The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

Local News

February 13, 2008

Guills backs ‘three R’s,’ not hunting classes

Mannix Porterfield

CHARLESTON — Senators have a long weekend to mull over Majority Whip Billy Wayne Bailey’s idea of giving students the option of taking a 10-hour hunting class in public schools.

One of them, Sen. Jesse Guills, R-Greenbrier, is already dead set against the idea, saying the curriculum should stick to the traditional core subjects.

Before the bill exited the Senate Finance Committee, he voted against Bailey’s proposal, largely because it imposes an unfunded mandate on local school systems. A full Senate vote should come Monday.

A fiscal note attached to the measure contained the round figure of $75,000.

Yet, there was no explanation of how that money would be spent, Guills pointed out Wednesday. Bailey’s bill says every school with grades 9 through 12 must offer the two-week course.

“It’s supposed to be volunteer training, which was another issue for me,” the Lewisburg attorney said.

“Who’s going to do this training? And what certification or guarantee do you have as to who is going to come in and conduct it?”

Bailey, D-Wyoming, and Sen. Shirley Love, D-Fayette, for years have sought to install a firearms safety class in schools, but the idea never caught on until this year when they altered the bill to provide an optional hunting class.

“I’m getting a tremendous response from the people outside the state,” Bailey said recently.

News outlets from across the nation and in Paris have flooded him for interviews, and lawmakers in several states have asked for input from Bailey, preparatory, it appears, to sponsoring similar legislation.

But Guills says he is put off by the idea of firearms in school, even if they are merely there as a training exercise. Bailey has assured any would-be critics that no live ammo would be involved.

“We traditionally talk about gun-free schools,” Guills said.

“It’s somehow ingrained in me not to be right to be doing that in a school system, even though it’s a safety factor. I wasn’t comfortable with it. That’s why I voted against it.”

Guills said he respects the recreational aspect of hunting as a pursuit “that is something young people do and carry through up until the later stages of their life.”

“But I’m more of a fundamentalist in the belief that we need to be dealing with arithmetic, science and English,” the senator added.

— E-mail:

mannix@register-herald.com

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