The cover art for the Eddie Eagle Kids' Activity Booklet, Pre-K and Kindergarten edition.

The Eddie Eagle GunSafe program and its namesake character were developed by the National Rifle Association for children who are generally considered too young to be allowed to handle firearms. While maturity levels vary, the Eddie Eagle program is intended for children of any age from pre-school through third grade.

The NRA encourages parents and other adults to reach out to schools and inform them of the availability of the program.[1] The NRA provides classroom materials for schools and other institutions free of charge.[2]

Effectiveness

Geoffrey Jackman commented on the study in 2001 that although the Eddie Eagle program "has been promoted heavily, it never has been evaluated formally to prove that it works. If gun safety education gives parents a sense of complacency without fundamentally altering child behavior, then it might do more harm than good."[3]

The NRA reports several examples of program successes in which children who were in live situations where a gun was found lying around did exactly as the program instructed them to.[4] They say that a decline in accidental gun deaths dating from the 1980s is due to the program, a claim that is contested by safety experts.[5]

In contrast, a 2002 study conducted at North Dakota State University aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of gun training programs on preschool children. The study examined the three main targets of the program, teaching children a safety message (what to say when facing a firearm), how to react to a firearm in a controlled setting, and how to react in a real-world situation. The study found that although the Eddie Eagle program was effective at teaching children the safety message (5 out of 11), only 1 out of 11 was able to react correctly to the role play situation, and none of the students were able to react properly in a real-life situation. The authors then concluded that the training program was not effective at keeping children safe.[6]

Training program

The program, administered in schools by trained law enforcement officers assisted by a volunteer, teaches children a litany to follow should they encounter a firearm: "Stop! Don't touch! Leave the area! Tell an adult!"[7] Instructional materials, including workbooks and a video featuring Jason Priestley, can be downloaded at no cost via the Eddie Eagle webpage.[8] The Eddie Eagle mascot costume cost $2800 in 2015.[9]

Origins and impact

Marion Hammer, at the time a lobbyist for the NRA, developed this program in 1988.[8] According to the NRA, "with a firearm present in about half of all American households, young children should learn that firearms are not toys."[10] Hammer won a National Safety Council's Outstanding Community Service Award in 1993 for her work on the program.[11]

In 2004, New York Times "Personal Health" columnist Jane Brody wrote that the NRA underwrote the Eddie Eagle GunSafe Program "in part hoping to avert more stringent gun control laws."[12]

As of 1997, the NRA says it reached 10 million children,[8] and by 2015 it said that the number had grown to 28 million.[9] The program has been mandated for schools in North Carolina and Oregon, and is used in individual school districts across the country.[8]

In 2015, the program was revamped by Tulsa, Oklahoma, advertising agency Ackerman McQueen.[13] The agency has won several local ADDY Awards for its work on the campaign.[14]

Media coverage

In 1999 the ABC News program 20/20 did a feature on Eddie Eagle which was highly critical of the program.[15] This feature stated that it did not work to simply "Tell [very young] kids what to do" and expect them to follow those instructions implicitly. The producers had a group of schoolchildren (aged 3 to 10 years old) watch the Eddie Eagle video along with a presentation by a police officer on gun safety. While the children all appeared to understand the message that guns are not toys, when the children were left alone with prop guns (and a hidden camera capturing their reactions), they all proceeded to use them as if they were toys. 20/20 collaborated with Hardy to recreate her 2002 study featured aired in 2014 reporting results similar to the 1999 feature.[16]

Samantha Bee on her show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, in a segment accusing the NRA of hypocrisy, contrasted an unsuccessful attempt to acquire an Eddie Eagle costume, noting an 18-page application and 20 day review period, while successfully purchasing several firearms without a background check.[17][18][19] In response to the segment the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action noted that the Eddie Eagle mascot is trademarked, to be used "ONLY for the purpose of firearm accident prevention" and subject to private property rights vs. 2nd Amendment rights.[20]

Criticism

Some parents have objected to the program because it assumes there will be guns lying around and makes people comfortable with guns, or because it contradicts their own teachings.[21]

Advocates of safe storage laws intended to protect children from unsupervised access to firearms, such as the proposed "MaKayla's Law" in Tennessee, complain that the NRA opposes their efforts and promotes Eddie Eagle instead.[22][23] An early childhood education specialist who helped create the Eddie Eagle program, denies that it is a replacement for safe storage laws. "No one ever told me that's how the program was going to be used," she says. "If they had, I assure you I wouldn't have had anything to do with it. That's giving way too much significance to the lesson."[22]

The Economist says that the program treats children as the problem rather than guns. It says the NRA sends a mixed message, noting that the organization encourages gun use by children as young as seven or eight years old in its magazine InSights.[10]

The American Academy of Pediatrics has maintained a critical position on the program since 1992 noting a lack of evidence demonstrating efficacy and advocating an absence of guns from children's homes as a more effective alternative.[24][25][26]

The gun control advocacy organizations Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and Violence Policy Center are critical of the program and its efficacy.[27][28]

References

  1. ↑ "Eddie Eagle School Gun Safety Program". 16 March 2015.
  2. ↑ "Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program Grant Funding".
  3. ↑ Jackman, Geoffrey A.; Farah, Mirna M.; Kellermann, Arthur L.; Simon, Harold K. (June 2001). "Seeing Is Believing: What Do Boys Do When They Find a Real Gun?". Pediatrics. American Academy of Pediatrics. 107 (6): 1247–1250. doi:10.1542/peds.107.6.1247. PMID 11389238.
  4. ↑ "NRA Victories: Eighteen Million Safer Kids". National Rifle Association of America, Institute for Legislative Action. July 27, 2006. Retrieved 2013-05-15.
  5. ↑ Luo, Michael; McINTIRE, MIKE (September 29, 2013). "Children and Guns: The Hidden Toll". New York Times.
  6. ↑ Himle, MB; Miltenberger, RG; Gatheridge, BJ; Flessner, CA (January 2004). "An evaluation of two procedures for training skills to prevent gun play in children". Pediatrics. 113 (1 Pt 1): 70–7. doi:10.1542/peds.113.1.70. PMID 14702451.
  7. ↑ "NRA Explore - Eddie Eagle". 2015-05-22. Archived from the original on 2015-05-22.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Bendavid, Naftali (November 20, 1997). "NRA Safety Cartoon Attacked: Gun-control Report Calls Eddie Eagle A Bird Of Prey". Chicago Tribune.
  9. 1 2 Bailey, Henry (June 27, 2015). "Eddie Eagle eager to keep kids safe from guns". The Commercial Appeal.
  10. 1 2 "Youth & age: Playing with fire". The Economist. December 23, 2000. pp. 37–39.
  11. ↑ Johnson, Carrie (March 15, 2005). "Famed, decried for work on guns". St. Petersburg Times.
  12. ↑ Brody, Jane E. (August 17, 2004). "Keeping Guns Out of Children's Hands". The New York Times. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
  13. ↑ Spies, Mike (October 13, 2016). "The NRA may be misusing its child gun-safety program". Business Insider.
  14. ↑ "26TH ADDY AWARDS". Tulsa World. January 31, 1993.
  15. ↑ "20/20 Show on Gun Safety". ABC News. Retrieved 2012-03-16.
  16. ↑ Sawyer, Diane (January 31, 2014). "What Young Kids Do With Guns When Parents Aren't Around". ABC News. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
  17. ↑ Blistein, Jon (2016-04-12). "Samantha Bee Slams NRA Regulations in Pursuit of Gun Safety Mascot". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2016-09-13.
  18. ↑ Cooke, Charles (2016-04-12). "Vox and Samantha Bee Ignore Markets in Favor of Gun Propaganda". National Review. Retrieved 2016-09-13.
  19. ↑ Wagner, Meg (April 12, 2016). "Samantha Bee proves it's easier to buy a gun than an NRA Eddie Eagle mascot costume". New York Daily News.
  20. ↑ "Samantha Bee's "Epic Takedown"? More Like "Epic Fail"". NRA-ILA. National Rifle Association of America. April 15, 2016. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
  21. ↑ "Oregon picks NRA to teach children about gun safety". Amarillo Globe-News. Associated Press. June 18, 1999.
  22. 1 2 Spies, Mike (October 21, 2016). "When Kids Pull the Trigger, Who is Responsible? Not Gun Owners, the NRA Says". Newsweek.
  23. ↑ "Don't Shoot. Run for Mommy". The New York Times. April 11, 1998. p. 10.
  24. ↑ "Firearm Injuries Affecting the Pediatric Population" (PDF). Pediatrics. American Academy of Pediatrics. 89 (4): 788–790. 1992. doi:10.1542/peds.89.4.788. ISSN 0031-4005. S2CID 68822597.
  25. ↑ "Firearm Injuries Affecting the Pediatric Population". Pediatrics. American Academy of Pediatrics. 105 (4): 888–895. April 2000. doi:10.1542/peds.105.4.888. ISSN 0031-4005.
  26. ↑ "Firearm-Related Injuries Affecting the Pediatric Population". Pediatrics. American Academy of Pediatrics. 130 (5). November 2012.
  27. ↑ Helmke, Paul (May 11, 2010). "NRA's "Eddie Eagle" Doesn't Fly or Protect". The Huffington Post. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
  28. ↑ Glick, Susan; Sugarmann, Josh (November 19, 1997). Joe Camel with Feathers: How the NRA with Gun and Tobacco Industry Dollars Uses its Eddie Eagle Program to Market Guns to Kids. Violence Policy Center. ISBN 978-0-927291-16-3. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
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