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Old 2nd January 2013, 11:43 AM   #35
roger
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Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 11,466
I'm 46, always been employed as a software engineer, and could not come up with a doctor that meets that requirement.


Most of this is either subjective or rubber stamping, yet a real nuisance. What sheriff is trained in detecting people that will shoot up a school? I assert no one in the world can do that, let alone a sheriff. On the other hand, I tend to suspect there are plenty of sheriff's out there that have biases against people with certain skin, speech patterns, or what have you (that's not an accusation of the office, but of people - people are biased). We have that situation right now in CA. Each county's sheriff gets to decide whether somebody gets a CCW or not. In my county, the sheriff denies almost every person that applies. In other counties, they are more reasonable (in my view, I moved from CO which is a "shall issue" state).

And really, except for the absurd time and location restrictions, who can't come up with 4 people to vouch for them? I dunno, I think that if I was a criminal intent on trafficking in weapons for nefarious reasons I'd get 4 similar pals to vouch for me, and I, of course, would vouch for them.

I moved to my current location in July. I can't find 4 people in this county that could reasonably testify for me. I'm lucky in that a college roommate lives here, so that would be one, but that is luck. I just moved here, how would I know anyone that lived here for 3 years or more?


I can think of tons of people that could not meet the 4 references conditions for other reasons, though. Consider anyone that is a minority but became a resident of the US. How many friends of multiple years that are also US citizens do you suppose they have? Along those lines, how many might not speak English well enough to be interviewed by a sheriff (the friends and the person applying)?

The lack of training, and unsafe handling that I see is certainly scary. OTOH, I don't see how that meets your goal of "So using this model, we can tweak this system a bit to make it much, much more difficult to have firearms of any type get into the "wrong" hands."

On the safety side (again, I share your concern), we have no training or restriction on nail guns. You can go to Home Depot and buy one. In 2005, there were 14,800 reported injuries. That's fewer than guns, but in the same general ballpark. I guess some would argue for licensing there, as well. I have no interest in arguing about that, but prefer a world where we accept some risk, even when it in nonideal, over government regulation on every last thing I do.

In any case, your proposals would restrict legal ownership to mostly English speaking people with highly stable lives, and lucky enough to get along with the sheriff. I've passed multiple national security clearance checks, but couldn't meet your rules. I own multi-thousand dollar pistols purpose built for a sport (bullseye) that cannot reliably shoot off the shelf ammo because they are built for a different bullet/powder configuration. I was trained by my father to shoot, again by the army, again in a safe handling class (which was government approved, and entirely worthless, btw, as the teacher exhibited quite unsafe behavior), again by a bullseye league that put me through training, a test, and a trial period. I'm not a person you have to worry about, yet I could not get a gun based on these rules. An aspiring criminal with 4 buddies? Easy peasy.
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Last edited by roger; 2nd January 2013 at 11:59 AM.
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