All 6th grade middle-schoolers here in town are required to take Outdoor Skills and Firearms Safety. As an ADF&G Volunteer Hunter's Ed Instructor, I always take two days off work to help out. That was Wed and Thur of this week. Kids can opt out, just like they can when it comes to dissecting a frog. But we've had great success at getting the new never-shot-before timid kids to finally shoot and really enjoy it.
This time was a unique experience however. Out of 120 kids from one school, we had 3 that just plain didn't want to shoot, one whose Mom said she could help, but couldn't shoot (and yet Mom didn't come to see how safe it all was), and one kid (6th grade!) who was a moral-objector to the use of firearms for any purpose. Sounded like he was brain-washed from home.
But that was a high percentage consider that I've never had a kid back out of my lane before, and see other instructors (we use an indoor range, and have at most 1 instructor to every 2 kids per lane) experience the same thing. The moral-objector left me laughing, because you could see that he wanted to shoot, and even came into the lane area to be a "helper" and hand out ammo, but couldn't get past his moral objections. How do you have moral objections at age 10-11 unless they're not your own?
I'm just hoping this doesn't portend the movement of too many leaf-eaters into our bush-country isolated area. Gawd knows we have enough liberals already here.
This time was a unique experience however. Out of 120 kids from one school, we had 3 that just plain didn't want to shoot, one whose Mom said she could help, but couldn't shoot (and yet Mom didn't come to see how safe it all was), and one kid (6th grade!) who was a moral-objector to the use of firearms for any purpose. Sounded like he was brain-washed from home.
But that was a high percentage consider that I've never had a kid back out of my lane before, and see other instructors (we use an indoor range, and have at most 1 instructor to every 2 kids per lane) experience the same thing. The moral-objector left me laughing, because you could see that he wanted to shoot, and even came into the lane area to be a "helper" and hand out ammo, but couldn't get past his moral objections. How do you have moral objections at age 10-11 unless they're not your own?
I'm just hoping this doesn't portend the movement of too many leaf-eaters into our bush-country isolated area. Gawd knows we have enough liberals already here.