Okay, I am hereby establishing Lib’s Law:
Any thread with the word “gun” in the OP will eventually turn into a debate on the second amendment.
Really? Where can I buy a permit to smoke pot?
You’re right! Starting tomorrow, I’m going to lobby my congressman so that every member of a well-regulated militia can own and carry guns.
How’s that?
Sorry 'bout the hijack.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled thread, already in progress.
eta: dammit, I wanted to get in before the founding of Lib’s Law.
No, my Posta… You must buy your Own… 
Yes, there are rules, and states go back and forth on them. I had a Glock 9mm, and went through some expense in training on how to use it, thinking it would make me safer. In the end, it was a waste of time and money, because it was burglarized from my apartment. I never had a reason or occasion to use it. And, I’ve never been in a situation where having the thing would have helped.
If carrying a firearm really is necessary to your daily protection (and you’re not in law enforcement), then most likely you’re in a gang–in which case, you’re probably already a criminal, in one way or another. Either that, or your work is by nature very dangerous.
It’s relevant to the OP, is it not? It’s the same as the people who rage that immigrants must be deported/imprisoned/shot because “the law is the law” but have an infinity of excuses for not prosecuting the violators of laws limiting who can declare war, whether people can be held without charge in torture camps, and when the police can enter your house. Whether it’s the right or the left, no one actually believes that the law is always right just because it’s the law, and those who invoke such a principle are hypocrites and unable to come up with a solid argument for their position.
I think he was specifically responding to Contrapuntal’s comment that all crimes are equal and breaking any of them is equally bad. Or whatever his point was.
It would seem to me that a “responsible gun owner” simply means an owner who knows how to use it, keeps it in proper order and very safe from any accidental discharge. “Law abiding gun owner” means he’s filled out all the required paperwork. You could call the latter a more responsible citizen but I don’t think it should be all or nothing. How much of the arguments here are just really semantics over this point?
And Liberal, if you fall for a trolling that easy then I don’t think you should get to name the “law”.
By definition.
Trunk, OTOH, advocates a inherently irresponsible approach, and should be barred from a CCW permit, and quite possibly from even owning a weapon that might be concealed.
And marriage. Oh wait…
All moral laws, yes. I believe it can be accepted that there are immoral laws, but I believe that simply getting a permit can be decided to not be one of those.
Trunk, get legal. It’s just being lazy not to. And the one thing you should never be is lazy around a gun.
AK, CA, CO, HI, ME, MT, NV, NM, OR, RI, VT, and WA, assuming you can find a doctor who’s willing to sell you one.
Hint: look for the doctor wearing a poncho and iridescent round-lensed glasses, who runs his practice from a '65 VW “Splittie.”
If we’re talking a long arm used for stationary (home) defense, then we can come to the meeting of minds; with a couple hours of familiarization, and a few more spent discussing tactics, legalities, liability, et cetera, someone can credibly defend themselves. But a handgun is another species of hazard; the long sight radius and weight of a long arm like a shotgun make it much easier to learn to handle accurately, and the fact that the muzzle is so far away from the trigger hand makes it, well, less easy to be totally careless and unaware about where the barrel is pointing. With a handgun, on the other hand, it’s very, very easy to lose discipline and allow the muzzle to cover the dog, your foot, the child standing beside you, et cetera, and firing a pistol accurately is a difficult skill even under the best of circumstances; under a combat situation, keeping the bullet on target is seriously difficult, as attested by police shootings where dozens of rounds are fired at a perpetrator by several peace officers with only a handful making contact.
Even more problematic is concealed carry; at home you at least have a clear line of demarcation for violation, and you can plan what you’ll do and where you’ll do it, with clear lanes of fire. In public, you don’t have that kind of preparation, and any mistake you make may result in injury or death to an innocent bystander, or a miscalculation that puts you on the wrong side of a self-defense claim. You also have to maintain secure control over a gun, which means not just dropping it loose into a handbag or pocket. Carrying a weapon in public should have a much higher standard of responsibility correlating with the increased liability, and therefore requires significantly more training and discipline. Personally, I think anybody who carries a concealed weapon should meet the same minimum training and maintenance standards as law enforcement (or better, where such standards are lax), which is really quite a pain in the ass for someone whose interest or need is only casual. There is, of course, a cost to this in both dollars and time, and that does weigh heavier on the poor that otherwise, a fact that is discriminatory and unfortunate, as the poor are the most likely to be preyed upon, but the fact remains that lacking proper skill and discipline puts people around the holder in danger.
Maybe ‘Better Dead Than Red’. I’m personally not interested in the Constitutional issues, about which I have my own opinion but is notwithstanding of the pragmatics. “An armed society is a polite society” is unmitigated bullshit as evidenced by numerous societies where weapons are common and life is cheap. Respect and attendant politeness do not flow fromt the barrel of a gun; but a society in which people are respectful and responsible need not fear legal gun ownership, something that attitudes like Truck’s belie.
Stranger
I researched the web and every gun site I know and I’ve come up with nothing that says there is any form of CCW license/permit in Vermont.
But I don’t live in Vermont, never have. Hell, it’s been 3 years since I’ve last been there. So if it is I who is wrong I’m sure someone will eventually correct me.
Which is unfortunate as it doesn’t apply to the states. It merely prohibits the Federal Government from disarming the people.
The right to bear arms people should be citing is the one that appears in the constitution of the state that person resides in. Most states have a right to keep & bear arms clause/amendment in their constitution. And of those that do, the majority of them are explicitly an individual right. More “pro-gun” rulings have been made based on state constitutions than the Second Amendment.
About the only thing I agree with Stranger on is “higher standard of responsibility/increased liability” thing. But I totally disagree that you or I (or, Og forbid, the government) should be allowed to deny someone the opportunity to defend themselves based on their income. Untold numbers of people are currently carrying with little to no actual training, and yet we don’t see carnage in the streets. Unless the these courses are offered at no charge in public schools, requiring such a level of training seems blatantly discriminatory.
I detect a bit of the same elitist attitude that the police are known for - “they” are the only people qualified to handle a firearm. Brainless civilians will just shoot themselves, their kids, and the dog before having the gun yanked out of their hand and used to shoot beloved child star Dakota Fanning.
Of course, the same minimum training and maintenance standards as law enforcement would take a drunk poodle about 10 minutes to learn, in the words of a police trainer I took a class with.
I said nothing of the sort. However, in my admittedly brief period as a firearms instructor, I found that the vast majority of people know little or nothing about actual case and statute law regarding self-defense, and think very little about the tactics of using a firearm for such. I’ve handled and trained with firearms under simulated combat conditions–not a target range or a “practical” simulation like an ISPC course–and frankly it is my experience that it is not easy to fire a pistol accurately and with good judgement under pressure without considerable training.
The reason you don’t see “carnage in the streets” is due not to the inherent lack of hazard or inate coolness under fire but because there are relatively few actual cases of someone not in law enforcement discharging a firearm in self-defense. If you look at police shootings though–and I’ll agree that law enforcement training standards are highly variable, but almost always more stringent than that required for obtaining a concealed carry permit–you’ll find that incidents of friendly fire, unindented discharge, and just plain missing the target after expending two high capacity magazines are not far out of the normal distribution.
I’m sorry if you think that view “elitist”–I don’t think that law enforcement personnel are the only people capable of handling a firearm (frankly I have my doubts about a significant portion of that group)–but I do think that most people are unwilling, and certainly not required or even encouraged, to meet a standard of training and awareness that is commensurate with carrying a concealed firearm. And yes, such training comes at a cost; the lack of said training also has an attendant cost, measured in terms of accidents and unintended injuries. I’m not against responsible gun ownership, and I regard most attempts at gun control to be facile and poorly conceived notions at best, but along with that one also has to acknowledge that an inappropriately handled or secured firearm is a hazard to everyone in range. I’ve seen too many “accidental” discharges–invariably the fault of someone blatantly violating the basic rules of safe firearm handling–to discount the notion that without training and reinforcement even well-meaning people can make gross errors or lapses in judgement.
Stranger
Surely what would be the least hassle at all would be not carrying a gun at all? I mean, not getting a permit means any time he’d actually *use * it leaves him open to lengthy court proceedings. It’s a very short-sighted view. I’m glad I don’t have to hang around with an armed, consequence-blind person.
Yeah, well Hitler and the Nazis had guns too. Also, Clinton got a blowjob.
That would make sense – if gun laws in various nations were even vaguely similar to each other! What do you want, extraterritoriality?
That’s actually an excellent debate topic. Unfortuately on these boards it would be argued from the pro-gun/anti-gun ownership position of the poster rather than from a position of law.
It seems to me that Articles 4 sections 1-2 of the U.S. Constitution conflict a bit with the 10th Amendment.
To personalize it I bring up H.R. 218. While this law greatly benefited me, my otherwise pro-gun Congressman James Sensenbrenner opposed it on a states rights position. (I do not remember if in the end he actually voted for it or not).
While Sensenbrenner is usually a “pro-gun” Rep., he made some good arguments against this bill, especially from the position of states rights.
Should the right of a state to pass it’s own laws regarding carrying a firearm be trumped by federal law simply because of the type of employment a person has [police officer]? Why should the fact that I’m a cop in Wisconsin over-ride the strict CCW laws in, say, Hawaii, while I’m on vacation there?
Outside of HR218, why should states with high training requirements have to recognize the CCW permit from states like South Dakota that have none at all?
It’s a good debate topic from a legal/states rights stand point. But you won’t get that kind of honest arguments on the SDMB.