Eight-year-olds learn to shoot guns

A Napier parent is disgusted that police had eight and nine-year-olds shoot a human-shaped target with a BB gun in their Nelson Park School classroom last week.

Children donned police protective gear and aimed a spring-operated BB gun - which fires plastic pellets but looks like a police handgun - at a cardboard target 3m away.

One parent, who did not want to be named because he feared his eight-year-old daughter would be picked on by her classmates, said he was shocked when his daughter told him what her class had done last Thursday.

"It is leading children down the wrong path - we should not be normalising guns to children," he said.

"The police have a hard enough job as it is. Why are they making it harder?"

"I don't believe they are sending the right type of message, which is, guns are exclusive to adults."

His daughter told him the three children who fired the gun were told to aim at the gun the man on the cardboard target was carrying.

If children did need to fire a weapon, the father said, then he should have been told about it and wanted to be present.

Nelson Park School was in no way to blame and he supported police education in schools, he said.

His concern was that his child could have fired a gun without his knowledge and that it could happen in other schools.

Nelson Park School principal Nevan Bridge said he believed the officer had been showing the children that a BB gun was dangerous.

Police were concerned that children were getting toy guns that look real, Mr Bridge said, and the message was not to have a BB gun.

"I don't believe the message was to normalise guns," Mr Bridge said.

His teachers were happy with how the exercise was conducted, but he would talk to police about whether they should be firing a gun at school.

Eastern Police district policing development manager Inspector Dean Clifford said shooting the BB gun was part of a session teaching students about firearm safety.

The pistol was a low powered and spring-operated BB type pistol, essentially a toy, he said.

Police were concerned about children using BB guns - which can be mistaken for real weapons, he said.

The exercise was done with the full consultation of the teacher and students and there had been no danger.

The exercise had been used before with no problems, but police would review parts of the programme, such as whether shooting at a human-shaped target was appropriate.

- NZPA