Eddie the Eagle and friend (courtesy nrablog.com)

“Two Houston school district principals have cancelled gun-safety presentations for their young students since learning the National Rife Association is involved,” chron.com reports. As Fergie would say, h-h-h-h-h-hold it. Who did the principles think ran the Eddie the Eagle safety program? The Texas Bikini Team? “A spokesman for the Houston Independent School District said the principals of Peck Elementary and the Martin Luther King Early Childhood Center thought the safety lessons were being taught by the Metropolitan Transit Authority police department.” What was that they taught us about “assume”? Anyway, so what? . . .

The principals made a decision they didn’t want to participate in an event that folks could perceive as them taking a position one way or another on the gun control debate or any other debate the NRA is involved in.

Or any other debate? Ouch! On a personal note . . .

I sold my house the other day. My emigration from the Ocean State to the Lone Star State continues apace. I’ve decided to put my daughter into the Austin public school system. I’ve been warned by several members of our Armed Intelligentsia that Texas schools are bastions of liberalism. Yes well . . .

My daughter currently attends the world’s most politically correct educational facility. While I’ve cautioned my daughter to appreciate the values of empathy and sympathy underlying their philosophy, I’ve also taught her to listen to the school’s teaching on diversity, history, global warming, etc. with a grain of salt the size of Guadalupe Peak.

She knows the fallacies of liberalism (I’m always amazed when I hear my values coming out of her mouth). She’s so familiar with the common sense arguments for gun rights that I gladly (gleefully?) let her debate the subject with my liberal friends. My experience affirms what conservatives have long maintained: that education within the family trumps social conditioning. Well, that and genetics.

More to the point, I taught Lola about gun safety  (real gun safety, not gun control) at the earliest possible age. And regularly. Hands-on. I see nothing wrong, and everything right, with schools teaching gun safety to back-up parental guidance and provide firearm safety instruction to those who don’t get it at home.

As I’ve said before, I don’t think Eddie the Eagle goes far enough. The NRA should have a second program for older children that talks about what to do if someone around them—friends, family, strangers—has a gun.

Anyway, if Houston school principles are uncomfortable with the NRA, fine. (Truth be told Eddie kinda creeps me out.) Make up your own damn gun safety program. Hell preach gun control at the same time for all I care. (I’d love to be at that PTA meeting.) Just don’t forget that teaching how to safely handle firearms is a lot more important survival skill than algebra.

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48 COMMENTS

  1. For all the good Eddie Eagle is capable of, the concept seems badly outdated to me.
    Why is the NRA so slow to adapt to the times?

  2. When is the Texas Bikini Team going to hold a car wash fundraiser? My car is very, very dirty.

    • Yeaaaaa send them to nj I’ll be emptying my bank account to get my car washed if you catch my drift.

    • When is the Texas Bikini Team going to hold a car wash fundraiser? My car mind is very, very dirty.

      fixed that for you.

  3. Texas has a bikini team?

    Thank you for bringing this important information to my attention.

  4. I’m pretty sure the Texas Bikini Team would have everyone’s attention easier than Eddie the Eagle.

    • If it can save one child without expert advice from people who actually know what they are talking about. Also without facts.

      Fixed.

    • Forget the children, have you seen the Texas bikini team?!?!??!!!!!! Lol

  6. “The principals made a decision they didn’t want to participate in an event that folks could perceive as them taking a position one way or another on the gun control debate or any other debate the NRA is involved in.”

    In that case you failed. You have clearly demonstrate where your opinion falls on this debate – otherwise why would you care who is teaching gun safety?

    • They expressed their opinion by explicitly stating they don’t want to express their opinion. I’d wonder what the response would be if something like this came from the Brady campaign…

  7. Well considering the amount of news about young kids getting shot by accident this is a no brainer. But seriously if you have young kids keep the guns out of the reach of them. While I am pro 2a I am very much for irresponsible parents being held accountable beyond just the emotional loss.

  8. School officials don’t like controversy. Their job is to keep things quiet, and the NRA is a strongly polarizing entity (strong positive feelings for many, strong negative feelings for others). I get it. Still, if MAIG sent someone to talk about “gun safety,” or if someone came to talk about global warming…err, climate change, I wonder if the schools would have balked?

    Beware, Texas. Looks like the Progressives have a foothold in one of the last bastions of freedom, and they view you as a juicy target. All heed the example of Colorado. Crap. And now Bloomberg’s money has given PA a Prog AG (shudder).

  9. My wife was raised in Wisconsin and as a young teen the whole class was encouraged to bring the family pistol to school one day. They were instructed on safety and taught how to shoot. Imagine today a school bus full of kids toting guns. The horror!

  10. Not surprising for Planet Houston.

    Robert, if you need a real estate person, hit me up. My wife is the Relocation Manager for a small agency. She can hook you up with a good agent.

    • We need a stronger Pro-2A presence on school boards– lots of good could be accomplished there and there is the fringe benefit of riling up a bunch of progressives (Repressives?).

  11. Texas is set to become the new California. CA real estate and cost of living is so ridiculously high that Californians are fleeing their state to Colorado, Arizona, and Texas. Google employees realize that they are dirt poor at $120K/year in San Francisco, whereas accepting a comparable $90K/year job in Texas puts them comfortably in the upper middle class in Dallas (complete with a big house and a white-picket-fence).

    We all saw what happened to Colorado. Texas is next. The only place safe (for now) is the deep South (Mississippi through the Carolinas). Liberals are scared poop-less about living in those states.

    • I’ve been saying this constantly. All those guys saying to move out of the “slave states” are apparently blind to the fact that the ” slave states ” are spreading all over, like cancer. You can’t win a war by running. When You’re running is when you suffer the most casualties.

      Those guys that are patting themselves on the back for up rooting their familes and disrupting their lives have a huge face palm coming to them when they wake up one morning and realize California has caught them.

    • Much sympathy for our American frineds in texas.

      Here in Alberta, the industrial engine of Canada, we’re seeing a lot of folks from the rest of the country relocating to work in our booming oilfield. Some have a handle on the whole “when in Rome” idea, but there are many who insist on bringing their Liberal and NDP thnking to what had been a predominantly Conservative (large and small “C”) place. As a result, we’re seeing a lot of folks wanting to make Edmonton or Calgary a sort of lesser western alternative to Toronto, home of all that s wonderful and progressive.

      My family’s been here a long time – Dad’s side since my Great Grandpa came up from South Dakota in 1900, and Mom’s side since the mid-1800’s. It pains me to see this place turning into something akin to the rest of entitled, squishy-thinking, left-leaning Canada. This stuff is like herpes – it spreads efficiently and is impossible to get rid of.

      I love Montana, and think I could die happy living in Wyoming. But as you say, it’s only a matter of time before this cognitive contagion spreads. If Texas (TEXAS!) goes squishy-headed, then there’s truly no place where a guy can be left the hell alone by a dabbling idiot government.

      • We have liberal loons in Wyoming as well. One just got caught trying to pull off a supposed rape threat from an anonymous Republican male at UWyo… and now that the evidence has come out that the left-wing feminist put up her own rape threat, there’s a whole lot of “let’s change the subject as fast as we can” from the liberals in Wyoming who bought into the trope.

  12. Progressive?

    the land of the free and the home of the brave
    to
    the land of the controlled and the home of the timid.

    If this is the case, as seems to be we are doomed. Don’t know about ya’ll, but to me this does not seem like progress.

  13. RF – by moving to Austin, you moved to the most progressive/liberal place in the state. I’m told that “There’s Austin, and then there’s Texas.”

    • Austin is liberal for Texas. Not compared to N.E. liberals. Austin libs are big on environment, less so on regulating your everyday life.

  14. Nothing makes my blood boil than the ignorance of blocking things like Eddie Eagle from schools. No one… NO ONE can look at the Eddie Eagle program and see anything in it other than positive value for kids’ safety.

    “Strangers are potentially a danger to our children and we know it’s hard to control whether or not our kids will encounter them, so let’s do everything we can to not tell our kids anything about strangers or what to do when they encounter one.”

    Said no sane individual ever.

    -D

    • And here is the problem:

      “Does The Eddie Eagle GunSafe® Program promote firearm ownership or use?
      No! The Eddie Eagle GunSafe® Program neither offers nor asks for any value judgment concerning firearms. Like safety lessons concerning swimming pools, electrical outlets, matchbooks and household poisons, Eddie Eagle’s safety lesson is one that children should not miss. With firearms found in about half of all American households, it’s a stance that makes sense. Just as Smokey Bear teaches children not to play with matches, Eddie Eagle teaches them that firearms should not be touched.”

      Eddie Eagle does not offer a value judgement on gun possession or use. The people blocking this would prefer a negative value judgement on gun possession and use be incorporated into such a program. And they’re willing to hold their own kids awareness of basic safety hostage lest they get it.

  15. I don’t understand this thinking at all. Personally I feel even the hunter safety course should be part of the school curriculum.

  16. “Just don’t forget that teaching how to safely handle firearms is a lot more important survival skill than algebra.”

    FYI, Eddie Eagle does NOT teach safe handling. EE teaches kids that, if they see a gun,

    “They should:

    STOP!
    DON’T TOUCH.
    LEAVE THE AREA.
    TELL AN ADULT.”

  17. They didnt want a gun safety program. You know with the Police department (almost any) you are going to get a “Turn in the gun, call and adult, etc, etc, etc” Not really gun safety but maybe just a small slice of it.

    not safe handling, or anything like that.

    It is what is. Most in education are left. Most in eduction dont like guns. Anything that makes people understand firearms better is not eduction to them.

  18. Man, do I just love school administrators. Welfare queens with no ability to actually do anything useful.

    • Yep.

      What really frosts school teachers and administrators is when I get the poor, befuddled teenagers into my grasp on the subjects of math and science. In short order, I clear up mountains of confusion and misinformation, you see young faces come alive with “Holy crap! So I wasn’t stupid or crazy!”

      No, young folks, you are neither stupid nor crazy. Your teachers are.

      • What’s really sad about our schools is the number of kids that seek a family type of relationship with the admins and teachers and even us old janitors becasue they rarely see their own parents. Some of these kids know more about the school staff than they do about their parents.

  20. So long as you also tell her to take the “research” from the Tobacco Institute and the equivalent at Exxon-Mobile with the same bolts of salt…

    “Well, little Timmy is dead because he didn’t get any safety instruction, but at least I didn’t take a position.” Ewww.

  21. Your post here doesn’t mention the part I like the best (it is in the article, though):

    The very same morning the presentation was to take place, the principal for the school did a live radio interview where she praised the presentation as necessary for the children and said how excited she was to have it.

    I listen to KTRH on a regular basis and I loved hearing the same radio station juxtapose those comments with the news story that the school decided to cancel the presentation because it is a NRA program.

  22. Liberals would rather kids be so ignorant on firearms that little Susie has no idea that the pink gun in mom’s purse is a REAL gun and not a toy. Then the kids grow up to be teenagers and the boys become fascinated with guns, yet retain their total ignorance. They are quick to hyperbole when it comes to social conservatives reluctance to complete strangers teaching their kids about sex, claiming they want to go back to the days when teenagers had no idea where babies came from, yet they want to impose the same kind of ignorance on guns. It will no more keep the kids from being interested in guns than ignorance will keep them from being interested in sex.

  23. BUT…IF IT COULD SAVE JUST ONE CHILD!!! WE SHOULD DO SOMETHING!!!

    Oh…not THAT…;)

  24. “The principals made a decision they didn’t want to participate in an event that folks could perceive as them taking a position one way or another on the gun control debate or any other debate the NRA is involved in.”

    Don’t look now, but I have it on good authority that the NRA also approves of daily showering and oral hygiene. You wouldn’t want to make it look like you’re on the same page as the NRA about anything would you?

  27. Yeah, the hell with the kids if they can’t be saved by the right people. They just want some of that bloomberg love, lol, Randy

  28. Judge Eddie Eagle however you want – who else has spent the time and the dime to do anything better? Our young’uns can do nothing but benefit from the basic tenets taught by Eddie Eagle.

  30. I really, Really wish that the Eddie the Eagle program was taught by the Texas Bikini Team. In fact, can we please get the TBT to run the NRA too? Please?

    That would mean that Uncle Ted would have to step back…no one wants to see him in a bikini, even if it is Red-White-and-Blue.

  31. Didn’t a cop pop himself in the leg at a school demonstrating firearms safety? I think it made IGOTD around here.

  32. “Just don’t forget that teaching how to safely handle firearms is a lot more important survival skill than algebra.”

    Lola is shooting her father’s Caracal C with a full standard-capacity* magazine and a round in the chamber. Assuming she loaded the pistol from a standard box of 50 9mm cartridges, how many rounds (x) remain in the box? State your assumptions and show all your work.
    *not valid where prohibited by law.

    See algebra and guns.

  33. In Texas of all places.. I can see New Jeresy but Texas!!!

    These dipSh*ts really are going to get some poor kid or bystander shot and possibly killed by not educating kids on gun safety… Maybe that’s what they’re going for… more bloody shirts to waive…

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