Thread: Guidelines for schools developing a firearms safety policy

Our High school in Napier has a pistol shooting team and for activities week at the end of the year all of our year 9 students do a 2 hour pistol shooting activity using the school's target air pistols. The students absolutely love it and all go away smiling. Some kids are a bit tentative at the start but as soon as they see others doing it they always all join in. They blow up a balloon, and put up a few cans and a paper target each. They have to pop their balloon and knock over a couple of cans before they are allowed to shoot at the target. Then they have a teams activity in which they have to shoot a hole in all the squares of a 3 by 3 grid. All in all the kids shoot about 50 sshots each in the 2 hours. We have no trouble recruiting shooters the following year. Many take their targets home at the end to show their parents.