Last time I looked, only a minority of states required that a citizen who wants to walk around with a concealed weapon actually know how to use it.  And the only way to determine whether someone knows how to shoot a gun is to watch them shoot it.  Kind of a no-brainer, wouldn’t you think?  After all, doesn’t every state require that someone actually drives a real car before they are issued their first driver’s license?  But of course driving isn’t a Constitutional right.  But according to the NRA, it’s all about the 2nd Amendment if you want to strap on a gun. So if a state is going to impose the onerous requirement on CCW licensees that they actually shoot the damn thing, they better not trample on our 2nd Amendment rights.  They better not!!! 

Gov. Nikki Haley

Governor Nikki Haley and the South Carolina legislature got the message loud and clear in the new gun bill that she signed this week.  Among other things, the new law allows Carolinians to bring a gun into a bar or other establishment where liquor is served.  But it expressly prohibits anyone from consuming alcohol if they happen to be carrying a gun.  It also allows bar and restaurant owners from prohibit patrons from entering their premises with a concealed weapon; you may recall that Toby Keith’s restaurant chain took a hit from the 2nd Amendment crowd when his Virginia restaurant told patrons to leave their guns outside.

What I found most interesting about the new South Carolina law is how it rewrote the training requirement that must be met in order to hook a gun up to your belt.  The old CCW law required eight hours of training, the new law doesn’t specify any time requirement at all.  The new law requires that a CCW candidate receive information on the following topics: laws covering firearms, firearm use safety, and proper storage of firearms with emphasis on practices that reduces injuries to children.  And after all that information is digested, no matter how little or long it takes, the candidate then must “fire the handgun in the presence of the instructor.”

Did you get that?  Because I quoted directly from the text of the law.  Any resident of South Carolina who wishes to walk around with the right to deliver lethal force with a handgun must actually pull the trigger of a handgun at least once.  Is South Carolina really saying that in order to exercise my 2nd Amendment rights I have to shoot the damn gun?  Well, I guess pulling the trigger only once isn’t much of a Constitutional threat.  But I’m going to tell you right now that if I lived in South Carolina, the last thing anyone’s going to make me do is pull the darn trigger twice.

Just remember, us South Carolinians were the first state to secede from the Union over the abridgement of our Constitutional rights.  We’ll give Governor Haley a pass on this one because we know she’s generally on our side.  But nobody better try to shove any more gun training down our throats or the Palmetto State might just rise again.