Two Central Oregonians, Jerrad Robison of Redmond and Ston McDaniel of Prineville, already are working to put a measure on the 2020 general election ballot. If they’re successful, Oregon sixth-graders will be required to take a class on gun education in addition to all the other things they do.

Let’s hope the pair is unsuccessful.

The current proposal would require all school districts in the state to offer a class in firearm safety, taught by a certified instructor. Students would be tested on what they learned, live ammunition would be prohibited and parents could opt their children out if they wished.

While gun safety education is valuable, requiring that it become part of the public education curriculum isn’t the way to approach the matter.

Young hunters in the state, those under the age of 18, are generally required to take a hunter education class, either in person or online. The classes, which are also recommended (but not required) for older, first-time hunters, focus on gun safety, hunter ethics and other aspects of hunting.

Meanwhile, gun ownership is not all that common in Oregon. A variety of sites that gather information about such things, including CBS News and Statistica, rank Oregon somewhere between 30th and 34th in per-capita ownership, and that suggests that most of our children are not routinely exposed to guns.

Nor, we suspect, would gun safety classes do much to prevent the firearms incidents that kill most Oregonians, including children aged 11 and up. Those deaths are suicides, and they far outstrip other firearms related deaths.

There’s no demonstrated need to spend scarce school resources on even a brief Firearms 101.