If even one child loses their life due to mishandling a firearm – either by them or a friend – then that’s just too many deaths. This should be as non-controversial as they come. It may be unrealistic since kids are notorious for doing stupid things, but it should be our goal and one we should work toward.
For some, the only reasonable response is to mandate things like how parents store their firearms, turning a parent’s pain into a criminal offense on top of everything else. I’m sorry, but there’s no way to be good with that.
In Kansas, though, gun rights advocates have a better idea.
Advocates for implementing a statewide gun-safety program in Kansas public schools urged the Senate to get behind a bill requiring the Kansas State Board of Education to establish curriculum guidelines for instruction of students from kindergarten through high school.
A comparable bill approved by the 2021 Legislature and vetoed by Gov. Laura Kelly also drew upon the “Eddie Eagle” initiative offered through the National Rifle Association for children in kindergarten to eighth grade. Students in eighth through the 12th grades would be eligible for the firearm training program coordinated by the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.
The Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee on Wednesday took up Senate Bill 116, which offered a blueprint for exposing Kansas students to as many as 13 years of firearm training in public schools. It emerged at the Capitol at the same time Kansas legislators weighed proposals to forbid K-12 educators from delving into so-called “woke” subjects such as diversity and equity. Other bills in the Legislature would place in state law broader authority for parents to challenge classroom or library LGBTQ materials considered offensive to them.
Many gun control advocates believe that such educational programs amount to indoctrination – which is interesting considering the things they want to be included in school curriculums – but the truth is that basic safety training just makes sense.
We live in a nation where gun rights are protected under the Second Amendment. As such, guns will always be around. Whether a child encounters a gun in the bedroom of either their parents or a friend or lying in a ditch in one of our inner cities, there always exists the possibility of someone not doing everything perfectly.
It’s a shame, but it’s also a thing.
By teaching children how to be safe around firearms, we up their chances of acting responsibly. Personally, I’m of the opinion that such training should include lessons illustrating the power of a firearm in a visceral way. Shooting fruit tends to work pretty well, even if unrepresentative of what happens to a person who has been shot.
Regardless of my feelings about what form that training should take, I’ve been pushing for years to see stuff like this happen. For me, Kansas is making the right move. It’s a move that every state, even anti-gun states like New York and California, should implement immediately.
Even if you think children and guns shouldn’t mix, how can you legitimately think teaching them to avoid them and act responsibly around them is bad?
Then again, these people think basic safety education, such as what’s being proposed in Kansas, is Second Amendment indoctrination. They believe that not being terrified of firearms will undermine gun control efforts, which in fairness, they might.
But if it saves lives, shouldn’t that be a risk they’re willing to take?
Then again, it’s not like gun control advocacy makes any sense in the first place, so just why should they make sense here? Once I accepted that, my life has been much happier.
