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Comment by lucian1900 | Hacker News Reader

lucian1900

Surely you can appreciate that most of the world considers the American obsession with guns absurd :)

Most countries have strict gun laws and the people are fine with that. Banning 3D gun models is still stupid though, especially in a country with such high gun availability.

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Shooting is an Olympic sport for God's sake, but of course Americans are ignorant violent idiots.

Hey, not counting Northern Ireland, handguns are banned in enlightened Great Britain and their pistol team and aspirants to it have to practice outside of the country: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_sport#Pistol

But there is a record. A printed 3D gun has no serial number or identification. Someone gets shot and killed with one, and there is no trace.

We don't have a national gun registry; there's no "trace" now.

And the vast majority of traces are mostly useless, either they lead to an already obvious source (including illegal straw purchases, but those are almost never prosecuted) or a theft.

And we find it absurd that after around a quarter billion disarmed people were killed by their own governments in the 20th century so many didn't learn anything from it.

Being from a country where owning a gun is frowned upon (we have uneducated citizens who blindly trust a government that has screwed over them for the past 70 years) and mostly illegal, I couldn't agree more. The idea that you should give governments monopoly over gun ownership only gives way for oppressive regimes to reign and makes civilians unable to protect themselves.

I hope whoever is a proponent of outlawing guns either has no idea what kind of tyranny that would enable or must be working for the government (whose best interests usually lie in maintaining their power and status quo).

Either way, I'm going to finish by saying you're lucky to have the second amendment.

Until 2008 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller), not really. Our betters read the 2nd Amendment out of the Constitution after our Civil War, couldn't have freedmen (former black slaves) legally keeping or bearing arms, could we? Followed by laws aimed at disfavored immigrant groups starting around 1900, followed by application of these laws to everyone and multiple spasms of nasty gun control, nationally and at the state and local level.

This didn't start reversing until 1986, through the political process, and it wouldn't have happened if we hadn't kept owning guns at such high rates; right now we're most feared because we vote on this issue to the exclusion of most others. E.g. the Democrats suffered a string of catastrophic defeats 1994-2000 that they correctly blamed on gun control, and mostly gave up on the issue until after Obama won reelection. E.g. compare the reaction to the Aurora, Colorado "Batman" movie theater mass shooting in June during the election to Newtown after, even allowing for the difference in the victims.

As of yet the 2 Supreme Court decisions and all or almost all of the subsequent lower court decisions have made almost no changes "on the ground". That may change real soon, Illinois has a June 9th deadline when their "no citizens who aren't politicians can carry" law goes poof, although they filed for an extension for filing an appeal with the Supreme Court and got it (http://onlygunsandmoney.blogspot.com/2013/05/supreme-court-g...), June 24th....

Of course, us gun owners always understood the clear meaning of the 2nd Amendment, and ultimately it means what serious men with guns say it does. Which would be us, we overwhelmingly outnumber gun grabbers and those who would follow them if they get too out of hand.

And very occasionally they have cause to think about the issues you cite, e.g. a few got a clue during Watergate; gun control was very hot back then, and the idea that Nixon might e.g. have the 82nd Airborne arrest the Congress prompted a few second thoughts.

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