Eleven-year-old Sakir Everett came upon a dangerous situation at his school and, because he had some knowledge about firearms and firearms safety, he felt the need to act before a tragedy occurred.
It was May 2025. Sakir was then a middle-school student at Dwight Rich School of the Arts in Lansing, Mich. That day, he discovered a fellow student had brought a loaded handgun to school. So, Sakir did what he thought best. He disassembled the handgun and disposed of the ammunition.
When school staff discovered the disassembled firearm, the student who brought the firearm to school was arrested.
However, school administrators also suspended Sakir for a year, as, when he handled the firearm in question, the school considered it to be “weapons possession.” Plus, Sakir did not immediately inform school staff of the firearm’s presence on school grounds. (The Lansing School District was contacted for comment, but at press time had not responded.)
Savitra McClurkin, Sakir’s mother, says her son had never been in trouble before and was a very good student. Her son only did what he did, she says, because he was scared. Sakir believed he was helping the other students by making the firearm inoperable. He had received his knowledge about firearms from a relative who taught him about guns and hunting.
Sakir and his fellow students no doubt would have been better served in this situation had they received actual gun-safety education, either as part of the school curriculum or as an after-school opportunity. If he’d been exposed to the NRA’s Eddie Eagle GunSafe program (eddieeagle.com), he would have known to “STOP! Don’t Touch. Run Away. Tell a Grown-up.”
But, like so many schools across the nation, Lansing Schools do not offer such educational opportunities. Instead, Sakir was forced to rely on what he knew and his own instincts about what was the best course of action. While admirably well-intentioned, his solution collided with the inflexible policies of a system that is more overreactive than proactive.
Actual Firearms Safety
Over the last 37 years, the NRA’s Eddie Eagle GunSafe program has been taught to more than 33 million children from pre-kindergarten to the fourth grade. The main teaching tool for the program is a video featuring Eddie Eagle and the Wing Team. Eddie and his friends teach children what to do should they ever come across a firearm in an unsupervised situation. The program also distributes activity books.
“As of today, we have 330 schools that we have verified are actively sharing the program,” said Kelly Farmer, the NRA’s program manager for community outreach. “We have 1,124 active organizations sharing the program if we take into account all entity types, and we are increasing these numbers each year to reach as many children as we can.”
Some 267,575 Eddie Eagle activity books were sent to these organizations in 2025 alone—this includes schools, churches, community-service groups, hospitals and public libraries.
Eddie Eagle’s materials also include “A Parent’s Guide to Gun Safety” that gives information on how to safely store guns to keep them inaccessible to any unauthorized users. Still, for their own safety, children need to be taught what to do if they are in a situation where someone has not followed basic gun-safety guidelines.
“Eddie Eagle’s message is valuable to every family, whether they are gun owners, gun-ownership supporters or not,” said Farmer. “The NRA advocates for the safe handling and storage of every firearm; however, there is no guarantee that a child won’t come across one in a public place, school or even at a friend or family member’s home. Eddie Eagle teaches them the right thing to do if they see one.”
Anti-Gun Groups See an Opening
The anti-gun group Everytown recently announced it is starting an online gun-safety course for adults called “Train Smart.” Yet by all accounts, “Train Smart” is filled with anti-gun propaganda and scare tactics and includes little actual safety education. This is, after all, the Everytown that advocates for gun bans and more.
Eddie Eagle, on the other hand, is non-political; this NRA program is offered free of charge (Train Smart charges a fee) and focuses on making children safer should they come upon an unsecured firearm.
Everytown’s supposed “education,” meanwhile, isn’t education at all; it is a thinly disguised attempt to convince the unwary that firearms are bad and should be avoided at all costs. None of this helps a child who suddenly comes upon a firearm.
Actual Gun Safety is Working
At the state level, gun-safety options are making inroads into public school curriculums. Last April, for example, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed Act 229 into law, requiring public and open-enrollment public charter schools to provide age-appropriate firearms-safety instruction.
In Utah, House Bill 104, Firearm Safety in Schools Amendments, recently went into effect, making gun-safety lessons mandatory for students. While Utah did have a statute in place allowing firearms safety to be taught in schools, H.B. 104 made gun-safety education a required offering.
New Hampshire State Rep. Terry Roy (R) added an amendment to a bill that would have required New Hampshire public schools to teach both the Eddie Eagle program and the NRA’s Hunter Education. Unfortunately, the bill was tabled in June 2025. Rep. Roy promised to re-introduce his proposal during the next legislative session as a standalone bill.
Meanwhile, while Sakir’s mother searched out an educational replacement for her now-expelled son, Michigan legislators were considering House Bill 4285, which would allow hunter education to be taught in Michigan schools and would be available to students in grades 6 to 12. This would be a voluntary program, but it would include gun-safety education. The bill passed the Michigan House last summer and was referred to the Michigan Senate for a committee assignment. At this writing, the bill appears to be stuck in committee.
