8 ms·

Heck, it doesn't even suggest anything actionable. Gun control is the elephant in this particular room. A cop who isn't expecting his next public contact to sh

Heck, it doesn't even suggest anything actionable. Gun control is the elephant in this particular room. A cop who isn't expecting his next public contact to shoot him is not going to pull a gun when he walks into the room, much less shoot first.

15155 11y ago
Within the confines of our Constitution, which has been well-interpreted by the fine, honorable justices of our Supreme Court, how would you stop the violent, law-breaking gang member from getting firearms?
- task_queue 11y ago
  It's better to not make any laws because someone might break them.
  - k33n 11y ago
    It's better to not make any unenforceable laws because it's a delusional exercise in futility.
    - Frondo 11y ago
      Gun control laws are absolutely enforceable--there's no question about that. Look to the other Western countries for examples.
      - ryanlol 11y ago
        The enforcement in other western countries is limited to not selling them as easily, tons of people still have unregistered guns and illegally importing them isn't difficult.
        jon-wood 11y ago
        This makes no sense. I've lived in the UK my whole life, and when growing up spent some time around pretty unsavoury people. I've once seen a firearm, and that was at a clay pigeon range. I don't dispute that some people may own illegal firearms, but its by no means an endemic problem. Somebody getting shot in the UK is guaranteed to make the news. Just the presence of a criminal with a gun will interrupt live news channels, that's how rare it is.
        jameshart 11y ago
        Exactly. In the UK, 99% of the population wouldn't even know how to begin getting hold of a handgun. If they started making serious enquiries, chances are they'd run into an undercover cop before they found someone able to supply them something illegal. While I don't doubt that the knowledge of who to talk to and where to go to get a gun is present in certain UK communities, the basic fact that everybody involved in procuring, handling and importing guns is committing a criminal act certainly acts as a pretty solid prevention mechanism to stop, say, an angry 20-something man from acquiring sufficient guns and ammo to go on a shooting rampage at a college.
        DanBC 11y ago
        Breivik tried to buy illegal weapons. He was unable to do so. He ended up buying weapons legally.
      - 15155 11y ago
        Against law-abiding citizens, yes. I can go to one of those countries with strong gun control right now and turn a formidable firearm if you like - do they need better mill control?
        jeffwass 11y ago
        Do you lock the doors of your house when you leave? Those locks are useless to a thief with a crowbar. So if you do lock your house doors when you go out, you're implicitly agreeing that you do this to make it more difficult for someone to get inside your house, reducing the likelihood of theft. Same thing with guns.
        DanBC 11y ago
        > Same thing with guns. So America has zero house burglary?
        jeffwass 11y ago
        ??? Seems you missed my point entirely. Parent claims guns shouldn't be restricted since someone can make one on a lathe if they cannot buy one at a store. Meanwhile parent almost certainly locks their house doors despite a thief with crowbar being able to bypass their lock. Therefore, the parent's reasoning that gun control won't work because a criminal can mill their own gun is not logically sound.
        Nadya 11y ago
        You reduce opportunity which gets rid of opportunistic criminals. Ones who might rob your house because it is unlocked and they are less likely to get caught (compared to the shattering of glass or breaking down a door). I'm going to go out on a limb and claim murders are not an opportunistic crime. People are not killing because they can and can get away with it. The comparison you are trying to make dies there because the type of crime is not comparable.
        11y ago
  - 15155 11y ago
    It's better not to make laws that are ineffective at stopping criminals, but completely effective at hindering law-abiding citizens from exercising their rights.
- hga 11y ago
  Well, the Supremes don't actually support "bearing" arms, just "keeping" them, so there's room there, the plain language of the 2nd Amendment notwithstanding. Plus the law at all levels, as well as pretty much everyone but I suppose the criminal class, supports making it illegal for a "violent, law-breaking gang member" to possess a firearm if he's been convicted of a violent felony (well, any felony, but we all agree about the violent ones).
  - gknoy 11y ago
    You didn't address the question. Of course it's illegal -- how would you stop them from __getting__ them, though? We've seen that making it illegal won't be enough, as drugs and prohibition have shown: there would be a black market, just as there almost certainly already is.
    - jeremysmyth 11y ago
      At the moment I can buy a beer in a corner store. During prohibition, it was much harder (and more expensive) to get beer (or liquor), and more liquor than beer was consumed at a considerably higher price. One outcome was significantly lower alcohol consumption and all that that means (lower deaths by cirrhosis, lower city drunkenness arrests). If we take prohibition as an analogy, then sure, a dedicated criminal will still be able to get guns. However, a casual street-level criminal is going to have to work harder to get them because they're no longer available in the mall or from the pawn shop, and he's going to have to pay ten times as much to get one from Benny in the pool hall. That'll significantly reduce the number of guns out there, and that is what creates the environment and the expectation that results in cops shooting civilians.
  - 15155 11y ago
    > Well, the Supremes don't actually support "bearing" arms Almost every appellate court below does in some capacity. As does the original text of the Second Amendment (as you said.) But again, how are you going to stop violent gang members from getting firearms without infringing on the law abiding? Why not focus on the problem: rehabilitating the violent individuals + improving mental health, instead of hoplophobic, knee-jerk legislation.
wallyhs 11y ago
A person who pulls a gun on an officer has already decided not to obey the laws. How would adding more laws make officers safer from such a person?
- task_queue 11y ago
  If the gun supply is strained, the chances of encountering such a person are lowered.
- Retra 11y ago
  Because you need more people to violate those laws with greater regularity for such a situation to occur. It is easier to get one person to break ten laws than to get ten people to break one. Regulating the sale and distribution of firearms mitigates such risks.
hga 11y ago
That's not actionable unless you're willing to suffer a 2nd civil war which your side would lose very badly, and all for the conceit that criminals would pay attention to such laws, especially when we already have well over 300 million guns in the country. A US police officer who doesn't assume a public contact might result in a lethal threat from a gun or edged weapon is an idiot.
- Frondo 11y ago
  One thing that really irritates me about the anti-gun-control crowd is that idea, "if you ban guns, criminals will ignore the ban, because they are criminals and criminals ignore laws." People who break one law will still obey countless others. It's also totally reasonable to think that someone who engaged in some kind of petty larceny would readily obey gun-restriction laws--why wouldn't they? This whole "gun control won't work because criminals ignore laws" thing always struck me as a nasty piece of nonsequitor logic and identity politics, a way to "other" a group of people (i.e. more people who live in some counterculture way than people who have actually broken some law) as wild or deranged Hollywood-esque marauders, or a way to invent a bogeyman threat that only guns (in the hands of the so-called "good guys") can stop.
  - merpnderp 11y ago
    Someone only interested in petty larceny isn't carrying a gun right now for two reasons. They could pawn it for money and if they get caught it will add far more years to their sentence than petty larceny. Someone who uses a gun illegally today, will use one when they're illegal. At best making guns illegal would stop some domestic murders, but that would have to be weighed against a massive number of people going to jail for not obeying, country wide stop and frisk, and New Orleans style door to door SWAT raids to confiscate.
    - dalke 11y ago
      "but that would have to be weighed against a massive number of people going to jail for not obeying" Did that happen to Australia? I see no evidence for it. If not, why don't we use the same mandatory buy-back approach that Australia did?
task_queue 11y ago
If guns were illegal and cops still carried guns, they'd pull them when they walk into rooms. Why wouldn't they?
- crimsoneer 11y ago
  They don't pretty much everywhere else in the developed world.
  - task_queue 11y ago
    This is the US, do you really think that if there wasn't a single gun in the hands of people in the country that cops wouldn't still carry guns?
rebootthesystem 11y ago
The term "gun control" is thrown around without definition, which makes it difficult to have an intelligent discussion. Let's start with the assumption it is impossible to alter the constitution to remove or severely cripple the second amendment, which, I think, is a reasonable assumption. How, specifically, would you define "gun control"?
- Frondo 11y ago
  The 2nd amendment can be clarified, and its meaning reinterpreted, as it was in 2008 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller).
  - hga 11y ago
    What reinterpretation occurred in Heller? It affirmed that we have the right to own firearms and keep them in usable condition for home defense, both of which D.C. had banned.
  - rebootthesystem 11y ago
    Sorry, that isn't what I asked. The OP didn't respond. Perhaps you can? How, specifically, would you define "gun control"? We throw this terms around but nobody bothers to define it. What exactly does "Gun control is the elephant in this particular room." mean? Again, I ask, how, specifically, would you define "gun control"? I am not refuting anything you are saying. I am simply asking a question.
    - dalke 11y ago
      As a reminder, you recently said ' Every time I get sucked into a political discussion on HN I hate myself so I am as guilty as anyone else' at participating in the non-tech threads you think should be banned from HN. ;) Quoting from Wikipedia, "Gun control generally refers to laws or policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms." This is general agreement with how others use. For example, this more policy-oriented survey of small gun laws in different countries ( http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/A-Yearbook/2011/en/Small-Arms-Survey-2011-Chapter-09-EN.pdf http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/A-Yearbook/201... ) breaks the regulations down into: > "how states regulate the firearm ... what types of firearms civilians may be authorized to possess and which states keep centralized records of firearms in civilian hands", "how states regulate the civilian user, including the criteria used to determine eligibility to possess a firearm, how the licensing process works, and whether states permit private sales of firearms", and "how states regulate the use of civilian firearms, including the extent to which states require a reason to possess a firearm and the conditions that apply to firearm ownership." I see nothing particularly ambiguous in how the term is used for you to call for a need for the us, the hoi polloi, to help you understand it better. Gun control laws fall on a spectrum. Typically people say "we need more gun control" to mean that the laws should be more restrictive on what is allowed, while "we need less gun control" means the laws should less restrictive. Wikipedia explains the phrase "elephant in the room" well: > The term refers to a question, problem, solution, or controversial issue which is obvious to everyone who knows about the situation, but which is deliberately ignored because to do otherwise would cause great embarrassment, or trigger arguments or is simply taboo. The idiom can imply a value judgment that the issue ought to be discussed openly, or it can simply be an acknowledgment that the issue is there and not going to go away by itself. > The term is often used to describe an issue that involves a social taboo, such as race, religion, or even suicide. This idiomatic phrase is applicable when a subject is emotionally charged; and the people who might have spoken up decide that it is probably best avoided.[8] The phrase "Gun control is the elephant in this particular room" refers to the top-comment's list of "tangentially relevant facts". One inference is that the stricter gun control laws of Germany mean that fewer people have guns, so police are less likely to use methods which presume the civilians are both armed and likely to response with a gunfight. However, saying that directly brings in well-worn nearly deadlocked arguments about changes to gun control laws, Second Amendment, etc. Hence, the top-comment's indirect reference, which avoids discussing gun laws by talking about possible effects - hence, the topic of gun control is "the elephant in the room" that is being avoided, for reasons Wikipedia illuminated. Note that "I am simply asking a question." is often used by people who are derisively said to be "JAQing off". In order to avoid that accusation, I suggest you do some research first, rather than ask Wikipedia-level questions. You say that people do not define it; what is wrong with the definition from Wikipedia? Is it incompatible with how most people use the term?

15155 11y ago

Within the confines of our Constitution, which has been well-interpreted by the fine, honorable justices of our Supreme Court, how would you stop the violent, law-breaking gang member from getting firearms?

task_queue 11y ago
It's better to not make any laws because someone might break them.
- k33n 11y ago
  It's better to not make any unenforceable laws because it's a delusional exercise in futility.
  - Frondo 11y ago
    Gun control laws are absolutely enforceable--there's no question about that. Look to the other Western countries for examples.
    - ryanlol 11y ago
      The enforcement in other western countries is limited to not selling them as easily, tons of people still have unregistered guns and illegally importing them isn't difficult.
      - jon-wood 11y ago
        This makes no sense. I've lived in the UK my whole life, and when growing up spent some time around pretty unsavoury people. I've once seen a firearm, and that was at a clay pigeon range. I don't dispute that some people may own illegal firearms, but its by no means an endemic problem. Somebody getting shot in the UK is guaranteed to make the news. Just the presence of a criminal with a gun will interrupt live news channels, that's how rare it is.
        jameshart 11y ago
        Exactly. In the UK, 99% of the population wouldn't even know how to begin getting hold of a handgun. If they started making serious enquiries, chances are they'd run into an undercover cop before they found someone able to supply them something illegal. While I don't doubt that the knowledge of who to talk to and where to go to get a gun is present in certain UK communities, the basic fact that everybody involved in procuring, handling and importing guns is committing a criminal act certainly acts as a pretty solid prevention mechanism to stop, say, an angry 20-something man from acquiring sufficient guns and ammo to go on a shooting rampage at a college.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        Breivik tried to buy illegal weapons. He was unable to do so. He ended up buying weapons legally.
    - 15155 11y ago
      Against law-abiding citizens, yes. I can go to one of those countries with strong gun control right now and turn a formidable firearm if you like - do they need better mill control?
      - jeffwass 11y ago
        Do you lock the doors of your house when you leave? Those locks are useless to a thief with a crowbar. So if you do lock your house doors when you go out, you're implicitly agreeing that you do this to make it more difficult for someone to get inside your house, reducing the likelihood of theft. Same thing with guns.
        DanBC 11y ago
        > Same thing with guns. So America has zero house burglary?
        jeffwass 11y ago
        ??? Seems you missed my point entirely. Parent claims guns shouldn't be restricted since someone can make one on a lathe if they cannot buy one at a store. Meanwhile parent almost certainly locks their house doors despite a thief with crowbar being able to bypass their lock. Therefore, the parent's reasoning that gun control won't work because a criminal can mill their own gun is not logically sound.
        Nadya 11y ago
        You reduce opportunity which gets rid of opportunistic criminals. Ones who might rob your house because it is unlocked and they are less likely to get caught (compared to the shattering of glass or breaking down a door). I'm going to go out on a limb and claim murders are not an opportunistic crime. People are not killing because they can and can get away with it. The comparison you are trying to make dies there because the type of crime is not comparable.
        11y ago
- 15155 11y ago
  It's better not to make laws that are ineffective at stopping criminals, but completely effective at hindering law-abiding citizens from exercising their rights.
hga 11y ago
Well, the Supremes don't actually support "bearing" arms, just "keeping" them, so there's room there, the plain language of the 2nd Amendment notwithstanding. Plus the law at all levels, as well as pretty much everyone but I suppose the criminal class, supports making it illegal for a "violent, law-breaking gang member" to possess a firearm if he's been convicted of a violent felony (well, any felony, but we all agree about the violent ones).
- gknoy 11y ago
  You didn't address the question. Of course it's illegal -- how would you stop them from __getting__ them, though? We've seen that making it illegal won't be enough, as drugs and prohibition have shown: there would be a black market, just as there almost certainly already is.
  - jeremysmyth 11y ago
    At the moment I can buy a beer in a corner store. During prohibition, it was much harder (and more expensive) to get beer (or liquor), and more liquor than beer was consumed at a considerably higher price. One outcome was significantly lower alcohol consumption and all that that means (lower deaths by cirrhosis, lower city drunkenness arrests). If we take prohibition as an analogy, then sure, a dedicated criminal will still be able to get guns. However, a casual street-level criminal is going to have to work harder to get them because they're no longer available in the mall or from the pawn shop, and he's going to have to pay ten times as much to get one from Benny in the pool hall. That'll significantly reduce the number of guns out there, and that is what creates the environment and the expectation that results in cops shooting civilians.
- 15155 11y ago
  > Well, the Supremes don't actually support "bearing" arms Almost every appellate court below does in some capacity. As does the original text of the Second Amendment (as you said.) But again, how are you going to stop violent gang members from getting firearms without infringing on the law abiding? Why not focus on the problem: rehabilitating the violent individuals + improving mental health, instead of hoplophobic, knee-jerk legislation.

wallyhs 11y ago

A person who pulls a gun on an officer has already decided not to obey the laws. How would adding more laws make officers safer from such a person?

task_queue 11y ago
If the gun supply is strained, the chances of encountering such a person are lowered.
Retra 11y ago
Because you need more people to violate those laws with greater regularity for such a situation to occur. It is easier to get one person to break ten laws than to get ten people to break one. Regulating the sale and distribution of firearms mitigates such risks.

hga 11y ago

That's not actionable unless you're willing to suffer a 2nd civil war which your side would lose very badly, and all for the conceit that criminals would pay attention to such laws, especially when we already have well over 300 million guns in the country. A US police officer who doesn't assume a public contact might result in a lethal threat from a gun or edged weapon is an idiot.

Frondo 11y ago
One thing that really irritates me about the anti-gun-control crowd is that idea, "if you ban guns, criminals will ignore the ban, because they are criminals and criminals ignore laws." People who break one law will still obey countless others. It's also totally reasonable to think that someone who engaged in some kind of petty larceny would readily obey gun-restriction laws--why wouldn't they? This whole "gun control won't work because criminals ignore laws" thing always struck me as a nasty piece of nonsequitor logic and identity politics, a way to "other" a group of people (i.e. more people who live in some counterculture way than people who have actually broken some law) as wild or deranged Hollywood-esque marauders, or a way to invent a bogeyman threat that only guns (in the hands of the so-called "good guys") can stop.
- merpnderp 11y ago
  Someone only interested in petty larceny isn't carrying a gun right now for two reasons. They could pawn it for money and if they get caught it will add far more years to their sentence than petty larceny. Someone who uses a gun illegally today, will use one when they're illegal. At best making guns illegal would stop some domestic murders, but that would have to be weighed against a massive number of people going to jail for not obeying, country wide stop and frisk, and New Orleans style door to door SWAT raids to confiscate.
  - dalke 11y ago
    "but that would have to be weighed against a massive number of people going to jail for not obeying" Did that happen to Australia? I see no evidence for it. If not, why don't we use the same mandatory buy-back approach that Australia did?

task_queue 11y ago

If guns were illegal and cops still carried guns, they'd pull them when they walk into rooms. Why wouldn't they?

crimsoneer 11y ago
They don't pretty much everywhere else in the developed world.
- task_queue 11y ago
  This is the US, do you really think that if there wasn't a single gun in the hands of people in the country that cops wouldn't still carry guns?

rebootthesystem 11y ago

The term "gun control" is thrown around without definition, which makes it difficult to have an intelligent discussion. Let's start with the assumption it is impossible to alter the constitution to remove or severely cripple the second amendment, which, I think, is a reasonable assumption. How, specifically, would you define "gun control"?

Frondo 11y ago
The 2nd amendment can be clarified, and its meaning reinterpreted, as it was in 2008 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller).
- hga 11y ago
  What reinterpretation occurred in Heller? It affirmed that we have the right to own firearms and keep them in usable condition for home defense, both of which D.C. had banned.
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  Sorry, that isn't what I asked. The OP didn't respond. Perhaps you can? How, specifically, would you define "gun control"? We throw this terms around but nobody bothers to define it. What exactly does "Gun control is the elephant in this particular room." mean? Again, I ask, how, specifically, would you define "gun control"? I am not refuting anything you are saying. I am simply asking a question.
  - dalke 11y ago
    As a reminder, you recently said ' Every time I get sucked into a political discussion on HN I hate myself so I am as guilty as anyone else' at participating in the non-tech threads you think should be banned from HN. ;) Quoting from Wikipedia, "Gun control generally refers to laws or policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms." This is general agreement with how others use. For example, this more policy-oriented survey of small gun laws in different countries ( http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/A-Yearbook/2011/en/Small-Arms-Survey-2011-Chapter-09-EN.pdf http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/A-Yearbook/201... ) breaks the regulations down into: > "how states regulate the firearm ... what types of firearms civilians may be authorized to possess and which states keep centralized records of firearms in civilian hands", "how states regulate the civilian user, including the criteria used to determine eligibility to possess a firearm, how the licensing process works, and whether states permit private sales of firearms", and "how states regulate the use of civilian firearms, including the extent to which states require a reason to possess a firearm and the conditions that apply to firearm ownership." I see nothing particularly ambiguous in how the term is used for you to call for a need for the us, the hoi polloi, to help you understand it better. Gun control laws fall on a spectrum. Typically people say "we need more gun control" to mean that the laws should be more restrictive on what is allowed, while "we need less gun control" means the laws should less restrictive. Wikipedia explains the phrase "elephant in the room" well: > The term refers to a question, problem, solution, or controversial issue which is obvious to everyone who knows about the situation, but which is deliberately ignored because to do otherwise would cause great embarrassment, or trigger arguments or is simply taboo. The idiom can imply a value judgment that the issue ought to be discussed openly, or it can simply be an acknowledgment that the issue is there and not going to go away by itself. > The term is often used to describe an issue that involves a social taboo, such as race, religion, or even suicide. This idiomatic phrase is applicable when a subject is emotionally charged; and the people who might have spoken up decide that it is probably best avoided.[8] The phrase "Gun control is the elephant in this particular room" refers to the top-comment's list of "tangentially relevant facts". One inference is that the stricter gun control laws of Germany mean that fewer people have guns, so police are less likely to use methods which presume the civilians are both armed and likely to response with a gunfight. However, saying that directly brings in well-worn nearly deadlocked arguments about changes to gun control laws, Second Amendment, etc. Hence, the top-comment's indirect reference, which avoids discussing gun laws by talking about possible effects - hence, the topic of gun control is "the elephant in the room" that is being avoided, for reasons Wikipedia illuminated. Note that "I am simply asking a question." is often used by people who are derisively said to be "JAQing off". In order to avoid that accusation, I suggest you do some research first, rather than ask Wikipedia-level questions. You say that people do not define it; what is wrong with the definition from Wikipedia? Is it incompatible with how most people use the term?