Iron County lawmaker may try again to create gun safety education for Utah students
Sep 9, 2024, 6:00 PM | Updated: Sep 10, 2024, 10:25 am
FILE: Dummy gun replicas are laid out during a free gun safety and awareness class during the Rocky Mountain Gun Show at the South Towne Expo Center in Sandy. (Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News)
(Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News)
Editor’s note: This article has been edited to reflect the accurate location of a commenter who added information to a hearing about gun safety education.
SALT LAKE CITY — During the 2021 General Legislative Session, there was pushback to a piece of gun safety legislation that Utah Rep. Rex Shipp proposed. The bill, HB258 Firearm Safety in Schools, would have created a pilot program for a firearm safety course in Utah high schools.
According to the Iron County representative, the pushback initially came from an online comment. The commenter aired their concern before the Senate Education Committee after the bill passed the Utah House.
The commenter told lawmakers that Utah’s public schools could already offer gun safety education. Today, Shipp says that was “bad information.”
Considering gun safety legislation, again
Today, a few weeks after an 8-year-old died by accidentally shooting himself in Lehi, Shipp said he may file the bill again. He said he’s been talking with fellow lawmakers in a second amendment caucus.
“They want to make sure people are educated … to avoid an accidental shooting,” Shipp said of the caucus members.
Lehi City police said the child was alone in a car at a Maverik gas station when the shooting happened. The child died in a hospital.
“Sometimes I think kids run into a firearm, they go, ‘Wow, how do you handle this thing?'” Shipp said.
“Pretty soon they’re grabbing it with a barrel pointed at them. [They’re] not understanding that you always have to treat every firearm as if it’s loaded,” he told KSL NewsRadio’s Dave and Dujanovic.
In 2021, HB258 would have created a 3-year firearm safety pilot program, offered through a public school’s physical education department. The audience would have been those in 9th through 12th grades. The State Board of Education would have been responsible for establishing the instructor qualifications.
Shipp did not specify what a new version of 2021’s HB258 would look like.
The Pew Research Center reported that most of the people (54%) who died by gunfire in 2021 died by suicide. Forty-three percent of gun deaths were murders. Accidental deaths account for 549 of the gun-related deaths in 2021.
