Memphis Parents Learn They Can’t Opt Kids Out of Gun Safety Class, But Why Would They Want To?

There are some classes that no parent should be forced to have their child sit through. While some of those classes might sound great on paper to a lot of people, the concerns are that the class won’t reflect the parents’ worldview, thus creating some issues. It would be like having a class on the New Testament, and a Jewish parent preferring their child not to have to sit through that.

But then there are classes that don’t reflect a worldview so much as simply making sure the kids aren’t stupid, such as driver’s safety classes. Those might not be mandated for kids who aren’t going to drive–which seems to be an alarming number of today’s youth, to be honest–but you can’t opt out of them.

Yet it seems some parents in Memphis asked if they could opt their kids out of Tennessee’s mandatory gun safety class.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools physical education and health teachers began leading one-day gun safety classes under a new state law requiring firearm safety curriculum in all Tennessee public schools.

District leaders said the training should be finished by fall break. According to the 2024 state law, the curriculum needs to be “viewpoint neutral on political topics,” including gun rights and the Second Amendment.

The safety lessons are necessary to prevent accidental shootings, district leaders said, but some parents are skeptical that the program will make an impact, and others asked during a virtual town hall Thursday if they could opt their children out of the classes.

Jim Harbin, special projects coordinator for Memphis-Shelby County’s health services office, said that isn’t allowed. He compared the lessons to fire and lockdown drills.

Harbin isn’t wrong here, and I’m left wondering just who would want their kids to opt out of such a class.

I mean, the curriculum is required to be neutral on issues like gun rights. It’s not pushing a narrative, either for or against the Second Amendment, but is instead simply teaching kids basic gun safety. 

While many parents don’t own guns and may well take great pains to make sure their child isn’t exposed to firearms, they either have to hover over them all the time–and I mean all of the time–or they risk the possibility of their child being completely unequipped to deal with a firearm found in the wild.

Yes, responsible gun owners should secure their guns, but criminals trying to dump a firearm so the cops don’t catch them with it aren’t going to be worried about kids stumbling upon the firearm. That has happened. Other people have dropped a gun and been unaware of it until later.

Basic firearm safety courses would teach kids what to do should they encounter one. It’ll likely go into all the various things that one should do in such a situation, as well as cover things like the four rules of firearm safety, should they go to a gun range somewhere down the road.

I cannot, for the life of me, see why any parent would want to opt their child out of something like that.

Unfortunately, the anti-gun side has done quite a number on people’s brains in recent years anytime this subject has come up. They act like it’s indoctrinating kids into becoming NRA members or something. Frankly, making more people into lawful gun owners doesn’t sound like such a bad thing to me, but to these people, it does, and I might understand the desire to opt out of such a class if that were the case.

But it’s not.

Why people would take issue with a safety class is beyond me.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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