By: Journalist Heba Saleh (TU)
Rep. Jaden Hansen presented OBU-502 — a joke bill mandating schools to raise student militias.
Rep. Hansen has presented several jokes bills over the past few sessions.
This was the first bill the House of Representatives heard this session.
Members of the House spent about an hour discussing and debating this bill.
Many delegates leaned into the joke of the bill, particularly during debate.
One point made during debate was that the bill allows students to apply the skills they learned in “Call of Duty,” a video game, to real life. Another was that the United States is in the same circumstances as it was before World War II. Because it is on the brink of war, schools should arm their students in case the U.S. goes to war.
Rep. Calia Walker (SE) debated against the bill, saying it did not mandate the use of muskets, and the Founding Fathers would not have approved of a bill that did not include muskets. This was a point Rep. Walker brought forward the last time the bill was presented.
Although it was a joke bill, some members of the House of Representatives took it moderately seriously.
“It needed to be worked through a lot,” Rep. Alan De Leon (ORU) said.
According to him, the author wanted an amendment to include an armory for the militia but did not know the language he wanted to include in the bill.
“It could have had more substance,” Rep. De Leon said.
Others saw real-world implications of the bill.
“At its core, there is an element of it that goes a bit deeper,” Rep. Noah Jones said. “It is a fact that when a school shooting happens, police response times are not instantaneous.”
This allows more time for students to be “shot and killed” and “having students be involved in the protection of their campus” would do something to combat this, Rep. Jones said.