Jim Heath, a state coordinated of Project Appleseed, brought the three day program to Craver Middle School in Colorado City earlier this week.
“We’re teaching them about the firearms so they are familiar with them, they can be safe with them,” Heath told KOAA.com.
The course is designed not only to teach people across America how to safely handle and shoot firearms, it also aims to give those new to guns an increased level of confidence around the weapons.
“I think that it’s better for them to have a respect for it [and] know how to handle it,” Heath said. “Not that they should, but that they are aware about the firearm. It’s not, ‘Oh, what’s this? What can we do with this?'”
In the group’s third straight year of running this program at Craver Middle School, volunteers from both Project Appleseed and the NRA are working toward eliminating the fear and negative stigma surrounding firearms.
After the two in-class sessions, organizers will be transporting the students to a local gun range where they will continue to bolster their confidence around the weapons and learn how to accurately fire them.
