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Comment by josteink | Hacker News Reader

To many people in the US, gun ownership is an as equally essential right as freedom of speech.

Assuming you can just introduce "gun control laws" and solve "the gun problem" is a very European centric way of thinking. It will not translate well into actual US policy.

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Look, a normal, mental healthy person can get a gun almost everywhere in the world. He/She is checked, screened and if the reasons are not outwordly, the lethal weapon can be owned.

But I don't get how can a FBI suspect, or with a histoy of mental issues, can just simply walk to a weapon store and buy an assault riffle?! Just like that!

USA scares the shit out of me.

EDIT: to make things clear: histoy of mental issues=medical records of mentall illness.

And regarding the idea that the laws are by men and I have to protect myself from the abuse of the law: have you heard of democracy? Next time you vote, choose the ones that can revert/improve that law. I much prefer to oblige the law , bad or good, than to be "protected" by random shooters.

What you said sounds perfectly reasonable, if you have a normal functioning government that executes the law in a normal and reasonable way. The US was founded, however, partly on the idea that laws are executed by humans, and humans are fallible, and if the laws of our country were ever abused, they couldn't unjustly damage or harm the lives of the citizens subject to those laws. With the current proposal regarding terror watch lists, Donald Trump wants to put all Muslims on a terror watch list just because of their religion. Does that sound fair to you? Should those Muslims have their right to self defense taken away because of their religion? This is what our Constitution was designed to protect.

Any legislation relating to mental illness does nothing but create a subclass with less rights. You can either be honest and argue for full restriction of firearms or nothing. I had problems with depression in my early 20s, am I too mentally ill? All a law like this would do is incentivize people to never get help, never see a doctor, and never get medication. The mentally ill don't commit most gun violence. Most mass shooters are not mentally ill, that is a comfortable lie repeated mindlessly by scared people. They're just murderers.

People who just want to take rights away from the sick because they demonize them are literally going to make things worse.

Mental health legislation is a mess. Decades of Freudians spreading misinformation doesn't help, but we also do a horrible job of educating children. We're worse at that than we are at educating children about sex, which if you think about it is no wonder why we have these bizarre nonsense national discussions about how we need to treat all mentally ill people as potential criminals.

Legislation relating to mental illness already creates a subclass with no rights. Apparently Americans are fine with that so long as it doesn't specifically target their right to buy guns (so stripping them of all freedom is a-OK).

For the former - due process? How many times has the majority of HN argued against 'blame the terrorists' and unwarranted surveillance?

And for the latter, the sibling answered it very well - a subclass of people, and where do you draw the line at "enough" mental issues?

A FBI suspect shouldn't have their rights infringed. If there is actual evidence, the FBI should make an arrest. Due process and all. Also, "assault rifle" is misleading anti-gun propaganda. A semi-automatic rifle that's called an "assault rifle" is only cosmetically different but generally functionally identical.

> To many people in the US, gun ownership is an as equally essential right as freedom of speech.

But that's a relatively recent phenomenon, though. The US has had a strong military history, but the 'citizens need guns to fend off our government' thing has only been frothy for the past little while.

It's not going to go away either, until the US kicks the societal idea that problems are best solved by men with guns. It's going to take a long time for that to ebb away, even if public opinion were going in that direction.

Gun control laws won't work even if they're brought in, because handguns will never be a part of them, and it's handguns that do three-quarters of the firearm murders in the US. So there'll be some pissweak restrictions eventually brought in about really fringe longarms, and they'll do nothing to solve the problem.

> But that's a relatively recent phenomenon, though. The US has had a strong military history, but the 'citizens need guns to fend off our government' thing has only been frothy for the past little while.

That idea seemed pretty popular as far back as April 17th, 1775...

Just as freedom of speech, there's no freedom of speech in Europe as it is in the US. You can get arrested in Europe for writing unpopular opinions on Twitter or Facebook ("hate speech").

>> "unpopular opinions"

I don't think anyone has been arrested for writing in 'unpopular opinion'. They've been arrested for writing highly racist content or directing abuse at others.

In Sweden it is a crime to criticise goverment's immigraiton policy. Saying "we should not let so many immigrants in" counts as "hate speech".

> it is a crime to criticise goverment's immigraiton policy.

Citation? Is there actually a law that says this? Or is it hyperbole?

Even if all you've got are anecdotal court rulings, I would be interested in reading about it.

I'd be interested in seeing some sources on this. My guess is that it's not criticising government policy that's a problem but abusive behaviour towards immigrants or criticism backed up with hatred.

In the current Swedish political climate, all you need is not being positive enough towards mass immigration and you're counted as part of the "hate crowd". You really need to watch your mouth if you're in any sort of public position.

While legally not criminal, in practice you will find your right to free speech severely challenged.

I think all such "hate speech" laws are deliberately vague opinion policing and unrightfully limits freedom of speech. They all need to go.

Sounds like they were arrested for expressing unpopular opinions to me. Unless you're saying their racist opinions are actually not unpopular.

In some European countries, there are special laws for insulting the monarch. In others, there are laws for insulting foreign heads of state. These laws are sometimes enforced.

For example, two Spanish cartoonists were fined for depicting the Spanish king having sex with his wife captioned with the "unpopular opinion" that getting his wife pregnant was "the closest thing [the king has] done to work in [his] whole life": http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7092866.stm

Interesting. I'm surprised that happened, thanks for pointing it out. I've been trying to find more information on the case (to see if the ruling was appealed) but I can't.

Thanks for spurring me into looking up more about it. As a correction, while the person depicted is in fact the present Spanish king (Felipe VI), following his father's abdication, he was at the time prince.

Here is the original cover: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mNFvFt4lGqU/U5JJpeCCkmI/AAAAAAAAF6...

My understanding is that the cartoonists filed an appeal, which was unsuccessful: http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/375143/0/ESPANA/ELJUEVES/

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