I recently discovered that you have not know true joy until a telemarketer from an organization you detest hangs up on you. I was minding my own business when the phone rang. The NRA was invading my privacy, likely by calling random gun owners, or permit holders, using some list purchased from somewhere, in an effort to gin up support for their proposed national concealed carry reciprocity law. Apparently they thought I was low hanging fruit. The woman on the other end of the line enthusiastically read from her script, which was filled with confrontational rhetorical questions and the NRA’s convenient answers, but she was not prepared for a debate.
"Do you know of any law that can stop a deranged individual from getting a gun?” She asked authoritatively, clearly expecting silence as an answer.
"Yes.”
Wait, what?
“Don't let deranged people buy guns. Why can a lunatic walk into a gun store and buy ten guns, one of them a military rifle? That is just plain stupid. Mentally unstable people shouldn't be allowed to buy deadly weapons, and nobody should be able to buy a freaking AR-15 or AK-47."
She recovered her tongue and came back with “well criminals don't follow the law and that won't stop them from buying guns on the street.”
Hmmm. When did we start talking about criminals? I thought we were on mentally ill people getting guns? Fine, let’s talk about how stupid laws in one place can affect not stupid laws in another.
“Look at Chicago,” she intoned, feeling confident again despite the above observation about the unrelatedness of the new subject to the first question, "and the soaring murder rates when they have some of the strictest gun laws in the country.” Then she went for the jugular. “Gun laws don't work! Democrat x and y want to keep ordinary citizens from protecting themselves!”
After pointing out that rates of violent crime have been going down and she shouldn't be lying to strangers about that, I went on to explain why Chicago’s strict gun laws haven't worked.
“There are no iron boarders between states that keep crap from one out of the others, what one does will affect them all. This is a race to the bottom issue, Chicago has strict gun laws, but Indiana, Georgia, and Alabama don't, so people buy 100 guns to the south and drive them north to sell on the street. Chicago can't stop that from happening. Strict gun laws are thwarted, not because they don't work, but because they aren't everywhere.”
To bring it home I used an analogy that would resonate with my likely underpaid and underemployed blue collar adversary. “It's the same with jobs, if every country had the same labor laws then companies wouldn't ship jobs overseas to cut costs by getting dirt cheap labor in foreign sweatshops.”
Silence. Is. Golden.
At this point she was starting to feel a little unsure so she skipped down to the purpose of her call. “Well we are trying to gain support for our national concealed carry bill so that your right to carry will be recognized by all states, like a drivers license.”
Is that how they are pushing their Carry Secretly Everywhere law to every day people? Is it really like a drivers license?
"But to get a drivers license you have to take a test to make sure you know how to drive and you have to register your car. You have to have insurance in case you hurt someone. With a gun you just walk in and buy it then walk in and get a permit. No training, no registering it every year, and definitely no insurance to cover damages you cause with it."
Apparently she didn't know that because she started stuttering. “I'm sure they require training to get a permit.” I assured her I had to do none whatsoever to get mine. Had I not actively sought out instruction on how to safely use and maintain my firearm I could be walking around with it every day knowing absolutely nothing about either. She was shocked into another silence, perhaps wondering how many people around her were doing just that.
The exchange above is why I am writing this diary. To a lot of people, that drivers license analogy will sound reasonable, and we must absolutely counter it by pointing out that we know those drivers had a minimum amount of training, they are monitored yearly, and they aren’t allowed to go out and buy a tank. It is not the same thing, because if we did with guns what we do with drivers licenses then the left would be ecstatic.
“Can you join the NRA to help fight for this bill by paying $150 today, which includes a free duffel bag and five years of membership in the NRA at $50 off?"
I told her that if the NRA required competency training to own a gun, safety training to carry concealed, and advocated actually treating guns like we do cars, including requiring insurance, I would gladly support it and become a member.
This is, in my opinion, an opportunity to emphatically change the left position from the intrusive sounding "gun control” to the much more palatable “gun safety,” which is more conducive to getting legislation we want passed if liberals retake any part of the government in 2018 and 2020. We should take that divers license analogy and run with it. Literally.
The NRA’s position is that we cannot be safe until every “good” citizen is armed. Our easy answer to that is if half of them don't know how to use their gun we are worse off than if they didn't have one because now they can accidentally kill somebody innocent. How is it “safe” to have citizens running around with military weapons whose sole purpose is to kill large numbers of people really fast? Is this a war zone? They are useless for hunting and home defense so why does anyone need one? Collectors? The Constitution protects the right to collect exotic weapons now?
The NRA shill had no answer for those questions, or their implications, because they point to the reasonable position. There is no logical reason to oppose mandated safety and competency training before buying a gun and owner registration afterwards. Nor is there any for allowing civilians to own war riffles, which is why they fall back on a tortured interpretation of the 2nd Amendment as justification. Fear and suspicion of the “Deep State” as a reason to secretly stockpile weapons of war you don’t know how to use is neither reasonable nor logical to the vast majority of the population. Mass shootings are quickly convincing people we should think about banning AR-15s and similar type guns. However, this drivers license narrative might overcome people’s leanings toward more gun safety precisely because it is familiar, sounds superficially reasonable, and they don’t know that no training is required to get a CC permit in some states and counties. Just like the woman who called me. She hung up more informed about guns and less sure about her current employment situation. She is only one person.
I posted something on Facebook about this exchange, but I think Democrats need to actively counter this “just like a drivers license” campaign on broad scale. National CC is a very, very bad idea. Idiots walking around in unfamiliar places with guns hidden in their purse or wasteband who think they are potential heroes in a Bruce Willis style modern American cowboy movie playing in their heads are a danger to everyone around them. That is evident to most of us, we just need to make sure people know that is what will happen. They won’t get competent good guys with guns, they will get an armed and dangerous Barney Fife with a chip on his shoulder. Plus getting guns on the same footing as cars- testing to make sure you know how to use it properly, registration of every owner, and mandatory liability insurance coverage- would be a huge step in the right direction. It would be nice if we could use their own propaganda against them for once.