Arizona Republicans want public
schools to teach children what to do when they encounter a gun, but they
refuse to support laws around safe firearm storage that could prevent
that from being a problem in the first place. 

On Monday, the GOP-controlled Arizona House of Representatives gave preliminary approval to Senate Bill 1424,
which would require schools to design curriculum for all K-12 students
on firearm safety awareness. The proposal prohibits using an actual gun
during instruction and limits discussion topics to accident prevention
and “personal safety awareness.” 

But teachers and students would be
explicitly forbidden from discussing the morality of possessing a gun,
public policies concerning them or whether a student’s family members
have responsible firearm storage practices in their homes. 

Similar Republican-led efforts to force schools to teach courses on gun safety have been pushed since at least 2022,
with no success. Critics argue the proposals aim to give gun culture
and the National Rifle Association a foothold in public schools. A core
part of the latest iteration outlines what to teach students to do if
they come across a gun: don’t touch it, leave the area and tell a
trusted adult. Those instructions echo the “stop, don’t touch, run away, tell an adult” catchphrase used by Eddie the Eagle, an NRA gun safety mascot. 

While Republicans on Monday framed
the bill as a way to keep kids safe, Democrats unanimously opposed the
legislation, saying it unnecessarily burdens teachers and doesn’t
actually help prevent gun violence. 

Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, D-Tucson, sought to amend the proposal to include a version of “Christian’s Law,”
a gun storage requirement that Democrats have tried to pass for years.
The shortened version would require gun owners to take reasonable
measures to ensure a minor can’t access their gun and punishes them with
a class 4 felony if a minor causes the death of another person using a
firearm that wasn’t properly secured. 

Gutierrez pointed out that firearms
have become a leading cause of death among children and said that
concrete steps to prevent that trend from continuing are necessary. Since
2020, firearms have replaced car crashes as the No. 1 cause of death among children 17 and younger in the U.S. 

The amendment failed when every
Republican in the chamber voted to defeat it. Gutierrez lambasted that
move and said the proposal unfairly puts the onus of preventing gun
violence on children when it should be on the adults. 

“You cannot rely on students to fix
the gun problem that our adults in this state have had,” she said. “It
is not a six-year-old’s responsibility to see a firearm and do what’s
right with it.”

Republicans, meanwhile, touted the
proposal as a compromise between upholding Second Amendment rights and
teaching children how to stay safe. 

“We have to respect the Second
Amendment and we have to train our kids on the importance of respecting
the great responsibility and the great danger that comes along with
seeing a firearm and not having the requisite skills that go along with
that,” said Rep. Matt Gress, R-Phoenix.

The bill has yet to undergo a final
vote, but is likely to win approval from the GOP majority. But without
bipartisan support and with multiple public education advocacy groups
registered as opposed to it, the legislation is likely to earn a veto
from Gov. Katie Hobbs.