No sooner had the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) been awarded a two-year, $2.4 million grant by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to provide firearm safety education messaging and free gun locks to communities across the map than did a couple of gun prohibition groups try to get the grant rescinded.
The grant project will be done under NSSF’s popular Project ChildSafe program. But the anti-gun Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) launched a petition effort to pressure the DOJ to rescind that grant. They were joined by the Newtown Action Alliance, a group formed following the December 2012 Sandy Hook tragedy. NSSF headquarters is in Newtown, only a couple of miles from where the school was located.
The CSGV listed some of its gripes with NSSF, while acknowledging that “few would oppose the use of gun locks to secure firearms or the dissemination of information on gun safety,” but it quickly adds, “the partnership between DOJ and NSSF is nonetheless deeply troubling.” Perhaps what is most “troubling” about this “partnership” is that it has an important government agency working in tandem with the firearms industry group to promote genuine gun safety.
In its attack on the program, CSGV asserted that the NSSF “has actively lobbied for policies that put children at direct risk of obtaining unsecured firearms.” The group listed four specific complaints claiming that NSSF :
- Opposes all legislation that would require parents to safely store firearms in the home in the manner described in their Project ChildSafe Safety Kit brochure.
- Opposes Child Access Prevention laws to hold adults criminally responsible when children gain unauthorized access to their firearms.
- Supports unprecedented legal immunity for the gun industry, which prevents parents (and others) from bringing lawsuits against the industry when they market and/or distribute their products in a negligent manner.
- Supports lowering the age at which Americans can purchase firearms and carry them in public.
But that’s not so, the industry group wrote in response. “It is unfortunate,” NSSF said, “that these groups, which do not have comprehensive, practical firearms safety programs of their own, cannot find common ground to support the goals of this successful, long-standing safety initiative.
“They also made false claims about the quality of the program’s cable-style gun locks,” NSSF continued. “The gun locks included in the Project ChildSafe firearm safety kits exceed standards set by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and the California Department of Justice.”
According to NSSF, this new funding will allow the ChildSafe program to expand, and “broaden community partnerships and focus on developing new safety communication tools and distribution strategies.”
That may be what the anti-gun groups dislike the most. By reaching out and partnering with more communities, officials and the general public might change their attitude about how the firearms industry approaches the subjects of safety and responsibility.
“With support from the firearms industry and past grants from DOJ-OJP, Project ChildSafe has distributed more than 37 million free firearm safety kits to gun owners in all 50 states and the five U.S. territories through partnerships with over 15,000 law enforcement agencies,” NSSF noted.
The organization said accidental firearm fatalities have dropped to their lowest levels since record-keeping began in 1903, including a 60 percent decrease in fatal firearm accidents among youth 14 and under over the past 10 years,” NSSF reported. The trade organization referred to the National Safety Council, which said firearms are involved in fewer than one percent of all unintentional fatalities in the United States.
