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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

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

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