MrArcheson said:
Required training is unnecessary but some training is positively necessary? Are you just making a point that required CCW training is generally crap?
Well, that is
one of my points, but hardly the main one. I'm a strong believer in good training, and that's one of many reasons I oppose state-mandated training. Such required training
can't provide the high level of skill that an ethical "sheepdog" truly needs to learn; if it tries to provide that level of expertise, it necessarily excludes many people who most need firearms (the poor and people in crisis) from being able to exercise their right to protect themselves from imminent danger.
Furthermore (and this is more to the point), such required training has proven itself to be
statistically pointless. In states without a training requirement (such as my own Washington state), there's no extra blood running in the streets. Arizonans found concealed carry so non-problematic that they moved to eliminate not just the training requirement, but the very permit process itself became optional rather than mandatory. Many states allow you to walk into an office, pay a small fee, and walk out with a carry permit
that very day. This is what freedom looks like -- and it doesn't result in shootouts over parking spaces, blood running in the streets, wild west, yadda yadda ad nauseum. People who want to insist on a law forcing others to do something (such as "get training") should have a
reason for that law, and "we just
feel safer if you do" really isn't a reason. It might be politically expedient, but that doesn't make it rational or reasonable.
So what we've ended up with is a political compromise between the rational and the non-rational people, where many states require "training" but that training bar remains low enough that it doesn't exclude so many people that the courts have to take notice.
In most states, all the mandated training does is tell its participants:
1) DON'T use the firearm for this, this, this, or that -- here's what the state law says,
and
2) DON'T carry your firearm into this list of prohibited places -- here's what the state law says.
That's about it. Sometimes they bootleg a bit more information into the required classes, but the
purpose of the class is to get these two basic points across to the participants. That accomplished, the state is satisfied and the permit is issued and home everyone goes. Some of them go home believing they now know all they need to know about protecting themselves with a firearm because they took "The Class."
Understanding that the required training classes do have such limitations, a smart person who wants to be prepared when something terrible happens will do what it takes to learn more. How much more? Well, that depends on whether he's the type of person who would defend only himself, or the type of person who would defend his family, friends, and people around him when their lives are threatened.
Those who would never lift a finger to defend another person under any circumstances, and those who carry the firearm as a good-luck talisman and aren't willing to use it -- well, those folks don't need training of any sort. Required training doesn't help them. Realistically speaking, the only people affected by these people's ignorance is themselves. When they get it wrong, they're the ones who suffer for it. When they break the law in ignorance, they're the ones who go to jail. When they can't get their guns out, or can't bring themselves to pull the trigger, or can't spot a setup in time to avoid it, they're the ones who lose the fight and get killed. Their ignorance doesn't kill other people, so why should anyone else care that they are untrained?
Those who might want to do more than that need to learn more than that.
pax