SPOKANE, Wash – Robert Smith is the Director of Security Awareness and Firearms Education, also known as S.A.F.E. He has decades’ worth of experience in firearm education and says when you are holding a gun the consequences are real.
“Whenever we launch that bullet, we get to pay for whatever hits emotionally, financially, everything else we are responsible for that,” Smith said.
Smith did not know the specifics of what happened in Deer Park but says in his decades-long career this isn’t the first time this has happened, “they’re more common than we should have, and a big part of that is that children want to emulate adults.”
He says it’s essential to prepare your children regardless of if they come in contact with one saying you can’t quote “suffer from denial syndrome.”
“Gun owners and even non-gun owners, I believe in gun proofing your child. You can’t prohibit items,” said Smith.
According to Smith, everyone who comes in contact with a firearm should follow these four cardinal rules:
All guns are loaded. Point the muzzle in a safe direction and follow what he calls the “laser rule.” He explains it as follows, “if we took fear that gun is oh, it’s projecting a laser that cuts steel, we would be very cognizant of what we pointed out.”Keep your finger outside the trigger guard until you are on the target and decide to fire. Be sure of your target and what is around it.
He added that familiarizing yourself with those steps, and being prepared can potentially save a life, “bad things can happen and will happen to us. And we should prepare for that and try to avoid and if you can’t avoid it, have some kind of counter in place to mitigate it.”
