Rep. Barbara Drummond (D-Mobile) filed a bill in the Alabama House last week that would charge parents if their child brings an unsecured firearm to school.

Originally, the bill made the penalty a Class C felony, but Drummond says lawmakers are working on dropping it down to a misdemeanor offense.

The state lawmaker promoted her bill on WVNN’s “The Dale Jackson Show,” Monday.

“I don’t think that this is a gun bill, I think that this is more about school safety for our children and it does not violate anyone’s Second Amendment rights,” Drummond said. “What it does is make parents responsible if that weapon is not secured … we need to get parents’ attention because the safety of our children is what is at risk.

“And I tell people that this bill is something that I felt was rather common sense.”

Drummond reiterated that a parent would only be charged if it was proven the student had the firearm because it was not properly secured by that parent.

“If law enforcement says that this weapon didn’t go off because you, as that child’s father had that gun secured, then it would be no charges against you because you had the gun secured,” she said. “It wasn’t the fact that it just went on campus, but if it was secured, your kid could not use that gun to fire it off or harm other children. And if you go and talk to school administrators, resource officers, and teachers there are a lot of guns that are showing up on our school campuses.”

Drummond emphasized that gun owners need to be responsible with their firearms, especially around children.

“I am a gun owner,” she said, “and I don’t have small children … but I have my grandchildren and nieces and nephews … I have a biometric lock, but I do keep it out of their reach, so I’m being responsible. This bill is very common sense. It just says ‘let’s be responsible,’ and all of the debate that you’ve heard around guns, it’s a lot of irresponsibility going on, and this is a bill that says ‘we can be responsible.’

“Our children’s lives depend on it.”

She also believes this bill has a chance of getting some Republican support, which it would need to pass the Legislature.

“I even talked to the Speaker of the House about it last Thursday,” she said, “and he was getting ready to read it, but he said in concept it sounds like a good piece of legislation.”

Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee