In reply to Brandon Kraft.

Yep, good dialogue, I appreciate your thoughts also and yes, we could nitpick at one another but that would be falling into the trap that everyone else does and accomplish nothing....

A couple of points:
"But, the solution to gun violence being more guns (even in the hands of well-trained honest folks) concerns me."

Why? Think for a moment... the issue is not a badge... the issue is training. If someone is trained then who cares whether they wear a badge or not? Our country has a history (that we have gotten away from) of our citizenry being responsible for protection of our country. Why have we lost this?

A typical police officer has less than 20-30 hours of firearm training. They are instructed (as are CHL folks) that this is only the beginning of their training and that they need to continue on personal time. However, there is nothing that mandates this. The reality is that most police officers in the situation either freeze completely or miss their shots because of lack of training.

There are many CHL folks who are not trained and there are many who are trained far better than police officers. To give you an idea, I have spent probably in excess of 1,000 hours in training and have fired well over 10k rounds.... and I'm probably middle of the road trained...

Most people who train regularly do so with a community and that community is made of up CHL carriers, military and Law enforcement working together. Trust me the issue is training and not a badge.

On Gun Free Zones:
The problem is that these make it against the law to carry a weapon there. But if you're going to shoot someone then illegally carrying your weapon doesn't do much to deter you.... what it does instead is deters those well trained, law abiding citizens who could have stopped the criminal.