According to the NRA, the antidote to a “bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” In furtherance of this reasoning, some members of the Utah Legislature, in its recent session, proposed a bill which would authorize anyone to carry a weapon with no restrictions whatever—whether he or she has even been given instruction on how to use it.
A recent article in “New Scientist” magazine (May 13, 2017, p. 32) summarizes research indicating this idea may be problematic at best.
According to author Michael Bond, in many, if not most individuals, the first thing to go in a life-threatening emergency is the ability think through a situation and act appropriately. Hence too many people simply freeze, whether they are faced with a fire, a ferry disaster, or some other natural or man-made disaster.
Quoting Charles Morgan, a forensic psychiatrist at the University of New Haven, Connecticut, Bond asserts that everyone becomes less intelligent in a high stress situation. Hence even dialing 911 can become a challenge.To combat this natural tendency to act irrationally in an emergency, Bond says the military, emergency services, and other agencies who must put their people in peril, resort to intensive training. Repetition is a key, he says, as is prior planning.
Extrapolating from the findings summarized in Bond’s article, what could we expect from an untrained “good guy with a gun” in an emergency? First, he might well freeze. Second, if he does act, he may fumble with his weapon endangering himself as well as innocent bystanders. Third, if he does make his weapon operational, he may misjudge the identity of the “bad guy with a gun” (it could be another “good guy”) or fail to take into account innocent individuals in the line of fire.
The upshot is that if the “good guy with a gun” is to be useful in an emergency, he had better have undergone some intensive training—something akin to the FBI’s “Hogans Alley.” A corollary is that such training needs to be refreshed at regular intervals. A few trips a year to a static firing range is not likely to cut it.
So the question arises: how many prospective “good guys with guns” are willing to undergo the expensive and time-consuming training it would require to become really proficient under stress in the use of their weapons? I suspect the number would be few. By comparison, the requirement of a rudimentary gun safety course to qualify for a carry permit is a minor burden, though it is better than nothing.
Even Justice Scalia, in his opinion in the case of District of Columbia v Heller, recognized that reasonable limits can be placed on the Second Amendment right to bear arms:
nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.
Given the human propensity to act irrationally and ineffectually under stress, it stands to reason that issuance of a carry permit, requiring at least a safety course, is a minimalist approach to public safety. Omitting even this level of training would be nothing less than irresponsible.