Right now, we do have school shootings. Your ignoring that is emotional rather than rational.
When kids stop cutting off fingers in shop class I'll consider mandatory gun safety training. Of course, Buddhists could probably opt out for religious reasons.
Did you actually read my post? There's no reason that a basic safety course cannot be taught using non-firing guns. The worst you could do would be to pinch your finger.
I don't have delicate sensibilies. I haven't insulted you. Who's being emotional here?
But there is a point here. People who are against guns (Not me, I am all for guns), will demand that their kids sit out. I just think it should be the gun owner's
personal responsibility the get the education. In fact, it's ironic that you want the govt. to do it for you seeing how it is in opposition to your libertarian sensibilities.
Nope. I'm saying that if you insist that a safety course should be a pre-requisite to firearm ownership, the simplest solution, the one that infringes on a right enumerated in the BoR least, would be to have it as a course for H.S. seniors.
There is absolutely no reason to tie a safety course to having a FOID card that has to be renewed, by jumping through whatever hoops the government wishes, every 5 years. This is completely spurious, the two are not inherently connected and need not be connected.
If having a safety course is so important to you, then it could be done as a private enterprise function; when you pass the safety course, the notation is appended to your NICS data. When you go to buy a gun, NICS clears you if you are not red-flagged and have the notation of having taken a safety class.
Personally, I'm not sure I'd even want to go that far. Yes, I would
like for everyone to take a firearms safety course; making it compulsory would arguably be a 2A infringement unless you could prove the benefits would justify the infringement. Notice I said prove, not assume.
I just don't see a FOID card as an infringement on your right to have a gun. Law enforcement officers I know endorse it because it's a picture ID that you must have to purchase firearms and ammunition. It also makes it effective for them to determine whether or not is allowed to have a gun. We both agree that there are some people who shouldn't be allowed to have a gun. The card helps the police and merchants.
You already have to show a picture ID when they run your name through NICS.
Criminals and loonies do not usually purchase guns through legal means anyway; NICS already tends to prevent that. You have not shown that there is any substantial improvement to public safety with FOID, and the burden of proof is on the FOID supporter to justify the infringement... just as it would be if we were talking about free speech.
No where in the Constitution does it say that the 2nd Amendment can be infringed upon in ways that would not be tolerated for the 1st, 3rd, 4th-10th, as you seem to assume.
I've explained to you why it is an infringement. I'll try once more.
It turns a right, enumerated in the BoR, into a privilege that is licensed by the government, subject to whatever requirements gov wishes to impose on same, through the mechanism of having to renew the license every 5 years. Once gun owners accept such a mechanism, the requirements can be increased to the point where very few people can own a gun. This is no slippery slope argument, there are plenty of politicians and political lobbies that would love to use this method (or any other they can swing) to drastically limit who can lawfully own a gun, beyond that which is at all reasonable.
You wouldn't tolerate a Free-speech card, or a Freedom of Religion card. The right to own firearms is equally fundamental.
FOID makes it a
privilege granted at the government's whim.
My stance is about safety. This isn't a grab for guns. That will never happen. We love our guns too much. I don't see regulation for the public safety is an intrusion. You haven't shown how going and spending 15 minutes every five years is such a great intrusion.
You're flat wrong.
You are being emotional by jumping to this unsupported conclusion.
I support responsible gun ownership.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt... although it is difficult to do so, given your refusal to recognize that FOID is just as much an infringment on a right as a "free speech card" would be.
I have explained that this level of regulation would make it easy for government to regulate gun ownership practically out of existence if it chose to do so, and pointed out that there are quite a few politicians, as well as lobbyists like the Brady Group, who would just love to use it for that purpose. I've made my point. What you refuse to recognize is that the burden of proof is on your side of the argument, to prove that an infringement on a fundamental right, of this magnitude, must be PROVEN to have substantial positive benefits for society as a whole, before we can even begin to debate whether it is justified. You have still offered no proof.
You just haven't been willing to listen. You haven't shown how this would keep anyone from getting a gun.
Keeping people from getting guns isn't my agenda. It would appear to be yours.
I've mentioned NICS, whose purpose is to keep felons, druggies and loonies from legally buying a gun. I don't see what you think FOID would do, as far as preventing those "undesireables" from getting a gun legally, that NICS doesn't. Your only point is that it makes it convenient for LE to see who is "allowed to have a gun" (which phrasing makes it clear you fail to appreciate that this is a fundamental enumerated right we're talking about), and convenience is an inadequate justification for making a right into a privilege.
Your fail. You didn't mention Ghengis Kahn.
2 points for silly humor, -50 points for failing to admit that the point I made was valid.