Sick Transit

Volokh has a story about a state legislator in California who wants to create an optional firearms safety curriculum. Of course, opposition is strong. What struck me most is Volokh’s heading for the post: he wonders if there are “shades of the sex education debate.”

Obviously, gun use, unlike sex, is not a natural biological function. Teenagers do not spontaneously acquire guns (and an intense urge to shoot them) at puberty.

However, there is a common principle: if a problem exists, education is a much better solution than denial. So in areas where gun usage is common, I think that a gun-safety curriculum at school makes sense. And I think that Volokh is very insightful in recognizing the instinctive repression–one could almost call it prudery–inherent in anti-gun activists’ reactions to proposals like this.