5 ms·

I don't actually think at any point in this article did he really articulate why he "needs" an AR-15. Only that he wants one. Which is perfectly fine. However

by jpgvm 10y ago

I don't actually think at any point in this article did he really articulate why he "needs" an AR-15. Only that he wants one. Which is perfectly fine. However at the end of the day I don't think peoples wants should trump my -need- to be safe.

cheez 10y ago
Uh.. Cars?
- jpgvm 10y ago
  Are you insinuating that people don't need cars? I don't need a car. But that is because I am wealthy and am able to live very close to my place for work. But there are people that most definitely -need- cars. If anything not needing a car is a luxury (atleast in my country).
  - pohl 10y ago
    Even in the case of mere want there are standards of road-worthiness, classes of licenses, etc.
  - ryanackley 10y ago
    People "need" cars because much of western civil infrastructure is built around the assumption that cars or something similar will always be around. I think you could argue that without cars everyone would be better off. Less pollution, people would save money on gas, more public real estate for parks, etc. not to mention less people dying from accidents.
    - TylerE 10y ago
      How much productivity would society lose because people can't work anywhere more than a few miles from where they live?
      - tracker1 10y ago
        Public transit, not to mention many jobs should be able to remote work. Before cars were very common it was also common to build communities around smaller shops that were closer. There are a lot of people in and around NYC that would argue differently.
- pohl 10y ago
  It's not obvious in which direction you hope the mention of automobiles will cut. I can imagine it cutting both ways.
jonstokes 10y ago
As someone else pointed out about this post elsewhere, there are very few things that any of us actually "need" -- do you need running water and indoor plumbing? Or, to bring it a little closer to home, does anyone really need an outdoor uncovered pool, or a drink of alcohol? But anyway, before this gets derailed, the point of the post was really about laying out the rationales for the AR-15, while openly acknowledging that many people will still find them insufficient. What I really wanted to do, though, is move the discussion away from the "rednecks with small penises" rut that it seems to be stuck in. The "need" phrasing was the framing I chose in order to hook into the "nobody needs an assault rifle" phrase that's repeated over and over again. At any rate, again, I acknowledged up front that I wouldn't be able to convince everybody, or even most people, and that I was ok with that as long as people on the other side of the "assault weapon" debate could gain some new information about these firearms and their appeal to non-crazy, non-penis-size-compensating, non-military-fetishist normal people.
- ratsbane 10y ago
  Whether anyone "wants" or "needs" an AR-15 or any other type of firearm, the rest of us need to know that anyone around us with such a weapon has some basic competence in using it and is responsible enough to do so. I had to pass a written and and practical test and I have to show financial responsibility to operate a car. If you can do that with your AR-15 then I won't object to your having it. I suspect you are a careful, conscientious, and responsible gun owner and would have no problem demonstrating this, but there are a lot of people who have guns who are neither careful, conscientious, nor responsible. I hope you won't mind having to demonstrate your competence so that society can stop the other people, the irresponsible ones. And of course, you might say that even if we had such requirement to demonstrate responsibility, the irresponsible people would circumvent the system and have guns anyway. I'm sure that's true for a few, but it would remove many guns from irresponsible hands and it would give law enforcement a reason to arrest the others and get them off the streets.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    I read an article earlier that pointed out that in police shootings in NYC that they hit their target less than 50% of the time. Unfortunately, even light training isn't enough. And short of sending everyone into the military for active duty in combat, most people won't be thoroughly literate. It's about personal freedom and liberty... I'm in favor of them, even if I choose not to own one.
ryanmarsh 10y ago
He did near the bottom, probably without thinking so when he called it a "gadget". It is indeed, albeit a deadly one, but so is a Cessna.
DKnoll 10y ago
He does actually. He mentions specifically a hunting scenario and the need to use a powerful weapon and also the ability to quickly issue a follow-up shot if the animal is only wounded, which is a humane action. Just clarifying the point of the author, please don't project his views on me and mob me.
- jpgvm 10y ago
  He didn't need to go hunting any more than I needed to go to the cinema last night. The difference being that my going to the cinema doesn't impact the inherent safety of our society. He wanted to go hunting. He wanted to use a powerful weapon while doing so. I understand the desire to want things. I too think it would be cool to have a powerful weapon. However I am also rational enough to understand that laws can't exist that grant me a powerful weapon and deny it to 100% of nutjobs. So given the option between having a cool gun and living in a world where I may get shot to death in a cinema or club vs just not having the gun.. I choose to not have the gun and I think any truly rational person would come to the same conclusion.
  - DKnoll 10y ago
    Hunting is more ethical, cheaper and also more convenient for those living in remote locations than purchasing meat at a supermarket. Consider the cost of airlifting food to remote communities in Nunavut and you will understand the need. http://nunavutfoodprice.tumblr.com/ http://nunavutfoodprice.tumblr.com/
    - jpgvm 10y ago
      That is a beyond tiny subset of society that actually applies to. For 99.9% of more of people that go hunting it's a luxury.
      - DKnoll 10y ago
        Can you back up that figure please? I truly doubt 99.9% of hunters worldwide (you didn't qualify it) or even in the west hunt for 'luxury.' How long have you spent in a rural locale?
adambom 10y ago
Yeah, I get his point that it's the best general purpose rifle out there. If you need to own a gun, it's probably one of your better options. But I still don't get why you would need a gun. For the most part, we don't need to hunt for our food. We don't need to shoot targets either. Home defense, maybe, but there are other ways to be secure at home without weapons. I do agree with his point that if you're going to argue against guns, you shouldn't pick and choose categories that are "ok". It's either we ban guns or we continue to live with them in our society.
- tracker1 10y ago
  Do you feel we should also disarm the police? In my mind there's no reason the police should have a firearm that doesn't apply to someone being attacked in their own home.
- DefaultUserHN 10y ago
  You don't need a gun. I need a gun. See. That's the problem. I am not forcing you to own a gun. But you're forcing me NOT to own a gun. How about we let everybody do what they want? You can choose not to own a gun. And I can choose to own a gun. It's called freedom.
diek 10y ago
I like the analogy of swimming pools. I don't _need_ a swimming pool, and having a pool by definition makes neighborhood children and visitors with children to my house less safe. In fact, children under 15 are about 40 times more likely to die by swimming pool than by an accidental firearms discharge [0]. I still have a pool. There are reasonable laws about having auto-closing gates and a fenced-in yard. I don't see anyone clambering to tighten restrictions on assault swimming pools. Likewise, semi-automatic, detachable-magazine-fed rifles are responsible for something like 2% of shootings. The only real place they have significance is in mass shootings. The only refute I have to, "but if we ban these rifles we won't have shootings" is that it would just happen through a different means. The Happy Land Fire killed 87 people, not a shot fired. Timothy McVeigh killed 189 people with fertilizer... and that was in 1995 -- under the "Assault Weapons Ban" of 1994. [0] http://www.m1-garand-rifle.com/gun-safety/firearms-versus-swimming-pools.php http://www.m1-garand-rifle.com/gun-safety/firearms-versus-sw...
- finnh 10y ago
  > In fact, children under 15 are about 40 times more likely to die by swimming pool than by an accidental firearms discharge [0]. You know, it's not really the accidental discharges I'm worried about. It's the mass shootings. Also, you appear to be misquoting that article. The 40x number is scaled by the number of pools/firearms, and so is saying "an individual firearm is less likely to kill a child than an individual pool" (although firearms are vastly more common than pools). And, finally, that article uses "86 children killed by accidental firearm discharge in 2000" as its primary metric. The top google hit [0] for "How many children are killed each year by guns?" gives a value of 1,500. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=How+many+children+are+killed+each+year+by+guns https://www.google.com/search?q=How+many+children+are+killed...
  - diek 10y ago
    It looks like the 1,500 number includes all deaths of children under 18. However -- without going into that particular dataset -- these numbers are normally inflated by gang violence and include 17-year-olds killed in shootouts with police. I'm certainly interested in more data, but it's hard to find summary datasets that aren't slanted.
jscheel 10y ago
In a free society, the burden of justification should be placed squarely on those that would restrict your rights. You should not have to explain why you need something, the person telling you "no" should have to defend their position.
thescribe 10y ago
I don't believe human rights are up to a vote, so the fact that he wants to exercise his rights should trump.
DefaultUserHN 10y ago
What about his needs to be safe (through the protection of his own guns)? Or my need to be safe (through the protection of people who carries)? If someone walk into a theater and starts shooting, though I don't carry, I prefer that the guy next to me is the type to carry, and that at least half the theater carry too, so they can all drop that killer with 100 bullets at the door.

by jpgvm 10y ago

cheez 10y ago

Uh.. Cars?

jpgvm 10y ago
Are you insinuating that people don't need cars? I don't need a car. But that is because I am wealthy and am able to live very close to my place for work. But there are people that most definitely -need- cars. If anything not needing a car is a luxury (atleast in my country).
- pohl 10y ago
  Even in the case of mere want there are standards of road-worthiness, classes of licenses, etc.
- ryanackley 10y ago
  People "need" cars because much of western civil infrastructure is built around the assumption that cars or something similar will always be around. I think you could argue that without cars everyone would be better off. Less pollution, people would save money on gas, more public real estate for parks, etc. not to mention less people dying from accidents.
  - TylerE 10y ago
    How much productivity would society lose because people can't work anywhere more than a few miles from where they live?
    - tracker1 10y ago
      Public transit, not to mention many jobs should be able to remote work. Before cars were very common it was also common to build communities around smaller shops that were closer. There are a lot of people in and around NYC that would argue differently.
pohl 10y ago
It's not obvious in which direction you hope the mention of automobiles will cut. I can imagine it cutting both ways.

jonstokes 10y ago

As someone else pointed out about this post elsewhere, there are very few things that any of us actually "need" -- do you need running water and indoor plumbing? Or, to bring it a little closer to home, does anyone really need an outdoor uncovered pool, or a drink of alcohol? But anyway, before this gets derailed, the point of the post was really about laying out the rationales for the AR-15, while openly acknowledging that many people will still find them insufficient. What I really wanted to do, though, is move the discussion away from the "rednecks with small penises" rut that it seems to be stuck in. The "need" phrasing was the framing I chose in order to hook into the "nobody needs an assault rifle" phrase that's repeated over and over again. At any rate, again, I acknowledged up front that I wouldn't be able to convince everybody, or even most people, and that I was ok with that as long as people on the other side of the "assault weapon" debate could gain some new information about these firearms and their appeal to non-crazy, non-penis-size-compensating, non-military-fetishist normal people.

ratsbane 10y ago
Whether anyone "wants" or "needs" an AR-15 or any other type of firearm, the rest of us need to know that anyone around us with such a weapon has some basic competence in using it and is responsible enough to do so. I had to pass a written and and practical test and I have to show financial responsibility to operate a car. If you can do that with your AR-15 then I won't object to your having it. I suspect you are a careful, conscientious, and responsible gun owner and would have no problem demonstrating this, but there are a lot of people who have guns who are neither careful, conscientious, nor responsible. I hope you won't mind having to demonstrate your competence so that society can stop the other people, the irresponsible ones. And of course, you might say that even if we had such requirement to demonstrate responsibility, the irresponsible people would circumvent the system and have guns anyway. I'm sure that's true for a few, but it would remove many guns from irresponsible hands and it would give law enforcement a reason to arrest the others and get them off the streets.
- tracker1 10y ago
  I read an article earlier that pointed out that in police shootings in NYC that they hit their target less than 50% of the time. Unfortunately, even light training isn't enough. And short of sending everyone into the military for active duty in combat, most people won't be thoroughly literate. It's about personal freedom and liberty... I'm in favor of them, even if I choose not to own one.

ryanmarsh 10y ago

He did near the bottom, probably without thinking so when he called it a "gadget". It is indeed, albeit a deadly one, but so is a Cessna.

DKnoll 10y ago

He does actually. He mentions specifically a hunting scenario and the need to use a powerful weapon and also the ability to quickly issue a follow-up shot if the animal is only wounded, which is a humane action. Just clarifying the point of the author, please don't project his views on me and mob me.

jpgvm 10y ago
He didn't need to go hunting any more than I needed to go to the cinema last night. The difference being that my going to the cinema doesn't impact the inherent safety of our society. He wanted to go hunting. He wanted to use a powerful weapon while doing so. I understand the desire to want things. I too think it would be cool to have a powerful weapon. However I am also rational enough to understand that laws can't exist that grant me a powerful weapon and deny it to 100% of nutjobs. So given the option between having a cool gun and living in a world where I may get shot to death in a cinema or club vs just not having the gun.. I choose to not have the gun and I think any truly rational person would come to the same conclusion.
- DKnoll 10y ago
  Hunting is more ethical, cheaper and also more convenient for those living in remote locations than purchasing meat at a supermarket. Consider the cost of airlifting food to remote communities in Nunavut and you will understand the need. http://nunavutfoodprice.tumblr.com/ http://nunavutfoodprice.tumblr.com/
  - jpgvm 10y ago
    That is a beyond tiny subset of society that actually applies to. For 99.9% of more of people that go hunting it's a luxury.
    - DKnoll 10y ago
      Can you back up that figure please? I truly doubt 99.9% of hunters worldwide (you didn't qualify it) or even in the west hunt for 'luxury.' How long have you spent in a rural locale?

adambom 10y ago

Yeah, I get his point that it's the best general purpose rifle out there. If you need to own a gun, it's probably one of your better options. But I still don't get why you would need a gun. For the most part, we don't need to hunt for our food. We don't need to shoot targets either. Home defense, maybe, but there are other ways to be secure at home without weapons. I do agree with his point that if you're going to argue against guns, you shouldn't pick and choose categories that are "ok". It's either we ban guns or we continue to live with them in our society.

tracker1 10y ago
Do you feel we should also disarm the police? In my mind there's no reason the police should have a firearm that doesn't apply to someone being attacked in their own home.
DefaultUserHN 10y ago
You don't need a gun. I need a gun. See. That's the problem. I am not forcing you to own a gun. But you're forcing me NOT to own a gun. How about we let everybody do what they want? You can choose not to own a gun. And I can choose to own a gun. It's called freedom.

diek 10y ago

I like the analogy of swimming pools. I don't _need_ a swimming pool, and having a pool by definition makes neighborhood children and visitors with children to my house less safe. In fact, children under 15 are about 40 times more likely to die by swimming pool than by an accidental firearms discharge [0]. I still have a pool. There are reasonable laws about having auto-closing gates and a fenced-in yard. I don't see anyone clambering to tighten restrictions on assault swimming pools. Likewise, semi-automatic, detachable-magazine-fed rifles are responsible for something like 2% of shootings. The only real place they have significance is in mass shootings. The only refute I have to, "but if we ban these rifles we won't have shootings" is that it would just happen through a different means. The Happy Land Fire killed 87 people, not a shot fired. Timothy McVeigh killed 189 people with fertilizer... and that was in 1995 -- under the "Assault Weapons Ban" of 1994. [0] http://www.m1-garand-rifle.com/gun-safety/firearms-versus-swimming-pools.php http://www.m1-garand-rifle.com/gun-safety/firearms-versus-sw...

finnh 10y ago
> In fact, children under 15 are about 40 times more likely to die by swimming pool than by an accidental firearms discharge [0]. You know, it's not really the accidental discharges I'm worried about. It's the mass shootings. Also, you appear to be misquoting that article. The 40x number is scaled by the number of pools/firearms, and so is saying "an individual firearm is less likely to kill a child than an individual pool" (although firearms are vastly more common than pools). And, finally, that article uses "86 children killed by accidental firearm discharge in 2000" as its primary metric. The top google hit [0] for "How many children are killed each year by guns?" gives a value of 1,500. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=How+many+children+are+killed+each+year+by+guns https://www.google.com/search?q=How+many+children+are+killed...
- diek 10y ago
  It looks like the 1,500 number includes all deaths of children under 18. However -- without going into that particular dataset -- these numbers are normally inflated by gang violence and include 17-year-olds killed in shootouts with police. I'm certainly interested in more data, but it's hard to find summary datasets that aren't slanted.

jscheel 10y ago

In a free society, the burden of justification should be placed squarely on those that would restrict your rights. You should not have to explain why you need something, the person telling you "no" should have to defend their position.

thescribe 10y ago

I don't believe human rights are up to a vote, so the fact that he wants to exercise his rights should trump.

DefaultUserHN 10y ago

What about his needs to be safe (through the protection of his own guns)? Or my need to be safe (through the protection of people who carries)? If someone walk into a theater and starts shooting, though I don't carry, I prefer that the guy next to me is the type to carry, and that at least half the theater carry too, so they can all drop that killer with 100 bullets at the door.