Review Of 'Safety On,' A Book About Gun Safety For Children

Cover photo courtesy of Yehuda Remer.

A while back, I had the opportunity to write a review of competitive shooter Julie Golob’s outstanding kid’s book. As a parent of a small child, it was a thrill to sit down with my young daughter and enjoy the book together.

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However, a short time afterward, a gentleman by the name of Yehuda Remer reached out to me. He’d written a children’s book on the subject of gun safety as well, and wanted to know if I’d be interested in writing a review on the topic.

Since I’m of the belief that there’s no such thing as too much education on gun safety, I said why not.

Once again, I recruited the Bearing Arms Kid’s Testing Department (read: my daughter) to take a look and see what we thought of the book titled “Safety On: An Introduction to the World of Firearms for Children.”

Her assessment: “I liked it!”

Yeah, she’s a child of many words, but she’s also easily distracted as most kids her age are. However, if she doesn’t like something, she says so, so you can take her at her word.

Now for the daddy’s side of the review.

While Golob and Remer wrote books for a similar age group on a similar subject, the books are still very different. While they repeat some of the same information, which is to be expected, they do so in very different ways.

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If I were to compare and contrast the two, I’d categorize this title as being slightly more advanced. It’s still ideal to read with young children, though perhaps not quite as young a demographic as the Golob’s book.

This, in my opinion, is a good thing and a nice selling point. Remer’s has more of a story format, which will appeal to slightly older children, and is a book they may well be more likely to pick up on their own when they start reading.

Not only that, but this book delves a bit more into the philosophical side of guns such as the importance of guns and how they can be used for good or evil. It also explicitly states that gun ownership is a right.

Hard to argue with that.

The downside of the book is the artwork. It looks…off. The people are proportionally correct, which is fine, but it almost looks like photographs were run through some kind of filter to make them look like they’d been painted. I’m not saying that’s what happened, only that it doesn’t look like the typical artwork you’d find in a kid’s book.

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For some kids, this might be a turn-off.

It wasn’t for my daughter, however, so let your child examine the cover art, which is representative of the artwork as a whole. After all, it’s not bad artwork, it’s just different than what I would usually expect in a book for kids.

If you want my advice, get this book and use it as part of your gun education arsenal for your children or grandchildren. It’s a good, informative take on gun safety geared toward slightly older kids, a nice addition to any gun owner’s library, along with his other children’s book, “The ABC’s of Guns.” That one’s not quite as focused on gun safety and is more of a general information about firearms kind of book, but still worth having.

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