Agents of Change is supported with funds from Co/Motion of the Alliance for Justice, Comprehensive Health Education Fund, and the Seattle Sonics.Bunch more organizations that obviously don't want our donations.
Posted on 09/21/2002 4:33:17 PM PDT by tarawa
Toy Gun Exchange Encourages Children To Think, Not Shoot 9/20/2002
Press Release CeaseFire Foundation P.O. Box 20216 Seattle, WA 98102 www.ceasefirefoundation.org
Contact: DeAnna Martin Phone: 206-322-1236 deanna@washingtonceasefire.org
CeaseFire Foundation and Seattle Sonics to Swap Toy Guns for Tickets and Prizes
Seattle, WA - The CeaseFire Foundation of Washington will join with the Seattle Sonics to sponsor a toy gun exchange this Saturday, September 21st at the Seattle Center. The event is being coordinated by CeaseFire's Agents of Change, a group of five high school students that have been involved in several projects throughout the year involving gun safety education and awareness.
Children and families can bring their toy guns to the Nate McMillian Basketball Court (on the corner of 5th and Harrison) from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. this Saturday. Sonics players will be on hand to swap these toy guns for tickets and prizes. Members of the law enforcement and medical community will also be present with health and safety information.
"Play-acting with toy guns sends mixed messages to children and is one of the ways that they learn violent behavior," said DeAnna Martin, associate executive director of CeaseFire Foundation. "The Agents of Change have been working diligently throughout the year on a number of safe storage programs, from campaigning to close the gun show loophole to teaching safe firearm storage."
The five Agents are part of the CeaseFire Foundation-sponsored youth leadership program in which students design and implement a yearlong program to educate their peers on gun safety issues. The students, from Seattle, Kelso, Mercer Island and Puyallup, have focused recently on educating their peers on the gun show loophole. They planned and organized a youth rally in Olympia to urge legislators to close the gun show loophole, presented post cards signed by hundreds of voters, and educated their peers about the issue. In addition, they traveled to Washington DC where they lobbied our Senators to support similar legislation at the federal level and participated in direct action to educate the public about H&R Block's support of the National Rifle Association.
The Foundation's Agents of Change program is the first of its kind in Washington State. The five students completed a youth leadership seminar where they crafted an action plan to outline their activities for the coming year. This includes gun safety education days, in-school education seminars and peer mentoring programs.
Agents of Change is supported with funds from Co/Motion of the Alliance for Justice, Comprehensive Health Education Fund, and the Seattle Sonics.
Date of Release: September 18, 2002
This is an oxymoron. Of course, if you are mentoring your peers, you can always spew the platitute "I learn as much from my students as they learn from me!"
Agents of Change is supported with funds from Co/Motion of the Alliance for Justice, Comprehensive Health Education Fund, and the Seattle Sonics.Bunch more organizations that obviously don't want our donations.
Your education tax dollars at work.
Any kid knows a deal, when he sees one-- they'll just ask Santa for a new toy gun next Christmas, if they really want one. Or they can ask their parents for a REAL one.
An interesting statement. Wonder what studies they might cite for this? I could easily state that play-acting with toy guns provides a safe outlet for agressive tendencies in youth and helps prevent actual violence over time. Any studies they might cite could be countered by the equivalent reasoning and conlcusions for my statement.
Remember back when I was a kid 45 years ago, we played with toy guns constantly, but there wasn't any corresponding violence in non play activities. In fact, there was far less youth violence then and there than here and now.
As a kid, I used my very realistic, much envied toy m-16 and uzi against make believe Russians on an almost daily basis. Amazingly, I still have not shot anyone with any of my real guns.
What really gets to me is the fact that these gun grabbers are usually the same whiners who complain about kids not getting enough exercise. I guess they would rather have kids sitting in front of a tv screen all day instead of getting outside and getting some exercise playing cops and robbers or World War III.
If you accept the proposition inherent in the message, that "violence is evil", then using violence to protect yourself or to defend your country or loved ones, is evil. It is the use that violence is put to that is good or evil. Violence is often necessary to accomplish good things. The fall of the Taliban could not have been accomplished without violence, for example.
Considering the losses to fire in this country every year, I think a match turn in program is long overdue!
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