Cosmodragoon
New member
Trying something and seeing if it works for a trial period is better than saying "Oh it would never work." If higher standards are implemented then they should be done so for a trial period and analyzed with statistics that are kept during said period in order to see if it's worth keeping. If it is, then Antis will have ammunition to rally support for it and if it isn't the Pros will have the same to rally against.
There are two important points to consider here.
1. Have we really not tried it? Across the nation and in all fifty states we've tried all sorts of gun control, including but not limited to training requirements. I asked before if in any of those cases it actually made a significant and quantifiable contribution to public safety. Well, has it?
Meanwhile, we still have the Vermont example: no permits, no training requirements, and the only requirement for carry is being at least sixteen years of age. Yet it remains the safest in the nation, both overall and per capita.
As I said earlier: "Every time a new gun control law is proposed, some pressing problem is presented to justify it. If the law gets passed, does the problem get solved? No. In fact, that problem just gets presented again the very next time another new gun control law gets proposed."
2. There are some important practical problems with this idea. First, think about how laws get passed and what it takes to repeal them. Lots of bad laws stick around for a reason. Second, think about how that kind of research gets done. There is a very real institutional bias against guns and gun rights in this country. That can be particularly dangerous when it comes to the soft sciences or their accurate reporting. As a supposedly impartial scientist in charge of gun research at the CDC once said: "We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes... Now smoking is dirty, deadly and banned."
Of course, research can go both ways. You'd know if you heard about it. Here is a nice article that discusses several of the issues in question here, including the factual bases for political "ammunition":
http://www.gunsandammo.com/politics/cdc-gun-research-backfires-on-obama/
I hope that helps.