Jordan Klepper of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah produced a two-part video designed to test the theory that “the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” In the first segment, he went through a gun training workshop in Florida to become eligible for a concealed carry permit that is valid in more than thirty states. In the second, he received training in active shooter situations.
These videos are very funny, mainly because he brings a Hollywood mindset into his gun training and the responsible, intelligent, and professional gun trainers and officers don’t play with that at all: “I’m a rule breaker.” “Don’t break the rules.” “But…” “Don’t break the rules.”
It’s not about swagger. It’s about knowing how dangerous guns really are, and people trained to handle them every day know that.
If we had average people with guns on the street during an active shooter situation, odds are one of two things would happen:
- The active shooter would just shoot the armed people first.
- The “good guys with guns” would probably shoot each other or innocent bystanders (or both) before the active shooter was killed.
No clear-thinking police officer wants untrained people walking around on the streets with guns, even if they’re good guys. The only thing more dangerous than a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun who doesn’t know what he’s doing.
According to the officer in the second video who co-wrote an FBI study about the subject, about 3% of active shooter cases were stopped by armed civilians. 25% were stopped by unarmed people on the scene.
Not one of these professionals believe that there’s such a thing as too much training.
The videos follow:
But, for some reason, the officers in the second video didn’t think gun control would work in the US even though it works well everywhere else.
What I would like to see is training, licensure, registration, and insurance for gun ownership — just like car ownership.
Training reduces gun owners’ risk to themselves or to others.
Licensure is proof of training.
Registration associates every gun with a legally identified owner. Ideally, there would be a ballistic fingerprint associated with every gun registration, just like we have photo IDs on our driver’s licenses. That fingerprinting allows us to identify guns by their bullets fired.
Insurance is perhaps the most important of them all and where the real gun regulation would take place. We already have theft insurance. I would like to see added to that liability insurance, so that if you shoot someone else wrongfully or mistakenly, your insurance company pays out damages. The higher a risk you are, the more your insurance will cost, and if you engage in illegal activities, you can lose the right to insurance — just like you can lose your driver’s license.
Insurance companies make their money by collecting data and calculating risk.
Anyone who can’t get gun insurance can’t own a gun, and if you’re found carrying one without it, you can lose your gun and be fined.
This proposed regulatory scheme is still not a violation of the Second Amendment, as guns themselves aren’t illegal, and they cannot be made illegal without the passage of a new Constitutional amendment. So no, you don’t have to worry about the government taking your guns away so long as you follow the same laws that are already in place for your cars, which are in fact more important to your everyday life.
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