This one out of Arizona, the AZ Capitol Times to be precise, a state known as a bastion of firearm freedoms.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety currently issues concealed weapons permits at the state level. However, eligibility criteria are lax and, due to Arizona being an open carry state, obtaining a weapons permit is not required to own a firearm. We propose a state licensing program in order to reduce gun violence in Arizona. All gun owners should be required to obtain a firearm permit. Licensing would include a rigorous training program including a classroom-based curriculum focused on firearm safety, Arizona gun laws and a review of gun violence in the U.S. Subsequently, a written exam would need to be passed in order to advance to live range training. Individuals would then learn how to properly handle and shoot firearms followed by a live range qualification exam. Upon successful completion of the program, individuals would qualify to obtain a firearm permit which would be required to purchase or own a gun in Arizona.

Compare this with Article II Section 26 of the Arizona State Constitution.

“The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself or the state shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain, or employ an armed body of men.”

State licensing (at a cost/tax) with a review of Arizona laws and U.S. gun violence statistics (at a cost/tax to prepare) with a written exam that is likely to have a cost/tax to take, submit, and grade. Then advancement to live range training (cost/tax to pay instructors and range safety personnel who maintain the state standard) and a qualification exam. Upon completion of the program (and paying your right access tax) individuals would qualify to obtain a firearm permit which would be required to purchase or own a gun in Arizona.

That seems to me, and maybe it is just me but I doubt it, to be impairing the ability of citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves or the state. As the state will not be making the proposed training readily available and at no additional cost to residents or as part of public education I cannot see how this scheme in the least is feasible.

Nor how it will positively influence homicide rates into decline. Unless, of course, the theory is that by making exercise of the right a pain in the ass, especially to lower income individuals who are more likely to be victimized and statistically more likely to perpetrate, you intent to slowly filter out firearms from the ‘undesirables’.

Instead of focusing funding, policing, and prosecution efforts on targeting organized and semi-organized criminal activity that make up the majority of homicides nationwide… I’m sure taxing a human right is the way to do it. It has worked to well in Illinois after all, nobody gets shot in Chicago with all those FOID cards.

Oh… well… huh. Well I’m certain the licenses allow them to solve all those crimes at least.

Okay so… not that great, but let’s see what they say about the rest to justify this point of view.

The right to bear arms is guaranteed in our nation’s Constitution and many, including the NRA, are against new laws or requirements to gun ownership. 

That is what guaranteed means…

However, our law enforcement and military are trained extensively on firearm usage, both in the classroom and on the range, before they are allowed to handle and use guns.

Bold assumption. It would be accurate to say members of these organizations receive a standardized curriculum on service weapons. The Marine Corps has one that is drawn out, emmerive, and instructive, as part of basic training. But it is also very basic and doesn’t get more advanced unless your specific MOS requires it to do so in other schools. The Marine Corps is also a foundation up professional, high mobility, specialized, combined arms fighting force. Not Joe Americano of Arizona who just wants a 9mm in case someone breaks down his door or tries to carjack him.

Civilians should be held to the same requirements. 

No they shouldn’t. It is entirely unreasonable and unnecessary to expect all citizens, including those of less able body (who are at increased risk of victimization), to conform to some kind of military standard.

An independent study found that carrying a gun did not realistically provide self-defense unless a user is properly trained in the classroom and on the range (NGVAC, 2015).

Yes, this is true. Just as owning a tuba doesn’t make you a musician owning a firearm does not make you proficient in its use. This logic does not compel the state to make it mandatory to be proficient for ownership and right exercise. If it does, then let’s start talking about literacy and competency tests for voting again, since you have to be proficient to exercise a right with any good effect. Right?

The NRA (2019) even offers courses to help people learn firearm basics, safety, and improve marksmanship and shooting skills. Required licensure is not meant to reduce Second Amendment rights, but rather ensure that those who own guns are properly trained for their own safety and the public’s.

What it is meant to do is not at issue. We attack laws all the time that were not meant to do one thing but ended up disproportionately negatively impacting a group, usually minorities and lower income citizens.

Which. Is. Exactly. What. This. Will. Do.

If it were meant to work as you say we would make this part of public education and accessible to high school students, as a necessary part of their civic education, and adults at their leisure. But of course we won’t. Because the goal is to strangle the Right to Keep and Bear Arms slowly from the public consciousness through lack of accessibility. Why are we pretending otherwise?

The future reloaded

The title of a Sacramento story this morning that attempts (poorly) to explain to the public the technology behind our favorite piece of haunted hysterics… the ‘Ghost Gun‘

The shooting happened so fast that three off-duty officers rushing toward it couldn’t make a difference.

Last month at Saugus High School, California’s 21st mass shooting since 1982 left two victims dead and three wounded among the brushy hills of Santa Clarita. With a trio of officers heading straight into that chaos, the causalities were a jarring reminder of how fast tragedy comes once a gun starts firing. The campus has high fences and security cameras, but it’s not one of the 3% of American schools that currently use metal detectors. But even if it had taken that precaution, it may not have been enough.

If the student had gone through the detector (that was not there), yes they could have made a difference. But let’s break down all the things that would have to go in favor of security for it to have mattered. Because it could just have easily failed to make the difference.

• Student would have had to attempt to go through the detector, knowing the detectors are there.
• Security would have to properly screen when the detector went off and not miss a concealed firearm, an event that happens all the time (Check the TSA’s failure rate)
• If the prior two events didn’t occur the officers in place to respond would have to be in position to directly observe the student, recognize he was pulling a weapon, and respond themselves in a manner to effectively intercede…

In manufacturing, it is called stacking tolerances. The amount of error that can be allowed in a given part of a system before a failure of the system occurs that must be additionally calculated with the errors in all the other parts. This is all when individual parts are, technically, correct.

The security systems, any system, has only so much latitude that it can influence in favor of successful intervention or dissuading a motivated perpetrator. Those are its tolerances. Each more complicated item you add to that system can only work within its capabilities and influence in its limited sphere.

You get to a point where your system is so stacked to only work successfully in such a limited manner that it fails. This leaves people wondering why it was there, and what failed, in the first place? The very basic reaction to this is to add additional complexity, further limiting the specificity of system but biasing those who know of the system’s existence to believing its coverage far greater than is reality.

We see that bias in full swing with this article and its author’s either confusion… or perhaps deliberate obfuscation.

Not only do ghost guns exist outside conventional safety measures—background checks, restraining orders, general traceability—a new customized breed can now be made almost entirely of plastic. Some are forged by advanced computer numerical control milling machines, while other versions have been made with 3D printers. At least some of them have already slipped through metal detectors. In fact, investigative journalists report having been able to sneak a 3D-printed gun through the security system for the Israeli parliament—twice.

We go into a dramatic mix of misplaced information after the opening about the high school shooting and its use of a ‘Ghost Gun’ in a school without detectors. That shooting occurred with a 80% receiver finished into a 1911. A 1911 is almost all metal parts, the 80% receivers are generally aluminum or steel, not polymer. Even if it had been polymer the majority of the gun would have been steel and therefore detectable by screening machines that, I repeat, were not at the school to begin with if the student had gone through them with the gun at all… Yeah this one is quiet the rabbit hole folks.

The article has steered from the tragedy of a disturbed student attacking classmates in close proximity to law enforcement, to the fact detectors were not present to find the 1911 (if he would have passed through them to begin with), to the fact it was a 80% receiver 1911 and didn’t have a serial number, to the fact that 3D printing is a viable technology now and that security screening is still and will always be imperfect.

But all of that is written to lead you to the problem being identified as, ‘Ghost Gun’ and not individual system limitations for security. By the end of the paragraph you would think the student in California had printed some untraceable device that used stealth materials to slip in and kill his classmates before killing himself. A technology that has been used to sneak guns into an ally’s parliament chambers!

You are left with no notion that the only difference between the gun he used and any other handgun bought from a store is that no one put a number on the side. That’s it, the only physical difference. Every other part of the security net requires perfect social interactions to work, that includes the person committing violence doing what we want and walking into our security screen, something that person or persons are actively trying to avoid.

No one wants to say that good safety systems aren’t foolproof. They don’t want to acknowledge the realities that those tolerances exist and a lot of things must go how we want them to go for our safety systems to work.

But… Why bother with that when we can demonize a technology no one will understand, especially not from that explanation…

No one wants to hear, “There is nothing we could have done, at that point.” No one wants the public acknowledgement that the power to commit or prevent an act is so weighted in the hands of the perpetrators and that our measures against such will always be imperfect. They want to equate the acknowledgement of that with a refusal to do anything. If it is a refusal, it’s easy to blame someone for it.

If it’s impossible… then what? Do the best we can?

Yes. But making it the best requires recognizing the hard truths. That’s not something many are willing to do.

I’ve steered clear of this political topic up until this point. Mostly because… the impeachment of Donald Trump doesn’t directly have a lot to do with firearms and 2nd Amendment rights. The Donald is mostly a fair weather friend of the 2A for political reasons and we saw that when it came to bumpstocks.

So what does the impeachment mean in a more 20,000 ft altitude view of things and how does that relate to gun rights?

Well… probably pretty status quo.

Let’s break it down.

The sitting President has been impeached by a less than 100% party line vote in the House of Representatives over two articles with less than clear ties to actual crimes on under US law. Compare that to the two acquitted formal charges against President Clinton for Perjury and Obstruction of Justice, both with clear statutes under law, and the Trump case looks far murkier.

So from a practical procedural standpoint we’re likely to end up with the same result as the Clinton impeachment but with an even more partisan taste left in everyone’s mouths. The Senate was split 50/50 on Clinton, and that only on one charge with the other charge being 55/45 for acquittal.

The Senate this time is likely to give a war stronger showing for acquittal if the party lines hold steady. The absolute most the Democrats are likely to pull off is 47 out of 67 necessary votes, and given the uncertainty and defections in the House they’re not likely to to even get that. It’s possible, depending on the electoral circumstances and how the trial goes, that the conviction vote doesn’t even hit 40 for either charge.

And with the House holding the articles from the Senate until a ‘favorable situation’ can be worked out after the holiday break, the process looks more and more like the political stunt and less and less like the solemn constitutional duty the Democrats claim to have been carrying out in defense of the nation at its principles.

Talk about a house divided. Literally the House divided. Even the Dems were divided and mostly had to be pushed into position like taking an all cats holiday picture. Still a few decided, nope not gonna ride this one down.

What’s this stunt going to get them?

I have no idea what they see gaining out of this that will not be taken away in an election year campaign that will capitalize on every weakness in the Democrat’s case.

The obviously partisan nature of the proceedings overshadows any validity they ever had because the Democrats have been after impeachment vocally from the opening months of the Trump presidency. There is no way this couldn’t look like a partisan attack and yet they brought the weak case to its partisan fruition and have spent enormous political capital to do so.

And add to that the atrociously biased optics of withholding the articles from the Senate… if this was so important the message you would want to send is The Avatar of the House banging down the chamber door of the Senate because this thing is so urgent and so egregious that the Senate must act swiftly! Instead they are sitting on it and playing a game of ‘We aren’t partisan! They are!’

All this for…

No appreciable gain for any candidate they are running for President and putting all their up for reelection House members on dangerous ground unless they have very hardcore bases. Copy and paste that for Senators that go along with the House. They’re putting all their chips on ‘Orange Man Bad’ and their evidence is ‘well, we said so.’

They also get… energized opposition base with a full drum magazine of political ammunition that will play like sweet resonating justice.

Even with the the blindfolded dartboard approach that finally stuck a point, after three years and multiple attempts, it is far from a bullseye and all but that small hardcore base are kinda tired of it.

All this sets up the potential for huge Republican gains in Congress along with the first reelected impeached President of the United States, potentially with greater gains than his run against Hillary Clinton. Especially likely if no one comes out of the Democrat field looking like a voice of reason and unity, a move that would alienate and dishearten their dwindling vocal base because ‘how dare you ever agree with a Republican.’

What does it mean for the 2A?

Like I said above, status quo more than likely. The 2nd has been making steady gains in small arenas and taking losses in locations where it wasn’t all that surprising, if disappointing. Virginia is the hot zone right now and we’re going to take a more critical momentum gauge from the efforts there than broader national stage where gun rights get swallowed up as a minor issue unless they are contentiously in the spotlight due to recent events.

But if we get the House back and gains in the Senate, a likely event unless Republicans royally screw the PR pooch, we could see and pressure for momentum on items like the Home Defense and Competitive Shooting Act, which would make us happy and a lot of ATF agent’s jobs much much easier.

So the impeachment is an arena where we have to see what settles and what we have to work with after it all settles. The Republican electorate could get down with having a field day welcoming all the Moderates and disillusioned Democrats to the more sane looking party at the moment.

But we will see, there’s a lot of election season to go… oh boy…