Gun control codified into law!

If passed, bills H7755 and S2726 will make it harder for ordinary people to buy firearms by replacing the current blue card system with a broader state controlled requirement covering rifles, shotguns, pistols, and revolvers. The bills require an attorney general approved firearm safety course completed within the last five years, expand the training to at least eight hours, require live fire training, and add a standardized written test created by the attorney general. This would then have to be repeated every five years just to maintain your rights.

For current lawful gun owners, that means your next purchase will depend on completing a far longer and more restrictive state approved training process, even if you already own firearms responsibly. For potential new gun owners, the burden is even worse: before they can buy a gun, they would have to sit through a state approved course that covers not just handling and marksmanship, but secure storage, disengagement tactics, suicide prevention, and other topics chosen under an attorney general controlled curriculum.

The bigger problem is that this curriculum closely tracks the Train SMART program run by Everytown for Gun Safety. Train SMART’s eight hour course covers secure storage, gun safety rules, state and federal gun laws, suicide prevention, de-escalation style material, and pistol marksmanship, which is the same basic framework these bills write into law. The worst part? Reviews online have stated that this course actively pushes the idea that “the best gun safety is not to own a gun”, which is in line with Everytown’s stated goal of eventual total disarmament.

This is an Everytown aligned model built by an organization whose larger mission is advancing more gun restrictions. For new gun buyers especially, this means Rhode Island would be forcing them through a course shaped by people who approach gun ownership as a problem to manage, not a right to respect. They will actively try to scare people away from buying a gun, before they can even legally go to the gun store to pick one out.

On top of this, the Moms Demand Action meeting last week had a long section devoted to trying to force this bill through. They even discussed amendments that would replace the AG as the owner of the training requirements and put in the state police or the police training academy. The talking points were that the AG is too controversial and may tank the bill, but going with an alternate owner – who are also not friendly to private gun rights – may allow the bill to get through.

In plain English, H7755 and S2726 do not just add training. They create a longer, more ideological gatekeeping process for lawful gun ownership and put Everytown style thinking one step closer to being mandatory in Rhode Island.

While we have been telling everybody to keep an eye on the current gun bills, this one is probably the worst. This needs to be killed at all costs!  Write to the House and Senate committees, as well as to your own Senator and Representative if they are not on the committee.  We need to keep the pressure up to kill this immediately and not allow an amended sub-a variant to slip through.