Teaching Kids Gun Safety at Texas Gun Camps

Teaching kids gun safety and how to prevent accidental shootings is the goal of two Texas-based gun ranges with a strategy designed to implement good firearm practices for America’s youth.

According to Bearing Arms, Shoot Smart Gun Range and Training Center in both Grand Prairie and Fort Worth, offered a camp for kids aged 8 to 15 years to learn about firearm safety from an instructor. The facilities offered a valuable program called the Summer Youth League Gun Camp.

Cassie Shockey is Shoot Smart Gun Range’s customer and programs manager. Shockey informed the press in late July that all of the classes were at full capacity at both locations.

“They all go through the new shooter class the first day of the league and then they get to go down to the range and shoot,” Shockey explained. “We pair them up, so it gives the kids a chance to try the fire arm out in a fun and non-threatening way.”

Shockey and Shoot Smart’s Jared Sloane earned the title of Local Champions of Gun Safety in connection with the NSSF Project ChildSafe’s S.A.F.E. Summer Campaign for their influence in promoting community firearm safety.

Sloane said that if the effort of teaching kids gun safety can keep “just one kid from accidentally accessing and discharging a firearm, we’ve succeeded.” He continued that there are too many tragedies of kids getting injured or killed because they came across a gun and took it upon themselves to explore it further out of curiosity. Sloane added that even though natural curiosity can’t be trained out of children, other means of raising gun safety awareness and assuring that guns are locked up when not in use must be carried out.

Shoot Smart saw proof of the summer youth program’s impact as evidenced by 8-year-old Hayden. He recited a core fundamental from the gun camp he enrolled in.

“The rules are always point your gun in a safe direction, don’t point your gun at a person, always have your earmuffs on, and always treat the gun like its loaded,” Hayden said.

Students in the Summer Youth League were educated on not just gaining a knowledge for gun safety, but having a respect of firearms.

Shockey revealed that teaching kids gun safety is important because some of the students who participated in the youth camp had parents with “limited knowledge of firearms,” but who wanted their children to understand gun safety because loaded weapons are in the house or a relative might have a gun.