Army Safety Center Creates Interactive Firearms Site
The U.S. Army Combat Readiness/Safety Center developed and has now launched a new interactive site called Firearms Safety Techniques (FST) to help reduce off-duty incidents with privately owned firearms.
The site includes information and video challenges, which highlight
aspects of safe firearm handling and combine safe practices and safety
messaging into an enjoyable experience, said Ray Baker, FST program
manager, Human Factors Task Force.
Dr. Patricia LeDuc, Human Factors Task Force director, added that the video challenges are a different way of communicating with soldiers
and family members about safe weapons handling in a fun, non-threatening, non-confrontational manner.
For example, in the Transporter video challenge, players participate in a timed event to demonstrate their knowledge of proper unloading sequences and transportation best practices. The TriggerTech video challenge prompts players to use their mouse or touch pad to perform a series of individual firearms handling steps to execute safe weapons handling sequences.
In the nFocus challenge, players participate in a series of tasks that center on increasing awareness of the dangers associated with environmental and physical impairments, such as foul weather, lack of sleep, and the effects of medication. During this virtual simulator experience at the nFocus Laboratory, the player attempts to shoot
targets to score points as the impairment progressively becomes more and more severe.
The USACR/Safety Center said it developed FST to address factors that commonly contribute to privately owned weapons accidents, such as failure to treat firearms as if they were loaded and failing to clear the chambers of rounds.
For more information about privately-owned firearms safety and to access the site, go to https://safety.army.mil/.