FABLE XII: Hunting and the "gun culture" teach our kids to be violent.
After several isolated firearm crimes committed by children on school grounds during the late 1990s, anti-gun activists falsely suggested that such crimes were common and attributable not only to guns, but to hunting and the so-called "gun culture." They even faulted the "Southern culture" in particular, for a shooting in Arkansas, until it was reported that the primary suspect in the crime had been raised in a Northern state.

Several recent studies conducted for the federal government tell a different story than one hears from those who spin the news to promote gun control. Among the findings: Boys who learn about firearms and their legitimate uses from family members and who own firearms legally have much lower rates of delinquency than those who own firearms illegally and those who do not own firearms.1 Only 2% of school administrators consider guns a serious problem on school grounds.2 Ninety percent of schools had no serious violent crimes during 1996-1997 and 43% had no crime at all. The overall school crime rate dropped 22% from 1993 to 1996, and murders and suicides rarely occur in or near schools, leading the Secretary of Education, Richard Riley, to conclude, "the vast majority of America's schools are still among the safest places for youngsters to be."3

Many factors have been identified as contributing to the likelihood of homicides, including poverty and unemployment, as well as population size, density, age, and the percentage of people living in urban areas. Merely being in the South, however, is a statistically insignificant factor.4 And while persons who live in rural areas are more likely to be hunters, the total violent crime rate and murder rate in rural counties are 69% and 42% lower, respectively, than those found in metropolitan areas.5

False stereotypes of gun owners have been an article of faith in some anti-gun circles for years. Professor William R. Tonso, head of the Department of Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Anthropology at the University of Evansville, Indiana, attributed the on-going clash over gun ownership to a cultural conflict between people who, by virtue of their upbringing and lifestyle, have little knowledge of firearms and their legitimate uses, and people who are familiar with firearms and associate them with freedom, security and recreation.6

Those whose loathing of guns stems from a fear of the unknown might have a change of heart if they knew that hunting not only teaches youngsters how to be safe with firearms, it provides them valuable character-building lessons that will serve them throughout their lives. Hunting has a longstanding code of ethics built upon respect for the rights of others. And hunters, more than any other group, are responsible for protecting wildlife and their natural habitat through a variety of conservation programs they fund.

Additionally, NRA has been the nation's leader in firearm safety training and hunter education for decades. Our 39,000 Certified Instructors and Coaches train hundreds of thousands of people each year in a variety of programs of study. Additionally, the Eddie EagleŽ GunSafe Program, which does not use guns, teaches children in grades pre-K through 6th that if they encounter a gun while unsupervised, they should "STOP! Don't touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult." The award-winning program, used by 10,000 police departments and schools, has been provided to more than 12 million children during the last decade.