"Former NRA instructor" offers radical idea for gun control

Glock Model 21" by Michael @ NW Lens is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED.

The National Rifle Association offers a lot of training opportunities, including some that will allow folks to describe themselves as NRA instructors. Some value this training and opportunity while others don’t.

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Yet someone claiming to be a former NRA instructor offers a bizarre suggestion for gun control in a letter to the editor in Arizona.

The NRA and lawful gun owners can be a positive force in maintaining the Second Amendment’s intent. Certified firearm ranges can educate people on gun safety, as I and numerous others have done. Legal use and storage of automatic weapons could be facilitated at such ranges; however, use or storage outside of certified ranges would be a felony. Trained individuals could keep one single-shot handgun at home while both concealed and open-carry guns would be outlawed. Only trained law enforcement could publicly carry arms. Trained and licensed hunters could have one single-shot rifle.

It will take a generation for these measures to become effective. Contact your elected officials and demand they curb our national gun violence epidemic. Gun ownership is a responsibility, not a crime. Thus, gun owners need to drive responsible use from a public health perspective.

That’s…well that’s a thought.

Now, let’s understand that the individual who sent this letter self-describes themselves as a former NRA instructor, so we don’t have any way to actually verify that.

Yet the fact that they think this is a valid idea certainly raises some questions about that.

First, automatic weapons are heavily regulated and comparatively rare in private hands due to a combination of cost and regulation. Most of the automatic weapons we see in the news were illegal from the get-go.

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The fact that the author doesn’t seem to get that is interesting, especially if he was in fact an NRA-certified instructor. I’m pretty sure the basic NRA course covers these differences, after all, which means he would have had to cover them at some point or another.

As is the idea that we should be relegated to single-shot firearms. That’s a bit of gun control far too radical even for groups like Brady or Giffords to suggest.

Further, how could anyone who claims to have been an instructor not comprehend that people don’t have perfect marksmanship, especially under high stress? A single-shot firearm for hunting or home defense is damn near useless, especially considering there’s zero reason to believe the bad guys will play by the same rules.

Maybe this is really an attempt at trolling, a letter meant to drop on April 1st but didn’t, but if so I’m not seeing the humor.

I don’t think it’s meant to be, though. If so, I think we’d see more than just a call for ridiculous gun control proposals, ideas that at least some people were bound to take seriously.

If there’s an upside, it’s that there’s no hope in hell of this individual getting what they want, which is good. That suggestion wouldn’t make people safer. It would ultimately cost many more lives as people wouldn’t be able to effectively protect themselves.

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Yet the overall message here isn’t the gun control proposals themselves. Those are so bizarre and radical that they’re not even going to happen at the state level. If they did, the Bruen test would put them to an end rather quickly.

No, this is about how some people will sling around credentials as if they somehow make their supposed expertise stand out. Yet this is someone who wants to relegate automatic weapons even further than they currently are, despite absolutely no evidence that there’s any need to further regulate those weapons, and seems to think single-shot firearms are sufficient.

We’re supposed to take these suggestions seriously because they were supposedly an NRA instructor at one point in time. That swinging of credentials–credentials I, personally, doubt are even valid–is meant to lend gravitas to an idiotic suggestion.

Frankly, it’s annoying.

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