By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
UPDATED – 9/25: The adage, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” may be in for a dramatic re-set, just a couple of months after Everytown for Gun Safety—the billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobbying group founded by Michael Bloomberg—announced creation of its own firearms safety training program, Train SMART.
According to an article in USA Today, “the program met stiff opposition from its own members and longtime supporters.” One might compare it to blasphemy.
Still, the project has a schedule of online classes including sessions today and over the coming weekend, and one slated Oct. 13.
The project’s eight instructors include those with military backgrounds and a couple are hunter education instructors.
That pales in comparison to the National Rifle Association’s network of more than 125,000 certified instructors who annually teach an estimated “hundreds of thousands of students every year,” according to an NRA reaction to the Everytown effort.
And the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Larry Keane, senior vice president and general counsel, wrote a column in August in which he observed, “The Michael Bloomberg billionaire-bankrolled gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety is rolling out a new firearm ownership campaign to teach gun owners how to be safe and responsible with the firearms they’re bringing into their homes… That’s like getting barbecuing lessons from vegans.”
But according to USA Today, criticism from both veteran gun rights organizations may be taking a back seat to discord within the ranks of anti-gunners who have supported Everytown. The article quotes Sandy Phillips, a gun control activist and mother of 24-year-old Jessica Ghawi, a victim of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado movie massacre.
Phillips reportedly told USA Today, “What they’re doing is so hurtful and so insulting to survivors. It’s like ‘oh my God, how could any survivor continue to support them? People are hurt and confused. Our mission is to reduce gun violence and keep people from having guns in their homes and here you are giving a gun safety class that encourages gun ownership. You can’t have it both ways.”
Well, perhaps you can, according to Everytown President John Feinblatt. He told USA Today there have been pilot programs with some 200 courses already taken. His position is that Everytown is a “wide tent” with room for gun owners—an argument which might seem laughable to those attending this weekend’s 40th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference in Salt Lake City—and he contends current training is “primarily fear based” and “marketing for the gun industry disguised as training.”
Ken Campbell, CEO at the world-famous Gunsite Academy in Paulden, Arizona, responded.
“Gunsite Academy is the world’s oldest and largest privately owned firearms training academy at 50 years old,” Campbell said via private message. “We do not market to any firearms manufacturer. Our mission is simple: Help keep good people alive through education. That means we teach our clients with whatever firearm they bring so they leave stronger and safer. Fear based? Hardly. Our mission is education and that takes the fear away and allows our students to leave empowered.”
NRA’s counter to the Everytown program included this observation:
“There are numerous disciplines and many experience levels from which one may choose courses. As an added bonus, our instructors won’t tell you that you shouldn’t have certain firearms that are legal to own.”
NRA considers its training program, which has been around for generations and has evolved over that time, to be “the gold standard.”
“It makes one wonder why Everytown would seem so determined to reinvent the wheel,” the association says in its remarks. “Our guess is the course will be less about safety and more about indoctrinating students into becoming less pro-gun.”
