The Captain’s Journal – by Herschel Smith
Jon Bailey spent a Friday afternoon over Christmas break taking his 13-year-old son, Connor, to shoot pistols at Allen Arms Indoor Range in Greenville.
He showed Connor how to load, aim and fire the weapon, but he also instructed him on what to do if he ever saw friends playing with a gun or found a gun lying around.
“He knows to get the heck out of the room and talk to adults,” Bailey said.
Bailey doesn’t call himself a gun fanatic. He wanted to demystify the idea of guns for his son.
But he does think more children should have knowledge of gun safety.
Who instructs children on the gun rights and safety has traditionally been left out of the state’s school systems, but bills pre-filed in both chambers of the South Carolina Legislature would bring gun rights squarely into focus in the classroom.
Whether schools are the right place to instruct students about firearms will be up for debate.
Zero-tolerance policies regarding guns at South Carolina schools has led to a backlash against citizens’ gun rights and a lack of knowledge on how to safely use firearms, Republican state legislators said as they prepared to open a new session in the state Legislature.
State social studies standards that instruct teachers to explain how the Constitution and Bill of Rights helps protect limited government. But schools don’t go far enough to explain gun rights, they said.
One bill — pre-filed in the state House — would create a Second Amendment Awareness Day to be held on Dec. 15 each year in all state schools, complete with a poster or essay contest centered on the theme “The Right To Bear Arms: One American Right Protecting All Others.”
Students — at every grade level — would receive at least three weeks of education on their gun rights based on a curriculum chosen by the state Department of Education and approved or recommended by the National Rifle Association.
[ … ]His idea for the bill came after an incident in a Summerville high school in September where police were notified and a 16-year-old student’s locker searched after he wrote a fictional essay that mentioned purchasing a gun to kill his neighbor’s pet dinosaur.
The student was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after police said he became belligerent.
Clemmons said the incident “shocked” and “offended” him.
“In this case, it squelched a student’s first amendment rights, in responding to an assignment, to talk about the second amendment,” he said.
Students are being punished when they choose to “write about one of their precious American rights,” he said.
Rep. Garry Smith, R-Simpsonville, who co-sponsored the bill, along with Rep. Richard Yow, R-Chesterfield, said the second amendment deserves more instructional time than other amendments because it is the lynchpin for the rest of democracy.
This is all well and good, but I have a better idea. If South Carolina citizens really want to teach children about the second amendment, then get rid of gun-hater and elitist establishment ruler S.C. State Senator Larry Martin (from Pickens) and institute open carry throughout South Carolina. Patriots need to initiate a beat-down to establishment GOP in South Carolina. Until then, it’s just all bluster and hot air to me.
http://www.captainsjournal.com/2015/01/07/gun-rights-education-in-south-carolina/
Yep, teaching the kids about gun rights while sitting in a gun free zone. That makes sense.