I have to wonder at the intellectual honesty of a woman (or anyone) who
deliberately chooses to remain as ignorant as possible about the safe use and operation of a machine, in this case a gun, just to "proove" a point she has already decided on in her own mind.
I read the blog, and several things (besides her obvious bias) jumped out at me. First of all, guns scare her. That right there is a huge warning.
She repeatedly points out how easy it was to get the permit, and buy the pistol, not knowing anything about how to operate it. She gets home, pistol in the box, opens the box, and freaks because she knows just enough to recognize that the magazine is in the gun. She can't tell if it is
loaded.
The gun has been in her possession since she bought it. Does she think that the store loaded the gun before they put it back in the box and gave it to her? Does she think somehow, the gun loaded itself?
Does she even bother to read the owner's manual? Apparently not, because she made no mention at all of the instruction manual that comes with EVERY new firearm. No, she goes out and finds a cop, and asks him to check if her gun is loaded!
There really are some people who shouldn't have guns. Not just the mentally ill, or those with criminal intent. The willfully ignorant should be in that category as well.
WE all believe that anyone who owns a firearm ought to have the basic understanding and knowledge to be able to load, unload, and operate it safely. Everyone recommends taking a course, if you haven't already learned it somewhere else. And people who are going to carry a handgun for protection need to have at least a basic understanding of their legal rights and responsibilities as well. BUT many of us object to the legal requirement for taking a course, on several grounds.
The main one is that by giving the govt the authority to hold us all to an arbitrary standard for exercising a basic right, we are giving them the ability to set what the standard is. And in someplaces, that standard has been changed over time, and even denied access to training in some cases. I have seen one "required safety course" go from 3-4hrs when first mandated to 8hrs, and later 40hrs of required "training" before the state would approve a permit. AND, the training was neither provided by, nor paid for by the state. In a different case one state govt reduced the number of accepted training courses (over time, of course) down to where there were only two or three in the entire state, and people could not get the required training to even renew their licenses before they expired! (this case did result in legal action, and was, eventualy resolved).
My point is that while we all agree that knowing what you are doing is vitally important for safety, mandating minimum requirements is a bad idea, because it puts too much authority in the hands of people who have proven that they have no interest in our being able to exercise our rights, and often quite the opposite.
So, here is this woman, clearly with her mind already made up, deliberately learning as little as she can about the gun she bought, and is
wearing, (not even knowing how to tell if it is loaded or not!
) trying to proove what a horrible risk it is, that she got, and wears a gun without knowing what she is doing.
I have to wonder, how is it that she knows how to drive a car? A multi-thousand pound projectile, capable of delivering thousands of ft/lbs of impact energy to a chosen target, and she's fine with that. Why?
Because she knows how to drive a car. She knows where the ignition is, what the steering does, and where the brake is. Why? Because she had training. Why? Because she wanted to get training. No law required it (you can buy a car without being a licensed driver). She got training because she
wanted to know how to drive.
Yet this same woman, obviously afraid of guns (repeated mentions of hands shaking and adrenaline pumping, just because she
had a gun with her),
deliberately chooses to avoid any and all instruction about the gun, and then makes the case that it is dangerous.
There is more than just a whiff of a double standard here.
