In the United States firearms education should be mandatory. It’s not because the anti-gun crowd loses their fucking minds whenever it comes up.
The NRA has funded and run a program called “Eddie Eagle” for decades that teaches basic firearms safety and accident reduction to kids and it’s been slowly driven out of schools.
Wrap your head around this for a minute. Here’s Republicans and the NRA (fuck those guys) trying to do a “common sense” thing and getting lambasted for it. I can understand having an issue with the NRA (fuck those guys) but there’s been absolutely no counter proposals or attempts at creating something similar without NRA involvement.
We NEED firearms education in this country but we’re losing what little we did have and attempts at adding more are continually thwarted by the very people screaming from the rooftops about “Common Sense Reform”.
It the same stupidity that Republicans have with Sex Ad. It’s education vs ignorance. We need education.
2A types generally lose their minds over anything that might imply a restriction on ownership. I think it’s not because they don’t approve of the thing – whatever it is – but they see it as a slippery slope, and that The Liberals will just keep adding more straws to the camel’s back until it’s not practically legal.
For instance, if you troll around in the pro-gun forums, you’ll often come across people saying things like, “every gun owner should also own – and know how to use – a trauma kit”; or jumping down the throats of any poster posting a picture where someone isn’t practicing trigger discipline; or derides the people in a video where someone inadvertently (thoughtlessly) waves a gun at someone else. Even presumably “pro” gun YouTubers are usually careful to show that the weapon they’re handling is unloaded when they’re doing something with it that isn’t shooting, and it’s not because of YouTube’s increasingly stringent gun video rules: it’s because otherwise their comment section will be filled with gun people criticizing good gun ownership habits. So it’s demonstrable that the wider gun-owning community is pro gun education and safety, and you’d think adding laws that support these beliefs would be no-brainers – but they aren’t. It’s when it comes to codifying the socially-enforced rules into law that the community stomps on the brakes and becomes mulish.
Personally, I believe that this is a silly position to take; relatively few people object to drivers being required to take driving tests, and nobody complains about driver’s ed classes in pub ed. Cars are dangerous. So are guns. IMO you should need to take a test, get a gun license, and then be able to buy and carry (concealed if that’s what floats your boat). Just like a driver’s license, you’d need to retake the test whenever you move to a new state, but otherwise it’s essentially a one-time test. Just put the same restrictions on guns that we do cars, and do away with most of the other laws. Maybe rifles are like basic licenses, handguns are like motorcycles, and machine guns are like tractor-trailer semis: you take a different test to get a different kind of license allowance for each. And treat guns like cars: when you buy a gun, you register it just like you’d do a car, whether it’s a private or commercial sale. Move to a new state, register your guns there, just like you have to do with cars.
Gun control is a massive source of contention between liberals and conservatives, and we’re never going to overturn the 2A in the states. I don’t know if the 2A crowd would agree to treat guns like cars if it meant eliminating a whole mess of other legislation around guns which are of questionable efficacy to begin with. Absolutely, getting rid of all of the guns in the states would have a huge public safety impact, but I don’t believe it’s a realistic expectation that will ever happen; whereas mandatory training/education, testing, and licensing I think would improve things, and might be a reasonable middle-ground acceptable by both sides. Like they say in Lower Decks: “if both sides are equally unsatisfied with the negotiation… THAT’S A COMROMISE!”
So it’s demonstrable that the wider gun-owning community is pro gun education and safety, and you’d think adding laws that support these beliefs would be no-brainers – but they aren’t.
Gun Owners generally do support firearms education, both for kids and adults. The stuff for kids is increasingly being removed and blocked by the Democrats as shown in the links I provided.
The problem with requiring education / training for adults is that the anti-firearms folks broke trust on the issue. In places that have, or had, such requirements the barrier to entry was being continually raised while more firearm types and accessories are being restricted.
If you’re a Pro-2A person you’d have to be outright stupid to hop back in the pot for another round of “Boil the Frog”.
…whereas mandatory training/education, testing, and licensing I think would improve things, and might be a reasonable middle-ground acceptable by both sides. Like they say in Lower Decks: “if both sides are equally unsatisfied with the negotiation… THAT’S A COMROMISE!”
There’s no trust between the groups which makes compromise nearly unobtainable. The Anti folks will not offer any compromises and the Pro folks wouldn’t trust them, and rightly so, even if they did.
Firearms education is only necessary when there are guns all over the place. The people you’re complaining about don’t want guns around to begin with. Not to mention the inherent propaganda that is 100% built into any children’s content produced by Republicans and the NRA. If the goal of Democrats is to increase gun control and reduce the amount of guns among the general populace, it doesn’t really make sense for them to want NRA propaganda in schools. That said, I do agree that while there are all these guns around, parents should generally do a better job to make sure their children get this information, whether their family owns a gun or not.
Firearms education is only necessary when there are guns all over the place.
True but that condition is absolutely positively 100% not going away at any time in the next 50 years. The 2A could be repleaded and private firearm ownership made federally illegal tomorrow and there would still be firearms in closets, dresser drawers, and attics in 2074.
it doesn’t really make sense for them to want NRA propaganda in schools.
That’s completely fair but nothing is being created to replace it. If they don’t want the NRA involved that’s cool and I completely get it…but that doesn’t clear them to do nothing while blocking what already exists.
In the United States firearms education should be mandatory. It’s not because the anti-gun crowd loses their fucking minds whenever it comes up.
The NRA has funded and run a program called “Eddie Eagle” for decades that teaches basic firearms safety and accident reduction to kids and it’s been slowly driven out of schools.
You can find a plethora of articles online but here’s an example: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2022/02/15/bill-require-gun-safety-nra-eddie-eagle-program-schools/6800808001/
Here’s another example from Kansas: https://www.kmbc.com/article/kansas-bill-would-require-school-gun-safety-program/39432200
The legislature passed it, the Dem Governor VETOED it!
Wrap your head around this for a minute. Here’s Republicans and the NRA (fuck those guys) trying to do a “common sense” thing and getting lambasted for it. I can understand having an issue with the NRA (fuck those guys) but there’s been absolutely no counter proposals or attempts at creating something similar without NRA involvement.
We NEED firearms education in this country but we’re losing what little we did have and attempts at adding more are continually thwarted by the very people screaming from the rooftops about “Common Sense Reform”.
It the same stupidity that Republicans have with Sex Ad. It’s education vs ignorance. We need education.
2A types generally lose their minds over anything that might imply a restriction on ownership. I think it’s not because they don’t approve of the thing – whatever it is – but they see it as a slippery slope, and that The Liberals will just keep adding more straws to the camel’s back until it’s not practically legal.
For instance, if you troll around in the pro-gun forums, you’ll often come across people saying things like, “every gun owner should also own – and know how to use – a trauma kit”; or jumping down the throats of any poster posting a picture where someone isn’t practicing trigger discipline; or derides the people in a video where someone inadvertently (thoughtlessly) waves a gun at someone else. Even presumably “pro” gun YouTubers are usually careful to show that the weapon they’re handling is unloaded when they’re doing something with it that isn’t shooting, and it’s not because of YouTube’s increasingly stringent gun video rules: it’s because otherwise their comment section will be filled with gun people criticizing good gun ownership habits. So it’s demonstrable that the wider gun-owning community is pro gun education and safety, and you’d think adding laws that support these beliefs would be no-brainers – but they aren’t. It’s when it comes to codifying the socially-enforced rules into law that the community stomps on the brakes and becomes mulish.
Personally, I believe that this is a silly position to take; relatively few people object to drivers being required to take driving tests, and nobody complains about driver’s ed classes in pub ed. Cars are dangerous. So are guns. IMO you should need to take a test, get a gun license, and then be able to buy and carry (concealed if that’s what floats your boat). Just like a driver’s license, you’d need to retake the test whenever you move to a new state, but otherwise it’s essentially a one-time test. Just put the same restrictions on guns that we do cars, and do away with most of the other laws. Maybe rifles are like basic licenses, handguns are like motorcycles, and machine guns are like tractor-trailer semis: you take a different test to get a different kind of license allowance for each. And treat guns like cars: when you buy a gun, you register it just like you’d do a car, whether it’s a private or commercial sale. Move to a new state, register your guns there, just like you have to do with cars.
Gun control is a massive source of contention between liberals and conservatives, and we’re never going to overturn the 2A in the states. I don’t know if the 2A crowd would agree to treat guns like cars if it meant eliminating a whole mess of other legislation around guns which are of questionable efficacy to begin with. Absolutely, getting rid of all of the guns in the states would have a huge public safety impact, but I don’t believe it’s a realistic expectation that will ever happen; whereas mandatory training/education, testing, and licensing I think would improve things, and might be a reasonable middle-ground acceptable by both sides. Like they say in Lower Decks: “if both sides are equally unsatisfied with the negotiation… THAT’S A COMROMISE!”
Gun Owners generally do support firearms education, both for kids and adults. The stuff for kids is increasingly being removed and blocked by the Democrats as shown in the links I provided.
The problem with requiring education / training for adults is that the anti-firearms folks broke trust on the issue. In places that have, or had, such requirements the barrier to entry was being continually raised while more firearm types and accessories are being restricted.
It’s reached the point that some states who have the requirements are now being sued for failure to issue permits in accordance with their own law.
If you’re a Pro-2A person you’d have to be outright stupid to hop back in the pot for another round of “Boil the Frog”.
There’s no trust between the groups which makes compromise nearly unobtainable. The Anti folks will not offer any compromises and the Pro folks wouldn’t trust them, and rightly so, even if they did.
Its an intractable problem.
Firearms education is only necessary when there are guns all over the place. The people you’re complaining about don’t want guns around to begin with. Not to mention the inherent propaganda that is 100% built into any children’s content produced by Republicans and the NRA. If the goal of Democrats is to increase gun control and reduce the amount of guns among the general populace, it doesn’t really make sense for them to want NRA propaganda in schools. That said, I do agree that while there are all these guns around, parents should generally do a better job to make sure their children get this information, whether their family owns a gun or not.
True but that condition is absolutely positively 100% not going away at any time in the next 50 years. The 2A could be repleaded and private firearm ownership made federally illegal tomorrow and there would still be firearms in closets, dresser drawers, and attics in 2074.
That’s completely fair but nothing is being created to replace it. If they don’t want the NRA involved that’s cool and I completely get it…but that doesn’t clear them to do nothing while blocking what already exists.
It’s frustrating as all get out.