The University of Wyoming has received a federal grant of nearly $1 million to develop a high school curriculum focused on the Second Amendment. The U.S. Department of Education awarded $908,991 to the university for this initiative, which aims to provide an educational program that explores constitutional issues related to firearms without political bias.
According to a news release from the university, the curriculum will “highlight ongoing debates about firearms education in American schools and the federal government’s role in shaping how constitutional issues are taught.” The funds come from a pool of more than $137 million in federal resources redirected by President Donald Trump.
The project will be led by the Firearm Research Center (FRC) at the University of Wyoming, which is recognized nationally for its research and scholarship on firearms and Second Amendment topics. The FRC states its mission is to “foster a broad discourse and produce meaningful change in how firearms and the Second Amendment are discussed and understood in America through research, scholarship, legal training, and publicly available resources.”
George Mocsary, director of the FRC and law professor at UW, explained that the new curriculum seeks to address what he describes as a lack of objective discussion around gun rights. “The doctrinal complexity of the Second Amendment is too often obscured by divisive discourse. We seek to provide a much-needed apolitical approach to an otherwise politically charged topic, emphasizing the legal and civic origins of the right to bear arms, connecting it to the early principles of the nation’s founding and examining its evolving role, through legal interpretation, in American culture over time,” Mocsary said.
The finished materials will be distributed among UW professors as well as an advisory committee composed of K-12 teachers, scholars, public health experts, and members from UW’s College of Education. Mocsary added that technology would play a key role: “Through a deliberately layered program of professional development, artificial intelligence-assisted archival research and open-access instructional media, the Firearms Research Center will empower teachers to cultivate in K-12 students the habits of mind essential to critical inquiry, evidentiary reasoning and civic deliberation.”
While adoption is not mandatory—since federal authorities cannot require schools to use this curriculum—the developers hope parents and educators will advocate for its inclusion at local levels.
The Firearm Research Center has previously published reports addressing various aspects of gun ownership rights including Supreme Court decisions such as Bruen and Heller; analyses on young adults’ access to firearms; regulatory debates over digitizing gun sales records; legal perspectives on firearm modifications; and other topics related to weapons law.
