I'm still struggling to understand the gist of pax's original post. In it I see...
- State-mandated training is useless. The state shouldn't be involved.
- The state doesn't care about you, only about the people you might shoot.
- The state keeps poor women from being able to protect themselves (not sure why poor men would be excluded).
- Accident rates don't go up when untrained people carry, so why should the state bother to regulate it?
I also see...
- Untrained people shouldn't carry, your gun can't possibly do you any good.
- Unmarried unattached people don't need much if any training.
- Family people should be able to shoot a kidnapper without harming their baby held in the arms of the kidnapper.
- If you care about people and might act to defend someone else then you need more than basic training.
- If you are going to be shooting at a potential mass murderer in a crowd then you need LOTS of training.
- If you're too stupid to get training then you deserve to be self-eliminated.
Regardless of whether these statements are valid when evaluated one at a time, I don't see a coherent thread running through them. What's the point?