Arkansas Requiring Schools To Teach Firearms Safety
A while back, we speculated that there was something magical in the drinking water of Arkansas, as the state gets more and more based. Guess what, it’s happened again! Now, the state is requiring mandatory firearms safety classes for public schools starting this year.
Based Arkansas @ TFB:
Safety first
No doubt hoplophobes will decry this move as an attempt to militarize the state’s young people, but a careful reading of the HB1117 mentions no such silliness. Instead, it is quite openly an attempt to educate young people about firearms in order to prevent accidents. Section 1 opens with these words:
(a) It is the intent of the General Assembly to:
(1) Protect Arkansas children from the accidental discharge of firearms by providing age-appropriate firearm education and instruction; and
(2) Empower the Arkansas State Game and Fish Commission to work with the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education to create and approve age-appropriate firearm safety courses.
Later it says that they want to teach kids what to do—or what not to do—if they encounter an unsecured firearm. The training may include off-site live-fire training, and will include instruction on safe handling and safe storage of firearms. The safety training program will be developed by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and the state's Department of Education. The live-fire training will only be done with parental permission.
You can see the full bill here.
The bill was sponsored by Rep. R. Scott Richardson from the town of Bentonville. According to Richardson, the idea for the bill came when he talked to his neighbors and discussed the possibility of children encountering firearms that were not locked up, perhaps when visiting a neighbor’s house as they played with other kids.
The intent is for children to know how to act around firearms in such scenarios, avoiding tragedies from incorrect handling of guns.
The training programs are supposed to start in the 2025-2026 school year, and will be taught in open enrollment public charter schools and public schools.
Professional hoser with fudd-ish leanings.
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Wow, actual good legislation from a Republican legislator in a Republican-controlled state, I'm legit shocked.
Statistics on sex education in schools have long made it undeniably obvious that teaching kids early-- and honestly-- about potentially dangerous situations makes them dramatically less likely to engage in risky behavior, and to grow up with healthier attitudes about those situations in non-dangerous contexts, and it's about damn time the same understanding of basic child psychology and educational practices be applied to firearms again. It's been true since forever that treating anything as a taboo subject is the most surefire way to guarantee that kids will jump right into it as soon as your back is turned, and presenting anything potentially dangerous-- sex, drugs, guns, cars, whatever-- as being universally bad and then walking away without bothering to explain why they're dangerous and why some people do it anyway and how it can be done safely only guarantees that when curious children and rebellious teens encounter those things in the wild when there are no responsible adults around, they'll have no way of protecting themselves.
And relevant to our interests here, kids who grow up with an honest, fact-based understanding of how firearms operate and how to operate them safely and how horrible the effects of operating them unsafely can be, are kids who will grow up immunized against the fearmongering nonsense of anti-gun politics and be far less likely to support inane gun control efforts as adults.
I was always with my dad when he went hunting. When I was 4, my father shot a deer. He showed me and my brother what a firearm can do and why we should never touch them without his presences. Like most kids of my era, we were not confused about dangerous things. Firearms were not the mysterious forbidden fruit, but another dangerous tool that was respected. When I was of age I took and passed hunter safety. Why this is type of instruction is not mandatory is bewildering to me.