Gun control 2.0

Via Ammo Land:

Against the backdrop of a push for gun control by Democrats on Capitol Hill, Democrats in the Washington’s state Legislature are pushing a pair of bills, one in the Senate and its companion in the House, that amount to a guide for anti-gun state lawmakers anywhere to reduce the number of concealed carry licenses or permits by discouraging applications and renewals via extremist requirements.

Joe Waldron, former executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and past president of the Washington Arms Collectors, contended in an email to several colleagues that the two bills, SSB 5174 and HB 1315 “serve no useful purpose other than to reduce…significantly” the number of active concealed pistol licenses in the Evergreen State, which now hovers around 613,000, the highest number of any western state.

But for the first time in the state’s history, anti-gun-rights lawmakers want to slap possibly the strictest training requirements in the West on those armed citizens.

A bit of history is in order. Washington’s concealed carry statute dates back to 1935. While the law has gone through several changes, the tradition dates back nearly 75 years. Prior to that it was not uncommon for Evergreen State citizens to openly carry sidearms thanks to the state’s right-to-bear-arms constitutional provision, which reads:

“The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men.”—Article 1, Section 24, adopted Nov. 11, 1889

Under the proposed legislation, anyone applying for a concealed pistol license would have to take a minimum of eight hours of instruction to include the following:

Basic firearms safety rules
Safe handling of firearms
Firearms and suicide prevention
Safe storage of firearms to prevent unauthorized access and use
State and federal firearms laws, including prohibited firearms transfers
State laws pertaining to the use of deadly force for self-defense
Techniques for avoiding a criminal attack and how to manage a violent confrontation, including conflict resolution
Firearms and children including safe storage of firearms and talking to children about firearms safety
Live-fire shooting exercises on a firing range that include a demonstration by the applicant of safe handling of, and shooting proficiency with, each firearm that the applicant is applying to be licensed to carry

Waldron, a retired Marine Corps Lt. Colonel, raises some questions about all of this. For decades, he noted, there has never been what amounts to a “literacy test” (he calls it a “poll test”) in order to obtain a CPL.

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