Guns Are A (Sea) Breeze
In this Reality Check, CBS News Correspondent Eric Engberg muses that Americans don't mind the government regulating their activities - except when it comes to guns.
The first time I took a Coast Guard course on boating safety, a few years ago, I learned a lot.
Crossing the street to go to class one night, I was struck by a car. I learned that the first thing that happens to you when you are struck by a car is that you fly through the air. Seeing a person fly through the air and smack the pavement nose first will also cause bystanders to utter incredibly dumb remarks, such as, "Are you hurt?" (Appropriate response: "Of course I'm hurt, I've been hit by a car.") I had learned even more in my boating safety course than I anticipated.
Recently, I signed up for an advanced boating course, taking care to see that the classroom this time was in an area where pedestrians were safe. Once again I found myself learning more than I had bargained for.
Did you know that it is a federal requirement that there be at least one B-II fire extinguisher on board a boat for every 1,000 brake horsepower that its engines deliver? There is. Take it from a graduate of the Coast Guard's Operator of Uninspected Passenger Vessel Course, there is such a rule. And hundreds more like it.
And despite this "intrusion" into everyone's right to operate his boat any old way he wants, we have not seen the formation of the "National Unfettered Boating Association," or anything like it.
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It just so happened that I took the final exam in the boating class the day before the Mother's Day Million Mom March in Washington, so the subject of handgun violence was all over the newspapers and newscasts as I crammed for the test. And I found myself wondering why so much controversy has been generated over the years regarding the appropriateness of regulating firearms, when we accept without complaint strict government regulation of dozens of other areas of endeavor. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.
Once you start down this road, you find yourself cataloging all the things that are regulated without question or whimper, and comparing their relative potential for misuse and bodily injury to the typical 9mm semiautomatic pistol.
In America today, nobody thinks anything of the fact that you are required to register your dog or apply for a permit to put in a new bathroom or a lcense to catch a fish. Nobody complains about having to register a car. No one even complains about not being allowed in the "eight items or less line" at the supermarket if they have nine items in their basket.
There is only one issue that ignites violent argument over the right of the government to issue rules and restrictions - guns.
This weekend, I have to put the new registration number on my boat. As required by the Coast Guard, it's a sign made up of letters and numbers "four inches high, using Arabic letters, permanently affixed to the boat." Not three inches, not italics.
Then, if I want, I can go buy some handguns and leave them sitting around a school playground. It's truly amazing.