Park Ranger, Stacey

Do you really need a gun to supervise a campsite? In the US you do. Stacey was a very nice young lady that I met in a Washington State Park. She explained that the previous evening she had arrested two people. To try and understand US gun culture I took a Concealed Carry Weapon (CCW) course in Arizona in April. For me a very unsettling experience. The course consists of a lecture on Arizona gun law. This was interspersed with colouful gung ho anecdotes by our tutor, Chris, a law enforcement officer who teaches the course on the weekends (i.e. "It is fun to taze people"). All the money that Chris earns from teaching he ploughs back into ammunition he buys to use on shooting ranges (about 30,000 US$ in the last 2 years) The CCW class is held at a shooting range is is a commercial enterprise in a mall in Phoenix about the same size as a bowling alley. I would guess that a lot or most of the customers are police officers. There is a little room where a lady sews badges onto uniforms and I buy my United States badge for my touring shirt from her. After the lecture there is a very easy 20 question multiple choice test which every body got either 100% or 95% on. I have taken many law tests in my career as a lawyer, and in my view unless you were a lobotomized llama I do not know how you could possibly fail this test. Then we were shown a video explaining how an AK 47 bullet can penetrate 10 walls, and less powerful handguns do I think about 6. Then it is into a Dirty Harry style shooting range to fire off 5 shots at 5 yards and 5 at 10 yards. Again quite difficult to miss. Finally you get fingerprinted, these get sent off to the FBI and you are allowed to carry a gun I think for five years (I didn't do this bit as I don't have a green card). There are some restrictions. One lady, who said that she shot every week at a shooting range as she found it a great way to relieve stress, was extremely frustrated to learn that there were some limitations imposed on people carrying guns near schools. Statistically many more children die in swimming pools in the US than from guns (source Freakonomics). It is however quite difficult to cary 20,000 gallons of water in your pocket.