4 ms·

Gun control should not be a national issue, it should remain a local one. What works for the people of urban cities will not necessarily work for rural areas. L

by pg_bot 11y ago

Gun control should not be a national issue, it should remain a local one. What works for the people of urban cities will not necessarily work for rural areas. Like it or not the second amendment exists and isn't going anywhere anytime soon. While I choose not to exert my right to bear arms I should not force other people to conform to my lifestyle.

thescribe 11y ago
This took me a super long time to learn. I'm fairly rural and to me gun control seems bizarre. It wasn't until I talked to someone from a very dense mega-city that I had an ah-ha moment.
mmcconnell1618 11y ago
My biggest issue with guns is that they let one person become judge, jury and executioner without due process. Yes, you can kill someone in many other ways but guns have a tendency to deliver multiple kills with incredible ease and detachment. I do understand that rural areas are going to need a level of protection from wild animals that might not be required in urban areas. My suggestion for how to solve gun violence is to put together an "Apollo moonshot" project to develop a non-lethal weapon as effective at stopping as a lethal one. Phasers on stun is my dream. Once you can stop a person without harming them you can then take a tobacco industry marketing campaign to make owning a lethal weapon unacceptable in civil society. Rifles and relevant lethal weapons should still be available outside of urban areas unless non-lethal alternatives would work.
- deelowe 11y ago
  There's one giant issue with that. Most gun use isn't with intent to harm another individual.
  - hga 11y ago
    Most gun use, in the form of self-defense, call it ~2.5 million times a year (that figure is now getting very long in the tooth), doesn't even involve shooting the gun, most shots fired don't hit, and most hits don't result in death.
    - deelowe 11y ago
      I was specifically not talking about self defense b/c that's an extremely small percentage of "gun use." If you don't understand your opponent, how can you ever hope to reason with him?
      - hga 11y ago
        True, true, we don't produce and buy > 12 billion rounds in the US per year to shoot each other with, sorry if I wasn't clear in constraining my remarks to only self-defense uses, which I consider to be the essential uses of guns, if you include the ability to resist/prevent the establishment of a tyrannical government. The most notable example of that in my lifetime was the reevaluations of some liberals on the wisdom of gun control in hit's heyday after the Saturday Night Massacre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre) where Nixon dismissed the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and his Attorney General and Deputy AG resigned rather than carry out the order. We mostly Nixon supporting "gun nuts" were among other things part of the insurance that mess wouldn't go too far.
- thescribe 11y ago
  I wonder if criminals like muggers would be less likely to surrender if they knew that their lives were not on the line. I wonder if this would create a risk asymmetry between people breaking the law and people obeying the law.
- enjo 11y ago
  I do understand that rural areas are going to need a level of protection from wild animals that might not be required in urban areas. How do people living in rural areas with strong gun control even survive?
  - hga 11y ago
    Heh. But seriously, absent a population of brown bears (e.g. the Grisly), I'm not sure it's that great of a problem. And many people simply don't care about the occasional child, jogger, etc. killed by a mountain lion, bear, whatever. But I consider myself lucky to have grown up in an area were humans are the undisputed the apex predators, not even any black bears in my part of SW Missouri. Got to watch out for snakes, though.
  - tclmeelmo 11y ago
    I realize your comment was said in good-natured jest, but I've actually had to shoot (based on behavior) several rabid wild animals over the past decade that were an immediate threat to me.
- brandonmenc 11y ago
  > develop a non-lethal weapon as effective at stopping as a lethal one Expect that thing to be fired indiscriminately and very often by people who want to commit crimes or pull pranks, but aren't hard enough to kill. We'd see many orders of magnitude more crimes like burglary and carjacking committed if that weapon existed.
- ctdonath 11y ago
  "Detached reflection is not required in the presence of an upraised knife." If someone is in fact trying to kill you, you indeed have the natural right to "judge jury & executioner" if that's what's required to survive. It is exactly that natural right by which we delegate such power to the state (when circumstances do not demand otherwise).
  - hga 11y ago
    Note also that due process does follow even in the cases where a citizen becomes an "executioner", it just can't bring the killed person back to life, vs. judicial condemnations which have an appeal process before hand. That I'm going to potentially be "judged by 12" even if I'm not "carried by 6" weighs heavily in my mind (sort of, I've never had to make such a decision in, say, 45 years of gun ownership (starting as a kid in a gun owning family when I was trusted enough) and ~17 years of carrying concealed (as noted in a previous recent related HN discussion, avoidance is the best policy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11429446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11429446
woodman 11y ago
Does that apply to the rest of the Bill of Rights, or just the right to bear arms?
- pg_bot 11y ago
  The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
  - woodman 11y ago
    14th Amendment, states can't screw with the Bill of Rights. See McDonald v. Chicago.
jim-greer 11y ago
I actually think it should be national, but reforms should be evidence based. First off, gun homicides are actually down over 50% since the early 90s. There are still too many, of course. Assault weapons bans are ineffective, since they account for 2% of crimes. Open carry and concealed carry are emotional issues, but aren't a big contributor to guns deaths. 13M people are already permitted to concealed carry, and while it has led to more aggravated assaults with guns, it hasn't been a big increase. Background checks and waiting periods actually do make sense. People with a restraining order shouldn't be able to get guns - research indicates that keeping guns out of their hands would reduce this category of murders by 10%. Most of this is cribbed from Nicholas Kristof: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/opinion/sunday/some-inconvenient-gun-facts-for-liberals.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/opinion/sunday/some-inconv...
- hga 11y ago
  Background checks and waiting periods actually do make sense. People with a restraining order The former is debatable (e.g. most handgun murders aren't committed when gun stores are even open, i.e. evening and night), and as far as I know the latter, when it's domestic violence, it's the law of the land everywhere. But that's very dangerous, since it's an easy way for the non-law abiding to strip a victim of protection when they most need it, and the threshold to get a restraining order, even a permanent one, is way too low.
  - jim-greer 11y ago
    Yes background checks are required at licensed gun stores. But as many as 40% of gun sales are private.
    - hga 11y ago
      But a substantial fraction of those involve implicit background checks. I recently received 3 long guns of personal significance in my teens in the '70s, from my father (who I live with after "eviction by tornado" and now to help take care of him), and having started my education in all gun things starting in 1963-4 he knows my character better than just about anyone else. The first time I bought guns was from a professional couple, and they wouldn't have done it if I and my SO hadn't convinced them we were also such, and would treat them with all due respect. Of course, no one denies there are problems at the other end, but we are talking about a Constitutionally enumerated right in an era where all Constitutional protections are under threat (yes, even the 3rd Amendment, pervasive surveillance is exactly what quartering troops was all about way back then). I won't predict a violent counter-revolution if the nation went to mandatory background checks, like would be certain if registration became mandatory, but that would be playing with fire.
minikites 11y ago
The problem with this is that people aren't planted to the ground. Chicago has tough firearm laws but it's not that hard to drive to Indiana to buy a gun which is why Chicago has such a problem with gun violence.
- pg_bot 11y ago
  Chicago doesn't have a problem with gun violence due to Indiana's gun laws. It has a problem because of drug prohibition and the black market that has sprung up to meet the needs of drug users. You need to find the root cause (why violence is occurring) instead of looking at the symptoms (how the violence is occurring).
  - Turing_Machine 11y ago
    Chicago doesn't have a problem with gun violence due to Indiana's gun laws. Right. If Indiana's gun laws were to blame, you'd see similar levels of violent crime within Indiana, and you don't. The only places in Indiana with anything like Chicago-level violence are areas such as Gary (which is a Chicago suburb in all but name). On the other side of the coin, nor do you see Chicago levels of violence in downstate eastern Illinois, which is just as close to Indiana. Chicago has a violent crime rate of 884/100,000. Urbana has a violent crime rate of 338/100,000. Blaming Indiana's gun laws is convenient rhetoric, but quite obviously wrong.
- hga 11y ago
  Chicago has tough firearm laws Not particularly any more, see my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11464325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11464325
- jevinskie 11y ago
  A resident of Illinois cannot legally buy a handgun in Indiana without getting it transferred to an FFL in Illinois. Straw purchasers may be another matter. Make no mistake though, Cabelas and Bass Pro Shop are located right on the border in northwest Indiana not Illinois.
enjo 11y ago
It can only be a national issue. As long as the answer is "I'll just go over there and buy a gun" no meaningful gun control can possibly exist. See what's going on in Chicago currently to see this dynamic in action.
- hga 11y ago
  Thing is, Chicago has had a sky high crime and murder rate for a very long time, and went from no legal handgun ownership at all to it being allowed due to McDonald v. Chicago in 2010, took effect within a year or so, and now full and fairly administered shall issue in 2013. Gun laws there are confounded by so many other factors in general crime and murder rates that I doubt much useful knowledge can be discerned until some number of years pass as the city returns to US norms of gun ownership and concealed carry.

by pg_bot 11y ago

thescribe 11y ago

This took me a super long time to learn. I'm fairly rural and to me gun control seems bizarre. It wasn't until I talked to someone from a very dense mega-city that I had an ah-ha moment.

mmcconnell1618 11y ago

My biggest issue with guns is that they let one person become judge, jury and executioner without due process. Yes, you can kill someone in many other ways but guns have a tendency to deliver multiple kills with incredible ease and detachment. I do understand that rural areas are going to need a level of protection from wild animals that might not be required in urban areas. My suggestion for how to solve gun violence is to put together an "Apollo moonshot" project to develop a non-lethal weapon as effective at stopping as a lethal one. Phasers on stun is my dream. Once you can stop a person without harming them you can then take a tobacco industry marketing campaign to make owning a lethal weapon unacceptable in civil society. Rifles and relevant lethal weapons should still be available outside of urban areas unless non-lethal alternatives would work.

deelowe 11y ago
There's one giant issue with that. Most gun use isn't with intent to harm another individual.
- hga 11y ago
  Most gun use, in the form of self-defense, call it ~2.5 million times a year (that figure is now getting very long in the tooth), doesn't even involve shooting the gun, most shots fired don't hit, and most hits don't result in death.
  - deelowe 11y ago
    I was specifically not talking about self defense b/c that's an extremely small percentage of "gun use." If you don't understand your opponent, how can you ever hope to reason with him?
    - hga 11y ago
      True, true, we don't produce and buy > 12 billion rounds in the US per year to shoot each other with, sorry if I wasn't clear in constraining my remarks to only self-defense uses, which I consider to be the essential uses of guns, if you include the ability to resist/prevent the establishment of a tyrannical government. The most notable example of that in my lifetime was the reevaluations of some liberals on the wisdom of gun control in hit's heyday after the Saturday Night Massacre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre) where Nixon dismissed the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and his Attorney General and Deputy AG resigned rather than carry out the order. We mostly Nixon supporting "gun nuts" were among other things part of the insurance that mess wouldn't go too far.
thescribe 11y ago
I wonder if criminals like muggers would be less likely to surrender if they knew that their lives were not on the line. I wonder if this would create a risk asymmetry between people breaking the law and people obeying the law.
enjo 11y ago
I do understand that rural areas are going to need a level of protection from wild animals that might not be required in urban areas. How do people living in rural areas with strong gun control even survive?
- hga 11y ago
  Heh. But seriously, absent a population of brown bears (e.g. the Grisly), I'm not sure it's that great of a problem. And many people simply don't care about the occasional child, jogger, etc. killed by a mountain lion, bear, whatever. But I consider myself lucky to have grown up in an area were humans are the undisputed the apex predators, not even any black bears in my part of SW Missouri. Got to watch out for snakes, though.
- tclmeelmo 11y ago
  I realize your comment was said in good-natured jest, but I've actually had to shoot (based on behavior) several rabid wild animals over the past decade that were an immediate threat to me.
brandonmenc 11y ago
> develop a non-lethal weapon as effective at stopping as a lethal one Expect that thing to be fired indiscriminately and very often by people who want to commit crimes or pull pranks, but aren't hard enough to kill. We'd see many orders of magnitude more crimes like burglary and carjacking committed if that weapon existed.
ctdonath 11y ago
"Detached reflection is not required in the presence of an upraised knife." If someone is in fact trying to kill you, you indeed have the natural right to "judge jury & executioner" if that's what's required to survive. It is exactly that natural right by which we delegate such power to the state (when circumstances do not demand otherwise).
- hga 11y ago
  Note also that due process does follow even in the cases where a citizen becomes an "executioner", it just can't bring the killed person back to life, vs. judicial condemnations which have an appeal process before hand. That I'm going to potentially be "judged by 12" even if I'm not "carried by 6" weighs heavily in my mind (sort of, I've never had to make such a decision in, say, 45 years of gun ownership (starting as a kid in a gun owning family when I was trusted enough) and ~17 years of carrying concealed (as noted in a previous recent related HN discussion, avoidance is the best policy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11429446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11429446

woodman 11y ago

Does that apply to the rest of the Bill of Rights, or just the right to bear arms?

pg_bot 11y ago
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
- woodman 11y ago
  14th Amendment, states can't screw with the Bill of Rights. See McDonald v. Chicago.

jim-greer 11y ago

I actually think it should be national, but reforms should be evidence based. First off, gun homicides are actually down over 50% since the early 90s. There are still too many, of course. Assault weapons bans are ineffective, since they account for 2% of crimes. Open carry and concealed carry are emotional issues, but aren't a big contributor to guns deaths. 13M people are already permitted to concealed carry, and while it has led to more aggravated assaults with guns, it hasn't been a big increase. Background checks and waiting periods actually do make sense. People with a restraining order shouldn't be able to get guns - research indicates that keeping guns out of their hands would reduce this category of murders by 10%. Most of this is cribbed from Nicholas Kristof: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/opinion/sunday/some-inconvenient-gun-facts-for-liberals.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/opinion/sunday/some-inconv...

hga 11y ago
Background checks and waiting periods actually do make sense. People with a restraining order The former is debatable (e.g. most handgun murders aren't committed when gun stores are even open, i.e. evening and night), and as far as I know the latter, when it's domestic violence, it's the law of the land everywhere. But that's very dangerous, since it's an easy way for the non-law abiding to strip a victim of protection when they most need it, and the threshold to get a restraining order, even a permanent one, is way too low.
- jim-greer 11y ago
  Yes background checks are required at licensed gun stores. But as many as 40% of gun sales are private.
  - hga 11y ago
    But a substantial fraction of those involve implicit background checks. I recently received 3 long guns of personal significance in my teens in the '70s, from my father (who I live with after "eviction by tornado" and now to help take care of him), and having started my education in all gun things starting in 1963-4 he knows my character better than just about anyone else. The first time I bought guns was from a professional couple, and they wouldn't have done it if I and my SO hadn't convinced them we were also such, and would treat them with all due respect. Of course, no one denies there are problems at the other end, but we are talking about a Constitutionally enumerated right in an era where all Constitutional protections are under threat (yes, even the 3rd Amendment, pervasive surveillance is exactly what quartering troops was all about way back then). I won't predict a violent counter-revolution if the nation went to mandatory background checks, like would be certain if registration became mandatory, but that would be playing with fire.

minikites 11y ago

The problem with this is that people aren't planted to the ground. Chicago has tough firearm laws but it's not that hard to drive to Indiana to buy a gun which is why Chicago has such a problem with gun violence.

pg_bot 11y ago
Chicago doesn't have a problem with gun violence due to Indiana's gun laws. It has a problem because of drug prohibition and the black market that has sprung up to meet the needs of drug users. You need to find the root cause (why violence is occurring) instead of looking at the symptoms (how the violence is occurring).
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  Chicago doesn't have a problem with gun violence due to Indiana's gun laws. Right. If Indiana's gun laws were to blame, you'd see similar levels of violent crime within Indiana, and you don't. The only places in Indiana with anything like Chicago-level violence are areas such as Gary (which is a Chicago suburb in all but name). On the other side of the coin, nor do you see Chicago levels of violence in downstate eastern Illinois, which is just as close to Indiana. Chicago has a violent crime rate of 884/100,000. Urbana has a violent crime rate of 338/100,000. Blaming Indiana's gun laws is convenient rhetoric, but quite obviously wrong.
hga 11y ago
Chicago has tough firearm laws Not particularly any more, see my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11464325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11464325
jevinskie 11y ago
A resident of Illinois cannot legally buy a handgun in Indiana without getting it transferred to an FFL in Illinois. Straw purchasers may be another matter. Make no mistake though, Cabelas and Bass Pro Shop are located right on the border in northwest Indiana not Illinois.

enjo 11y ago

It can only be a national issue. As long as the answer is "I'll just go over there and buy a gun" no meaningful gun control can possibly exist. See what's going on in Chicago currently to see this dynamic in action.

hga 11y ago
Thing is, Chicago has had a sky high crime and murder rate for a very long time, and went from no legal handgun ownership at all to it being allowed due to McDonald v. Chicago in 2010, took effect within a year or so, and now full and fairly administered shall issue in 2013. Gun laws there are confounded by so many other factors in general crime and murder rates that I doubt much useful knowledge can be discerned until some number of years pass as the city returns to US norms of gun ownership and concealed carry.