This woman’s son was killed in a gun accident, and she’s become an advocate for safety training:
She’s convinced that gun-safety courses, especially for teenagers, can avert tragedies such as the one that forever changed two families.
The foundation is circulating an online petition — about 440 people have signed — asking for mandatory safety training. Stein plans to send the petition to Barack Obama.
”People who don’t have bad intent should at least be taught how to handle guns,” Stein said. “You don’t let [teens] behind the wheel without knowing how to drive . . . This is not about taking people’s rights; it’s about keeping people safe.”
Morris Stein bought a gun after graduating from Dr. Michael Krop Senior High School. It was a choice more whimsical than ominous: an antique French rifle.
”I’m allowed to have a long gun,” he told his mother. “I’m an American citizen . . . No one knows where the clip is but me.”
Mandating gun safety training in high schools is a proposal I would gladly stand by Robin Stein and advocate. I think everyone should know how to safely handle a firearm, including not pointing it in unsafe directions, or keeping firearms gratuitously loaded and unsecured. But I won’t get behind any proposal to make training a prior restraint on purchasing a firearm.
Religion in the wrong hands can be quite deadly, yet we do not require training in peaceable religion before purchasing Bibles, Torahs or Korans. We do not require people first read The Gulag Archipelago before purchasing a copy of The Communist Manifesto, or the Diary of Anne Frank before buying Mein Kampf. I agree that we need more education on firearms, but that education cannot be a barrier to the exercise of a constitutional right.