I share the same concerns expressed by others on this one. Let me add a few other concerns.
Obviously, we all favor education on firearms safety. We've been trying for years to get schools to provide access to NRA Eddie Eagle type safety instruction on equal footing as they provide to UTA and Union Pacific for train crossing safety, Rocky Mountain Power for power line safety, MADD for DUI and alcohol safety, the fire department for fire safety, and the local police for DARE and other anti-drug, anti-violence, and stranger danger instruction. The schools have always opposed any kind of even "ownership neutral" instruction on gun safety, much less anything that might actually presuppose that guns in homes are a good thing. So I have natural concerns about how any school district would handle this from the get go.
And even if a school were to have the NRA or shooting sports association provide material, unless very carefully worded, what prevents the Brady Bunch, Utahns Against Guns, or other such groups from proposing material to be included in these lessons/discussions/presentations?
I think there is great value in providing some instruction to parents about how to assess risks and store guns properly for the situation. What is proper for a family with small children may be different than is needed for a single young adult who never has children in the home. A gun owner with a family member with mental health problems might need different storage options than would a family with perfectly healthy, well-adjusted teenagers who are active in the shooting sports. An urban family whose children's friends include many not familiar with proper gun safety might need something different than would a rural family living in a culture where everyone knows as well not to play with guns as they do not to put bobby pins into electrical outlets.
But I very much oppose singling out guns for special legislation. Guns are dangerous. So too are car keys, household chemicals and drugs, gasoline, and a host of other common household items. While I support education I vigorously oppose any legal mandates (criminal or civil liability) that treat constitutionally protected small arms more stringently than every other dangerous item in a home. I believe current negligence laws are sufficient to cover all of these items.
I fear (an excess of paranoia perhaps) that any kind of formalized government instruction on safe storage sets the stage for someone to come along and suggest that if the recommendations are good enough for formal education, they should be made mandatory in law.
I also worry about any setting that deals with this kind of instruction too easily including polls or questionnaires of children regarding what guns are in their homes, how they are stored, etc.
I recall some very graphic and frank anti-suicide presentations when I was in high school. I think they were a good thing and can admit they have had some positive influence on me personally if for no other reason than reminding me that while life can be very fragile, it can also be annoyingly tenacious when you don't want it to be. The images of the fellow who survived an attempted suicide by eating a shotgun barrel left a lasting impression. (He survived. But the condition of his face was enough to make any sane person not want to be alive.)
But these were presentation. There was time for students to ask questions. But nobody was asking any questions of the students. Nobody was gathering any data. And nobody was being referred to a shrink or put into some database based on what he said or asked. And of course no attempt to find out who owned guns though in 1980s rural Utah you could just about have taken every name from the white pages as a gun owner. I just don't trust today's schools and government not to violate the privacy of students and their parents.
Like sex ed, and suicide, gun safety is a topic that could benefit from some sound educational presentations in schools. But given the highly divergent views and politicization of these topics, any such discussion under the direction of government has the real possibility of moving into a violation of rights or undermining of one set of family values or another.
I think the bill is well intentioned. But I think a one line addition to code is likely to cause far more problems than it fixes.
Charles