Once upon a time, just about everyone seemed to grow up learning about firearms from their families. It wasn't just that Pa's muzzle loader took half an hour to load when you don't know what you're doing, it was also that guns were such a part of life that everyone knew when and when not to touch it.
And because they were common, no one really grew up not understanding this.
But those days are long in the past. While many in rural areas do continue to grow up with guns as a common part of their lives, many others grow up without that guidance.
Since my early days here at Bearing Arms, I've advocated for gun safety education in our public schools. I'm not a fan of public schools as they currently exist, mind you, but if we're going to have them, we might as well use them for good, right?
It seems that despite a mandated politically-neutral focus, Oklahoma's new law dictating such training has some opposition, and, frankly, the arguments being made in this op-ed strike me as bizarre.
Because it’s become clear that at least some of our Republican legislators don’t actually have a good grasp of what’s happening in our schools each day, how little time educators already have to teach or the importance of integrating technology.
Rather than doing the hard work of focusing on legislative financial investments and strategies that legitimately boost educational outcomes, some of our lawmakers this session have decided the best path forward is obsessing over guns, eliminating the opportunities for elementary children to learn robotics and other computer skills and prioritizing certain school specials over others.
The utter insanity of these bizarre distractions makes me want to rip my hair out.
For instance, why on Earth should our schools waste precious instructional time teaching children about gun safety? And why is it a good use of our tax dollars to require the Oklahoma State Department of Education to develop a curriculum of how to teach safe gun storage and what to do if you see a firearm?
This is a state agency that couldn’t even complete the basic task of developing constitutional social studies standards governing what topics must be taught in our classrooms. Forgive me if I don’t want them deciding how to teach my children about gun rights.
As a gun owner, it is my responsibility as a parent to teach my children what to do when they find a firearm and how to secure it. The measure would require gun lessons to be “viewpoint neutral on political topics,” including the Second Amendment and gun rights and violence. I don’t want a school or Republican Rep. Ryan Eaves setting “viewpoint neutral” policies that determine my family’s values or how we’re teaching this.
And, if we really have so much extra time in school, why not teach children an actual useful life skill, such as budgeting, civics 101, how to resolve conflicts, resilience when they’ve failed an assignment or even digital literacy.
The author goes on to lament how lawmakers are limiting screen time in elementary schools, and how that might interfere with STEM education, which it seems she's a big fan of, and her elementary school-aged daughter is a fan of.
Now, I'm not a huge fan of this "STEM at all costs" push by schools, and I say this as someone whose oldest went to a STEM magnet school for high school, but she's not wrong that there are tons of things that students should be taught that they're not.
However, her hostility toward gun safety education seems...weird.
Every year, we hear some story about a kid that finds a gun, picks it up, starts playing with it, and shoots themself or someone else.
Sometimes, the kid in question is too young to really have gotten much in the way of gun safety education, but much of the time, they are. Why is it that a class designed to simply teach kids not to screw around with a firearm and kill their friends is the hill this woman wants to die on? Why is it that gun safety training is what earns her ire, when I'm sure there are plenty of other areas that the schools are delving into that they really don't need to?
Of course, she also seems to see "viewpoint neutral" as somehow determining her family's values.
The author is Janelle Stecklein, the editor of Oklahoma Voice, one of States Newsroom's publications. States Newsroom is, basically, a leftist cabal of "newsrooms" not unlike The Trace, though more general in focus, and thus hostile toward anything Republican lawmakers do.
That includes giving our kids the tools they need to be safe should they encounter a firearm somewhere they probably shouldn't.
I get that there are issues with schools in Oklahoma. That's true of every state, but holy cow, to actively oppose kids being taught safety is a whole new level of unhinged.
