In some parts of the country, kids grow up understanding about firearms and firearm safety. Hunting is a normal part of life, as is the fact that wild animals are in the vicinity and not all of them are always as scared of you as you are of them.
But other parts have never really seen that. Large urban centers just don't have the same needs, so kids often grow up not knowing anything about guns they didn't see on TV, which is just a terrible way to learn about them.
In Arkansas, a bill seeks to change that by mandating firearm safety in public schools. Some people, however, have a problem with that:
A new law signed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders requires yearly gun safety courses for students in public schools.
According to House Bill 1117, now Act 229, schools would use videos, online resources and live demonstrations off campus as part of that education.
Some parents like Donny Kennedy say they feel like this could be good for the state’s school systems and others, like Mathew Hasen, say it will only create more problems.
...
But despite lawmakers’ attempt to crack down on gun safety, Hasen believes the new law could only make things worse.
“Having kids more comfortable with guns could possibly lead to more school shootings I believe,” Hasen said.
First, this is age-appropriate training, which will reflect more on where they are in their development. Plus, any gun safety training has to include at least some degree of discussion about how deadly a mishandled firearm might actually be.
I also doubt that the safety training will include live firearms, which means no one is growing more comfortable with firearms by learning how to be safe around them.
Plus, this argument is beyond idiotic on the surface of things.
Let's keep in mind that guns were common parts of American life for more than two centuries before they started being pushed more and more toward the fringes of society by anti-gun leftists, really starting in the 1970s and earlier, but hitting its stride in the 1990s following the 1994 Assault Weapon Ban.
Guess what else happened in the 1990s.
Go on, guess.
Columbine.
Columbine is typically considered the beginning of the modern mass shooting era. Many mass killers idolize the Columbine killers and hold them to be martyrs. That incident spurred countless mass killings and plots for such massacres.
That was at a time when a lot of kids weren't comfortable with guns anymore.
The idea that comfort with firearms leads to massacres is about as ridiculous of an idea as one is likely to find.
Especially when we have a chance to keep kids from injuring or killing themselves because they encounter a firearm somewhere they probably shouldn't encounter one. Keeping kids in the dark about this doesn't help, especially when it's backed up by such a ridiculous argument.
Then again, what else could we expect from an anti-gun jihadist who seems to think guns are really cursed items from a fantasy game that will drive all who wield them to insanity sooner or later?
