The visibility of cars in fog ... not one. Particularly since, as you point out, cars are required to be be made as visible as possible. Sigh, if only people wandering around with firearms had to do the same ... and if only, of course, we could spot them anyway when they didn't.
But our issue here had nothing to do with accidents. It had to do with how it can be determined whether the person doing the stuff with the thing is
legally entitled to be doing it.
Even the silliest rkba-heads seem to think that there *are* people who are *not* entitled to
exercise this right of keeping and bearing.
So why they oppose a simple, effective way of distinguishing between the entitled sheep and the disentitled goats, well, that's just beyond me.
carrying a gun concealed upon ones person is not the same thing as actually operating a gun in publicYeah, and sitting behind the wheel of a car whose motor is not running, while one is intoxicated, is not actually
operating the car, but damned if it isn't still an offence. Where I'm at, anyhow.
http://www.canlii.org/ca/sta/c-46/sec253.html
253. Every one commits an offence who operates a motor vehicle or vessel or operates or assists in the operation of an aircraft or of railway equipment or has the care or control of a motor vehicle, vessel, aircraft or railway equipment, whether it is in motion or not,
(a) while the person's ability to operate the vehicle, vessel, aircraft or railway equipment is impaired by alcohol or a drug; or
(b) having consumed alcohol in such a quantity that the concentration in the person's blood exceeds eighty milligrams of alcohol in one hundred millilitres of blood.
We really do seem to think that there are some situations in which the honour system is not quite the best way of protecting the public.
simply carrying a holstered weapon does not put the public at significant risk for accidental harm.First, ya don't get to define the problem out of existence by speaking as if the only thing we're talking about is "accidental harm". It ain't.
What it does is provide the person carrying the firearm with instantaneous access to the
use of it. I mind some rkba-heads, by the way, who have trumpeted their "use" of firearms to avert the harm intended by some dastardly individual, and never had to fire the things at all. Sometimes they "use" them just by pulling their lapels back a bit and flashing them, I gather. I'll wager that most 7-11 robbers and bus-stop bandits never "use" their firearms either, if we're going to limit "use" to pulling them out and shooting somebody. And yet we don't really want people
using the things to hold up 7-11s.
If all you gotta do to "use" your firearm is undo your front button, I'm seeing an extremely fine line between wearing and using. A little finer than the line my car crosses between my driveway and the public highway.
So the fact remains that anybody with a firearm can wander abroad with it, effectively "using" it anytime anybody else sees it, while nobody with a car can use it in public without everybody else who is able to see the broad side of a barn in daylight also seeing the use being made of the car.
I can avoid cars by seeing them and not going where they are, if I so choose. And I have pretty much zero expectation, if I do hang out where cars are, that anybody is going to decide to "use" his/her car to steal stuff from me or cause me to expire. I also don't have much reason to think that very many people with cars have been eagerly handing the keys over to people who aren't entitled to drive them.
There is a whole range of factors that combine to give me much more than reasonable assurance that the overwhelming majority of people driving cars have passed driving tests, obtained driver's licences, and not had their licences revoked for medical or behavioural reasons. And given the effects of enforcement action and educational efforts in recent years, I have not a bad assurance that very few people driving cars are intoxicated.
In a context in which no licence is required in order to obtain a firearm, and no controls are exercised over the use or possession of that firearm by, or transfer of it to, anyone other than the person who legally acquired it, I'd have damned little assurance at all that the person sitting next to me on the bus didn't have three of the things in his/her pants, even if s/he was a paroled robber in the throes of a psychotic delusion who'd had too much to drink and couldn't distinguish between me and a grizzly bear without glasses s/he isn't wearing, or hit what s/he was aiming at anyway.
If I were planning to scoff a law, I'd feel a whole lot less likely to be caught if I were illegally carrying a pistol in my pants than if I were illegally driving a Pontiac down the parkway. Wouldn't you?
In any event, the issue simply was NOT the comparative likelihood of harm coming to someone because of the driving of cars vs. because of the carrying of firearms.
The issue was what controls need to be exercised in order to deter the unauthorized doing of the two.
For a car, the control can be exercised mainly at the "use" point on the spectrum, because there is a clear line between "in use" and "not in use", and the state of "in use" is readily observed by the public eye.
For a firearm, there is no such clear line between "in use" and "not in use",
except in the mind of the (potential) user, who is in complete control of when the "not in use" firearm, which no one else knows is even there, becomes "in use".
Actually, a good analogy I see is what we'd have if we allowed drivers to consume alcohol while driving, but of course required them not to drive while intoxicated. We don't do that (except, I gather, in some boondock state in the US). We don't let people engage in behaviour that involves a serious risk that something illegal and dangerous will occur, relying solely on their discretion and word of honour and self-control to avoid crossing a line so fine it is near invisible.
That's what exercising no (the end result of ineffective) control over who gets to have firearms looks like to me. Putting a bottle of whiskey in the driver's hand and saying
now drink, but don't do anything stupid or dangerous or criminal!