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English, American history, and gun rights according to the NRA—that could be a rundown of a South Carolina class schedule if a conservative lawmaker get his way.
Two bills already filed in the South Carolina legislature aim to place gun safety classes in the state’s public schools.
The more controversial version, sponsored by state Rep. Alan Clemmons, requires that schools offer a curriculum approved by the National Rifle Association. Clemmons says the course would be optional for parents and students.
He would also create a gun awareness day on December 15—which unfortunately happens to also be the date of the Sandy Hook shootings. Clemmons claims that part was a coincidence.
On the awareness day, Clemmons would require schools to “conduct poster or essay contests” based on the Second Amendment.
South Carolina has a zero-tolerance weapons policy. According to Clemmons, this policy led one school to call the police on a 16-year-old student who wrote a fictional essay about killing his neighbor’s pet dinosaur with a gun.
“In this case, it squelched a student’s first amendment rights, in responding to an assignment, to talk about the second amendment,” Clemmons told the Greenville News.
These gun rights classes would continue from elementary through high school, FOX Carolina reports, in an interview with co-sponsor Rep. Garry Smith:
In these early stages, Rep. Smith knows the bill will be in for a lot of discussion and changes, but believes the Founding Fathers put the right to bear arms as number two on the Bill of Rights, because it helps protect all the other rights.
Clemmons told WCIV he has been surprised by the attention his bill has received.
A second, separate bill would make gun safety courses an option for an elective in schools. The course would have students visit a gun range and learn to handle them, along with studying gun rights history. The sponsor of this bill, state Sen. Lee Bright, likened his idea to elective driving courses in schools.
(h/t Daily Caller)
