rainbow wrote:Seth wrote:JimC wrote:... or the characteristic "needs a gun"...
Yup. That's a valid point as well, but cannot be taken to mean that nobody ever needs a gun for self defense.
In civilised countries, people who require a gun for self-defence apply for a license, and if they can provide justification and competence, then they can get one.
Would this be a problem to you?
Yes, because anyone may require a gun for self defense at any moment and "justification" means subjecting their need to exercise a right to the whims and caprices of a bureaucrat who, for reasons of his own, may decide there is insufficient justification. The "need" component is the most-abused aspect of several of the now-mandatory CCW laws in the US, particularly places like NYC, NJ, Chicago etc. where unless you are politically connected it is flatly impossible to demonstrate sufficient "need" to be issued a license. The same is true in the UK, just to own a gun. In Canada, if you apply for a gun license and put "self defense" down as the reason you want one, you will be denied, as armed self defense is not considered to be adequate justification to own a gun. Which is of course absurd.
I'm not opposed to a training requirement, as we require that for hunters (hunter safety education). Indeed I advocate universal firearms training as a mandatory part of primary and secondary public education at all levels, beginning in the first grade and continuing through high school graduation, where a successful student is issued a certificate of training, a concealed carry permit, and government-issued handgun and standard military rifle that they must keep, maintain and remain proficient with during their tenure in the Unorganized Militia. At the end of that tenure (18 to 45), if they are in good standing, a grateful nation gives them title to the weapons in return for their service to the nation.
Nor am I axiomatically opposed to requiring a permit for concealed carry, although it's largely unnecessary, but as it is here in Colorado and many other states, the issuance of a permit must not be discretionary on the part of reviewing authority (county sheriff in Colorado, a state agency in other states). If the individual meets the criteria set forth in the law, such as not being a criminal or drug user or suchlike, then the permit must be issued.
One complaint I have about Colorado's law is that it requires a permittee to notify the issuing department of any change of address within 30 days. There is no need for this information in the first place, and it's a function of the way the system was set up, with the local sheriff issuing the permit rather than a state agency issuing it as is done in places like Florida. I see no compelling need for the agency to even know the address of the applicant at all. If a person is legally qualified to own firearms and meets the standards for a CCW permit, then she should be issued a permit that is valid everywhere in the state, regardless of place of residence. Once every five years, at renewal, the applicant must prove state residency but not place of residence. This change prevents the data from even potentially being used by hostile politicians or law enforcement to abuse the rights of the individual. Better yet would be a federal CCW permit issued by the federal government that, like a passport, is valid anywhere in the United States without reference to one's place of residence.
One way in which abuse of residence and permit information happens, ie: when guns are registered to people and addresses, is that there is a tendency for law enforcement to grossly overreact if there is a call for service at that address. Numerous cases of SWAT teams creating unnecessary terror and panic (and deaths) at law-abiding citizen's homes merely because there is known to be a firearm there through the licensing system.
This also applies to vehicle stops, where, when an officer checks the vehicle database the owner is shown to either have a weapon or a permit for a weapon, it results in a "felony stop" which may involve officers pointing guns at the occupants unnecessarily. Many argue that the police have a right to know if someone they are contacting is armed or not, but this is not the case. The police do NOT have such a right. Being a police officer involves dealing with people who are armed, and the only ones who are a threat to officers are armed criminals. The presumption taught to police officers in basic training is that you assume that
everyone you meet is armed and you use good practices and procedures to reduce the chances of any weapon being used against you, but because it is not automatically illegal for a law-abiding citizen to be armed, it is beyond the authority of the police to treat every person they meet as if they have hostile intentions and subject them to pat-downs, frisks, detentions, physical force or arrests merely because it is possible, or even known that the person is lawfully armed. That goes beyond the authority the police have and trenches on the law-abiding individual's right to keep and bear arms.
Encountering armed persons in our society is an inherent risk that police officers must accept and deal with within the bounds of the Constitution. If they are so fearful of armed citizens that they cannot perform their duties without trenching on law-abiding citizen's rights, then they do not belong in law enforcement.
I'm willing to concede that mandatory education for
every citizen be a requirement in order to purchase (but not possess) a firearm. Like the hunter safety card, you take the class, you get the card, which never expires, and you present it to the gun dealer when you buy a gun. Added to this is mandatory firearms education in schools so that in a generation firearms training will be universal, and certification automatic. For concealed carry for self-defense I am willing to accede to a permitting system for the individual, but it must be a "shall issue" system that is not discretionary, and it must not provide the government with a defacto gun registration list. It is not relevant what particular weapon the individual chooses to carry, nor how many that person owns, so the permit should be for "weapons" not just "handguns" so it includes knives and other levels in the continuum of force that we allow police officers to carry.
For open carry, no permitting, licensing or weapons registration can be allowed to the government, because the power to license is the power to deny, and the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, except as a result of an individual's bad behavior.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth
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