How Safety First Came To Be
It all started a few years ago when Josh, feeling slightly masochistic, started browsing some of the gun / hunting / shooting forums on social media sites. His interest was piqued at a topic about regulating ammunition sales instead of regulating gun sales as a viable form of gun control. Almost 100% of the comments were along the lines of a paraphrased Charleston Heston, “they can have my ammunition when they pry it from my cold, dead, fingers.”
Again, feeling slightly masochistic, Josh decided to play the devil’s advocate and posted a comment, asking what is wrong with requiring someone to be proficient, both in skill and safety, with a gun in order to purchase ammunition? He proposed a yearly, four hour, reoccurring safety class that would get a person a safety card which could then be used to purchase ammunition. Folks, if you ever want to learn new words, and be compared to several species of animals, all you have to do is get a group of gun enthusiasts together and suggest they prove they can handle a gun safely. As a former police officer, and military police who carried a gun daily for years, Josh knew the importance of ongoing training. Even though he carried a gun every day, he still had to qualify on the use of it on a regular basis. The arguments of “I grew up with guns, so I’m safe.” rang hollow. He knew then that gun safety should be paramount in any endeavors he started in the field of firearms.
Around the same time as the social media fiasco, we ran across a documentary entitled, “No Guns for Negroes,” which was an eye opening experience. Being involved in a few aspects of social justice, we weren’t naive about issues of inequality, but the concept of second amendment inequality never occurred to us. We knew that we somehow had to try and level the field for everyone, regardless of background.
It was these two things that were the seeds of what has grown into Safety First.