The East Bay Times is reporting that gun owners in the East Bay town of Alameda are facing a possible new mandatory firearms training requirement. Now, this is coming from California so no one should be particularly shocked by anything related to firearms restrictions or controls, but some of the details of the proposal are…interesting.
Gun owners in Alameda might be required to receive mandatory training to use their weapons.
That’s one of the rules the City Council will consider Tuesday [March 3, 2020] when it reviews a proposed gun restriction ordinance, just a week after a man walked into his workplace at a Milwaukee brewery and shot dead five people before killing himself.
Is it surprising more firearms restrictions are being considered in the wake of the Milwaukee brewery murders in Wisconsin? No, not really, but this is:
The mandatory training could include lessons about how firearms can make domestic violence even more dangerous and how someone in a mental health crisis or struggling with substance abuse may be more likely to contemplate suicide if a firearm is nearby.
So they’re saying it should be a requirement to have an underpaid and most likely unqualified person teach a government-mandated class about mental health and domestic violence to people because those people own guns.
They’re going to lecture law-abiding gun owners about abuse, but not cover how gunc can be used to defend yourself against it. They’re going to tell people that their guns make these situations more dangerous.
They’re going to put pressure on adults who own firearms, saying that guns being around the house make it more likely their kids are going to kill themselves (just saying…that’s how I see this playing out).
Other issues they want to cover in the forced training in Alameda include:
…also would require gun owners to store their firearms at home inside a locked container or have them disabled with a trigger lock. In addition, the ordinance would require all gun sales to be videotaped.
You read that right. They want to make it the law to videotape you buying a gun. NICS checks and being a law-abiding citizen aren’t enough. The many, many limitations and restrictions already put on Californians who wish to keep and bear arms aren’t enough.
Let’s add video footage of your time in the gun store!
And just for funzies, here’s a quote from Alameda Councilman Tony Daysog who told the media he’s really “disappointed” the ordinance didn’t have anything in it requiring the one store in town that sells guns to keep them away from all of their other products:
“The issue is that, when Big 5 at South Shore shopping center displays rows and rows of firearms right next to the check-out area in clear view by people of all ages, it sends the wrong message that the brute force that guns represent is normal, or as normal as soccer balls, tennis rackets, and running shoes at Big 5. Even if Big 5 isn’t selling military assault-style weapons, it’s the normalization of the brute force of guns that worries me.”
Maybe Councilman Daysog missed the man in the UK who was murdered by someone who used a tennis racket. You know, the UK, where they have all that gun wonderful control.
Or, closer to home, Daysog must have mised the guy in California who was killed by a golf ball. Or the many, many murders involving baseball bats. Look, Councilman, anything with sufficient mass can be and has been used as a weapon (and the mass required for something to be used as a bludgeoning weapon really isn’t that much).
I’m not even going to touch the entire mandatory training and guns issue. You guys can argue that one in the comments. But it’s worth pointing out that adding mental health and domestic violence issues to mandatory firearms training is an absolute dumpster fire waiting to happen.
Even better is the way these things tend to happen in waves, so when Alameda passes this – because they probably will – it’s going to show up elsewhere. If you’re just glad you don’t live in California, try to remember other cities and states tend to follow by example.
What could possibly go wrong?