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Comment by papermachete | Hacker News Reader

They're not designed to maim or kill, just to accelerate a piece of mass. Police regularly use beanbags and target shooting is an olympic sport. Designing firearms spans all of STEM and keeps people employed well.

If the US government wanted to reduce the lethality of firearms, they would ban calibers, not accessories. Even so, a .22LR olympic pistol is enough to take down a bodybuilder with one critical hit. So olympic shooters could become murderers overnight, or have their weapons stolen. If not, why suspect that average people would instead?

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This line of argument is disingenuous.

Blades are, at one level of abstraction, designed to sever fibers and occasionally other materials. A straight razor is designed for a human to use to shave hair. A nakiri is designed for a human to use to slice vegetables. An executioner sword is designed for a human to use to kill another human by decapitation.

Likewise, many firearms are designed primarily to be good for shooting other people to incapacitate or kill them. I do believe most people should be able to obtain such weapons, but I don't find it difficult to imagine why someone might think otherwise.

If that's the case why do such laws exist as foldable knives and switchblades being illegal to carry but sturdy full-length ones are fine, in some countries? Why is banning pistol grips considered having prevented or hindered lethality?

I think bans on types of weapons, and on tools that can be used as weapons tend to be based on public perception of who uses them, and for what purpose. Politicians do not consult masters of knife-based martial arts or designers of fighting knives when drafting legislation about knives. Politicians backing gun restrictions in the US famously tend to be unable to explain the function of features banned by their legislation.

You can do the same with e2e encryption. It’s not secrecy, it’s literal 1s and 0s.

If the encryption was successful and 'unbreakable' it better be just 1s and 0s.

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