Every Tennessee student would have to get gun safety training at school under new Republican legislation, but some Democrats think the law accepts gun violence at school as a “new normal.”
The Tennessee Schools Against Violence in Education (SAVE) Act already mandates school safety planning strategies. It covers fire emergencies, severe weather events, prohibits weapons, and more. The law also mandates school districts to have procedures in place to respond to the report of a firearm on campus.
A new bill would add gun safety curriculum to the SAVE Act and parents could not opt their child out of the training.
With the new law, three state agencies — the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, the Tennessee Department of Education, and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency — would determine the most appropriate age to begin gun training for kids in school. But classes could start as early as pre-K and continue all the way through high school. Local school districts would then decide how to implement gun safety instruction into their students’ schedules.
The bill would teach students about the safe storage of guns, school safety relating to guns, how to avoid injury if the student finds a gun, to never touch a found gun, and to immediately notify an adult of the location of a found gun. This instruction should be be “viewpoint neutral on political topics, such as gun rights, gun violence, and the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.” The training should also not include the use or presence of live ammunition, live fire, or live guns.
School districts would decide who teaches the gun safety courses. Those courses “are certainly not about how to handle a firearm or proper techniques or anything like that,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Chris Todd (R-Madison County). “This is literally going to be more on the lines of ‘if you see a gun, [tell] an adult.’”
Todd said he sees gun training at school as just an extension of safety training already happening at schools within the SAVE. Act. He said members of gun clubs across the state, including the Alpha Gun Team of Memphis, stand behind the bill, too.
”We see this proposed legislation as a critical step in averting firearm related accidents while fostering greater awareness and responsibility among gun owners,” Todd said in a Tuesday hearing.
Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville), a retired school teacher, said schools have long drilled students to react to acts of nature, like fires and tornadoes. Gun have been around for a ling time, too, she said.
“But we haven’t had our classes shot up,” she said. “This isn’t something we should just accept as the new normal. We can stop this. And this [bill] isn’t going to do it.”
Johnson said mandating students to take the gun safety course could trigger some students who had a history of gun violence in their family and would leave them at school alone without a parent to ensure they are okay.
Todd said students cannot now opt out of fire safety training, even if they’ve been in a fire or lost their home in a fire. Students still need to learn fire safety, he said.
“I just think it’s part of life that we need to learn those skills,” Todd said.
Rep. Vincent Dixie (D-Nashville) argued for an opt-out from the program, saying some parents may not want their children “talking [about], touching, or introduced to guns at all,” especially for some who want to opt out for “religious reasons.”
“We should be able to have someone to opt out of this if they don’t choose this as appropriate for their child,” Dixie said. “I thought we believed in parents’ choice.”
Rep. Mark Cochran (R-Englewood) countered, saying that the “chances of a minor seeing a gun at some point is … that’s a reality of life, as [Todd] mentioned earlier.”
Rep. John Ragan (R-Oak Ridge) told committee members that many teachers are “former veterans who are trained hunters who go through hunter safety training” and could easily teach the courses. He said allowing students to opt out of other safety training courses “is ridiculous” and that a parent’s objection to gun training “is entirely misplaced.”
“It would be the equivalent, for example, of us saying to an Amish parent, because they prefer to ride in a horse and buggy, that their children shouldn’t be trained on how to cross the street with automobile traffic,” Ragan said. “Safety is safety. Opting out of it is ridiculous.”
