The reality exists that there is a "give and take" in any law changes. Requiring more (some) hands-on training as part of the "shall issue" was what I was talking about.
I am very much opposed to the Govt regulating everything we do.
Having said that, I do not oppose all regulation. I still feel that people need to be adequatelty trained before being able to go and buy their own firearm. If that is done at the local, state, or federal level I could care less as long as it makes sense.
My issue with the training requirement is this: who sets the training standard? This is not a firearm friendly state, and every time we've given a little more control to the state WRT firearms, it has gotten further and further out of control. What's to stop them from saying that the only kind of training that meets the standard to own a gun is having attended a full-time police academy or military basic training?
I understand that you don't want dangerous people with guns. I've been muzzle swept on and off the range, seen people do stupid stuff with guns, etc. etc. It's very scary. I posted awhile back about the time someone accidentally fired a 12 gauge over my head while I was downrange. The idiots with guns do scare me, but again, it comes down to each individual.
I had a former boss point an empty pistol at my penis and pull the trigger, then laugh when I jumped. He had a Mass. LTC (requires the state safety course), was Army infantry and is now an auxiliary police officer. He had lots and lots of firearms training, passed it all with flying colors, but the fact remains that he pointed a gun at parts of me I don't want a gun pointed at, and he pulled the trigger as a joke. Absolutely idiotic of him, but he did, despite all that training and experience, plus 20 something years of gun ownership behind him.
Anyone can pass a test. Highly trained racecar and stunt drivers still get in car accidents. Highly trained gun users still make stupid mistakes sometimes.
If you're a single mom, a disabled veteran in a wheelchair on a fixed income, an old person on a fixed income, a poor college student, or just someone down on their luck, you still have a right to be able to defend yourself. Unfortunately in Massachusetts, there is a great cost already attached to gun ownership. $50-150 for a safety course, $100 for the license, and the cheapest new handgun you can buy once you have your LTC is what, a $300 Sigma? Manufacturers charge us more here anyway because they have to pay to have their guns "safety tested" to get them approved to be sold here.
In most other free states, if your life is in danger, you can get a gun faster as I wrote about before, but you can get a gun a lot cheaper. In NH, with a photo ID you can buy a Jennings, Raven, Kel-Tec, etc. brand new for exactly the cost of the gun and a box of bullets. No, they're not great guns, and yes, most of us would be ashamed to show up at the range with one.
However, when you're living hand to mouth, the difference in cost between a Jennings and a Sigma is a heck of a lot of grocery money. Or worse, if you're in the middle of a SHTF situation like the LA riots or post-Katrina New Orleans, any training requirement/license requirement/etc. is going to leave you defenseless.
Training is great. You can never have enough, for safety reasons, liability and just gun skills in general. But it doesn't mean it will generate intelligence or common sense in the trainee.
I saw a video on one of those shock television reality TV shows of a convenience store robbery in a free state (I just tried looking for it online but there’s too many convenience store robbery videos to search through). The female clerk didn't like guns, she'd never handled one before in her life and said so in this interview. When a robber came in with what seemed like a gun in his pocket, she gave him the money, and when he told her to come out from behind the counter and get on her knees (after he had the cash in hand), she felt that her life was in danger. Her boss kept a .357 magnum snub nosed revolver in a drawer behind the counter, so she drew the gun, aimed and shot the robber one time center-of-mass. He dropped, she called the police, he survived the gunshot to the stomach and served time for the attempted robbery.
My point is that this clerk didn’t need a safety course, 10 hours of Massad Ayoob approved live-fire training, or any of that to defend her life. She knew how to use the gun, she used it, and behaved in exactly the right way without any formalized firearms education.
I’m not saying every beginner has all the skills they need to shoot wonderfully safe. But I am saying that when my life is on the line, I should have the right to self-defense, immediately, with no red-tape or other BS. Gun rights should not be limited to the highly trained spec-ops proffessional.
IMHO, trading off more training for shall-issue MA licensing wouldn’t be worth it to me. Florida has shall issue LTC’s, and you only need that to carry the gun on your person. Buy a gun on a driver’s license, and carry it in your glove compartment fully loaded with no LTC whatsoever. Their training requirements are much broader than Massachusetts are WRT what kind of safety course is acceptable for an LTC, and life goes on as usual.
We don’t need to trade anything off in Mass. We need full access to our rights, no questions asked, no CLEO discretion/suitability issues, no approved firearms roster, no incredibly long wait to prevent one from legal, inexpensive, ready availability of self defense. We need a state that recognizes the Constitution and that is taken to task every time they violate our rights.
And once again, my aim is to be pleasant and informative here, so please don’t take offense at what I say.
Whatever you do, stay safe out there, and encourage gun safety every chance you get.