South Dakota was considering a bill that would have allowed students to carry firearms on college campuses without a permit. This sounds extreme to some people, but it's really not.
However, one state Republican's question likely killed the bill, and it was a stupid line of attack.
See, not everyone who has an "R" after their name is as pro-gun as they'd like people to believe. They're proud members of the "I support the Second Amendment but..." crowd. They're not so much pro-gun as, generally, anti-gun control. They'll hold the line just fine, but don't trust them to help restore our rights.
And in South Dakota, Rep. Jim Halverson is, at best, one of the latter.
I say that because, in the discussion about this particular bill, he took this line of questioning:
Halverson wanted to know more about that.
“You’ve been through this course twice, you say, and you’ve been there when other people have been there doing the same thing,” Halverson said. “As they have started out, did they all hit the target right away?”
“Representative, no,” Lukkes said, causing laughter to erupt from the large audience in the committee room. “There’s a wide disparity of contact with the target as you work through the live-fire training exercise, with the different experiences and levels of understanding and exposure to firearms of individuals taking the course.”
Halverson wasn’t finished.
“So,” he continued, “if we take this enhanced permit away, will that automatically guarantee that these people that are carrying on campus that now have a permit — or don’t — they’re automatically going to be really good shooters?”
“Representative,” Lukkes answered, “this is one person’s opinion, but I would say no.”
More laughter broke out from the audience after that response. The exchange illustrated Halverson’s point about the dangers of people carrying and shooting guns on college campuses, and also carried the weight of the two men’s experiences handling guns. Halverson is a former state Highway Patrol trooper, and Lukkes served 10 years in the Army National Guard, including a deployment to Afghanistan.
I've been handling guns for 40 years or more at this point in my life. I've been a hunter, a concealed carrier, a member of the United States Navy, and a father who refuses to let his family become a statistic.
I'm also someone who works in the firearm industry in a context that shows me an awful lot of what happens throughout the country with firearms, both good and bad.
What I find so objectionable about Halverson's line of attack here is that the whole "is someone a good shot" seems to suggest that marksmanship is a requirement to exercise a constitutionally protected right, for one thing. We don't require people to be good at spelling to exercise their free speech. We don't bar stutterers from public speaking if they desire to be heard. We don't prevent sinners from going to church.
No other right is predicated on how well you can exercise that right.
Further, as a former state trooper, Halverson should be aware that, despite annual training requirements and qualifications, police officers miss a lot of shots when they have to discharge their weapons in the line of duty. That's because the range and the real world are very different, so it doesn't matter how well someone does in a qualification test; the day they have to fight for their lives, it's going to be different, and you never know what that'll look like.
The guy who barely passed his test may find it doesn't matter because his engagement is at point-blank range. The top scorer might miss a dozen shots in the course of a shootout.
There's no amount of training that will guarantee someone will be an excellent shot in that circumstance. Sure, training helps, which is why everyone should do more of it, no matter how much you've done.
Further, let's look at the plethora of states that have never had a training requirement. Is there any evidence they're less safe because of it? No? Shocking, isn't it?
This is the very kind of "thinking" that anti-gunners love to hear from Republican lawmakers, because they can claim it validates their arguments against concealed carry completely, especially in states without training requirements, even if there's no evidence of a problem.
Some Republicans are pro-gun.
Some are anti-gun control.
Then you have Halverson and his ilk.
