No rule ever makes anything safer. What the rule does is to teach people.
The rule mandates that people are taught and that in turn makes a thing safer. Knowledge and training working to a common good.
Or a right-wing politician like Huckabee. :up:
Sure. The point is the point, not who comes up with it.
Promoting understanding and safety is great. :thumb:
:thumb: And that's what requiring testing, certification and periodic recertification can accomplish.
However, there has to be consideration over what is the best means to achieve that end. Making regulations — demanding that people go through a course — might create a spike in understanding, but there is good reason to believe that it would only be that — a temporary gain
Actually, there's reason to believe it does much more than that, beginning with driver's license training and testing by mandate.
before the notion that the safety issue has been "taken care of" creates apathy toward genuine learning.
I don't agree. You can't mandate that a person learns from a course, but the chances are they will and that will impact their conduct. And I'd also favor periodic recertification, which would tend to help the lessons stick as they do when we understand we'll need them again.
More to the point, having seat belt regulations and education won't make everyone a safe driver or ensure that everyone uses their belts, but the data supports a dramatic impact of both and there's no reason to suggest the same impact can't be felt in relation to gun owners and be sustained in much the same fashion.
I know my training is still with me and helped shaped my attitude about how I approach my weapons. If it does that for any substantive number of people it could make a profound difference.
...a regulation that says you have to pass a test before you can use a gun teaches people they have to answer questions correctly and pay a fee before they will be accepted under the law.
It does more than that (though I didn't suggest a written only test and wouldn't). It teaches you something that is then yours to apply and given what's taught is beneficial to you it raises the likelihood of your being a responsible gun owner. No guarantee, but as with driver's tests, at least there's a greater knowledge base and the opportunity that wasn't there prior. Not perfect, but a step that can help and, again, benefit everyone involved.
This creates animosity toward the law, because there are those who will not meet its standards and there are those to whom the test would be childish.
We don't have contempt for law because of laws or contempt for knowledge that is helpful if we're rational.
A fundamental law, such as the death penalty for murder — along with its swift and public execution — teaches people that they must be good, while proper restitution and compensation laws teach that mistakes must also be accounted for.
I'd rather stay on the particular topic and talk about what we can and in this climate are likely to allow. Revisiting fundamental aspects of our legal system isn't that thing.
We do not have those. We have a myriad of regulations that change when we cross state or national lines that only encourage people to give up their right to self-defense.
I think your conclusion about people is wrong and at the very least arguable, as a gun owner in a country with more of me and guns than anywhere in Western civilization. I would, however, agree that a uniform approach tends to be a better one, where possible. And uniform certification would be one of those possibilities.
The key is that adding to the regulations — they have already been shown ineffective — will only exacerbate the problems.
First, you've only asserted, not demonstrated that regulations are ineffective and I've answered on one among many points that reject that premise, as the holder of a valid driver's license and someone who uses his safety belt. Going beyond that first point to the notion that safety regulations would exacerbate the problem they demonstrably combat isn't a point I have to argue until you make the first leg.
The answer is to redact the fluff and implement good, foundational laws.
Or, any number or rules an regulations do, in fact and demonstrably, make us safer. The trick is to weed the ineffective and to identify and pursue the beneficial. I think training and certification is a good place to begin given the productive and demonstrable history in line else with that sort of thing.
