Perhaps an important part of the course is: have the courage to get out of there fast when your buddies start handling firearms in an unsafe manner. I'm not sure it takes 10-12 hours for someone who has no interest in the shooting sports to be able to be safe around firearms on the rare occasions he/she is around them, but it may take some familiarity with firearms for someone to gain enough confidence to say to "that guy" "you're endangering us all, so please stop, or I will leave."

Please do not construe what I'm about to say below as a political statement; it is a pragmatic statement. Some people are put off by the NRA for whatever reason, and to reach a wider population, it would be useful for the basic safety classes to be offered by an organization that is perceived as politically neutral.