Letter to the Editor: Concealed pistol license is designed to be needlessly burdensome

To the Editor:

State Senator Jesse Salomon's bill SB 6294 would impose training requirements on concealed pistol license (CPL) applicants. It's one of those measures that sounds reasonable at first, but the deeper you dig into it, you realize that it's purposely designed to be needlessly burdensome.

CPL applicants would have to complete a minimum of 8 hours of training at the cost of hundreds of dollars. With the demand for so much training, you might think that CPL holders are out there constantly gunning down innocent citizens. Statistics do not bear this out, as CPL holders commit fewer crimes than non-holders. A person who both carries concealed and drives on our roads is vastly more likely to injure or kill an innocent bystander with their car than they are with their gun.

However, if you're 18 or older, you can walk into a drivers license office, take the two exams, and walk out with a license having had no training whatsoever. You don't have to take an entire day off work to go sit in a classroom and listen to an instructor recite knowledge that you already possess.

Imagine if you were required to take 8 hours of training the next time your driver's license expired. If you've been driving safely for 20 years, does that sound like a good use of your time? This is what Sen. Salomon is asking of longtime CPL holders.

What Sen. Salomon is doing with this legislation is the exact same thing that many Republican legislators do with abortion in red states. They cannot eliminate a right that they dislike, so they work tirelessly to nibble around the margins with onerous restrictions in order to curtail access. It's an anti-freedom legislative strategy, and Sen. Salomon deserves to be called out for using it.

Katie Johnson
Shoreline