The NRA is embattled, as it has been since I first joined back in my adolescence. We win some and we lose some, but we never give up the fight to secure the blessings of liberty upon ourselves and our posterity - as it is put in the Preamble to the Constitution. In Arizona the new concealed carry law is now in effect, providing for the issuance of permits to those citizens who are considered qualified. While there are various things wrong with this law, in my opinion, it is certainly a step forward except for those who feel that any sort of firearms license is an illegal infringement upon personal liberty. A curious characteristic of the law is the requirement of the exposure of the applicant to 16 hours of qualified instruction.
Nobody seems to have asked that question.
It is quite evident that mere exposure to a training program has no bearing upon subsequent competence. The upshot is that the qualification program is no more than window dressing, but that is not a serious matter. The object is that every man be armed, as Jefferson put it, and this is a step in that direction. By the time all these permits are issued, violent criminals will have no way of knowing whether their prospective victims are armed or not, and this may indeed have some effect in the deterrence of violent crime. In the Middle Ages it was customary to rule that only the good guys could be armed and the bad guys could not.