Mandatory Safety Training?

[Jason73]

There have been mutiple cases of accidental deaths in the national news recently. The most recent is a man who killed his pregnant wife and unborn child while "cleaning his gun". Another was a man in San Antonio who killed a boy on a trampoline with a stray bullet fired at a target in the man's backyard.

This is going to be a rough election year. The anti gun crowd is looking for anything and everything to support their agenda, even more so after the SCOTUS affirmed the 2nd amendment as an individual right. I cant help but think that every time one of these stories appear in the news they help support the anti-gun crowd's case and weaken ours.

I am the last person that want's MORE restrictions on our ability to exercise our 2nd amendment rights. I also don't want myself or my children to become a statistic resulting from someone who has no business handling a firearm because they are clueless as to its safe operation. Nearly everytime I go to a public range there is at least one person there who obviously has no clue about safe gun handling; finger on the trigger when not on target, covering people with the muzzle "hey Johnny, how come this thing is firing to the right?....." etc.

Just last Monday some co-workers and I were examing one of their pistols, one of them was examining it and covered me with the muzzle. I grabbed his wrist and moved it away from me while telling him don't ever point a gun at someone unless your planning to kill them, his response was "its ok, its not loaded" even though he had just picked it up off the desk and no clue as to its condition. ....my point is too many people just don't "get it".

I think more needs to be done to educate people regarding the safe handling of firearms and Im just curious to see if Im a minority in this opinion.


regards,

Jason





flame shield engaged

[boomerang]

I think more needs to be done to educate people regarding the safe handling of firearms and Im just curious to see if Im a minority in this opinion.

Absolutely. There should be Eddie Eagle programs in every elementary school in this country. Older kids should be taught firearms safety and driver safety and safer sex.

[agbullet2k1]

I believe that ignorance is a huge problem when it comes to guns. While not knowing how to program your VCR won't put you on the news, not knowing how to clean your gun properly might.

I'd be all for mandatory gun education, given several conditions were met:
1) It would be used only for educating with a 100% graduation goal, not restricting, such as voter tests were used for.
2) The course would be short and free, since anything else would be taxing a right.
3) I'd prefer it be tought in schools at a young age, since most are concerned with kids anyway, and they already teach sex ed (a much more dangerous topic, in my opinion).

Granted there are no conditions written into 2A, but also, most people grew up with a more than necessary amount of firearm experience back then. I'd be willing to wager most accidents are from people who have never taken a safety course, never read any articles on gun safety, didn't get knowledge passed down from parents (or parents didn't own guns), and just didn't know how to operate the thing. My main point is that I think classes should be a service provided rather than a restriction imposed.

[SCone]

Why is it the answer to every problem in society is better education EXCEPT when it comes to firearms?

There should be mandatory firearms training in all schools, K-12. Teach the little buggers the Eddie Eagle rules & the high school proper technique.

Going by the "better education" crowd, they should all be model citizens when they graduate.

[bdickens]

I didn't vote because I didn't see what I thought was the correct response. In school, we already teach kids to call 911, teach them to avoid talking to or accepting rides from strangers, teach them fire safety, teach them "safe sex," teach them all kinds of safety information. Why not add a block of instruction in firearms safety as well? Wouldn't that make sense? Of course it would.

[tboesche]

I am inclined to vote the "Darwin' choice. As long as these idjits shoot themselves. The problem is, they generally tend to shoot the innocents. Like the guy that recently shot his pregnant wife.

I would like to see firearm safety taught in schools, to include a range session. The only problem I see with it is, we may be also teaching the criminal's to be, better weapons control. Definately NOT what we want

[lrb111]

Let's go for bringing back shooting teams as an intramural sport. That should help it seep into the rest of the school.
We are getting our butts kicked regularly in international, and Olympic competitions.

Want a selling point? "We are losing our global leadership standing, in "accuracy", no less. They also help students immensely in their ability to concentrate, focus, and improves other hand-eye sports skills."

I feel that this tact is not a half-measure.

[Lumberjack98]

Personal responsibility...personal responsibility....personal responsibility!!!!

[Liko81]

You can teach and train all you want; the problem is complacency. As people become used to handling their firearms, they lose a bit of the healthy respect they have as new gun owners. After a year, or 5 or even 10, without a negligent discharge, people say "I'm safe with a handgun, I know what to do and I can relax on the four rules". This is when NDs happen. There is very little that can be done about it; it's human nature. All that can be done is to let the accidents happen and pray to your chosen deity that nobody gets hurt. Alternately, if two responsible gun owners live together, they have the opportunity to catch each other violating the rules and keep each other honest, but in the majority of cases there's one gun owner and either an S.O. who simply tolerates them, or nobody else around.

[anygunanywhere]

The day you pass legal carry for averyone where LEO can carry including schools and get school districts to allow firearm training in all schools I will support training for all kiddos.

If someone opts their kids out of training, so be it.

Nothing should be mandatory to exercise a right.

Requiring mandatory training to purchase/own/carry a firearm is lunacy and is unconstitutional, and I voted that way.

Anygunanywhere

[stroo]

I think we ought to make it a mandatory part of the 6th grade curriculm in every school. Then we also ought to mandate that everyone needs to have at least one gun in their house for home defense.

[mr.72]

there are a dozen reasons or more to support firearm training in public school. for that matter, there are reasons to teach self defense in public school as well. maybe you end up training both the good and the bad guys but at least you put the BGs on notice that their victims may be armed and properly trained.

if they are going to confiscate my tax money then they might as well use it to teach kids what I think kids should learn.

[Liko81]

I think we ought to make it a mandatory part of the 6th grade curriculm in every school. Then we also ought to mandate that everyone needs to have at least one gun in their house for home defense.

No. Just as people have the right to keep and bear arms, they also have the right NOT to keep and bear arms. The first drafts of the 2A included a "conscientious objector" clause stating that no person scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to do so. It's the same as any other property; you cannot force me to own a boat, or a car, or a house. You might encourage same by making them easy to own, and you might require that if you own one thing you must own something else (insurance for your car, smoke detectors for your home, and yes, a lock for your gun) but you cannot compel me to own a smoke detector if I live in the back of my station wagon. You cannot force me to buy liability insurance for a car I've never owned. And you cannot force me by law to own a gun.

Now, when I was an elementary school student in Austin, we had a police officer come around one day to give a lecture on firearms safety. At that age, the safest rules are "stop, don't touch, leave the area, tell an adult". However, he had an interesting demonstration; he armed a rat trap and gave it to a student, who passed it around from there. I'll tell you, I have never seen, before or since, such a quiet or respectful group of kids as when they were passing that rat trap around. And it never snapped, not once, till the officer took it back, and set it off himself intentionally by whacking it with his speech notes. The idea, of course, is that like a gun, a rat trap is dangerous, but it has to be set off, and if you handle it carefully it is as safe as if unarmed. Those kinds of lectures do some good; "stop, don't touch, leave the area, tell an adult" keeps kids from hurting themselves or others, but it also instills fear. Prefacing that with a demonstration that an inanimate object can only hurt someone who is careless with it removes a great deal of that fear and replaces it with respect.

[Pinkycatcher]

Liko, the problem with your argument is that a home and a car are not included in the bill of rights so those "rights" can be infringed, but unlike those the right to own arms cannot be infringed, so it can be argued that you can't infringe on it (mind-blowing right?) and the Heller decision also said you can't force someone to keep a gun lock and/or disassembled in their home. Now you probably can force someone to sell a gun lock with a gun (which in my opinion isn't a bad idea, I sometimes use a lock for my little 10/22 if I'm going to a range and if I'm moving it)

[KJV]

In school, we already teach kids to call 911, teach them to avoid talking to or accepting rides from strangers, teach them fire safety, teach them "safe sex," teach them all kinds of safety information. Why not add a block of instruction in firearms safety as well? Wouldn't that make sense? Of course it would.

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
John 8:32