Almost every week here we see headlines going around about Project Childsafe, a group that tours the country distributing gun locks and “firearms safety” material. Now, we don’t really see anything wrong with gun locks themselves (in certain situations, they might mean the difference between life and death). But the problem we have with Project Childsafe is that they’re run by a group called the National Shooting Sports Foundation. And while Project Childsafe gives an impression that they’re out to end gun violence, the National Shooting Sports Foundation is anything but. They’re a trade association for the firearms industry, and the truth is the Project Childsafe is their attempt to put a bandaid over a problem that requires major surgery.
Recently, a reader in Ohio found a Project Childsafe van making the tour handing out gun locks. And the pictures they sent back to us are very helpful in illustrating just what the NSSF is up to in running Project Childsafe.
“Firearms Safety.” That’s a noble goal, right? The problem, however, is that guns aren’t safe, no matter what. A gun lock is no guarantee at all that a gun has been made safe. They can be defective. Kids can find their way through them. And a gun lock is no protection against the person who actually holds a key to the lock– studies have shown that guns represent a bigger threat to anyone that lives in the house where they’re kept than to any invader. Gun locks don’t stop suicide, domestic violence, or any other type of violence where the gun owner is a fault. And they’re definitely not, as the NSSF wants you to believe, an end-all, be-all to the solution of gun violence.
But look! There’s a police officer on their truck! If the police are behind them, they have to be right, right? Wrong. The only way to stay completely safe from gun violence is to get rid of the gun. Period. And any police officer worth his salt will tell you that in a second. Not to mention that the NRA’s Eddie Eagle “firearms safety” program is supposedly “officer approved,” and is even taught in a few school districts around the country– all despite the fact that almost every study conducted on it has shown one thing: it doesn’t work.
Oh, and which police department is this guy from, anyway? We’ve never seen a uniform that doesn’t have the name of the jurisdiction on it…
But the scariest part of Project Childsafe? Not only do they claim guns can be “made safe” through training or gun locks (not true), they actually know they’re not safe. On the side of the truck, the message is clearly printed: “This vehicle contains NO firearms.” They wanted the public to know that firearms were way too dangerous to carry around in a truck that might visit children.
And yet the exact same people who run Project Childsafe, the gun industry, are actively fighting in court to get more guns in cars all over the country. They’re the same people who are trying to pass preemption laws that actually make it illegal for local communities to keep guns out of cars. They’re the same people who fought in Florida to make guns accessible to employees at work (fortunately on that one, they lost). And they’re the same people who are proposing laws everywhere they can to keep the names of concealed weapons holders totally and completely secret from the public and the police.
It’s the height of hypocrisy that after fighting for all of those things, they stamp a clear message like this on their van. They know guns are too dangerous to carry around. But for some reason that doesn’t stop them from fighting to get a gun in the car next to yours.
Again, we’re for using gun locks. If you have to have a gun around, a gun lock might make the difference. But, even better, you don’t have to have a gun around in the first place. And the NSSF, by preaching a flawed policy of “firearms safety,” is continuing to be part of the problem, not the solution.
