Hacker News Reader

Comment by Haul4ss | Hacker News Reader

What's wrong with this? Being completely serious here, what is wrong with citizens owning firearms?

I am all about reducing gun violence, but if you want to do that you have to do something to stem the tide of illegally acquired handguns in areas of concentrated poverty. That's where a lot of your gun violence comes from.

The recent happenings in Charleston are unicorns. Unpredictable and very rare events that you can't actually make a special law for, without the G-men physically going to every household in America and confiscating firearms. That is a policy I assure you you don't actually want.

View on HN

Because guns scare people. Why do they scare people? Because mostly they're just seen either in the hands of cops, grunts, or criminals. Most folks (especially here) aren't hunters, or are so far removed from rural life that they have no experience of firearm-as-tool.

On top of that, there is big business in demonizing guns--related to the big business (I suspect) in demonizing fighting, aggression, machismo, independence, or what have you.

I'll be the first to admit that there is no peaceful practical purpose outside of sport or investment for owning firearms in an urban area.

That said, it never ceases to amaze me that in an age of such universal and pervasive surveillance--an age of such unaccountability of authority figures in the .gov and .mil--that folks here are still more than happy to trash on the final safeguard they've got if things get too bad.

Private gun ownership isn't a safeguard against "if things get too bad".

It's also unrealistic and implausible to imagine that the .gov and .mil are going to make "things get too bad".

That is no more likely to happen than a return to some sort of monarchy or crowning of an American king/queen.

Private gun ownership isn't a safeguard against "if things get too bad".

Really? Because it caused us a lot of trouble during our occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. If anything, that pretty much proves it as a check on US doctrine.

It's also unrealistic and implausible to imagine that the .gov and .mil are going to make "things get too bad".

Fifteen years ago, even in the wake of Ruby Ridge and Waco, I might've been tempted to agree with you. Unfortunately, there's been a whole lot of history since then, yeah?

return to some sort of monarchy

What are your betting odds on Bush III, or Clinton II, again? Your countrymen are apathetic and easily-manipulated when it comes to politics.

It doesn't make sense to me to compare the military occupation of those countries with the paranoid proposal that things "could get too bad" in the U.S. Too much seems too different about those two to be meaningful; I could point to the strict gun laws in most of the western nations and ask, "why haven't they degenerated into `could get too bad'?"

About the "whole lot of history since Ruby Ridge and Waco," well, I don't see any specific pattern of things getting "too bad". I'm not seeing the history you apparently are.

About the 2016 presidential election, couple of things: the presidency's just a job, and a short-term one at that, and the president doesn't have much power. Presidents run the country, they don't rule it.

What other countries are doing/not doing is a red herring--their people are not ours, their demographics are certainly not ours, their pain points are not our pain points. They additionally don't have the same political foundations and history that we do.

We have seen a continual increase in the militarization of police, the surveillance and fining of private citizens, the violation of privacy, and the bullying and exploitation of the poor.

If you're not seeing the history that I'm looking at, we're considering different news sources. I'm thinking of the Snowden leaks, the killings of citizens by police without cause (some in my own city, sadly), and so forth. I'm thinking of the delightful interplay of the prison-industrial complex with the justice system.

As for the presidency--we've seen pretty much directly the actual effectiveness of the executive branch in causing shenanigans, both in George Bush's administration and Obama's.

We're simply going to have to agree to disagree on this.

"What other countries are doing/not doing is a red herring" ..... but you brought up Iraq and Afghanistan.

I agree about the bullying and exploitation of the poor, I just don't think that's anything new.

I think what's new is that now, techie types like you and me are learning about the police-based murders of black people, and how hard life is for the poor. That stuff's always been going on, it just didn't make it onto our radar until very recently.

but you brought up Iraq and Afghanistan.

Note that example was done specifically as a study of armed irregulars vs the US--your examples of other Western states were in a very different vein. :)

By the time things get that bad we've already crossed my threshold for "final" safeguard.

http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-...

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/copenhagen-cafe-attack-free-spee...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo_shooting

so you are saying there is a correlation between guns-per-capita and gun-deaths-per-capita?

No, I'm (foolishly) responding to an Onion article of all things. The claim is being made that the U.S. is the only place where mass killings with firearms happen. I'm merely stating this isn't true.

Just to clarify, here's the headline (my emphasis):

"‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens"

More guns == more murder.

> “For each 1 percentage point increase in proportion of household gun ownership,” Siegel et al. found, “firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9″ percent.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/09/13/2617131/largest-...

And what homicide rate diminished? If it just moves the weapon of choice, its largely irrelevant.

I'm not sure I can say there's something absolutely wrong with it, but my opinion is that citizens shouldn't be allowed to own firearms. I live somewhere (UK) where they can't, and there is very little gun violence. That's not to say, of course, there aren't problems, but I just think - on balance - the world would be better off with fewer killing machines in it.

Its kind of like prisoners' dilemma. Who loses their firearms first, citizens or criminals? They lose.

I'd also like to say something about societies with ubiquitous government public and private surveillance, chilling of freedom of speech and repressive cultures, but I live in the USA so I can't throw stones.

I'm not pro gun but many countries like Canada have pretty high gun ownership yet have low gun violence numbers. I think there is more to the problem then just disallowing private gun ownership would solve. It's a band aid fix in my view.

Why wouldn't he/she want some sort of mass, nationwide gun buy-back program?

It's worked in Australia: http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/16/gun_control_afte...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com