Dave's Razor

Move over, Hanlon. Step aside, Occam. There’s a new razor in town, and it’s all mine. It goes a little something like this:

When a “gun person” advocates training as a necessity for owning or carrying a gun, they will always advocate for an amount of training that they have already achieved themselves.

I’ve already discussed this phenomena in an earlier article, but I think it warrants further examination. To begin with, I am specifying that this attitude is predominantly found in “gun people,” and not just casual or indifferent gun owners. Understand that when I use the term gun people, I’m talking about enthusiasts like myself who shoot regularly, who carry regularly (if not every day), who consume firearms media, and consider themselves at least somewhat knowledgeable on the subject of firearms.

I would also include those who carry guns professionally, though many of those are not what I would call “gun people,” as they are not especially knowledgeable or proficient. They just think they are because they always pass their organization’s qualification course. They believe that achieving this minimum standard makes them special and qualified to pass judgement on “civilians.”

At any rate, some of the folks who populate this group can be heard from time to time pontificating about how necessary training is before someone should possess and/or carry a firearm. Some of them will even say it should be mandated by law. But even those who don’t endorse mandatory training will eagerly whip out their “buts” when the subject of firearms proficiency comes up.

“Now, I don’t believe in mandatory training in order to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights, but…”

If I had a dollar for every “but” I’ve heard while discussing the right to keep and bear arms! (And we gun people sure do like busting on people who say they “support the Second Amendment, but…”, don’t we?) Still, it can be enlightening to humor them for a moment, and then ask them two questions:

“So, how much training do you think someone ought to have before owning or carrying a firearm?”

They’ll often hem and haw a bit about what the appropriate amount of training ought to be, but with a little persistence you should be able to get them to at least give you a ballpark figure. Once they’ve done that, just ask them this:

“How much training do you have?”

If you are talking to someone who fits my earlier definition of a gun person, I’d bet you that 99 times out of 100 that their answer to the second question easily fits them within the parameters they established in answering the first question. That’s right…all of these folks meet their own standard of what adequate training should be. That in and of itself isn’t all that shocking, what with all the Dunning and Krugering going on in gun world. But I’m not as interested in the cognitive bias aspect as I am the willingness of gun people to advocate for some sort of bar to the exercise of Second Amendment rights for others, but never for themselves…never for anything that would impact them. They’ll happily look down their nose at the plebes who aren’t as schooled as they are, and insist that while they might have the right to keep and bear arms, they really shouldn’t. (At least not until they’re as trained as I am.)

And that’s Dave’s Razor: When a “gun person” advocates training as a necessity for owning or carrying a gun, they will always advocate for an amount of training that they have already achieved themselves.

Be careful, there. Wouldn’t want to cut your own rights.