Project ChildSafe offers free firearm safety locks

BANGOR – In an effort to promote gun safety, Ed Olds of Project ChildSafe offered gun locks Friday at a price not even Wal-Mart could beat.

The gun safety locks were free as part of a national program to promote gun safety.

Olds, a program representative from Albany, N.Y., was at the Bangor Wal-Mart for six hours providing the gun locks and safety information to anyone who was interested. During the day, he gave away more than 600 gun locks.

“We’re trying to keep kids safe by keeping guns locked up and out of the reach of kids,” he said in Bangor, his first stop in a four-day trip in Maine.

Other stops include Augusta and Mexico, with a second Project ChildSafe van covering other areas in Maine, he said.

Pam Daggett of Sangerville runs Kreative Kids daycare and knows firsthand the importance of safety. While in Wal-Mart to pick up scrapbooking materials, she stopped at the Project ChildSafe table and picked up some brochures, stickers, safety pledge certificates and gun locks.

Her husband, Larry Daggett, is a hunter and keeps the three guns he owns secured in a gun cabinet. But when he saw the sign for Project ChildSafe, he asked his wife to pick up some gun locks as an added precaution.

Daggett said she plans on incorporating the information in the safety talks that she has with her daycare children.

Project ChildSafe in the nation’s largest firearms safety program that stresses that gun safety begins in the home.

The program was developed and is managed by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, and it has distributed more than 30 million gun locks at no charge across the country. It is funded through grants from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Information about the program can be found at www.projectchildsafe.org.