Gun fight
Yesterday I got into a fight with Bitter in the comments on one of my posts.
At the time, I had no idea who she was.
I got mad, some insults were exchanged, and for that I apologize.
In all the rage, I lost control of the message I was trying to send. So here it is, in a more calm fashion. I hope Bitter and everybody else will understand what I was trying to say.
I remember shortly after I moved to Illinois that Moore v. Madigan was decided. The 7th Circuit Court came down with a severe case of Constitutional Principles and decided that Illinois needed to have concealed carry.
There was a kicker, the Court imposed a time frame. If Illinois didn’t put together a CCW law fast, the state would default to Constitutional Carry. This was the one ace that the Republicans had up their sleeves. If they didn’t get Shall Issue, they could hold up the bill long enough to squeeze the Democrats against a concealed carry free-for-all.
Let the legislative games begin!
I followed that with bated breath. I watched the IL State legislature live stream.
I watched as Democrat State Rep and Democrat State Senator after Democrat State Rep and Democrat State Senator made the same argument over training requirements: if the training was too easy, anybody could get a permit.
It was crystal clear that training had nothing to do with gun safety. A background check was mandatory, possession of a FOID was mandatory, fingerprints were optional but cut the wait time for a permit from 90 days to 30 days.
But there were a lot of people who could pass background checks. That alone wasn’t enough of a hurdle. The Democrats didn’t like the idea of CCW and they were going to make it as onerous as possible to obtain. What they settled on was 16 hours of training, including classroom time and live fire.
The courses were two full working days of a weekend. In a time with a down economy, that made if very hard for working class individuals who had to put in some weekend time at work to take the class and get the permit.
I remember driving through the driving snow early in the morning on a Saturday and Sunday to take my CCW class from two Chicago PD officers in Bolingbrook.
I remember the classes. It was essentially the same four hour course I took to get my FL CCW, repeated three times. Intermixed was commentary by these two officers, who made it crystal clear that they were not fans of CCW. They reminded us that we weren’t cops, we weren’t going to be cops, we aren’t ever going to be as good as cops, but the law is the law and they get $500 a head to do the training.
It was also impressed on us what we had to do to avoid getting shot by the Chicago PD because they will shoot first and ask for CCW permits later.
Then we went to the range.
Some 30 days and $700 later (training, ammo, permit fee, fingerprint fee), I got my permit in the mail.
That whole experience taught me a lesson.
Given the change, people who have no respect for gun rights will use any bureaucratic tool they can as an impediment to gun rights.
Most of us out shot the cops doing the shooting demonstration. What we learned about gun safety was the four basic rules. The only useful new information was about Illinois Code 430 ILCS 66/1 stickers and not to go into places that have them.
I said it before and I’ll say it again, minatory training is nothing more than a poll tax and a literacy test on gun rights.
The fact is I will NEVER trust a politician that talks about mandatory training when it comes to guns.
I’m all for training. Training is good. Mandatory training has nothing to do with gun safety and everything to do with putting hurdles in the way of gun ownership.
I do not trust a politician to set training standards in good faith.
I am not an advocate of Constitutional Carry, I am all for background checks on CCW. In Alabama, Indiana, and South Dakota, all you have to do is go to the Sheriff’s Office, pay a fee and have your background check run. Indiana mails you your permit. Alabama prints it right there and gives it to you like a drivers license. South Dakota used to just give you a receipt and mail you the final copy. Now SD has two permits, one good in SD and one that has reciprocity with Minnesota and Nebraska that includes training.
The total list of states I have or had CCW permits in is (in order): Florida, Indiana, South Dakota, Utah, Arizona, Illinois, Nebraska, Alabama.
I have run the gamut from $10 and out the door to $700 and a full weekend of training.
Nothing across all those states made me better or worse at gun safety or gun handling than I already was going into it. All the differences did was put bigger and bigger hurdles in my way that required me to jump over, from spending hours to days in training and taking off work to get finger prints and sign affidavits in front of notaries.
Want me to prove that I am not a felon before carrying a gun? Fine.
Want me to take another stupid course and shoot a B-27 at 5, 7, and 10 yards? Fuck you.
I will if I have to, to comply with existing law.
I will fight the implementation of new training requirements.
Especially if, like in Massachusetts, the training is strictly for gun ownership.
I do not care if it’s a class given by the president of the local NRA chapter, and a life long gun rights advocate. That the government mandated that I take a class with an approved curriculum to exercise my fundamental civil liberties is abhorrent.
I will not let politicians put hurdles in front of exercising gun rights any higher than current bans on prohibited persons.
As soon as a politicians makes training necessary, they have the power to make it onerous and inconvenient as they want to gatekeep people from exercising it.
I will not put myself at that mercy.
This is not a point I am wiling to compromise on.
