In communities where rates of gun ownership are moderate to high and families participate in various shooting sports, it’s critical to give kids a safety message that actually works. Training needs to be sensitive to the cultural context, provide learning paths that work for kids with any level of exposure to firearms, and never be propaganda.

Our approach, fundamentally, is to respect students and their families – to respect their agency, intelligence, and the context they live in. To support that approach, we avoid the de facto messaging used by so many national-level curricula on gun safety, which is, “if you see a gun, run away and tell an adult”. Kids who see guns in their everyday lives – that is, kids who most need to understand gun safety – know this message isn’t for them, and the rest of the messaging bounces right off.

We also recognize that many students who don’t see guns in their everyday lives are likely to shoot guns or encounter them as adults, and we are committed to helping kids understand the industry-standard practices of gun safety, as well as helping kids and parents know that eye and ear protection is part of gun safety.

We chose interactive video for this curriculum because it’s far and above the best way to both teach and reinforce critical messages with rich feedback and engaging opportunities to catch gaps and misunderstandings. There’s no better technology for this application, and modern streaming video platforms allow us to keep costs low and keep the experience interesting to students from start to finish.

Everyone involved with this project has a background as a parent in a state with lots of engagement in shooting sports, and in educating kids and adults about the safety issues involved. Our lead instructor, Ty Marbut, is a dad to two kids in Montana, and has instructed over a thousand students in their first shooting experiences, hundreds of them kids (mostly as a volunteer while working full-time creating interactive online learning experiences for learners in higher education, healthcare, government agencies, and private companies around the US).