A North Carolina firearm training program is teaching children as young as 6 about gun safety — by showing them how to fire a weapon.
Echo Firearm Training in Charlotte offers the gun safety class to minors, taking them through a step-by-step program on how to use a firearm. The students begin with Nerf guns, then, with parental approval, graduate to pistols.
"There was no other class like this," Michael Pegram of Echo Firearm Training told CBS affiliate WVLT. "So, I decided to come up with it."
Children spend four hours in both classrooms and on the range in order to learn how to properly use a gun.
"It's the parents' choice of what their kids should be around. I'm just offering a class to let them learn to be safe, if they're going to be around them,” Pegram said. “A lot of times they're not shooting a 9mm, but once in a blue moon, if they know what they're doing, and I know they can do it, we have done that."
The class, as expected, was met with mixed reaction on social media, with Pegram saying “people are extremely against it, or they’re extremely for it.”
The courses start at $100 for the four-hour class per child with packages for more children.
“Students will be introduced to firearms in a way that shows respect to firearms," the company’s website states. "At the end of the class students are expected to know the 4 primary firearm safety rules, how to load and unload a .22 semi-automatic pistol and marksmanship and accuracy skills in shooting a pistol and rifle.”
On its YouTube channel, Echo Firearm Training shows how the classes work.
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