Texas House Contemplates Teaching Gun Handling in High School

A Member of my State House, the Texas House of Representatives, has a new bill filed this week that authorizes public high schools to teach courses on firearms and how to shoot them.

 

My, what a great idea.

The bill, filed by East Texas State Rep James White, R-Hillister as HB 1142, will allow the state’s 1100 school districts to offer classes for 9^th to 12^th graders with a curriculum that includes “training and educating young people on their rights and responsibilities, based on the Second Amendment, liberty, constitutionalism and being members of a free society.”

White said that the course could be offered as an elective, but I have to say, with the multi-tasked curriculum that these new courses include, the courses could be offered to replace for example, a social studies course, like the 1 semester required course in US Government.

Or it could be a PE course.

Hunting is a sport, after all.

And the course is going to be multi-disciplinary in that it will teach the handling and use of not only hunting rifles but also shotguns, pistols and revolvers.

There was no specific mention of training in the use of assault rifles or semi-automatic pistols, although one could conclude that these are necessarily included as part and parcel of the tools necessary for proper home defense.

And ever-farsighted, White included words in his bill that required that the people teaching the firearm training course must be certified handgun instructors or law enforcement officers. No mention of the instructor being certified to teach in secondary classrooms or needing to take a TB test, but I assume that this was an oversight and will be corrected in the amendment process when this bill reaches the House floor.

The only downside that I can foresee is that school districts might have to take on more liability insurance to cover themselves if someone suffers an injury during the training. But as White, himself, pointed out, there are all sorts of dangerous activities that take place in high school such as chemistry experiments and football practice.

Gee, he has a point. Besides, what could happen to someone at a shooting range, anyway?

And there is the added benefit that having such courses offered by high schools might just decrease the dropout rate as well as boost the grades of that group of students known as gangbangers who will simply flock to these courses as a way to hone their firearm handling skills and learn of their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Truly a win-win for Texas schools.