Melissa Joan Hart has been one of the more successful child/teen actors, surviving two separate television shows (Clarissa Explains it All; Sabrina, the Teen-Aged Witch) without losing her mind and going full Miley Cyrus.

She then found continued success as an adult in Melissa & Joey, though it has been announced that the sitcom is ending it’s run after four seasons.

Hart has now (unwisely) associated herself with Moms Demand Action, the disreputable gun control group with serious and serial credibility problems, as they begin another propaganda campaign.

Sadly, while much of the video makes sense and appears have been pulled from advice provided by the NRA’s Eddie Eagle and firearms training programs and NSSF’s Operation ChildSafe campaigns, it still manages to fail on a spectacular number of levels.

As my friend Miguel points out at the cheekily-named Gun Free Zone blog, the “safe storage practices” shown in the video (above) are anything but safe:

We begin the usual blabber of guns are bad and yes you have a right but no you don’t (responsibilities!) and we follow with Mr. NYPD on Loan To Moms, a Beretta, a gun lock and a small gun safe, looks good.

Next, NYPD Officer unloads the Beretta. Still fine.

Next, he places the magazine inside the safe…

And locks the safe? Huh? So, what happens to the gun?

Ohh, the cable lock…about time too.

And that is it. I guess the gun stays OUTSIDE the safe.

So either MDA is going to provide a safe, a gun lock and a cop to every household, or somebody again did not do its homework by interpreting the “secure your gun and ammo in different places” in a rather bizarre manner. I can give you the double redundancy of having the cabled gun inside the safe, but locking the ammo and leaving the gun out? Oy!

Make sure you visit Miguel’s site for the images accompanying this bizarre demonstration of “gun safety,” and the rest of his take-down of this video.

Miguel hammers the technical failures in the video solidly, but the problems with the “Be SMART” campaign is structural in nature, and goes well beyond just a few minutes on film.

While the campaign is called “Be SMART For Kids,” the campaign is entirely focused on adults alone, which is a clear and obvious path to failure that anyone who actually understands the issue knows right off the bat.

For guns safety to actually work, children must be actively engaged and learn gun safety… something that the gun prohibitionist group refuses to acknowledge, as it requires firearms education, and there is a strong chance that people who are educated about firearms will learn to enjoy them responsibly, which make it impossible for Moms Demand to lie to them successfully.

How can they promote prohibition if people are actually educated? 

Therein lies the reason Moms Demand will never be able to have an honest and effective gun safety campaign.

Perhaps instead of hiring an out-of-work actress to pay lip service to firearms safety in a manner than isn’t safe, Moms Demand should have simply pointed to a much more intelligent video done by a group and a mom who really understands gun safety intimately, Julie Golob.

If I ever want advice on sitcom acting or talking to animatronic cats, Melissa Joan Hart is one of the first people I’d consider calling.

If I’m seeking competent advice about how to keep children safe around firearms, however, I’d rather get advice from someone who actually understands all the issues, like Julie Golob.

Julie understands that children must be part of the gun safety conversation.

Moms Demand has dropped the ball, yet again, and it’s sad that Melissa Joan Hart has chosen to participate in a group that is agitating for gun prohibition, and refuses to do what is necessary to promote real gun safety.