Anytime is the right time to talk about making schools safe from guns.
After the Las Vegas mass shooting was the right time, because maybe we could have prevented the shooting in a Marshall County, Kentucky high school.
After Marshall County also was the right time to maybe prevent the shooting in Parkland, Florida.
In Kentucky, our lawmakers are talking about guns — how to loosen gun regulations.
Child after child is killed at schools, and Kentucky lawmakers want to make it easier for more guns to end up on more school campuses.
You heard right...
House Bill 210 would prohibit public universities and colleges from banning guns from campuses.
Senate Bill 103 would enable public school boards to appoint marshals to carry and store guns on a school campus.
House Bill 36 would strip away any process, or need, to obtain a conceal-carry license, essentially making it legal for anyone in Kentucky to conceal their deadly weapon.
Last year, the General Assembly introduced, but did not pass, bills to remove the license requirement, including the gun-safety training process, as well as another that would have lowered the license age to 18. This bill would effectively do both.
None of these three bills would make a single school or student safer.
Had enough?
Now is the right time to use this most recent tide of anti-gun violence energy to stop gun deregulation in Kentucky.
Legislators need to hear from the overwhelming majority who oppose loosening gun laws: Prevent these three deregulation bills from becoming law, and support lawmakers who will try anything to protect our schools, children, teachers and all of us.
Call, email, tweet and write Republican Senate President Robert Stivers, House Speaker David Osborne, Gov. Matt Bevin and your representatives in the House and Senate.
Even better, let them hear from your children, just as the students of Parkland are taking the lead in speaking out. Pressure lawmakers to tell you and your kids why it’s important that an 18-year-old should be allowed to buy AR-15 assault weapons.
Nationally, students are organizing: March 14 is National School Walkout, and March 24 is March for Our Lives, when parents and children will march on Washington and their state capitals, expressing one unified message: “Enough is enough.”
Lawmakers have to be shaken from their NRA branch before any change will occur.
And while you are energized, support the bills that will help protect us from gun violence.
House Bill 31 would hold gun owners responsible for unlawful storage of their firearm.
House Bill 209 would make it a Class D felony for a person who has committed a hate crime to possess a firearm. It’s amazing this is not already law.
House Bill 387 would allow local municipalities, like Louisville, to regulate firearms and ammunition.
We know the next shooting is coming.
There will be a morning when parents will say their final goodbye to their child at the school bus. The time for preparing for, or preventing, the next tragedy is now; just as it is before the next terrorist attack, the next plane crash or the next hurricane.
We’ve been trying the gun-freedom first approach for long enough, and mass shootings are getting only deadlier and more frequent.
We need political leaders who will try the gun-safety approach, now.
