Liberal endorses concealed weapons laws

!--StartFragment-->

Knowingly or unknowingly, the liberal writer Marc Ambinder makes the case for laws that allow people who pass security checks and have appropriate training to obtain licenses to carry concealed weapons. "Guns are not going to disappear," he writes, because there is no realistic or constitutional way to confiscate them — which one suspects is his preferred solution. He decries, as so many liberals do, "the NRA's stranglehold on politics," without noting that the NRA's strength comes from its mass membership and funding from large numbers of small contributions — things liberals usually think are a good thing for an organization to have.

So to reduce the number of innocent lives lost — a goal Ambinder shares with every decent person — he proposes the following:

Ordinary people who volunteer to carry guns, who would receive significant and regular training from the government, might be in a position to intervene. I've always wondered why this suggestion is immediately ridiculed; properly trained citizens can serve as a deterrent if bad guys know that they might encounter them, and in some circumstances they might also be able to subdue or kill the attackers before they can kill dozens of people at will.

This sounds a lot like the concealed weapons laws that have been passed in every state. One difference: Ambinder wants license holders to "receive significant and regular training from the government." State laws, so far as I know, don't require government training; they require applicants to give the government evidence they have had training. Ambinder like many liberals evidently thinks government can do a better job of training, which strikes many of us as dubious. Would he like to have his laptop and tablet and cellphone designed by the people who have us healthcare.gov and the VA hospital system?

Read more on WashingtonExaminer.com