Is there any wonder the antis are struggling for a foothold:
Problem is, it’s 25 miles to the nearest range, where they charge $45 an hour. What’s a gun enthusiast to do?
Lucky for him, Varrieur lives in Florida. Problem solved. Just erect a makeshift range in the back yard and fire away. It’s perfectly legal.
Re-read that if you want. It’s just as nutty the second time around.
OH SO “Nutty”. I learned to shoot in a friend’s back yard. I have shot on MANY a private shooting range. They’re fairly common, and fairly safe. Of course Leonard goes full “Progressive” imagining if somebody was to do things totally wrong. Well #1. No law prevents somebody from being stupid. And #2. If your backyard range isn’t stopping all rounds fired, and isn’t within the state-mandated distance from paved roads and occupied dwellings you’re looking at jail time and loss of your guns.
Hence why the antis have to dig so hard to come up with horror stories. There are likely THOUSANDS if not hundreds of thousands of private shooting ranges like this, and stories of mishaps are a rarity.
They call Florida the “gunshine state.” But this madness is not Florida-centric. In Colorado, you can have a gun in class. In Arizona, you can take one to the bar. In Georgia, they’re trying to make it legal to take one to church. So this isn’t just Florida. It’s America. We live in states of insanity.
Lots of states allow lawful carry in places that serve alcohol, or Churches. Several even allow people to carry on school grounds. Again, there are no issues with these. I’m seeing a trend.
As it happens, I have been corresponding with a reader who wrote me with what I regarded as promising ideas for moving the gun-rights argument forward. They included mandatory gun-safety training and mandatory liability insurance.
The dialogue faltered on his contention that he needs his gun because crime is spiraling out of control, and the country is not as safe as it was 20 years ago.
Mandatory training is one of those things that SOUNDS awesome, but really isn’t. I did posts on it here and here. The gist of those posts are mandatory training are a mandatory minimum, and any non-continuing education is essentially no education. As I’ve said before, I took French, Latin, and Japanese in school. We even did a unit in Greek in my Latin class. The Greek unit was probably about the same classroom hours as one of the hardcore gun camp trainings. It was a few weeks of classroom time with homework. Now I doubt I could write the Greek alphabet without an error. I know a good bit of Latin still, but that’s because I’m a scientist and I use Latin words frequently. Still I couldn’t translate even a simple Latin paragraph because I don’t have use for that skill. My French and Japanese are HORRIBLE. All of these were YEARS of school, and my skills are effectively zero.
Now “Progressives” would respond that you could have mandatory reviews every year….mostly because Government is ALWAYS the answer, but that suddenly becomes VERY expensive, and let’s face it, we all know DOZENS of shooters who have taken maybe the NRA basic courses, or have no formal training who are experts.
Further all we need to do is look at all the states where you can simply walk into a gun shop on a whim and buy your first gun, or even the states where you don’t need a permit to carry. There is no appreciable difference between those states and the restrictive states when it comes to injury, or negligence. Its essentially the Broken Windows Fallacy. It destroys wealth for no appreciable gain except for the promise that hysterical people like this guy will FEEL better.
Liability insurance is another crock. It would all be good if every murder, assault, and injury was caused by a lawful gun owner. But that isn’t the case, “Gun Death” is concentrated in urban areas with gang violence. Lawful gun owners are simply statistical noise when it comes to personal injury and damage of property.
Essentially Liability insurance is forcing lawful citizens to pay for the crimes of the criminals. Further it is also just destruction of wealth, as the people WITH the insurance will never need to file a claim, and the people doing the damage will never have insurance. The insurance companies would LOVE that! FREE MONEY! The antis love it because its taxing a right, and they are anti-freedom.
This, of course, is false: crime is at historic lows. In 1993, according to the FBI, the violent-crime rate was 747.1 per 100,000 people. In 2012, the most recent year for which figures are available, it was 386.9. Almost 10,000 fewer people were murdered in 2012 than in 1993.
You think this is a coincidence? Unemployment is WAYY up, which generally translates to higher violent crime. What’s the difference? Well the gun shops are crowded and the shelves are bare.
We armed ourselves and crime went down…so now we should give up our arms? Logic FAIL!
Until some of us get over this media-driven paranoia, even promising ideas for ending the guns impasse are doomed. So I will close with some words of advice to anyone thinking of visiting or living in Florida or any other state of American insanity. One word, actually:
Duck.
Oh the IRONY! This whole article is hand-wringing hysterics, and he wants to be taken seriously?
Moving on to another “Moms Demand Ineffective Laws” story. Its a sad tale of domestic violence.
Our laws right now definitely don’t protect women and children. When I was granted a restraining order against my estranged husband, police seized handguns and shotguns from the house. A judge arrested him in court for violating that restraining order. He was booked, a mug shot was taken, so he had a record. How was he able to obtain the gun he used to shoot us? Where was the protection for us?
I am 150% behind Moms Demand Action’s mission to pass gun laws that make sense—of course particularly for keeping guns out of the hands of abusers, and closing loopholes that allow them to obtain guns. I believe this is a big part of my own mission in life as I move forward and heal and become stronger and stronger.
I almost lost my life at the end of the barrel of a gun—but I was spared. Now it’s time for me to work to save the lives of others. Enough is enough!
So her Husband had a restraining order (which he violated), owned and acquired guns illegally, and then attempted to MURDER two people.
And you’re 150% behind the anti-rights movement? How would ANY of their propositions have changed anything? The claim that they are “Saving Lives” is laughable.
Really the only thing antis do is punish lawful gun owners and coddle criminals, while ignoring the GOOD guns do. They don’t care a WHIT about saving lives, they’re willing for more people to die so they can feel smug about themselves.
And let’s not forget the rampant abuse in restraining orders; often lawyers/plantiffs will falsely accuse the other spouse just as a tactic in the divorce case.
A restraining order is granted without due process — often times the spouse doesn’t even know of the accusation until served with the order.
Used to see Leonard Pitts’ liberal douche-baggery in the local fish wrapper. I guess it’s comforting in a bizarro world sort of way to see that he’s remained consistent. That level of hand-wringing faux-angst surely is more benefit to us than to the antis.
Mandatory: EVERYONE has to take the classes. We start teaching them in kindergarten and it’s part of gym or phys-ed. They get the week long unit twice a year for 13 straight years. And they learn regardless of if they intend to own a gun.
On-going: When you show up for your monthly militia muster and shoot your range-table there’s a large fine for being unable to hit the targets. Gigantic fine (or tax) for not attending muster or owning one of the approved weapons (regardless of reason); approved weapons will be made available from the government arsenals on a needs basis.
There. Now I’ve pinned the other extreme for everyone!
LOL! I’m honestly not far from you.
Maybe I’ll just type a post!
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I’ve had that liability insurance conversation with Dog gone. It turns out she doesn’t want liability insurance- she wants a tax. The policy holder shouldn’t receive any actual benefit from holding a policy, like only paying your deductible after negligently shooting someone. There is no pay-out to a policy holder in her schemes.
And she got pretty cagey when I started asking details about the policy that she must have taken out for herself since she has a CCW and all.
Yeah I occasionally play with Dog Gone because she is a true believer completely incapable looking at reality.
One of my best exchanges with her was about how Massachusetts had universal background checks, and horrible violent crime, and criminals who shoot people. Her response was because we have a transaction CALLED a “Private Sale” which is done on the Mass.gov website and the gun and both sellers are entered into the state registry maintained by the department of pubic safety, and to fill out this form you need to enter two valid Mass FID/LTC permit numbers that match all the vitals of the holder as well as their PIN, that I was wrong since it said it was “Private Sale” it was “Private”.
AMAZING!
Oh I also edited your post and deleted the amendment comment you submitted.
Couple points:
“They call Florida the ‘gunshine state.'”
“They” who? The only people I’ve seen referring to Florida as the “Gunshine State” are the anti-gun fringe. The ONLY people. Everyone else calls it “Florida,” except for travel agents (if they still exist) who call it by its proper nickname: the “Sunshine State.”
“As it happens, I have been corresponding with a reader who wrote me with what I regarded as promising ideas for moving the gun-rights argument forward.”
“As it happens”? That phrase implies a coincidental correspondence. A reader wrote an idea he liked, and he responded. Someone didn’t “just happen” to randomly write him about an idea that he “just happened” to like; the reader read his ideas and figured he’d like an additional one, and he was correct – there’s no coincidence.
“So I will close with some words of advice to anyone thinking of visiting or living in Florida or any other state of American insanity. One word, actually: Duck.”
Nice to know he’s so willing to go through life on his knees, afraid to rise or look up. Unfortunately, most of us aren’t as willing to grovel out of fear.
And finally:
“Our laws right now definitely don’t protect women and children.”
Damn right they don’t. They aren’t supposed to. They’re supposed to provide a legal framework for outlining the expected behavior of law-abiding folks, and an attendant punitive response for not following those behaviors. Period. Full stop. Complaining about the law not doing something it’s not designed or intended to do is like complaining that your macaroni-and-cheese isn’t self-cooking; unless and until you do your part, you won’t get the result you’re looking for.