Comment by notacoward | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notacoward | Hacker News Reader

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Declare the NRA a terrorist organization.

Before people misunderstand, I'm not saying we should get rid of all guns or anything like that. They do have plenty of legitimate uses. What I'm saying is that the NRA specifically represents terrorists better than they represent most gun owners. Their absolutist position, rejecting any and all restrictions on guns and ammunition, is not representative of most gun owners. All it has done, over and over, is to enable the worst kinds of crazies to bring unreasonable amounts of firepower to places where it doesn't belong. For example, it should be practically impossible to bring eight long weapons and hundreds of rounds into a hotel unless you can prove you're military or law enforcement. Where, short of that, should one draw the line? That's a reasonable discussion to have, but it can't occur as long as the NRA gets a seat - and the most influential one at that - at the table. They need to be shut out, so that reasonable people can get on with reasonable discussion about how to stop these atrocities.

The NRA represents their membership, not all gun-owners everywhere.

> it should be practically impossible to bring eight long weapons and hundreds of rounds

How would one make it 'practically impossible'? I think most people agree that we would like to ensure day-to-day safety, but the disagreement is "at what cost"?

The NRA defends against removing a constitutional protection against tyranny, simply because < 0.01% of our population is made up of madmen who might access weaponry.

> How would one make it 'practically impossible'?

I can think of two fairly simple measures.

(1) His weapons should have been inspected on entry to the hotel, to ensure not only legality but condition and unloaded state as well. In this case, that would have resulted in them being flagged as illegal full-auto conversions.

(2) Ammunition should have been stored separately, in the lobby or the basement, in total accordance with what responsible gun owners already recognize as best practice.

With these two measures in place, he might have been able to do some damage, but a semi-auto and one magazine would not have led to the kind of result we actually saw.

> The NRA defends against removing a constitutional protection against tyranny

The NRA does no such thing. The measures they support or oppose would make no difference if the day ever came when we needed to defend against tyrants commanding a military with modern weapons and training. If you look at the paramilitaries that the NRA enables, it would even be fair to say that they're promoting the tools of tyranny.

Do you mean that we would need metal detectors at every single hotels? And get your luggages inspected? This is not feasible.

Have you ever traveled to another country? It might change your perspective on what's feasible and what's not. It's politically infeasible here because of groups like the NRA, but it's perfectly feasible in terms of logistics and any normal perception of rights. Remember, hotels are private property. Any owner of private property should have the right to exclude or limit dangerous items on that property. Any reasonable owner of a high-rise hotel might exercise that right, and any who don't could be considered accessories to acts like these.

Yes, I travelled a bit, I'm French living in the US.

Let's say that they prohibit it (some establishments do), without proper security screening, it would be easy to sneak anything in if you want to. The cost to implement this type of security seems too high (hardware + employees). The public may also reject that, the TSA is quite infamous in the US.

Have you been in any country that has this type of security in their hotels?

> Have you been in any country that has this type of security in their hotels?

Yes. It's common in India, though TBH the staff don't always seem to be paying that much attention.

This is really all about priorities. If putting an end to this endless blood tide were a priority, we absolutely could take measures that would help. We could even do so without violating essential rights. There's a reasonable debate to be had about what measures we can or should tolerate, but screaming "it's infeasible!" denies such debate. It assumes one conclusion, and doesn't even allow consideration of another.

If any of you want to stop a blood tide start with the cars.

Or maybe join the NRA as a safety instructor. Argue for gun safes and mandatory training for young gun owners.

That way you can actually reduce suffering since there is a possibility that someone will listen instead of write you off as a gungrabber.

That way you can save even more lives.

> If any of you want to stop a blood tide start with the cars.

Which are already regulated more than guns are. It would be great if we were allowed to make the same kind of rational choices about guns that we make about cars. Thanks for bringing that up.

> Or maybe join the NRA as a safety instructor. Argue for gun safes and mandatory training for young gun owners.

Oh right, I should join an organization whose policy agenda I despise, and spend my own time doing something that would have no effect on people like yesterday's shooter instead of advocating for measures that might. So glad I have you to tell me how I should spend my time. Or was that just deflection, to prevent a discussion that might lead to a conclusion you don't like?

> instead of write you off as a gungrabber

I can't control whether someone someone can write me off as a "gungrabber" (telling phrase BTW) even after I explicitly said that I don't want to take away everyone's guns and that they have plenty of legitimate uses. That's up to them and their psychiatrists.

That makes a lot of assumptions about the motives behind the people pushing for those measures which allegedly help. Your comment was absolutely on point regarding cars, but that was deflected in the response.

Not only is it not feasible, it's downright invasive.

> constitutional protection against tyranny

The idea of a right to armed revolution is the whole problem. This is indistinguishable from terrorism.

I don’t quite follow. Would you mind explaining what you mean?

You have a revolution if you win. You're just a terrorist if you lose.

That's how I understood it anyway.

> Declare the NRA a terrorist organization.

Terrorism is well defined and NRA for all it's flaws is not a terrorist organization.

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