I guess it’s up to you if you want to heed their advice or not. I’m comfortable with my firearm-related skills and I’d have no qualms about pointing a gun at an intruder in my own home, and shooting them if I perceive them to be a threat. Of course, I live in a “free state”, and so I’ve got little to fear from the authorities in such a situation. If you’re in New England, Illinois, or the Left Coast, your situation is quite a bit different from mine, and they might try to bust your balls for pointing a gun at someone trying to steal your TV.
I’d encourage you to familiarize yourself with your jurisdiction’s relevant laws and precedents and with any firearm you plan to use for self defense.
I don’t think you’ve written anything to counter my assertion that your opinion of legislation is based on whether it is pro- or anti-gun.
An effective ban on machine guns, as part of the Federal laws that you mention, is pretty damn obviously related to interstate commerce. But as you have conveyed your opinions, you just disagree with it on the basis that it is “anti-gun,” and gloss over the fact that it is on very solid constitutional ground. Then you apply a “tit for tat” logic that pro-gun legislation ought to be constitutional too, on the basis that “anti-gun” legislation is constitutional.
It’s pretty clear to me that you aren’t arguing the legal merits of legislation; you’re arguing whether you like the legislation or not.
Sorry, one more question if you don’t mind. In your state, can you pull a gun on a guy who looks suspicious while you are out walking around with your concealed weapon?
Could you explain this part to me, because it’s not as obvious as you seem to think it is. If I want to build a machine gun in my garage, and keep it in my garage, and never sell it to anyone, let alone across state lines (the “interstate” part), the Feds and you seem to believe that my garage-dwelling machine gun is “related to interstate commerce”, and therefore a criminal act. It’s not going to be part of interstate commerce, or commerce at all. Where’s the “pretty damn obviously related” link?
The arguments that can be made to support this law’s validity under the limited congressional powers could be based on a combination of interstate travel, full faith and credit, commerce clause, and even 2nd amendment. Theoretically it could be tied to federal funds in a non-coercive way such that the 9ish states that are no-carry states would want to comply.
I think the strongest avenue would be tying it to federal funds, but I think interstate travel and commerce could work just as well. Of course, that would only need to occur should the law pass, and it be challenged. If that were the case, the arguments would need to be flipped and opponents would need to support why all of the above could not apply. I’d rather be arguing from the position of the status quo - another reason I hope it passes.
It’s messy legalese, but basically, if I “reasonably” believe / perceive that someone is going to use unlawful force, than I can draw. Just “looking suspicious” would not be enough.
So what you’re saying is that you have no evidence that marksmanship requirements actually have a positive effect in the real world, but you think they might?
Can you tell me whether marksmanship requirements for concealed carry licenses have an actual effect on whether people carrying are good shots? Because it sounds like you’re assuming something that there is no evidence for, then asking questions that assume an extreme version of the thing you have evidence for.
The fact that a type of training is a good idea in a general sense doesn’t magically mean that requiring a specific and limited subset of that training in a specific circumstance produces positive results. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for evidence that a training requirement produces good results before writing a training requirement into a law. Especially when training requirements have historically been abused, and when they are extremely non-progressive, posing an extreme burden on poor people and negligible one to middle- and upper- class people.
I don’t disagree at all, which (I believe) was the gist of my comments. Government requirements (of all sorts) tend to get imposed with no real examination of validity, effectiveness or cost-benefit. And this particular requirement would very likely become purposefully burdensome in some jurisdictions.
Well, what do you think? That’s like asking if passing a driving proficiency test and possessing a driver’s license correlates to driving better. What do you think?
First, you need to pick the horse that you’re riding on. You’ve argued in this thread for both an expansive commerce clause power when it comes to allowing the Federal government to determine permitting issues that have nothing, as far as I can tell, to do with commerce. Then you argue a very narrow interpretation of the commerce clause that implies that you ought to be able to manufacture machine guns under certain circumstances. So which is it? Or, as I’ve said repeatedly, is it in fact true that you start with the conclusion that whatever rules are pro-gun are good, and then you back yourself into the convenient justification of whatever supports that argument, no matter what you’ve argued before?
Second, there’s an ample body of precedents relating to how the commerce clause relates to activities that some think ought not be regulated by commonsense laws. The application of these laws on trains, meatpacking, agriculture, and many other things. Similar cases are described here and here. Suffice it to say that the law is being fairly applied across all sorts of activities, and guns don’t get a magical pass from being treated the same as wheat and pot.
More: Besides that, **Pantastic, **what is the point you are trying to make? Are you saying to say that showing proficient marksmanship has no effect on real world use of a gun in a defensive situation?
Nope, no cite, but I don’t think I need a cite to say that a bad shot is not going to hit their target as often as a good shot.
If you really want, I might go to the range in the next couple of weeks, and I’ll post some pictures of targets after we are done. I’ll indicate who was a good shot in our group, and who is a bad shot in our group (I am probably well below average, but by no means the worst) and we can determine if there is a correlation between how good a shot someone is, and how centered their shots are.
It does seem as though in all of these cases, of “properly presenting a firearm” should require some level of training. Is this covered in CCW classes, or is this just something that people figure out on their own?
And I, like Manson, have always heard to never carry a gun that you aren’t prepared to use, never pull a gun if you aren’t willing to fire it, and never shoot anything you aren’t willing to kill/destroy. I would append “able” as well to that. If you are just carrying around a gun that you are not proficient with, then you are at best not doing any good, and at middling, just donating a gun to any criminal who asks, and at worst, causing injuries or death of bystanders as you try to be the good guy with the gun.
I have little problem with the current state of gun control. There is not a high bar to entry, in most states, but it is just high enough to keep the complete morons and assholes from walking around armed all the time. I am sure that you and all those in this thread are responsible gun owners, but it is not responsible gun owners who are my concern, it is the gun owners that are irresponsible that concern me, and those are not being weeded out at all by this type of legislation. Seriously, though, I am sure you know someone in your life that to whom you would be terrified to hand a loaded gun. If you think that this person could legally get and carry a gun in public with this sort of legislation, then even you can see why that’s a problem.
If this bill were set up with minimum requirements to get a CCW that is recognized by all the states, that would go a long way towards easing the concerns of not just myself, and the public, but gun owners who are afraid of backlash when idiots start making all gun owners look bad because there are no proactive restrictions on their behavior.
I take this to mean that you can’t really articulate the “pretty damn obvious” connection to interstate commerce of my hypothetical (completely fictional - I haven’t actually manufactured a machine gun) home-made machine gun.
To answer your broader question: I don’t think I’ve argued for the broad interpretation of interstate commerce that exists today. If I were king for a day, I’d drastically narrow the scope of the interstate commerce clause. I’d let Filburn grow his wheat, Raich grow his marijuana, me make my garage machine gun, Utah determine how far we should keep guns from school, and California determine what standards should apply to CCW permit holders within their borders.
What I have done is acknowledge that that broad interpretation of the interstate commerce clause is the law of the land today. Filburn can’t grow his wheat. Raich can’t grow his marijuana. I can’t make a machine gun in my garage. Utah can’t determine the appropriate size of gun-free school zones. And so telling California they can’t ignore lawful and valid CCW permits from other states when non-residents visit seems well-within the current legal precedents.
Those precedents wouldn’t be my preferred interpretation, but they are the reality, and I’m prepared to work within that reality to accomplish my goals (in this case, a more expansive right of the people to keep and bear arms).
My point in asking for a cite wasn’t to try to claim that a bad shot is not going to hit their target as often as a good shot (which is obviously true, by definition), but to highlight that there’s no evidence that minimal marksmanship requirements in CCW permit applications have any practical, measurable, effect in actual shooting CCW encounters in the real world. They’re rare enough, and CCW permit holders are usually proficient enough, that it doesn’t seem to be a recurring problem. And the downside is that places like Chicago will use training requirements to make sure many people can’t get permits, for example by requiring range time while simultaneously banning gun ranges.
I’ve sat through a variety of CCW classes here in Utah, and many of them use blue (fake) guns to get participants familiar with the mechanics of drawing, presenting, proper grip, aiming, etc without having to take the whole class to the range. The actual legal requirements for the class are to cover “the safe loading, unloading, storage, and carrying of the types of firearms to be concealed and current laws defining lawful self-defense, use of force by private citizens, including deadly force, transportation, and concealment.” (If you click on the link here, you can see the whole outline)
I’d agree with this advice, but I don’t think that a one-size-fits-all government-mandated shooting requirement for CCW permits is the solution.
I know lots of people like that. I also know people I’d be terrified to get in a vehicle with, even though they’ve passed the relevant government-mandated driving tests and have a valid license. I agree the competence in general is something we need more of, but I don’t think that government-mandated training does a good job of getting us more of it. Thankfully, most of the self-selecting group of people who choose to obtain CCW permits and travel across state lines with them are the sort of people that recognize the value of competence, and take steps to obtain such competence.
The comment was mostly based off my personal experience. I’m not particularly interested in trying to dig up evidence to defend it, so I’ll withdraw it.
One, you said that such encounters are rare. This is true, but with a greater arming of society, I think that they will become more common.
Two, you said that CCW holders are proficient, and this may be true, but we are talking about making CCW easier to get and more widespread, so I think the quality of a CCW holder will go down.
I didn’t read the whole thing, but the contents. It appears as though Utah has a reasonably high requirement to get a CCW. High enough that many states, including Ohio, seem to recognize it.
But, it does recognize the point that I feel I am trying to make with
Where a CCW from Utah or other states that have a decent requirement for getting it try to reduce those factors.
Opening up CCW to the lowest state’s requirements may cuase those tow primary causes to be more common.
I disagree, though I don’t call it a one-size-fits-all, but a basic minimum. You have given me some reason to doubt that high marksmanship should be required, but I cannot help but feel that we’d be better off if people could at least hit the target.
And this is my issue with expanding gun availability. I think most of the low hanging fruit has been taken with the CCW’ers. That most of the people who will use guns responsibly already are using them responsibly. Once getting a gun and a CCW is more trivial, then people will get guns just because it’s the thing to do. People like to follow trends, and if their friends have guns, they need to have a gun; if their friends are carrying their guns in public, they will need to carry their guns in public.
By making guns and CCW’s more available, the quality of the gun carrier will be going down. As there are already incidents of accidental or intentional use of legally carried firearms in ways that endanger public safety, I cannot see how lowering the bar will not increase those incidents proportionally.