Shannon Watts’ Mind Is Sealed Shut, But 2A Advocates Can Free Her Kids’ Minds

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Teaching kids how to safely handle guns is a good thing. In a country like the United States, which has hundreds of millions of firearms present in tens of millions of households, a child is bound to encounter or be exposed to firearms at some point in his or her life. Pragmatism alone is a solid reason to be supportive of firearms education for future adult generations.

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Cam Edwards recently wrote about a school in Ohio that is teaching children real gun safety, covering not just the four basic rules, but also de-escalation and conflict avoidance as a way to prevent violence, which according to the school’s principal, is part of the baggage that neighborhood children carry with them.

You would think that this would be a good thing, especially in a school that caters to children from the lower end of the socioeconomic strata. However, gun control activist Shannon Watts thinks otherwise:

Hey Ohio: This is called indoctrination, not education. Studies show gun safety training DOES NOT MAKE KIDS SAFER.

The irony of a self-proclaimed gun safety activist complaining about the supposed inefficacy of gun safety training is lost on Watts. When she was called out in a Breitbart article by AWR Hawkins, Watts retorted with a link to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report:

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The big miss in Watts’ tweet is that the GAO report she touted is about programs that teach kids to stay away from guns, but the Ohio school in question is actually teaching them how to handle guns safely, as can be seen from the video. (The instructor did a good job teaching the kids trigger discipline.)

Watts’ complaints about the school “indoctrinating” children on how to handle guns can only be explained by one thing: she believes in abstinence, not safety. If she thinks that safe handling of guns should not be taught to children, she needs to fess up and admit it instead of continuing the charade.

As I have written in a previous article, public schools are funded by the public, a good many of whom own guns and support the Second Amendment. Public schools should reflect our values also, and that means teaching children how to safely handle and shoot guns. Watts’ neo-puritan gun abstinence harkens back to abstinence-only sex education that routinely is derided in the press. Gun control supporters can’t coerce tax dollars out of gun rights supporters and then turn around and dictate a curriculum that excludes firearms education. Either be #inclusive of our views or get out of our way.

Regardless of Shannon Watts’ narrow-mindedness when it comes to firearms education, there’s still hope. Children are the future, and that includes Watts’ children. They will all grow up into adults, at which point they will be able to make free choices with an open mind. That includes choosing to learn how to safely handle guns and becoming gun owners themselves.

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That makes it very important for the Second Amendment community to perform outreach with persistence and determination, always paying attention to any young adult – including Watts’ children – who can be won over.

Gun control supporters will see this as a call to “corrupt” the minds of their children, but I see it as freeing their minds from gun control dogma, and thus helping them discover the spirit of American liberty that’s not taught in public schools.

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