The acceptable number of unintentional firearm deaths is zero. There’s no number above that where we should just shrug and figure we’ve done enough.
This is especially true when it comes to children. Even when they’re injured with a negligent discharge, it’s a tragedy, and we need to do all we can to prevent this, short of violating people’s civil liberties.
Once upon a time, people grew up learning about guns and how to handle them. They grew up knowing what a gun could do and not to play with them. They respected guns. Not everyone got it right all the time, of course, but we could trust that people learned as they were raised.
Yet as society became more urbanized, fewer and fewer people bothered to own guns. Hunting was a big part of what the gun culture of the time revolved around, and as people had nowhere to hunt, it just wasn’t a thing. As a result, the upbringing that included gun safety teachings fell by the wayside outside of rural communities.
And then kids encounter guns, don’t know anything about them beyond what they see from Hollywood, and horrible things happen.
What’s more, rules were created for schools so that even good kids trying to do the right thing get jammed up. Over at America’s 1st Freedom, they get into talking about gun safety education in schools.
Eleven-year-old Sakir Everett came upon a dangerous situation at his school and, because he had some knowledge about firearms and firearms safety, he felt the need to act before a tragedy occurred.
It was May 2025. Sakir was then a middle-school student at Dwight Rich School of the Arts in Lansing, Mich. That day, he discovered a fellow student had brought a loaded handgun to school. So, Sakir did what he thought best. He disassembled the handgun and disposed of the ammunition.
When school staff discovered the disassembled firearm, the student who brought the firearm to school was arrested.
However, school administrators also suspended Sakir for a year, as, when he handled the firearm in question, the school considered it to be “weapons possession.” Plus, Sakir did not immediately inform school staff of the firearm’s presence on school grounds. (The Lansing School District was contacted for comment, but at press time had not responded.)
Savitra McClurkin, Sakir’s mother, says her son had never been in trouble before and was a very good student. Her son only did what he did, she says, because he was scared. Sakir believed he was helping the other students by making the firearm inoperable. He had received his knowledge about firearms from a relative who taught him about guns and hunting.
Sakir and his fellow students no doubt would have been better served in this situation had they received actual gun-safety education, either as part of the school curriculum or as an after-school opportunity. If he’d been exposed to the NRA’s Eddie Eagle GunSafe program (eddieeagle.com), he would have known to “STOP! Don’t Touch. Run Away. Tell a Grown-up.”
Now, Everytown also has a training class called “Train Smart,” which is meant to also teach kids gun safety, but it’s riddled with anti-gun propaganda, while Eddie Eagle actually isn’t.
But while the Eddie Eagle course is solid, I still feel bad for Sakir, because his troubles weren’t the result of failing to understand guns. He rendered the gun brought by another student inoperable so no one could be hurt. He should have told an adult, sure, but that’s not why he was expelled. He was expelled for gun possession, which is nonsense, and we all know it.
That said, actual gun safety education, free from bias on the issue of guns in politics, is still a good thing. It should be in every school in the country. If not the NRA’s program, then someone else who isn’t trying to push an agenda onto school children.
Kids aren’t born knowing what to do when they come across a firearm. Like it or not, even if you do everything correctly with your own guns, your kids may still come across one, either at a friend’s house or just lying there from where someone dropped it, either intentionally or not. If they don’t know what to do should they come across it, natural curiosity could well turn tragic, and the only way to make sure as many kids get that proper education is through the schools, for better or worse.
Sakir may have ultimately been the victim of stupid, skittish administrators, but the truth is that our society is lacking in basic understanding around firearms. This wouldn’t be so bad if the results weren’t so tragic too many times.
Restrictions won’t solve anything.
Education, constantly reinforced, will.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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