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Comment by mindstab | Hacker News Reader

And this is why other nations have gun control laws. I think the rest of us are continually scratching our heads at the proliferation of unregulated guns in the US when they fairly clearly cause so many obvious problems. The article skirts the issue just saying the city had noticed an increase in gun violence and was "galvanized" but then back away and later just talked about police budgets.

Most of the rest of the world honestly finds this aspect of the US quite baffling.

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The guy who was behind the trigger probably laughs at you and your gun control laws. In fact any laws.

If nobody had guns from whom would the outlaw purchase(or steal) them from?

From whom they get guns in the UK? Demand will create supply. Drugs are banned, does it mean they are unobtainable?

> If nobody had guns from whom would the outlaw purchase(or steal) them from?

Nobody? Not police? Not govt?

How about folks who know how to use machine tools? (Guns are surprisingly low-tech.)

Yep, people who are rooting for gun ban fail to realize that M1911 was designed and developed 100 years ago and it basically remains as modern as the rest of the modern handguns are. Sure there have been some improvements in manufacturing technology and material science since then that make it possible to manufacture a gun like that in any decent machine shop.

Ammunition is actually the limiting factor. Primers, especially, are difficult to produce even vaguely safely in anything less than a $50mm+ plant. Whereas I could easily make an automatic short barreled rifle using just equipment at many hackerspaces or machine shops.

That's a pretty narrow and shallow way to look at it. For one thing, over time guns would become harder to get. Fine some people will always brake the laws. But at least maybe school children would stop shooting each other to death in school then?

And yes, it might make even the dumb, and gangsers think before drawing a gun in public and shooting away. Nothing will be perfect but I think looking at most other countries gun shooting statistics we can see it can greatly decrease it.

I understand the history behind it, but It's not 1787 anymore. I find it amusing that pro-gun people point out Mexico and Colombia have stricter gun control laws but worse violence problems. Look at Somalia and Afghanistan for counter-examples. Armed societies are polite societies? Realy?

Anyway, as a Brit really not my problem except for on my occasional visit states-side.

Think of the current state of gun ownership, laws, and culture in the United States as the legacy system. Many don't like it (I certainly don't), but "be like Europe" is not a viable migration strategy without a lot more detail.

How would we (in the US) get from where we are to where, say, the UK is with respect to gun use, ownership, and laws?

guns kill people just like cars drive drunk and forks make people fat.

Mexico has super strict gun laws, read the news and you'll see how well that is working out for them.

A gun is a force multiplier that makes it easier to kill someone.

A car is a force multiplier that makes it easier for a drunk person to kill someone.

A fork is a non-sequitur placed presumably to create a Voltron-like strawman out of a gun, car and fork.

That's kind of disingenuous, Mexico has massive corruption problems and a massive, semi-open black market.

> That's kind of disingenuous, Mexico has massive corruption problems and a massive, semi-open black market. reply

And the US doesn't? Where do you think that the recreational drugs come from?

Not to the degree Mexico has. And drugs are entirely different from guns -- drugs are something an individual takes that affects them; guns are bought by those who either feel the need for defense or the need to kill people easier.

> And drugs are entirely different from guns

Not from the supplier's point of view. (There is one difference - guns aren't consumables. Ignoring that, the US could supply a gun per crime with less than 1% of the suspected marijuana smuggling volume.)

FWIW, I've been offered illegal guns in both England and Japan. "You" may not know where to find them (but I suspect that you're lying to yourself about that) but anyone who does can.

Your straw-man argument falls flat on the fact that the US is actually quite good at enforcing it's laws.

Well, actually Mexico is safer for Americans than the US:

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/blog/2012/04/30/are-americans-sa...

edit: on the other hand there's Switzerland with 3M firearms (including assault rifles) among population and 0.9 homicide rate

This is also why we should keep all drugs illegal. If you are behind the wheel of a car, you could kill someone!

It's terrible that you can't even wait more than a few days before politicizing someone's senseless death.

You are a disgusting human being.

So when senseless atrocities are committed the proper response isn't outrage and attempts to fix problems but to sit by quietly and "respectfully"?

Yes it's a damn tragedy he is dead. I'm pissed off and angry about it. Was it preventable? Quite possibly. Even sadder. But instead you say I should stand by quietly and watch as it happens again and again with regularity.

It's a damn shame that taking steps to prevent deaths is such a political issue to some people :(

What about the marches after Trevon Martin's death? Should they have stayed home and not "politicized" that either? What about genocides? Should we just be sad and stand by?

> What about the marches after Trevon Martin's death? Should they have stayed home and not "politicized" that either?

What about them? Based on what's come out since, it's unclear why lynching Zimmerman (who is part black) is so laudable.

Also no one got mad at the guy mentioning the police budget keeps getting cut presumably suggesting increased police funding might help. Public allocation of funds and public policing seems to fall under political discourse but no one touched off on him.

It seems to indicate the issue isn't politicizing the the death, it is the issue of gun control in specific that bothers people deeply :/

You need to calm down dude.

I'm not entirely sure why you felt the need to make a fake account immediately before posting this, your only comment to date.

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