Open Season on a Gun Safety Course
Yesterday I took advantage of a half-price Amazon Local Offer to attend a Gun Safety Course in Woburn, MA. I now have my "Basic Firearms Safety Certificate" in hand, which is the first step to obtaining a license to purchase and carry firearms in Massachusetts. I have yet to decide whether I will actually apply, let alone purchase a firearm or join the local gun club. Nor would I post such decisions here.
No matter what your political beliefs on this polarizing issue, I'm pretty sure you'll find something upsetting in what follows. Feel free to click away now.
The course was taught by "Army Mike," an active duty Army Recruiter who also saw active duty in Iraq. He was personable, approachable, and did his best to make the material interesting. He was, in my very inexpert opinion, quite knowledgeable about the weapons, ammunition, and safety. His knowledge was very much geared to practicality; he was less sure when fielding questions about reloading ammunition, gunsmithing, or legal quirks. I was fine with that; those questions were well beyond the scope of what an introductory course should cover. He made no effort to hide his stock NRA stance on gun regulation issues, his general political leanings, or his disdain for Massachusetts gun laws in general; I was a lot less fine with that. He was also a male chauvinist; had Deb elected to come along I suspect she would have walked out half way through the class.
There were over 30 people in the audience. This particular site holds two classes a week; but after the Newtown shootings it was selling out a 50 person room 6 times a week. When it comes to convincing people to buy firearms, ammo, and related services, the NRA has nothing on Diane Feinstein or Michael Bloomberg. The most commonly given reason for people being there was "to exercise my 2nd amendment rights before they get taken away." As reasons, "Personal protection" and "I moved here from another state" were also-rans.
I use the term "audience" intentionally; this was a primarily a lecture. I'd estimate that most of the people there were in their late 30's or older with a much smaller cluster in the 20-25 range. The crowd was predominantly Caucasian, and less than a third of the crowd were women, Participation was strictly voluntary after the initial introductions -- it was not necessary to demonstrate any actual understanding to get your certificate.
When it comes to actually teaching gun safety, to put it bluntly, "this course is crap." That's a direct quote from Army Mike and it is spot on. Gun safety is a combination of practice, respect for the weapon, situational awareness, and common sense. During the course, I handled two weapons for less than 30 seconds each. One was a Glock 17 handgun; the other a Mass. Compliant Colt semi-automatic rifle. I think it was a model 6920, but I'll just call it an AR-15 and be done with it. (While AR-15 is still a registered trademark of owned by Colt, like pretty much everyone else they no longer sell a model by that name.) That doesn't qualify as "practice" in my book, nor are you going to learn respect or situational awareness while sitting in a classroom. And I think we all know that common sense isn't necessarily very common.
I did take some potentially life-saving knowledge away from the course. For example, I didn't realize how long one should wait before clearing the chamber after a hang fire or a jam. Other items fell into the "obvious once demonstrated" category, such as why revolvers suck for concealed carry. Handling the AR-15 helped me understand the popularity of the gun; it felt better in my hands than any bolt action rifle I've ever handled. The instructor also confirmed something I had long suspected; with one exception the "military-style" features which have been used to categorize rifles as "assault weapons," are mostly cosmetic. That exception is magazine size. "Army Mike" uses pre-ban 30-round magazine and sneered at New York's 7-round limit, but didn't even try to explain when or why one would need such a magazine in non-combat situations. But realistically, absent the Massachusetts requirement this course simply wouldn't exist.
Despite his disdain, "Army Mike" went into quite a bit of detail about the process of getting a license and what you could and could not do once you got one. This was also valuable information, but nothing one couldn't find just as easily online. In Massachusetts, the type of license you get and the restrictions on it are at the whim of your local police chief. The operant language is "may issue if it appears that the applicant is a suitable person to be issued such license" (emphasis mine.) Can you imagine such discretion to grant a driver's license or a civil service job? In light of the McDonald v. Chicago ruling, I doubt that the current law would survive a serious constitutional challenge even in the 1st Circuit.
And therein lays the problem with safety course, background checks, and mental health checks in general. My guess is that a real gun safety course would be more than a full day affair, including supervised live fire and graded tactical scenarios. I'd put the cost at about $1500, but liability costs could easily add another $500 to that. Nor should it be an "auto-pass" course like the one I just took. Now that's a decent sized chunk of change. If you add in the practice needed to keep safe, plus a reasonable level of liability insurance, those costs could further the divisions between rich and poor. (There are exactly zero ranges in Massachusetts regularly open to the public for rifle and pistol practice).
A background check with criteria which can pass due process muster should prevent legal sales to a felon or someone under an active restraining order, but can't go too much further than that. "Gun rights" advocates correctly point out that it's illegal for such people to acquire guns already and if they are planning to use the firearm to commit a crime they are unlikely to balk at acquiring one illegally. But it's just as correct to point out that the additional hurdle will cause some potential criminals to abandon their plans. I have no idea if any statistical link between crimes of opportunity or passion and background check "red flags" is sufficient to pass constitutional muster, but the holes will remain large and obvious.
As with the current Massachusetts "suitable person" standard, the problem with mental health checks is subjectivity. Notwithstanding "Person of Interest" or "Minority Report," there is no magic test or instrument which can tell if someone is sane and intelligent enough to use a gun safely or if they are predisposed to commit crimes. If there's a dispute over mental capacity or sanity, even after the fact the only limiting factor on the range of available expert opinions seems to be the budget of each litigant. I respect the experience and opinions of police chiefs and psychologists, but when it comes to personal rights I'm only willing to allow very limited actions based on "reasonable suspicion," intuition, or psychological conclusions.
In summary, all three measures can only be tradeoffs between effectiveness and fair treatment. The more effective they are at preventing "bad people" from legally buying firearms the more people they will unjustly exclude. Especially in a "we must do something/this is something" atmosphere, I can't say people are wrong not to trust politicians to strike a reasonable balance.
The Second Amendment exists and it ain't going anywhere. The USA spent decades pretending it was all about "A well regulated Militia" and equating that with the National Guard. The current Court has in its all-too-finite wisdom decided that language is meaningless and instead decided dance around original intent in the opposite direction. That may change again in a couple of decades, but don't count on it.
Until then, the millions of handguns, rifles, and high-capacity magazines in private hands aren't going anywhere, nor is the technology to churn out properly aged "pre-ban" counterfeits. To me, it seems like half the people in this country want to pretend none of that exists and the other half want to pretend that we shouldn't officially recognize or encourage the responsibility that comes with those rights. $95 "gun safety lip service" courses like the one I took are, in fact, crap. If the Court is going to hold to its current interpretation we have to install the responsibility that comes with those rights.