The NRA’s Eddie Eagle program was created as a way to teach kids how to be safe around guns. In this case, it’s about real gun safety, not a euphemism for gun control.

For those unfamiliar with the program, the idea that the NRA is teaching safety could elicit a number of feelings on the topic.

Many will understandably figure the NRA is in a unique position to provide such lessons. After all, they’re kind of all about guns, right?

Others who see evil in everything the NRA does will instead figure it’s pro-gun indoctrination. It’s not, which is clear from even a quick view of their page on the program.

Luckily, the powers that be in one elementary school in Delaware had enough sense to use the program.

Eddie the Eagle swooped into Lord Baltimore Elementary School in Ocean View Tuesday to help teach children about gun safety.

Lord Baltimore, part of the Indian River School District, started teaching gun safety to students last year, and the program has taken flight.

Now every class in the school, kindergarten through fifth grade, attends the presentation, which lasts about 20 minutes.

“We wanted to bring some type of safety program into the school for the kids because unfortunately, accidental shootings… is one of the leading causes of severe injury or death in elementary kids,” said Officer Rhys Bradshaw of the Ocean View Police Department. Bradshaw is the school resource officer at Lord Baltimore.

Many people incorrectly assume that teaching gun safety is teaching children how to safely use guns, he said.

This is far from the truth, he stressed.

Gun safety presentations like his explain how to act in a situation where one unexpectedly finds or comes into contact with a firearm.

It was a lively class Tuesday.

That’s good news, and Bradshaw is right that teaching kids gun safety is just about using a firearm safely. That can most definitely be part of it, and I think that in due course, every kid should learn that, but at this age, that’s not necessarily needed.

What matters is that kids know not to mess with a gun they happen to find.

And, unfortunately, that’s not as likely as many would like to think. Kids aren’t taught about guns and from what they see on television and the movies, good guys don’t get killed with guns. They get the wrong message and while we’d like to think our kids have more sense than that, one thing I’ve learned as a parent is to never assume anything.

So good on this school for using a program that has been shown to work, makes good points, presents them to kids in a way they’ll understand, and for not listening to the gun control alarmists who think anything associated with the NRA is automatically evil and tainted.

These kids have now been equipped with some much needed knowledge.

The only thing I’ll add, though, is that it needs to be repeated until they literally cannot forget the lessons. That’s how it sticks.