There is no mandatory drivers ed class if you're over 18. In NC you don't have to take the written test if you claim you can't read - they will read it out to you. So if you can learn basic road rules and sign rules, you don't even have to know how to read. Yay. You don't have to take a safety class to own a pool, get married, have a baby, practice free speech, refuse to let law enforcement in your home without a warrant, etc, etc. Heck, you don't have to take a class to get elected to any office in the country. And I am fine with all of the above, FWIW, just pointing it out.
I would be shocked if you didn't have to sign a waiver when installing a pool saying you've "read the safety...blah blah." I know the point you're making and some of those things should have an education comment tied to them. -Especially having a child. I think the gun people would do well to concede the "take a class" request from the gun-safety people. There has to be a reasonable middle ground to much of this debate. I'm not anti-gun, but I'd feel a lot better if I knew the guy I see carrying one was definitely educated as to how to safely handle it, and was thoroughly checked/screened for mental illness and past criminal behavior.In NC you don't have to take the written test if you claim you can't read - they will read it out to you. So if you can learn basic road rules and sign rules, you don't even have to know how to read. Yay.
You still need to know the answers. Do you need to know how to read in order to carry a gun? Hard to read those "no concealed signs" otherwise.
I agree with you and I'm not anti-gun (I dont live in the US so I might be VERY anti-gun by your standards...) either. The guns don't scare me half as much as the raised probability that due to the large number of armed people around me the odds that one of them will be having a bad day, their first mental break, their first attempted crime, their first mistake... while I or my family are within range. The math shows that the odds of getting shot are pretty tightly coupled to the number of armed people around you.I'm not anti-gun, but I'd feel a lot better if I knew the guy I see carrying one was definitely educated as to how to safely handle it, and was thoroughly checked/screened for mental illness and past criminal behavior.
No, I concede nothing, because every point limiting gun ownership is not made in good faith by "the other side." Just like conceding that there are so-called free-speech zones means that you agree to abridge your speech in other places. That is BS. Conceding that the TSA has a right to grope your kid's genitals defeats the 4th amendment - ok, I over-egg the pudding, but you get my point. How about less "Democrat" and "Republican" and more "Get your damn hands off my rights?" -XC PS - You don't have to know many of the answers. And I haven't taken the test in 15 years. PPS - You sign a contract absolving the installer of liability, but nothing more, when you buy a pool. You sign nothing when you buy a house with a pool.
IMO the gun debate is never going to be an honest one, because it treats all gun owners as equal when we know they are not. Take my fair city, Detroit. In the burbs there are throngs of dudes packing at all times, and the crime is negligible. In the inner city murder is an everyday occurrence, most often by gun. Most of these murders, so I am told, are drug/gang related. So the question isn't "how do we limit gun ownership?" but rather, "how do we stop gang violence?". But, as we live in civil society where we love to deflect real problems for imagined ones, truth for euphemism, the gun debate will always be about guns, and never about actual causes of violence. Personally, I have no idea how to solve this problem, but I'm damn sure that limiting the number of rounds in a magazine isn't going to help any of my neighbors get jobs and feed their families.
I took the test a year ago, I'm no dummy and a few of the questions had me sweating. You cannot get more than a few wrong or you fail.
Most of the questions have nothing to do with driving but have to do with punitive measures for wrong doing. IE failure to comply with a breathalyzer etc. At times, not exactly intuitive and definitely regionally specific. It sounds like gun laws are similarly so. Perhaps, a class and a test is a good idea? http://www.ncdot.gov/dmv/driver/license/test/sample_test.htm...
Well, the last time there was a test in the south to own guns, it was used to disarm black people. Hmmm, "racist, he explained." More seriously, there is a serious test to get a CCW - and it is 99% about the legal implications of owning and carrying a gun and when to decide to use it. You do have to pass a very lame marksmanship test, but it's no more a test of marksmanship than the driving test is a test of driving. -XC
Haha. I sometimes wonder about this one. Maybe they should at least have to take an anti-corruption class so they can't plead innocent when the Feds discover freezerbags full of cash in their office.Heck, you don't have to take a class to get elected to any office in the country.
For liability reasons, I have to take an anti-corruption training module every year. Good point, why shouldn't they?