Schools to Teach Dangers of Guns : Education: Shooting victim James Brady helps launch curriculum for children to be used at 20 campuses in L.A. district.

Former White House Press Secretary James Brady didn’t need an introduction to the problem when he arrived in Los Angeles on Tuesday to pitch a new anti-gun curriculum for schoolchildren.

But he got one anyway--a tragic example of the violence that has gripped the city.

Brady, who almost died in a March, 1981, assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, flew in one day after a 17-year-old boy was fatally wounded in a Reseda High School corridor. It was the second time in a month that a student has been shot and killed on a high school campus in the city.

Brady described the shooting as part of “an epidemic” that is not limited to Los Angeles.

“Today’s children live in a society where guns are all too available, and as a result gun violence is escalating at a frightening rate,” he said. “Just yesterday another student was shot in Los Angeles. But, sadly, that young man was not the only child who was a victim of gun violence yesterday. Each and every day in America, 14 children are killed with firearms.”

At a news conference in the library of Weemes Elementary School in South-Central Los Angeles, Brady joined school officials and teachers in launching the Straight Talk About Risks, or STAR, curriculum. The program, he said, teaches students how to stay safe when encountering a gun, how to resist peer pressure to play with or carry guns, and how to tell the difference between real-life and television violence.

The Center for the Prevention of Handgun Violence, a national nonprofit organization, developed the curriculum to reduce incidents of gun violence among children. It is the first anti-gun curriculum in the nation and already is in use in schools in New Jersey, Dade County in Florida, Ventura County, and the cities of Oakland and San Diego.

In Los Angeles, the curriculum will be taught at 20 schools as part of a pilot program funded by the Weingart Foundation.

At Weemes Elementary School, more than a dozen students demonstrated their fundamental grasp of the subject when asked what they would do if they saw a gun.

Students shouted, “Don’t touch the gun!” “Get out of the situation!” “Tell a trusted adult!”

“No one should have to endure what I’ve gone through the last 12 years,” said Brady, who was permanently disabled as a result of a head wound he suffered at the hands of would-be assassin John Hinkley Jr.

For years, Brady has campaigned to get national legislation that would require a five-day waiting period for anyone to purchase a gun. President Clinton has promised to sign such a bill if Congress approves it, but the proposal has run into opposition from the National Rifle Assn., which also criticizes the new school curriculum.

“It’s a cheap ploy to try to sway kids at an impressionable age to get on the anti-gun bandwagon,” said Fred Romero, a Southern California spokesman for the NRA. “They are not as concerned about the safety of young people as they are about recruiting them to further the anti-gun cause.”

School board member Julie Korenstein said the program is timely given the shooting at Reseda High.

“It’s extremely important for young people to understand the dangers of handguns,” she said. “They have to learn how to confront one another in a nonviolent way.”

Board member Barbara Boudreaux agreed. “It doesn’t make sense that we have children who leave home to go to school in fear,” she said.

Students at Weemes said adults need to do more to keep guns out of the hands of children.

“If parents have a gun, they should lock it up so that little children cannot get to it,” said Stephanie Howard, 10.

“They should teach children not to play with guns, not to touch them,” said Lisa Ball, 10.

“Parents shouldn’t have guns at all,” said Crystal James, 10.