Eddie Eagle is "Joe Camel with Feathers"

• The NRA's Eddie Eagle program falls far short of its stated goal of teaching gun safety. The primary goal of Eddie Eagle is not to teach gun safety, but instead to lure children at a young age into the gun culture in order to protect the interests of the NRA and the firearms industry. To do this, the NRA uses an appealing cartoon character that aims to put a friendly face on a hazardous product.
  
  
• Manufacturers of firearms, ammunition, and related products directly contribute hundreds of thousands of tax-deductible dollars to the NRA through its "affiliate," The NRA Foundation. In turn, The Foundation then makes "grants" to the NRA to fund the Eddie Eagle program. Financial contributors to the NRA Foundation include Saturday Night Special or "junk gun" manufacturers, rifle and shotgun manufacturers, and manufacturers of ammunition and reloading equipment.
  
  
• Many of the marketing problems confronting the NRA and the firearms industry today are in fact similar to those faced in the past by the cigarette and smokeless tobacco industries. Facing declines in its primary market, the gun industry and the NRA, like the tobacco industry before them, have expanded their market to include women and children—even though guns, like tobacco, cannot legally be sold to children or youths. Yet, while the tobacco industry denies that it is working to entice children to use its product, the NRA and the gun industry openly acknowledge it. At the NRA's 1996 annual meeting, Marion Hammer, then President of the NRA said: I pledge to you to dedicate my term in office to two demanding missions. One is building an NRA bridge to America's youth....It will be an old-fashioned wrestling match for the hearts and minds of our children, and we'd better engage our adversaries with no holds barred....If we do not successfully reach out to the next generation, then the freedom and liberty that we've lived for—and that many of our ancestors have died for—will not live beyond us.
  
  
• The Eddie Eagle program fails to warn children of the consequences of handling firearms. Its "Smokey the Bear," but without the forest fire.
  
  
• Finally, public health researchers have found that "gun safety" programs like Eddie Eagle are ineffective in preventing unintentional death and injury from firearms. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that "[b]ecause even the most well-behaved children are curious by nature and will eagerly explore their environment, the safest thing is not to keep a gun at home."