A school district in Wyoming garnered international attention when it posted a picture of fifth and sixth graders during a gun safety lesson.
Hot Springs County School District posted a picture to its Facebook page Wednesday of Brandon Deromedi’s physical education class armed with air rifles and safety goggles. In the photo, the children are lying down on yoga mats on a gym floor, aiming at plywood targets about 50 feet away. Their guns were braced on gym bags.
“Mr. Deromedi’s 5/6th PE classes are working on their marksmanship with air rifles!” the caption read. “All students passed their safety test and have been sharpening their skills.” The original post had over 66,000 shares and over 6,000 comments as of Tuesday afternoon, according to a report.
FACEBOOK TO DELETE POSTS FOR ILLEGAL GUN SALES
“This is fantastic! I’m a public school teacher and wish my school district would do this here in Pennsylvania! As a firearms instructor outside of school I’d be willing to help teach this too,” one comment reads.
“More schools should be teaching gun safety. Maybe we’d have less accidents if more people had access to this,” another user wrote.
“This is what every school should be doing teaching gun safety and shooting fundamentals,” reads another comment.
“Sounds like a great class. True skills for the future. Great to see,” a user wrote.
While the majority of the comments were positive, some users were not so enthusiastic.
“Training the next school shooter young and providing the guns on campus nice,” one user wrote. Another user commented that the course was “literally raising possible school shooters.”
Hours later, the post had disappeared from the platform.
Some reposts of the pictures remained, like one from a Canadian hunting and fishing YouTube channel. “Hot Springs County School District #1 is definitely doing it right!” their caption reads. “The more kids who learn firearm safety the better! Less accidents happen with proper teaching!”
Wyoming law allows for gun safety courses in public schools. “The district must also establish training requirements, curricula, and instructor qualifications, subject to approval by local law enforcement,” the law reads. Official gun safety training must include “at least 16 hours of live fire handgun training” and eight hours of “scenario-based training using nonlethal training,” firearms, and ammunition. In addition, the training expires after one year.
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The county did not respond to a request for comment.
