No more concealed carry permits in Arizona. The citizens will no longer have to ask the Nanny State permission to freely exercise their rights. Good!
Starting later this summer, U.S. citizens 21 and older can begin
carrying a concealed firearm without a permit in Arizona.Gov. Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1108 into law Friday afternoon. It
eliminates the requirement for a concealed-carry weapons permit, but
does require gun owners to accurately answer if an officer asks them if
they are carrying weapon concealed. It also allows officers to
temporarily confiscate a weapon while they are talking to an individual,
including during a traffic stop.
I’m not thrilled with the temporary confiscation scenario, as I don’t believe anyone has the authority to confiscate your property, but… it’s definitely a step in the right direction.
Since there is no permit requirement, there’s no permit training requirement. I do believe, as the article says, that people do need to get proper training. It’s a necessity for any responsible person who wants to carry a gun. I do, however, believe that Mr. Furbee cares more about protecting his source of income in this case.
Retired Mesa police officer Dan Furbee runs a business teaching
permit and other gun safety classes. He said if most people choose not
to get a permit, it will put several hundred Arizona firearms
instructors out of business.“It’s going to hurt,” he said.
But he said what really concerns him is that the new law will allow
people who have had no education about Arizona’s laws and no training on
the shooting range to carry a concealed gun. The eight-hour class
currently required to get a permit includes information on state law and
gun safety, as well as requires students to be able to hit a target 14
out of 20 times. Furbee said his class at Mesa-based Ultimate
Accessories costs $79, plus $60 for the five-year permit.“I fully agree that we have a right to keep and bear arms,” Furbee
said. “But if you are not responsible enough to take a class and learn
the laws, you are worse than part of the problem.”
Oh, I don’t know about “worse than part of the problem.” When my best friend from high school received a pistol for her birthday two years ago, her husband called me and asked if I would fly out to California to teach her gun safety rules and how to operate the weapon. He did so freely, without a requirement by law and without paying $79 to someone like Don Furbee whose entire business depends on government mandate.
That’s what responsible people do. They take their responsibilities seriously.
I don’t know why anyone would want to pay money to ask the government permission to exercise their rights, but smart people will likely take the class anyway. Except now, they have more options. If Mr. Furbee is threatened by this, perhaps he’s in the wrong business.
Apr 17, 2010 @ 12:02:41
I agree on the money part…can’t fault the guy for wanting to protect his income and cash flow, but a good businessman knows how to adapt to changes in his chosen line of work…if he’s bemoaning that folks won’t voluntarily train themselves, then he really isn’t a successful businessman. He’s simply another leech suckling at the teet of government intervention.
Apr 17, 2010 @ 12:53:54
Even with out the concealed and carry permit people where still going to carry unconcealed ,concealed(or course) with out training. It dose not take any more training to carry concealed then out in the open. I hope more people are more responsible then that, if they do not know how to use a firearm to go ahead and get the training as needed. As of officer Dan Furbee I agree with Angry Patriot.
Apr 17, 2010 @ 16:43:39
Les does have a point….I don’t know what people who carry open do, but it’s the same procedure whether in plain view or hidden. The bulk of the 8 hour training we get for CCW is about the specific laws on what we can’t do or where we can’t carry when doing it concealed. My actual ccw training taught me nothing about safety on using my gun in general, how to sight a target, how to clean it, etc. and I had to seek that out on my own. I chose to do so and can’t imagine anyone buying a gun to carry and not knowing how to use it.As far as the confiscation thing, they do that to every legal concealed carry weapon on a traffic stop where I am already so I don’t think that will be a major change. Some of our cops even go so far as to unload it even if it is a legal pistol “for safety precautions”. I agree though…I think it’s a great step in the right direction, for us taking our country back from the retards trying to change it now.
Apr 17, 2010 @ 21:05:27
I have often asked officers to disarm before continuing to talk to me as a matter of “citizen safety”. To date, none have complied. Why if they have such fear of me, should I not reciprocate?After all, I didn’t approach them.
Apr 18, 2010 @ 17:38:26
Most important points were made in the article and comments but I wanted to add – as someone who has gone through the full CCW training in my home state of Arizona twice (owing to letting my first permit expire), that I would trust a person with common sense and self control who has never had any firearms training whatsoever over someone with no common sense and self-control who has taken this course repeatedly.There is little covered in Arizona CCW courses that can’t be as easily learned from a book. Firearms operation and so on is *not* a part of the curriculum here, and never has been as far as I know (at least not the classes I took in Tucson). They make you memorize (and test you on) the basic gun safety rules, which a three year old could learn (applying these as habit is a whole other matter, and can’t be covered in a classroom), and then go into Arizona law, scenarios, and consequences for shooting someone.And that’s it.Training in marksmanship and tactical concerns is probably a great idea, but it is not a part of Arizona CCW training anyway.Without criticizing or devaluing training, I will say that people have an almost childlike faith in its efficacy and value when in reality I would imagine (having never been in a gun fight) that staying calm and rational in an ugly situation will trump pretty much anything you’d learn in a classroom in terms of the outcome.I would suppose that those who train regularly in mental conditioning would have the upper hand here, but this requires far more extensive training than most gun owners have, and it would require *regular* training as well.So the question becomes, how much and what kind of training is enough? And this is probably not a point anyone here hasn’t already considered – do we want the US government regulating and tracking training of US gun owners?In my opinion, far too much time is spent in the gun world fetishizing military and police concerns (for example, look at gun ads in any magazine) at the expense of practical civilian concerns.We need a whole new culture around civilian gun ownership and carry which focuses specifically on civilian issues, tactics, storage, and so on.Our forefathers clearly had some kind of militia in mind. I don’t know what the relevance of this is today, but it would be interesting to see voluntary “civilian firearms corps” organizations form to advocate for and train civilians on firearm use in the 21st century. Civilians need to know about penetration concerns of *drywall*, for example. Scenarios of the “mass shooting” type (schools, workplaces, restaurants) would be valuable as well, along with home invasion and carjacking.
Apr 18, 2010 @ 23:33:30
All good points Joe, but when it gets` right down to it like a big apple in the throat,the s@#t its` the fan there is no real training for that until it really happens. Even in the military they can prepare you, but you do not know until it stare`s you right in the face. Like I said before I hope most people shoot on the range to feel secure and have confidence in them self`s and there firearm`s if they are going to carry, or even not to carry for that matter.
Apr 19, 2010 @ 02:49:30
As a freely-admitted training junkie, I can say that my 12-hour mandatory CHP class was one of the least valuable. If a trainer can’t do any better on his own, maybe he deserves to go out of business. Good training classes always fill up fast without being required by the government.