauthorized access to guns; Focus on your responsibility as a firearm owner and Educate yourself and others about safe firearm handling and storage. The effort is focused on providing education and tools that helps gun owners take responsible action to keep their families and communities safer.

 Educational materials and resources are also available through the Project ChildSafe (www.projectchildsafe.org) website and social media, with tips on safe firearm storage, brochures, and information on the variety of safe storage options available.

Last week, the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) and the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) launched a public service announcement campaign to get gun owners to lock up their firearms when not in use. VSSA is betting however that S.A.F.E. Summer Across America will be better received than the approach taken by NCPC and BJA.

NSSF launched Project ChildSafe in 1998 (prior to 2003 the program was called Project HomeSafe) as a nationwide initiative to promote firearms responsibility and provide safety education to all gun owners. While children are a focus, Project ChildSafe is intended to help young people and adults practice greater firearm safety in the home. The program has provided more than 36 million free firearm safety kits to gun owners in all 50 states and five U.S. territories. That's in addition to the more than 60 million free locking devices manufacturers have included with new firearms sold since 1998 and continue to do today.

Project ChildSafe was originally supported by federal grants provided by the U.S. Department of Justice. Since 2008, when this funding was cut, the firearms manufacturing industry has solely funded the Project ChildSafe program through the members of NSSF.