Brilliant! :applause: :banana: :monkey
In all the times I've read the various parts of the new law, I never caught that, at least in the way it can be applied to the MD online training.
So even if DOJ decides the MDPTC is not a LEA (which I will, somewhat reluctantly, admit seems to be the case), they can't deny the second part of that clause.
Well, they can, but it won't pass scrutiny by a court...
I suppose they could question whether an automated on-line course such as the Maryland course is really "taught" by anyone. It may be
designed by the most competent instructors in the world, but it isn't really taught by them.
I don't think the fact that the course originates in another state is relevant. The statute accepts NRA courses taught anywhere; plus it accepts hunters safety courses from other states, indeed from other countries.
As I see it,
if there is a legitimate issue with online training such as the Maryland course, it's with the fact that there's no way in place to verify that anyone actually did anything more than just click "next" with their mouse throughout the entire course. There's no exam, there's no good way to verify that the person sitting at the computer clicking "next" is the actual person whose name appears on the certificate that prints out at the end of the course.
There's nothing wrong with the content of that course, it's just a firearms safety course with the same information that any basic course would include. Unfortunately we only face this issue because too many legislators believed that mandatory training made sense. I might have made political sense to them, but it makes no real world sense. Fear is a powerful motivator, but it's not a powerful argument. It's not an argument at all. It's a psychological explanation
why we do certain things, but not a logical justification for doing them.
