He could be just shy of 21 and have served 1 or 2 tours — then he wouldn’t be “allowed” to buy the plinker at all.
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I remind everyone that it wasn’t so long ago when our federal government circulated an internal document describing what they saw as incipient domestic “terrorists”. Among said incipient “terrorists” were “constitutionalists” of course, and military veterans.
We all talked about it at the time.
And so it is that, depending on one’s allegiance, a person might see that poster as making a good point in favor of the second amendment, and another person will see it as a compelling advertisement in favor of ever more restrictions on gun ownership.
I point out though, that the poster is by no means a promotion of the second amendment. Rather, it focuses on authority gained from experience or merit. It’s an authoritarian argument against a specific gun control measure, and yet gun control is a purely authoritarian concept. The principles behind the second amendment are absent. Thus we yield to, or adopt, or sometimes even heartily embrace, the enemy’s premises, often without knowing it.
THEY now how this stuff works. They study it and teach it. But we often forget it, if we ever knew it at all.
In saying, “He’s pre-qualified to own a gun so it makes no sense to scrutinize him” is tacitly saying, “If he weren’t so qualified, then it might make sense to scrutinize him prior to letting him have a gun”. Thus we yield our principles (assuming we had any).
Some will say that I’m nitpicking, but in fact this is the pivotal issue– If we yield to the premises, or the authority, of the enemies of liberty, we’re telegraphing to them that we’re on their side, that they’re in control, that they’ve already won the argument and therefore anything else is merely a matter of the details of their eventual, total victory. We may feel every bit in opposition to them, but our feelings or beliefs are irrelevant when we demonstrate to them that their false premises are the prevailing ones even among our ranks.
A perfect analogy to this is the history of the Reformation. The Protestants had almost everything almost exactly right, they made a huge impact, even specifically defining the papacy as the anti-Christ described in exquisite detail in the Bible, and yet hundreds of years later the Reformation has been oficially ceded back to the papacy, save one pathetic little remnant church which no one talks about.
The papacy pointed out, quite correctly, that although the Protestants opposed the Catholic Church on virtually all matters of doctrine, they still recognize the authority of Rome in their observance of Sunday worship (a Roman concoction, and a mark of Roman authority) as opposed to the Biblical sabbath. Thus, even after millions had died in the conflict, the Protestant Reformation was nothing but a fling, it was said, a temporary, internal rebellion, never fully rejecting the authority of the papacy in favor of God’s law. The Vatican and it’s allies took full advantage of that argument.
So from one side (our side in this case) I am engaging in silly, needless, irrelevant and probably counterproductive nit-picking, but to the other side this is EVERYTHING because, in their minds, in the authoritarian mind in which authority is all-important, it establishes exactly who holds the authority.
For myself I am pre-qualified to own and carry weapons by the fact that I was born. How about you? Which way is it? It’s either one way or it’s the other; we can’t dance on both sides, willy nilly, and be taken seriously by either side.
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The point I see being made is that their training requirement is disingenuous and they cannot be trusted in any matter, large or small.
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Here’s the training part of the initiative:
In addition to the other requirements of this chapter, no
dealer may deliver a semiautomatic assault rifle to the purchaser
thereof until:
(a) The purchaser provides proof that he or she has completed a
recognized firearm safety training program within the last five
years that, at a minimum, includes instruction on:
(i) Basic firearms safety rules;
(ii) Firearms and children, including secure gun storage and
talking to children about gun safety;
(iii) Firearms and suicide prevention;
(iv) Secure gun storage to prevent unauthorized access and use;
(v) Safe handling of firearms; and
(vi) State and federal firearms laws, including prohibited
firearms transfers.
The training must be sponsored by a federal, state, county, or
municipal law enforcement agency, a college or university, a
nationally recognized organization that customarily offers firearms
training, or a firearms training school with instructors certified
by a nationally recognized organization that customarily offers
firearms training. The proof of training shall be in the form of a
certification that states under the penalty of perjury the training
included the minimum requirements;
If the worst happens and this Initiative passes, and every part of the thing except this part is invalidated through lawsuit, here’s where I find some handholds:
– The initiative does not say that the training has to be done in person. It does not prohibit online training.
– Every training topic is no further defined. It does not prohibit presenting the actual stats and debunking talking points.
– It requires no testing, quizzes, etc. The topics just have to be presented, and presumably some record that all the pages were loaded in the student’s browser.
– It does not require that the student pay for the training. It could be provided for free.
– Teaching about ‘State and federal firearm laws’ could be as simple as identifying the online copy of the relevant laws and/or plain language interpretation in a FAQ from, say, the BATFE and recording that the student clicked the link.
– The firearms training school does not have to be in the State of Washington, but the instructor (content developer?) must be certified by the NRA as an instructor. What does it take to create a “firearms training school”, particularly one that might not be in the jurisdiction of the State of Washington, or even have a physical manifestation?
– The minimum requirements could be satisfied, as written, in a five to ten minute visit to a text-only website with a certificate generated in PDF form and emailed to the student, and maybe some kind of system to re-email the certificate back to the same address up to five years later and a convenience email nearing the five year point to have them re-take the course to update their completion date.
It’s almost like the initiative writers never wrote a contract or software requirements ever in their lives and then got stuck paying the specified price for something that met the minimum interpretation of their specs…
He could be just shy of 21 and have served 1 or 2 tours — then he wouldn’t be “allowed” to buy the plinker at all.
I remind everyone that it wasn’t so long ago when our federal government circulated an internal document describing what they saw as incipient domestic “terrorists”. Among said incipient “terrorists” were “constitutionalists” of course, and military veterans.
We all talked about it at the time.
And so it is that, depending on one’s allegiance, a person might see that poster as making a good point in favor of the second amendment, and another person will see it as a compelling advertisement in favor of ever more restrictions on gun ownership.
I point out though, that the poster is by no means a promotion of the second amendment. Rather, it focuses on authority gained from experience or merit. It’s an authoritarian argument against a specific gun control measure, and yet gun control is a purely authoritarian concept. The principles behind the second amendment are absent. Thus we yield to, or adopt, or sometimes even heartily embrace, the enemy’s premises, often without knowing it.
THEY now how this stuff works. They study it and teach it. But we often forget it, if we ever knew it at all.
In saying, “He’s pre-qualified to own a gun so it makes no sense to scrutinize him” is tacitly saying, “If he weren’t so qualified, then it might make sense to scrutinize him prior to letting him have a gun”. Thus we yield our principles (assuming we had any).
Some will say that I’m nitpicking, but in fact this is the pivotal issue– If we yield to the premises, or the authority, of the enemies of liberty, we’re telegraphing to them that we’re on their side, that they’re in control, that they’ve already won the argument and therefore anything else is merely a matter of the details of their eventual, total victory. We may feel every bit in opposition to them, but our feelings or beliefs are irrelevant when we demonstrate to them that their false premises are the prevailing ones even among our ranks.
A perfect analogy to this is the history of the Reformation. The Protestants had almost everything almost exactly right, they made a huge impact, even specifically defining the papacy as the anti-Christ described in exquisite detail in the Bible, and yet hundreds of years later the Reformation has been oficially ceded back to the papacy, save one pathetic little remnant church which no one talks about.
The papacy pointed out, quite correctly, that although the Protestants opposed the Catholic Church on virtually all matters of doctrine, they still recognize the authority of Rome in their observance of Sunday worship (a Roman concoction, and a mark of Roman authority) as opposed to the Biblical sabbath. Thus, even after millions had died in the conflict, the Protestant Reformation was nothing but a fling, it was said, a temporary, internal rebellion, never fully rejecting the authority of the papacy in favor of God’s law. The Vatican and it’s allies took full advantage of that argument.
So from one side (our side in this case) I am engaging in silly, needless, irrelevant and probably counterproductive nit-picking, but to the other side this is EVERYTHING because, in their minds, in the authoritarian mind in which authority is all-important, it establishes exactly who holds the authority.
For myself I am pre-qualified to own and carry weapons by the fact that I was born. How about you? Which way is it? It’s either one way or it’s the other; we can’t dance on both sides, willy nilly, and be taken seriously by either side.
The point I see being made is that their training requirement is disingenuous and they cannot be trusted in any matter, large or small.
Here’s the training part of the initiative:
In addition to the other requirements of this chapter, no
dealer may deliver a semiautomatic assault rifle to the purchaser
thereof until:
(a) The purchaser provides proof that he or she has completed a
recognized firearm safety training program within the last five
years that, at a minimum, includes instruction on:
(i) Basic firearms safety rules;
(ii) Firearms and children, including secure gun storage and
talking to children about gun safety;
(iii) Firearms and suicide prevention;
(iv) Secure gun storage to prevent unauthorized access and use;
(v) Safe handling of firearms; and
(vi) State and federal firearms laws, including prohibited
firearms transfers.
The training must be sponsored by a federal, state, county, or
municipal law enforcement agency, a college or university, a
nationally recognized organization that customarily offers firearms
training, or a firearms training school with instructors certified
by a nationally recognized organization that customarily offers
firearms training. The proof of training shall be in the form of a
certification that states under the penalty of perjury the training
included the minimum requirements;
If the worst happens and this Initiative passes, and every part of the thing except this part is invalidated through lawsuit, here’s where I find some handholds:
– The initiative does not say that the training has to be done in person. It does not prohibit online training.
– Every training topic is no further defined. It does not prohibit presenting the actual stats and debunking talking points.
– It requires no testing, quizzes, etc. The topics just have to be presented, and presumably some record that all the pages were loaded in the student’s browser.
– It does not require that the student pay for the training. It could be provided for free.
– Teaching about ‘State and federal firearm laws’ could be as simple as identifying the online copy of the relevant laws and/or plain language interpretation in a FAQ from, say, the BATFE and recording that the student clicked the link.
– The firearms training school does not have to be in the State of Washington, but the instructor (content developer?) must be certified by the NRA as an instructor. What does it take to create a “firearms training school”, particularly one that might not be in the jurisdiction of the State of Washington, or even have a physical manifestation?
– The minimum requirements could be satisfied, as written, in a five to ten minute visit to a text-only website with a certificate generated in PDF form and emailed to the student, and maybe some kind of system to re-email the certificate back to the same address up to five years later and a convenience email nearing the five year point to have them re-take the course to update their completion date.
It’s almost like the initiative writers never wrote a contract or software requirements ever in their lives and then got stuck paying the specified price for something that met the minimum interpretation of their specs…