Hacker News Reader

Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

So if there were a “War on Guns” in the US, do you think it would be targeted toward “rural America” or the “inner city”?

View on HN

I don’t think there should be wars in general. I think the old adage of “if you make guns illegal only criminals would have guns” is vacuously true and entirely the point. You can then arrest them for owning a gun rather than waiting for them to commit a crime with that gun.

Practically speaking I think this is unlikely to be possible in the US. Banning guns would be a dead letter law. Guns are so widely owned and pervasive it would be impossible to implement. I expect law enforcement won’t want to get involved either due to how dangerous disarming an entire populace would be.

There really doesn't have to be a war on guns.

Ban manufacture and sale to any party but the US government and let entropy do the work.

There are plenty of resources out there for reactivating spent 9x19mm casings (Project ButWhatAbout) with supplies legally available in Western Europe, it's wishful thinking that just banning ammo would pan out. The genie's kind of out of the bottle.

if selling your gun was illegal, sure, you could still sell it. but would you choose to sell it to a loner, mentally unstable 18 year old knowing you'd be in serious trouble if that gun were used in a crime and they named you as the source of the gun? If the kid isn't killed in the mass shooting, and he says "I got the gun from..." seems not worth the risk

If it’s illegal then it’ll just be done the same way as making an illegal purchase is now, probably by asking around until you find someone that “knows a guy”. Either that or you’d just steal one.

You know, I could've sworn the post I was responding to said "of ammo", hence why I spoke about building ammo and not guns.

But the conclusion remains the same in that making a working firearm at home isn't difficult, and there exist a plethora of designs like the FGC-9 family that can be assembled from easy-to-acquire parts, no manufacturer needed.

cities because they would be the only ones to pass any real gun legislation but that's blocked by the supreme court.

because the second amendment is the only clause of the constitution that's allowed a literal interpretation.

Except it’s not. Well regulated militias are about the states ability to muster a militia. Militias have scopes and scales associated with them, such as ages and dispositions. For instance in Washington state, “Idiots, lunatics, paupers and vagabonds, habitual drunkards and persons convicted of infamous crimes” and people younger than 18 and older than 45 years old, as well as government officials and judiciary and legislature, are not eligible for the militia, organized or unorganized. So, why are they eligible for consideration under the second amendment?

And how effective do you think it will be to ban guns in cities and doesn’t that go back to my point of giving police yet another reason to harass minorities unequally?

Police already have plenty of (proven successful) ways to harass or murder and get away with it, I'm not sure they need one more?

And we should be taking tools out of their hands not giving them more.

Urban prosecutors routinely drop gun charges instead of prosecuting them. Existing gun laws are largely unenforced, particularly in cities with democratic prosecutors.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com