A couple people had expressed interest in this topic, and I have a bit of extra time for a couple days, so here goes:
Bona fides: I am a former infantry NCO and sniper, hunter, competitive shooter, reloader, hobby gunsmith, sometimes firearms trainer and currently work in a gun shop, mostly on the paperwork/compliance side. Back in the day, was a qualified expert with every standard small arm in the US inventory circa 2003 (M2, 4, 9, 16, 19, 249, 240B, 21, 24, 82 etc.), and today hang around the 75th percentile of USPSA classifications. I've shot Cap-and-Ball, Trap and Sporting Clays badly; Bullseye and PRS somewhat better and IDPA/USPSA/UML/Two-gun with some local success. Been active in the 2A community since the mid-90s, got my first instructor cert in high school, and have held a CPL for almost twenty years now.
I certainly don't claim to be an expert in every aspect of firearms, there's huge areas that escape my knowledge base, but if you've got questions I'll do my best to answer.
Technical questions
Gun control proposals for feasibility
Industry
Training
Wacky opinions
General geekery
Some competition links (not my own) just for the interested.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=U5IhsWamaLY&t=173
https://youtube.com/watch?v=93nEEINflXE
https://youtube.com/watch?v=utcky0zq10E
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Notes -
There is a somewhat obscure bit of the gun control debate I’d welcome a legitimate steelman for: concealed carry on mass transit.
I live in a US city that is rather notorious for high crime rates, and grew up in a family that was…dad and grandpa were hunters held in very high regard, which is a long story, but I grew up familiar with guns. When there was a debate about concealed carry on the mass transit systems here, notably the trains, my instinct was to sneer, because superficially it seemed like bravado. But then past that, it seemed totally unworkable to me, because I just can’t picture myself getting a good solid bead on an attacker in one of those swaying clanking metal tubes.
Put another way, besides “feeling” that guns on trains are a bad idea, it also seems like concealed carry in those situations would end up with more friendly fire accidents than dead muggers. (Note: I’m a big-city liberal but also have absolutely no inherent problems mowing down criminals, especially after a robbery nearby where some bastard fatally shot the victim’s dog while out walking.) As someone who has had proper training, and not just flushing quail: any thoughts?
Before addressing whether armed self-defense is practical on mass transit, I think the more important issue is how too many over-thought regulations makes CCW highly impractical. In real life, when an individual is choosing to leave their house to go about their business, they either choose to strap on a gun, or don't. If they do, then they're going to be armed over the course of everywhere they go and everything they do doing that trip - it's not like the gun just disappears when it's inconvenient. If there's someplace on the way that they're not allowed to carry at, they have to either avoid that place or mode of transportation, or carry anyways and take the risk. If you ban carry on mass transit, then you're effectively also banning it for everywhere anybody might want to go via mass transit.
Now, how effective is it? It's pretty much never going to be necessary or justified to shoot along a whole train, whether it's empty or full. Any self-defense is basically going to be at touching distance. Think more like this Joker clip than a 25-yard range (the beginning is justified, but chasing down and executing the guy who ran away, not so much). If your primary objective was self-defense on trains, you might be at least as well served by training empty-handed martial arts or other weapons like knives or Kubotans or something like that. Having a gun might be helpful in some possible situations there, but it's probably going to be at contact range, which is a whole different type of gunfighting to train.
Another thing to remember - if you're carrying a gun, than any fight you get in is now a gunfight, regardless of what you might have intended. Did someone just call you whatever slur pisses you off the most? You better learn to shrug it off and walk away, because if you tell them "fuck off, asshole" and it ends up escalating into a fight where you draw or shoot, you might well be considered the bad guy legally speaking since you didn't do everything possible to deescalate the situation. You have the power to end conflicts with lethal force, but along with that power comes the responsibility to try your best to deescalate any confrontation that doesn't justify that.
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