FBM wrote:JimC wrote:
But as I've said before, unlike certain...people...I'm all for stricter controls, training and educational requirements and so forth for legal firearm ownership. It should be at least as hard to get a license to carry a handgun as it is to get a license to drive a car. I'd be fine if the US followed the Scandinavian models. They seem to work quite well. But then again, the average Scandinavian criminal doesn't already have easy access to handguns, as far as I know. American criminals do, and no amount of legislation is going to make that fact go away. No more than the war on drugs made drugs go away. Cracking down on firearms will make illegal trafficing that much more profitable. Just like with drugs. I remember when I used to be able to get a quarter ounce of weed for 15 bucks. That was before the War on Drugs(R).

The problem with licensing of firearms as you suggest is that the power to license is the power to destroy. Licensing itself doesn't just imply, it flatly states that the State has the authority to determine who may exercise a right and who may not. For the same reason that we do not permit licensing of printing presses (something that King George did in his time) we do not permit (or at any rate cannot constitutionally permit) government to determine who may and may not exercise the RKBA.
It's an issue of prior restraint. Censorship is usually imposed because of some perceived harm from published materials that will presumably happen if the content is allowed. No actual showing of harm regarding any particular bit of information is required. What always happens when the government censors free speech is that it very quickly begins censoring mostly that speech which is directed against the power of the State, as is the case in every Communist country on earth. This leads to suppression and greater tyranny in every case.
The same is true of the RKBA. If the State has the power to determine, by policy, who may and may not bear arms, then you inevitably end up with Chicago and New York, where it is virtually impossible for the average law-abiding citizen to own a gun. The Supreme Court just ruled that the right to keep and bear a handgun in one's home or business for self defense is constitutionally protected by the 2nd Amendment. The ruling is crystal clear, but still state agents all over the U.S. are attempting to cling to their authority to limit the keeping and bearing of arms in their jurisdictions. They throw up every obstruction they can think of, including in Cook County (Chicago) a $25.00 tax on firearms purchases that forces law-abiding citizens to pay for the alleged costs of gun violence not caused by them, but rather caused by criminals, which is a cost that all of society must bear, particularly when it is the State's fault that there is so much crime to begin with because it disarmed the citizenry and made them easy prey for criminality.
In NYC, for example, it is theoretically possible to get a concealed carry permit. However, the rules are such that it is factually impossible to do so unless you are a well-connected political ally of the incumbents. You must submit your application on the form provided by the NYPD, and ONLY that ORIGINAL form, which must be obtained from the NYPD. For more than 50 years however, NYC has failed to fund publishing of the forms, and only a very few "authorized" forms are printed each year, and they are jealously guarded. The average citizen is told that the NYPD is "out of the forms" and that they "do not know when more will be available."
This is precisely the sort of abusive tactics that are always used by gun banners to obstruct the exercise of rights by citizens where that exercise goes against the power and prestige of the State.
In the 42 states that now have "shall issue" concealed carry, those laws were passed EXPLICITLY to remove from local authorities any power to discriminate and abuse their authority by arbitrarily choosing who does and does not get a CCW permit. I experienced this myself many years ago. In the county where I lived, because the Sheriff had the sole authority to issue a permit, and because it was entirely discretionary on his part, it was impossible to get a permit for decades, unless you were quite literally a crony of the incumbent Sheriff. Moreover, if a new Sheriff was elected, all the old "permits" (which were often nothing more than the Sheriff's business card with a hand-written notation on the back) were voided and the new crop of cronys had to barter for a permit.
Then our incumbent Sheriff finally saw the light when he was forced to explain why a woman who had come to him to apply for a permit because of her violently abusive husband who had broken two restraining orders and beaten her twice, was not given a permit and was subsequently murdered by her ex-husband. He realized that he had been wrong and started issuing permits to any law abiding citizen who could pass his extensive background examination, which was very detailed and involved detectives interviewing family members and neighbors.
I was issued the 10th formal CCW permit ever issued in that county, which I still hold today.
But in the county next door, NOBODY but a police officer could get a permit under any circumstances, because that Sheriff didn't like citizens having guns.
So, the State stepped in and passed a uniform concealed carry law that requires a Sheriff to issue a permit to anyone and everyone who meets the fairly simple criteria in the law, which includes a clean background, no federal disability from firearms ownership, and a minimal training course in concealed carry law and handgun proficiency.
This is not optimal, and gun owners would prefer the "Vermont Model" of CCW, which says that any person of good character and without a legal disability can carry concealed without a permit. Strangely, there has never been an orgy of lawful concealed carry violence leaving the gutters running with blood in all those hundreds of years that it's been legal to carry concealed in Vermont.
But the Colorado Constitution explicitly restricts concealed carry, although it expressly authorizes open carry everywhere in the state, so that it's necessary to have a permitting system for CCW.
But as you can see, before the State acted, this system was arbitrary and capricious and depended entirely on the preferences and proclivities of the local Sheriff.
That is not the proper way to regulate the exercise of a fundamental right.
This is why licensing is so very dangerous. By having the authority to deny licenses, the State gains too much power to discriminate and abuse its authority and thereby infringe on the rights of the citizens. This is why we don't license printing presses, and why we should not license guns.
What we do is to create a structure of law regarding the USE AND DISCHARGE of firearms that is very, very stringent, and we hold every gun owner to that meticulous standard and punish those who misuse their firearms. That's perfectly reasonable and necessary. But hoplophobes are simply so mentally deranged that they cannot distinguish between the "keeping and bearing" of firearms and the operation, discharge, use or misuse of those firearms.
I've carried a concealed handgun now for more than 25 years in perfect peace and tranquility, never once being forced to discharge it, although I have been forced to display it as a deterrent to an attempted crime a couple of times in my life.
Owning and carrying a handgun are a far cry from shooting someone with it, and the former does not inevitably result in the latter. But this distinction is beyond hoplophobe understanding. They delusionally equate firearms possession to firearms abuse and are under the false impression that people who possess firearms are bound to suddenly snap and become random mass-murderers.
Sadly for their twisted and insane agenda, the facts prove this is not the case, and those who trouble themselves to obtain a CCW permit are in fact much more law abiding and less likely to be involved in ANY sort of crime than even your Joe Average law-abiding citizen. CCW permittees tend to be the MOST law-abiding and careful citizens in the community, by far. In some cases more so than police officers and public officials.
But I agree wholeheartedly that education is the key to reducing gun violence and gun accidents, which has been proved by a 98% drop in gun accidents since the 1920s largely due to the NRA's firearms safety and education programs.
I would go much further and require gun safety, education and marksmanship training in public schools starting in the first grade and continuing through high school graduation as a mandatory part of the curriculum. Congress has full authority to require this under its power to organize, train and equip the Militia, and I think it should do so.
"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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