Teaching Kids That Guns Are Not Play : Safety: An innovative program aims to head off disaster by teaching children that firearms have no place in play or anger.

By DAVID SMOLLAR

Jan. 31, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Guns kill too many kids, San Diego teachers say, and children need to know that they are not toys and not a solution to settling an argument.

So teachers have agreed to instruct students, starting with third-graders, about the dangers of guns, using a classroom program written by a Washington, D.C., group that lobbies for gun control.

The first 20 teachers received training earlier this week and next month will begin teaching children that guns have no place in play or anger. Teachers in Los Angeles, Oakland and New York will also participate beginning this spring.

“I lost my son because of gun violence,” Mira Mesa-area resident Pacifico Jose, a parent-volunteer with the new program, told teachers at their preparation meeting. “This (effort) means safety and prevention, and it’s very much needed. I’m glad it’s happening.”

The curriculum, first begun in Dade County, Fla., in 1989 after a rash of child-involved shootings there, has been credited with helping level off the number of incidents and with persuading children to turn in students they see carrying guns at school.

But the National Rifle Assn. calls the program “scare tactics” and says it makes judgments about people who have guns.

The San Diego Unified School District, the nation’s eighth-largest urban system, will direct its initial efforts at the third grade. With 122,000 students, the district is about half the size of Miami’s.

In sample lessons, teachers might ask 11 students to stand up and then explain that 11 children are killed every day in the United States “because someone didn’t think before picking up a gun,” either for play or in anger.

Students will act out “conflict” skits to learn how quickly anger can erupt from minor disputes such as how long hair can be or their failure to make the bed. The idea is for them to understand that at an adult level, trivial disagreements could end with use of a gun.

To learn that television violence is “not the real thing,” children will create a movie scenario in which a 12-year-old boy stands watch for older boys who are robbing homes, holding a loaded gun they have given him that results in his being shot when police show up.

All the suggested activities include discussion, role-playing and rehearsal of scenarios familiar to elementary-age students, and call for little or no lecturing. The lessons can fit into other activities, and be spread over weeks or concentrated in a shorter period.

“It’s just good information for children to have about the dangers of handling guns,” said Principal Adele Lancaster, who volunteered for the training along with her teachers at Ocean Beach Elementary. “It will also help children learn to cope better with problems and work through ways of settling disputes peacefully.”

About 20 San Diego elementary schools will participate this spring.

“We’re trying to stress not just stopping gun violence but being violence-free,” said Alan Richmond, city schools health education specialist. “Just look at the shooting at General Dynamics” last week, in which a disgruntled former employee killed one man and severely wounded another. “This is really timely.”

The $20,000 San Diego effort is being funded by private grants and will not cost the district any money. All but $5,000 comes from David Subin, a San Diego physician whose son Eric was killed as an innocent bystander during a gunman’s murder-suicide.

Nationwide, as many as 90,000 schoolchildren are believed to carry guns to class every day, mainly because they fear violence against themselves, according to the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, the Washington lobbying and education group promoting the new curriculum.

The center says that every day, 11 children die in handgun accidents, suicides and homicides, accounting for 12% of all childhood deaths.

State Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren last week proposed metal detectors where necessary at violence-prone California high schools, similar to those already used at some New York City schools.

No student has ever been shot by another student in the San Diego district, but school police attribute that to good luck. Last school year, 24 guns were confiscated at city campuses, contrasted with eight guns four years before. While that’s a small number contrasted with other urban areas, it represents the tip of the iceberg, police say.

“God only knows what is out there we don’t know about,” Richard Ewens, a school police supervisor, told the teachers. “Every kid from whom we confiscated a gun said they had it for protection, because of the neighborhood or gang fears or whatever.

“We also confiscated a number of stun guns, which are almost as bad as a regular weapon,” he said.

Contrary to popular thought, gun problems are not limited to schools in areas of San Diego traditionally thought of as more prone to violence, Ewens said.

Three years ago, a Poway second-grader brought a loaded gun to class for show and tell.

The head of the school police division in Dade County, Fla., credited the education effort with prompting students to report other students carrying guns.

“I think they’re now more willing to come forth and say who has a gun,” E. O. Red McAllister said in an interview. “Before the program, I think that kids felt there was no danger if a gun was left in someone’s pocket, even if brought to school.”

Miami’s school system had six shootings at campuses last year and four this school year, but there have been no deaths, McAllister said. “Usually, it’s a reaction-type thing between students” growing out of a dispute, he said.

Officials in the San Diego area are braced for possible criticism from the NRA because the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence is affiliated with Handgun Control Inc., a group headed by Sarah Brady. Her husband, James, press secretary to then-President Ronald Reagan, was shot and left paralyzed during the 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan.

An NRA spokesman Wednesday said that “we do have a problem” with the program because “it tells kids that guns are bad.”

Liz Swasey, director of women’s issues for the NRA, said that “since half the households in America have guns, are kids supposed to think that their parents are bad for having them? And police carry guns. Are they therefore bad, too?”

The NRA has its own education program in some districts around the nation. Called the Eddie Eagle safety program, it teaches children under 12 to avoid guns, Swasey said. “It is simple in saying, ‘Stop, don’t touch,’ ” she said. “It doesn’t make any judgments on guns.”

But Nancy Gannon, Western program director for the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, said: “We think our education program is politically neutral, and we are not taking a position one way or another on the legality of guns. This is injury prevention, and we’re not pushing gun control or showing how to use a gun safely.

“I know there are some people who think everyone should be armed and they will be upset, probably. And our program is trying to produce attitudinal changes toward guns, in that attitudes are too loose right now.”

McAllister, of Miami’s school police, said his schools emphasize that guns are illegal on campuses, and said the district has an annual Gun Awareness Week each November.

“The bottom line is that we don’t need guns as kids or teen-agers. They should have no place,” he said.