Confession: gun owners supporting tests and qualifications for CCW has got to be my biggest pet peeve, especially when those same gun owners claim to be ardent defenders of liberty. So here goes...
The only thing worse than having pointlessly simple or needlessly complex CCW shooting tests is having a test for CCW at all. Simply put, I believe that supporting tests and qualifications is incompatible with truly supporting the causes of private gun ownership and self-defense.
- Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming all seem to be getting along just fine (hint: these are the constitutional carry states). That's about 7.5% of the US population.
- If you say the word "but" after "I support the Second Amendment", you don't support the Second Amendment.
- Requiring tests and classes and education and training makes CCW cost money. When the government mandates that you pay money to do a thing, we call that a "tax". If you believe that adequate self defense is a fundamental human right, then it is immoral to support taxing citizens who exercise it. It is even more immoral when you consider doing so means the poorest citizens, the ones most commonly victimized by crime, will be even less able to afford access to adequate self-defense.
- I've never heard a single person advocate for a shooting test they themselves couldn't pass, or a standard of training they hadn't already acquired.
- When you advocate in favor of a test you can pass, but others can not, that makes you an elitist.
- When you believe you should have access to adequate self defense, but other people are not worthy of wielding lethal force, that makes you Michael Bloomberg.
Will some goobers do stupid things with guns? Sure. The cost of freedom is that some people misuse it. But plenty of folks do just as much damage by abusing the First and Fourth Amendments, and I'm sure plenty of folks here are irritated at how others use their right to vote, and Congress' incessant abuse of their lack of term limits and budgetary authority.