It's the pro-gun community that insists they shouldn't be. They'll literally send you death threats for trying.

Gun safety should be a mandatory class in education. Probably a multi-stage class starting with an age appropriate class in Elementary school, a more advanced class in Middle school to demystify and take some of the taboo cool factor out, and again in High school. Range time should be incorporated in High school, and maybe Middle school. We all know abstinence only education doesn't work.

That's good, and I can relate to your experience growing up respecting firearms, but children should simply not be trusted to have access.

There have been many experiments in which children find a weapon and the parents who claimed their children knew better were horrified to see them handle the staged weapon.

Children simply don't have the logical portion of the brain developed. Even in teenagers, their amygdala (emotionality, anger, fear response) is nearly fully developed, yet their prefrontal cortext (executive control, rational thinking, emotional regulation, thinking of future consequences) is still severely underdeveloped. [1]

In fact, the prefrontal cortext isn't fully developed until our mid 20s, and possibly a few years longer for those of us with ADHD. [2] This is why teenagers display heightened risk-taking, are bad at controlling their emotions, restraining themselves, and thinking about the consequences of their actions.

Under supervision is one thing, but unsupervised access to a firearm is a patently bad idea. With that said, I did have access to a firearm (.22) and I acted responsibly as a minor (only used it for target practice). But I absolutely should not have had access to it.

There's a huge difference between giving a child unrestricted access to a firearm, and taking them sport shooting in a controlled environment. I've helped with beginner shooting courses for kids in scouts. There is an adult with each kid, one round loaded at a time, etc. You can similarly control the environment hunting by using blinds, etc, where you oversee the use of the firearm, loading of round etc.

I'm not big into shooting, but from a safety perspective there are ways to hunt and sport shoot with kids in a very controlled way.