Wisconsin Rep. Sondy Pope. (Photo: Joseph W. Jackson III/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism)
The Wisconsin Legislature last week held the first public hearing for a new bill that calls for the development of a gun safety course for public schools. The course would focus primarily on gun safety but would also cover the “history, science, and mathematics of firearms.”
“With so many [Wisconsin] students participating in [shooting sports], it is important to offer students an opportunity to better understand the safety and responsibilities that firearms require,” said Rep. Ken Swowronski in a written statement.
Swowronski emphasized that the proposed legislation does not require schools to include the new course in its selection of electives. The bill merely calls for the development of a course that individual school districts can choose to use or not.
The bill specifically prohibits the presence of live ammunition in the classroom and says nothing about whether or not functional firearms need to be brought into the school to use as examples.
But the non-binding nature of the proposed policy and its emphasis on safety didn’t stop anti-gunners from displaying their ignorance about firearms and pushing their conspiracy theories about the gun lobby.
Wisconsin Rep. Sondy Pope, for instance, worried that a student might bring live ammunition into the gun safety course to use in one of the firearms. But even a rudimentary knowledge of firearms would have told her that by removing the firing pin most guns can be made inoperable while retaining enough functionally to be useful for education.
Safety concerns like these can be answered without much trouble, so the bulk of the testimony against the policy took another mode of attack.
Wisconsin resident Ann Muenster said the bill is nothing more than a “marketing ploy of the gun industry to promote gun sales to a new generation.”
Derek Hoesly agreed, saying “The gun lobby should have no role in deciding the high school curriculum.”
Rev. Scott Marrese-Wheeler reiterated these objections, almost verbatim:
“[This bill] is not even really about teaching our students safety. It has nothing to do with promoting the health and well-being of our students, our neighborhoods, our community and our great state… It is simply another assault on our good senses, our schools, and our students to introduce guns into more public places. The gun manufacturers and the gun lobby simply see this as another way to make a profit.”
Sally Drew also believed the gun lobby is behind the push to teach kids how to handle guns responsibly. “This bill is not really about teaching gun safety,” she said. “It is about teaching children how to shoot, and the purpose is to grow the shooting industry by promoting this activity to children at a young age.”
Other states have already passed similar educational programs, including Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Louisiana, North Carolina, Idaho, and Arizona.
Funny, but I remember quite a few schools that had rifle teams and skeet teams in the 70s… and at my school during hunting season, there wasn’t a pickup in the student parking lot that didn’t have at least one rifle or shotgun in a window rack… and the hunter safety course that is required for a hunting license was given at the school…
Well, by those libs standards, driver’s ed must be a ploy of the auto industry to promote sales of new automobiles and should be stopped immediately!
Ohhh the insanity….
We die from a lack of knowledge More kids are kill because they don’t know the basic skill of Firearms operation, especially automatic weapons. Some children don’t know the power, trigger pull, loaded or unloaded, playing with loaded pistol how detrimental a automatic pistol is.A lot of children go to prison and die from accidents, simply because they have no knowledge of pistol handling. BASIC skills are apart of growing up. Basic driving, swimming, sports, personal defense. They need to know once the ammunition leave that pistol, you can not get it back
I remember in Elementary school, a suburb of Detroit, I brought in two firearms for show and tell. My Mossberg 410 shotgun and Winchester 22… There was never any issue, I showed my firearms and both times gave a mini course on how to safely carry a firearm, store it and the safety features of both guns. I think I was around 7 years old, 2nd or third grade… My how things have changed.
I remember in middle school back in the early seventies we had a firearm safety class that lasted about two hours. A VERY basic safety class. Those basic rules learned have followed me to this day.
YES – by all means, have a mandatory gun safety/history class taught in public schools. The reason the libatards don’t want it? Because it’ll actually draw people into the shooting sport that grow up to be responsible gun owners and enthusiast.
Contact Rep. Sondy Pope, as I have. Let’s try to save some kid’s life! When kids get shot, it messes up the other family members forever. If any readers of this post want to make a difference, contact the Wisconsin legislators.
I had taught our state Hunter Education at the local school for around 10 years. The last year I set up the dates to have the program everything was fine. Then two days before class started I received a letter informing me I had to provide proof of insurance and custodial fees along with a contract I was to sign. I am a volunteer instructor so my budget is $0.00. I confronted the superintendent and he said it was just standard policy and to “just go ahead and sign the contract”. I refused and was allowed to hold the class that year. It was pretty clear the school wanted nothing to do with the program. Now the same school has junior league trap shooting and the participants need the Hunter Education course to participate!!
The assault of the left on common sense appears to be endless! I was president of our “Rifle club” in high school and members brought .22 rifles to school (kept in individual’s lockers!) Safety, responsibility, shooting skills, proper car & maintenance, etc were essential parts of club training! No accidents or safety issues, no criminal activities. Many club members, upon graduation, went into the service and to Vietnam…and did not have to learn what a rifle looked like!
“This bill is not really about teaching gun safety,” she said. “It is about teaching children how to shoot, and the purpose is to grow the shooting industry by promoting this activity to children at a young age.”
Why then do they support sex education in schools? Is the intent to encourage under age children to engage in sexual activity? The hypocrisy is palpable.
I guess to the far left it is right to teach about alternate lifestyles (LGBT) but not fire arm safety and proper use.
Our children are being inductrinated to be left wingers where right is wrong and wrong is right.
Accepting homosexual behavior is far more important than firearm safety by ignorant decision makers. Accidental gun deaths occur mainly in those under 25 years old. Over 1,300 victims of unintentional shootings for the period 2005–2010 were under 25 years of age. Adolescents are particularly susceptible to accidental shootings due to specific behavioral characteristics associated with adolescence, such as impulsivity, feelings of invincibility, and curiosity about firearms. Firearm safety classes can be conduct without any real firearms being in the classrooms with video sources.
But narrow-minded thinking is the same attitude about sex education being also taught in the schools. But these same narrow-minded thinkers are against abortions and females having babies out of wedlock. Preliminary data indicate that 40.7 percent of all 2012 births were out-of-wedlock, plus the spread of STD’s. My question to all those that oppose the trainings, then where should it be taught?
Makes perfect sense to me. It would definitely eliminate accidental shootings in the home caused by lame parents or parent who refuses to lock up their weapons. There are plenty of fast access safes out there now.
Living in Wisconsin, I can say most residents agree teaching firearm safety is a good thing, and I think should be mandatory. The problem here is the governing climate in our capital, Madison is extremely liberal and anti-gun, while the rest of the state (except Milwaukee) is conservative and pro-gun. Sadly, the libtards aren’t considering the families of kids who die every year in our state from accidental discharge and unsafe handling of guns. I suspect this is true of the rest of the country as well. The liberal anti-gunners have a fundamental cognitive dysfunction, impairing their ability to: 1- think straight, 2- recognize the validity of a view they don’t understand. Basically, they’re what is retarding this country in many ways.
If they did try to teach firearm safety in schools, there would be so many snowflake parents and teachers horrified and crying about the prospect of their snowflake kids learning such a “barbaric” subject that districts would be forced to drop it anyway.
Just shows how stupid these people are. It should not surprise anyone with any common sense. They did elect Al Frankin didn’t they? Or was that in Minnesota, does not make much difference, same part of the country.
Brock, There is a HUGE political ideological difference in the midwest. Illinois to my south and Minnesota to my west are left (liberal) and Wisconsin is about as red (conservative) as can be. We elected a controversial Republican Governor, absolutely hated by the left 3 times (2 regular and once during a recall election). Need I remind you that Arizona shares the southern border of California, and those two states have completely different view on guns.
Is it marketing of scissors that is behind the “don’t run with scissors” mantra that our mothers and teachers chanted when we were learning how to use this particularly useful and fun tool in primary school?
The fact of the matter, whether the main stream media and the rest of the uneducated ostriches want to admit it or not, is that gun ownership and use is common among most rural families and gun safety that used to be taught by Dad and Mom to young kids beginning at 5 or 6 can only be enhanced by additional training and it will certainly not hurt the kids that are exposed to guns but may not have parents who have been and are reluctant to learn and teach their own kids. Partially due to concern that a parent who teaches their child to shoot will be subjected to ridicule by these same nitwits. Kind of like how Dad and Mom used to teach kids how to drive at a young age but it is now something taught in school and more often then not, for a profit.
I taught my wife and all of our four daughters to shoot at a very young age and we also taught them to drive long before they hit the age of Driver’s Ed. They are safe and competent drivers as a result of having the basic skills that their mother and I gave them reinforced by the driving instructors. They are also dead eyes at the range and should they choose to continue their shooting education, the added instruction is welcomed, as any training in any skill is a good thing. Ignorance can be trained out. Stupid is forever. Only the terminally stupid would argue against any kind of training.
We had a very serious drunk driving problem– We educated, legislated, and enforced our way to a much better position. We teach household safety eg fire protection, 911 use, home security, drivers Ed, cold/hot weather safety, farm safety in many of our rural areas. All of these issues are potential hazards to our children. There are 200 million guns in the US, and MANY children are shot by “accident” in our country every year, why would we NOT teach firearm safety?
Guy, you got it. Part of the problem is that the term “gun safety” has been co-opted and distorted by Mothers Demand Action and other anti-gun organizations to be the same as “gun control.”
I work with the NRA’s Eddie Eagle GunsSafe Program for kids and understand the situation firsthand. I have been verbally assaulted at various events by the Muthas (get my drift?) who believe, as does the “Wisconsin resident” quoted in the article that Eddie Eagle is part of a “marketing ploy of the gun industry to promote gun sales to a new generation,” much as they claimed that Eddie was the “Joe Camel” of the gun industry.
While we promote Eddie Eagle wherever we can – particularly at events gun owners frequent – the Bloomberg folks do not. If they were truly concerned about gun safety, shouldn’t they go where the gun owners are? No, they, unlike me, are too thin-skinned to deal with possible verbal abuse; perhaps aware of their bankrupt arguments, they prefer to preach to the choir.
We have tried to get the Eddie Eagle program into our local schools but have been thwarted – even though local police and public safety agencies promote it – because of politics. Eddie doesn’t say that guns are bad, so how can he be a spokesbird (LOL) for gun “safety?” I wish that I had the proverbial nickle for every teacher who asked for more information about gun safety but told me that she or he would not be able to get Eddie Eagle approved by local school administrators.
Last year a representative of the Muthas spoke to my city’s governing Council about gun “safety,” and presented several proposals supported by the Bloomberg lobby; a few weeks later an NRA spokesperson presented not only Eddie Eagle, but other actual gun safety programs offered by the NRA and the National Shooting Sports Foundation. One of our Councillors asked why NRA and NSSF did not offer any “proposals” concerning “gun safety.”
Huh? Did she not present to the Council programs that were already in place, available to all, and demonstrated as effective? Well no, his idea of ” gun-safety proposals” was more gun-control laws such as the several times proposed – and several times defeated – bills to “close the gun-show loophole” sent to our State legislators. He’s now running for Mayor, a truly scary prospect.
Don’t schools teach driver’s safety anymore? Is that the automobile industry trying to sell cars? Same arguement.
I many areas, people have guns for hunting and to protect livestock. Is this going to change? Do these antigunners actually believe that there will be no use for guns by the future citizens of this country? I know that is what they want, but guns are nessesary for millions of homes, even if you take self defense out of the picture, which is what they want to accomplish.
Your comment says more than a mouthful. The opposition to any sort of firearms training in schools feeds into a myopic, circular argument.
People see no problem with driver education because so few of us are unfamiliar with automobiles. They see a problem with gun safety because so few of them are familiar with guns.
Perhaps if they were educated about guns beyond the bleeding-heart left-leaning liberal mantra that “guns are bad” they might see the value in gun-safety education. Even if they see guns as their enemy, knowing their enemy might enlighten them.
Sounds just like the arguments about sex education in schools. Keep them uninformed and let them pay the consequences if they make a mistake.
I find your comment interesting because the opposition to sex education is from the right, while opposition to gun education is from the left. Considering as the education establishment comprises left-leaning liberals, I have no compunction in calling them out as hypocrites.
“This bill is not really about teaching gun safety,” she said. “It is about teaching children how to shoot, and the purpose is to grow the shooting industry by promoting this activity to children at a young age.”,
Whaaaaaatttt?
Any responsible parent would do exactly that!! I know I did and they are prepared to handle anything from a .380 to an AK-47, I took the time!!
Every single school in America should be using the N.R.A.’s Eddie Eagle Program.
Unless the children are taught gun safety, There will be more and more tragic shootings.
Ronald, I don’t mean this critically, but what have you done in that regard? Many people don’t realize that they can get into the fight. If you know of a local law-enforcement agency or school that supports the program, get in touch with them and help out. If those don’t exist, contact the NRA and volunteer for the Eddie Eagle program. They’ll provide materials you can distribute. If you can’t get into the public schools, do as we have here in NM and take Eddie’s message to gun shows, health fairs, outdoor shows, and as one of our young volunteers has, the Scouts, church groups, and private schools. You can apply for an NRA grant to cover your expenses, even to get an Eddie Eagle costume so he can appear where you go. It’s a tough row to hoe, but as you have observed, a necessary one to cultivate.
We can agree or disagree with others ideas. But be respectful and not insul telling words like \”Idiots\” because we disagree with them. Now regarding the subject of this article: Should schools teach children gun safety? In my opinion I believe they shouldn\’t. Gun safety is important and mandatory for anyone who decides to own a firearm which is a personal choice, but not relevant for those who decided not to own one. The constitution gives the right to own firearms. But it also gives the freedom to decide to do it or not. And don\’t take me as an antigummer, I am the one who own several firearms for self defense, sport, and conseal and carry every day because it is my choice and not dictated by others.
Sharp, your an idiot. Did you even read the article? It’s all voluntary to adopt it.
And you think all accidental shootings of kids is because of choice to be fatally ignorant? Get a clue.
Sharp, I’m not going to call you a name but can say that you are definitely not “sharp.” Your narrative screams of feeblemindedness. Firearm owner ship may be a personal choice, but access to to a gun is not about ownership. Too many kids in our inner cities and rural communities find guns which sometimes result in deadly consequences. In my work, I see it all too often. We have laws in Wisconsin against access of loaded guns to minors, but it still happens. Having another level of education can only save lives. Laws don’t do crap. Why not solve the heroin epidemic by making it illegal? Stupid people.
Sorry, Sharp, but you are wrong. Indeed in too many cases, “dead” wrong.
Your notion that ” Gun safety is important and mandatory for anyone who decides to own a firearm which is a personal choice, but not relevant for those who decided not to own one” might work if no one ever came in contact with firearms not their own. Gun safety is indeed relevant for everyone, even non-gunowners. As a volunteer with the NRA’s Eddie Eagle Gunsafe program I often talk with folks who tell me that their guns are secure and their kids know not to touch them. Okay, but what about guns in your neighbor’s home? Do your kids understand that just because someone else does not take the same care as you do it’s okay to handle their guns?
Firearm safety? Heck no. Transgenderism, exploratory sex, teaching sex positions, LGBT dogma, indoctrination, liberalism, anti-God, fascism, racism, SJW, and etc….sure, no problem
Santa Maria!
Hey, I’m with you, but how do we change it? Too many of us confine our comments to online discussions when we need to say something to society at large. The inclusion in public-school curricula of all the things you mention and deplore only got there because too few of us opposed them.
The squeeky wheel gets the grease.
Of course theu would oppose it. That would completely undermine what they have been trying to do and in many cases have been successful at which ia constantly paint firearms in a negative light so as to make the mere idea of onw taboo, and the slghtest hint of one causing a hysterical, uncontrolable emotional response. They don’t want kida to be any safer. They just want more victims to use for their agenda and more mindless drones to follow them.
Stop and think for a moment of the things kids learn at school these days that do not come from paid instructors. Personally I think they are better served by knowledge than curiosity. After a year of political science I did not become a politician.
Jeff, you are right to consider “the things kids learn at school these days that do not come from paid instructors.” Unfortunately in our country most of what they are provided are things that come from paid instructors, aka the education establishment.
Like you, “I think they are better served by knowledge than curiosity.” That is why there has been such an explosion of Charter Schools in recent years. Unfortunately, most Charter Schools (at least in my state) must conform to standards set by – wait for it – the education establishment.
Glad my kids are smarter than this. They have been taught how to disarm every firearm in our household, if only to do the same if presented with a firearm at a friends house. It’s not my kids I worry about, it’s the idiots these lawmakers are attempting to protect by teaching them negligence is the right way to grow in life. Because if one of the students who didn’t get safety education and then killed a friends through improper possession and handling of a firearm, they could very well be charged with a negligent death, if not at least sued for it. It’s like some parents and non parents (politicians) don’t want the youth to have all the common sense tools necessary for a long and prosperous life.
Sorry Jonathan, I can’t agree.
While I applaud your care and concern in teaching your kids “how to disarm every firearm in [y]our household,” “if presented with a firearm at a friends house” they should be taught simply to not touch it, if for no other reason than to let their friends know that they should not handle firearms without adult supervision.
If, however, their friend disagrees, then yes, they should disarm it. Then leave their friend’s home and not go back.
Well I do agree with you Jonathan, I started teaching my kids when they were seven years old , some people may not agree with me starting so young , but these are my kids we are talking about not theirs, anyhoo by eight years old eith er one of my kids could safely pick up ,rack and shoot handguns very well . But before that could happen they both learned about the safety aspects of gun operation. So if some other kid did start messing with a gun somewhere, my kids would know what to do. They are all grown up now and both accompany me to the range occasionally. Gun safety should be taught at an early age so accidental deaths do not occur , due to ignorance of the fact !