The National Rifle Association is trying to smooth over the extreme ideas presented in a recent video suggesting children should have to receive mandatory gun training “to advance to the next grade” by mischaracterizing the video and airing a deceptively cropped version of it on NRA News.

In a July 21 NRA News video titled “Everyone Gets A Gun,” NRA News commentator Billy Johnson imagined a compulsory education system that would require children to become proficient with firearms, just like “reading and writing,” even “if they didn't want to learn” as a requirement to advance in school:

JOHNSON: Gun policy driven by our need for guns would insist that we introduce young people to guns early and that we'd give them the skills to use firearms safely. Just like we teach them reading and writing, necessary skills. We would teach shooting and firearm competency. It wouldn't matter if a child's parents weren't good at it. We'd find them a mentor. It wouldn't matter if they didn't want to learn. We would make it necessary to advance to the next grade.

Johnson's suggestion children would have to become proficient with a gun to move on in school was widely ridiculed. Now the NRA is responding to critics with the misleading suggestion that Johnson was merely talking about the importance of teaching children gun safety.

Johnson appeared on the July 24 edition of NRA News' Cam & Company on The Sportsman Channel to defend his video. Host Cam Edwards started the conversation by saying, “One of the things that specifically the anti-gunners are flipping out about is [Johnson's] suggestion that if we had a national gun policy, that again, embraced our right to keep and bear arms, one of the things we might be talking about is educating kids about how to be safe and responsible with a firearm, regardless of whether or not their parents were gun owners. That thought ... has really got people on the anti-gun side of the equation freaked out. They're saying that you're demanding compulsory education of firearms training for kids, they are wondering why on earth any child would need to know how to be safe and responsible with a firearm and I find it fascinating because they're ignoring the fact that there are already hundreds of thousands of kids across this country who are safely and responsibly learning about firearms.”

But critics of the NRA video were saying that it promoted the idea of mandatory firearms training because in the video Johnson says, “We would make it necessary to advance to the next grade.”

Johnson also offered misleading commentary on his video, suggesting that he was being called “radical” for talking about teaching kids “what they should do if they do find a gun”:

JOHNSON: I think education is important. I think you need to teach your kids, whether or not you're a gun owner yourself, what they should do if they do find a gun, if they are confronted with a gun, on what's the right thing to do. And you know how that's so radical is beyond me to comprehend.

However in his commentary video, Johnson said he was talking about “firearms safety,” but also “shooting and firearm competency” that would be required to advance to the next grade.

Edwards ended the segment by showing “a portion of this commentary clip so you know what it is that the anti-gun folks are actually freaking out about.”

Unfortunately NRA News cut the video just before the most controversial part of his commentary, where Johnson said: “Just like we teach them reading and writing, necessary skills. We would teach shooting and firearm competency. It wouldn't matter if a child's parents weren't good at it. We'd find them a mentor. It wouldn't matter if they didn't want to learn. We would make it necessary to advance to the next grade.”