Oh, there's more to it than that.
I don't care
who picks the questions or decides what the answers should be. It's irrelevant, because
self defense is a basic human right. It is not negotiable. It is not open to bureaucratic bafflegab. It is not acceptable to nibble away at the edges of this right.
In fact, that's kind of what our Constitution says. It says that our founders thought this basic human right to own and carry weapons was so important, so critical to the security of a free country, that they forbade forever anything that would nibble away at the edges of that broad right.
Just because it
has been infringed already, does not mean it
should be infringed a little more. That's stupid and wrong.
Also, I'm no elitist. Elitists want rules to prevent
those people from getting more guns. You know
those people. They're the ones who live in the crappy ghetto neighborhoods, who don't talk right, who dress different than "we" do. They're the ones who don't have spare cash for extra fees, people to whom a "low" fee of $50 is a
serious hardship, people who work low-status retail jobs that prevent them from taking weekend classes because, you know, they're
working and will get fired if they take the day off.
These are people who truly don't have time to wait for a class, like the woman who just managed to ditch the psycho ex who threatened to kill her if she ever left. She left him and now what should she do? Wait for the next class (two weeks away) and then another six weeks after that for the paperwork to arrive in the mail -- if she's lucky? The danger in that situation is highest
right now, not two months from now, and who has the right to tell her that her life or her children's lives aren't worth defending? Or do you just want to send her down to city hall to fill out yet
another piece of paperwork, to "expedite" her permission to exercise this basic human right -- and incidentally take another day off work, another day of paying for babysitting, another extra fee?
Did you know there are some counties in New York where the wait is literally one and a half
years -- simply to get permission purchase a gun? I'm not talking about carrying it, I'm talking about buying one in the first place. With a wait like that, that woman is dead and so are her children, and the bureaucrats
Don't. Care.
But I do. I despise any law that stops poor people, busy people, threatened people, frantic people, from buying the simple tools to protect their lives. A right delayed is a right denied.
What about hunting, what about target shooting, what about gun games? Look, I don't care what use you're going to put your firearm to. The firearm is, at its heart, a
weapon. It should be protected and enshrined in law on that basis. Anything else you do with it is up to you, but the right to own and carry it goes back to its status as a weapon. (If they could outlaw lawn darts as 'too dangerous,' your 'sport rifle' isn't immune to that kind of nonsense either. But the right to protect your own life ... that's sacred.)
***
And I still think that if you have the resources to do it, you're a fool if you don't go get some professional training.
pax
but I will take the class when my son is 12 just to keep up. It dont hurt....