6 ms·

Here's a fix: Ban guns, end privatized jails, invest in education and social programs, and redistribute wealth. Mass surveillance? That will not end well. Ther

Here's a fix: Ban guns, end privatized jails, invest in education and social programs, and redistribute wealth. Mass surveillance? That will not end well. There is historical precedent and plenty of speculative fiction to persuade us away from this path.

docdeek 7y ago
I know the article is about the US use case, but cities like London (in Europe) and Beijing (in Asia) fit most of the criteria you mention and are incredibly closely surveiled. I suspect that if someone wants to deploy mass survillance they are going to find reasons no matter the on-the-ground reality. Too much crime? You need 24/7 surveillance to cut that. No crime to speak of? Let’s put cameras all over the place to keep it that way.
- komali2 7y ago
  Is mass surveillance working to reduce crime in the UK? I recall anecdotes about police throwing their hands up over moped muggings.
  - threezero 7y ago
    It appears that it isn’t working, since crime has risen quite a bit in London for the past few years.
- world32 7y ago
  Can't speak for Beijing but the only thing from that list that fits London is that guns are banned.
_zachs 7y ago
Why is banning guns relevant?
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527 https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-na...
- some_random 7y ago
  Because the onion said they're scary, obviously.
vbuwivbiu 7y ago
Actually solving problems at the roots like that won't show results for 1 generation which is too long for human political memories
akudha 7y ago
Not end well for who? Those who are in charge aren't going to be affected, and they don't care about the others.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Banning guns worked so great in Chicago and Baltimore that they're considering investing in mass-surveillance to top it off. I agree with you about educational programs but anything that shifts the power balance away from people and to the government (or "society" as the proponents of these things will say) is not going to help, it will just create a rift that makes full time criminality more attractive to marginalized people (e.g. London) or a dystopian nightmare (e.g. Xinjiang) that may have low crime but is a terrible place to live your life. Whenever people start proposing things like mass surveillance, banning guns, or other things that are completely incompatible with cultural ideals (which those things are in the US) in order to solve a problem that should be a tip-off that a metric has become a target.
- asark 7y ago
  > completely incompatible with cultural ideals (which those things are in the US) If anything's gonna change that, it'll be the current crop of kids coming up seeing shootings on the news, then having scary-real shooter drills every year at school. With maybe a side of increased youth suicide rates meaning more of then know someone who shot themselves. It's even spooking the kids in fairly red areas, excepting pretty much exclusively the kids of, ah, very red parents with the gun-related bumper stickers to prove it. FWIW I think the drills are doing a lot more (psychological) harm than they're worth, but one side-effect may be a sharp change in our national attitudes toward guns, over the next 30-50 years or so.
  - claytoneast 7y ago
    I feel that shift would be a mistake and be conflating things that are not related. Teen suicide rates have to do with teens feeling terrible about life and killing themselves. The gun is just the messenger in this case. A belt and a tall closet works too. I have lived in parts of the country where there are extremely high rates of gun ownership and 0 problems with gun shootings. Then there are areas with much less gun ownership and very high shooting rates. Those areas, to be blunt, are generally low-income PoC neighborhoods. The leadership at the country/state/city level won't admit they don't give a shit about poor brown people. They want to blame the troubles of the neighborhoods on firearms and take those away. I have a theory that mass shootings are a similar situation, that there is a shift in the mental health of people that is causing them to want to go kill a bunch of people just to kill a bunch of people. It's currently fashionable in certain (typically) young white disillusioned male communities to go buy a gun and go kill a bunch of people. If there were no guns, would that problem disappear? Or would they just use the kinetic energy of 4000 lbs traveling at 25-60 mph to accomplish the same thing, like in Paris? I don't know.
tengbretson 7y ago
> Ban guns Wouldn't it make law enforcement a lot more difficult and dangerous if the police didn't have guns? Unless you didn't mean ban guns, but rather to give them exclusively to the police and military. Is that what you're suggesting?
- mindslight 7y ago
  Getting guns out of the hands of every day police would indeed make policing safer, especially for police doing traffic stops. Very rarely do parking tickets end up with armed conflict. There's this overriding myth that's been stoked by Hollywood et al that a "good guy" with a gun can just shoot everything up to save the day. There's no surprise what this narrative maps onto in the real world, where the results aren't predictably written to entertain.
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  I can list quite a few police shooting innocent people incidents from USA, and quite a few civilians shooting innocent people incidents from USA. Can you reference any incidents of people with guns using them to stand up to the police or military in recent (~20 year) history, in USA - and winning (whatever that might mean)? Any armed political protests? Any hint of a serious suggestion that a group of armed civilians could take on the US military and military-weapons-armed police forces if it came to a fight? Armed civilians don't mean civilians stand a chance against the police or military. They're outnumbered, outfunded, out-trained, out-equipped and whatever the out- equivalent of the state having sheerly more options, is.
  - jbattle 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff
  - tengbretson 7y ago
    > Armed civilians don't mean civilians stand a chance against the police or military. They're outnumbered, outfunded, out-trained, out-equipped and whatever the out- equivalent of the state having sheerly more options, is. You're missing the point of an armed population and its ability to fight tyranny. First of all, the military has almost nothing to do with any of this. Tyrannical regimes have to maintain order at a hyper local level, which means either by police or police-like forces. Secondly, it has almost nothing to do with going "gun to gun" and shooting out a winner. Level of violent escalation and public support for the regime is the name of the game. When a population is disarmed a government can make political dissidents just disappear in the middle of the night without a sound. When there's even a possibility of an armed population it means if they want to take out opposition they're rolling up with armored vehicles, swat teams, choppers, the works. This sort of event gets noticed! It requires an explanation. It means live coverage, newspapers, choppers, etc. How many bloody shootouts can a regime survive while retaining public support? How many Wacos could the US have had and still maintain social order?
homonculus1 7y ago
Why do you perceive mass disarmament of non-police and non-military as an acceptable alternative to mass surveillance? They both present the same issues of: -selective enforcement; -persecution of minorities; -suppression of political rivals; -inherent asymmetrical concentration of power into the established elite; -history of abuse by totalitarians; I'm genuinely unable to wrap my head around taking a pro-liberty stance on one issue and a pro-authority stance on the other. Yes, criminals abuse our common freedoms, but governments have always had vastly greater ability to abuse their power. And crime is already marginal, and falling!
- homonculus1 7y ago
  To those of you who disagree, please feel free to explain why.
randyrand 7y ago
Even in your perfect society there will still be unhappy people that want to do harm to others, and there are many ways to do mass violence without guns.
robdachshund 7y ago
You do realize that banning guns does absolutely nothing to stop gun crime, right? It already illegal to use weapons to commit crimes, and in the vast majority of cases the guns used in these crimes were obtained illegally.
madengr 7y ago
There is historical precedence of gun bans and wealth redistribution leading to gulags and concentration camps.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

docdeek 7y ago

I know the article is about the US use case, but cities like London (in Europe) and Beijing (in Asia) fit most of the criteria you mention and are incredibly closely surveiled. I suspect that if someone wants to deploy mass survillance they are going to find reasons no matter the on-the-ground reality. Too much crime? You need 24/7 surveillance to cut that. No crime to speak of? Let’s put cameras all over the place to keep it that way.

komali2 7y ago
Is mass surveillance working to reduce crime in the UK? I recall anecdotes about police throwing their hands up over moped muggings.
- threezero 7y ago
  It appears that it isn’t working, since crime has risen quite a bit in London for the past few years.
world32 7y ago
Can't speak for Beijing but the only thing from that list that fits London is that guns are banned.

_zachs 7y ago

Why is banning guns relevant?

jodrellblank 7y ago
https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527 https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-na...
some_random 7y ago
Because the onion said they're scary, obviously.

vbuwivbiu 7y ago

Actually solving problems at the roots like that won't show results for 1 generation which is too long for human political memories

akudha 7y ago

Not end well for who? Those who are in charge aren't going to be affected, and they don't care about the others.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

Banning guns worked so great in Chicago and Baltimore that they're considering investing in mass-surveillance to top it off. I agree with you about educational programs but anything that shifts the power balance away from people and to the government (or "society" as the proponents of these things will say) is not going to help, it will just create a rift that makes full time criminality more attractive to marginalized people (e.g. London) or a dystopian nightmare (e.g. Xinjiang) that may have low crime but is a terrible place to live your life. Whenever people start proposing things like mass surveillance, banning guns, or other things that are completely incompatible with cultural ideals (which those things are in the US) in order to solve a problem that should be a tip-off that a metric has become a target.

asark 7y ago
> completely incompatible with cultural ideals (which those things are in the US) If anything's gonna change that, it'll be the current crop of kids coming up seeing shootings on the news, then having scary-real shooter drills every year at school. With maybe a side of increased youth suicide rates meaning more of then know someone who shot themselves. It's even spooking the kids in fairly red areas, excepting pretty much exclusively the kids of, ah, very red parents with the gun-related bumper stickers to prove it. FWIW I think the drills are doing a lot more (psychological) harm than they're worth, but one side-effect may be a sharp change in our national attitudes toward guns, over the next 30-50 years or so.
- claytoneast 7y ago
  I feel that shift would be a mistake and be conflating things that are not related. Teen suicide rates have to do with teens feeling terrible about life and killing themselves. The gun is just the messenger in this case. A belt and a tall closet works too. I have lived in parts of the country where there are extremely high rates of gun ownership and 0 problems with gun shootings. Then there are areas with much less gun ownership and very high shooting rates. Those areas, to be blunt, are generally low-income PoC neighborhoods. The leadership at the country/state/city level won't admit they don't give a shit about poor brown people. They want to blame the troubles of the neighborhoods on firearms and take those away. I have a theory that mass shootings are a similar situation, that there is a shift in the mental health of people that is causing them to want to go kill a bunch of people just to kill a bunch of people. It's currently fashionable in certain (typically) young white disillusioned male communities to go buy a gun and go kill a bunch of people. If there were no guns, would that problem disappear? Or would they just use the kinetic energy of 4000 lbs traveling at 25-60 mph to accomplish the same thing, like in Paris? I don't know.

tengbretson 7y ago

> Ban guns Wouldn't it make law enforcement a lot more difficult and dangerous if the police didn't have guns? Unless you didn't mean ban guns, but rather to give them exclusively to the police and military. Is that what you're suggesting?

mindslight 7y ago
Getting guns out of the hands of every day police would indeed make policing safer, especially for police doing traffic stops. Very rarely do parking tickets end up with armed conflict. There's this overriding myth that's been stoked by Hollywood et al that a "good guy" with a gun can just shoot everything up to save the day. There's no surprise what this narrative maps onto in the real world, where the results aren't predictably written to entertain.
jodrellblank 7y ago
I can list quite a few police shooting innocent people incidents from USA, and quite a few civilians shooting innocent people incidents from USA. Can you reference any incidents of people with guns using them to stand up to the police or military in recent (~20 year) history, in USA - and winning (whatever that might mean)? Any armed political protests? Any hint of a serious suggestion that a group of armed civilians could take on the US military and military-weapons-armed police forces if it came to a fight? Armed civilians don't mean civilians stand a chance against the police or military. They're outnumbered, outfunded, out-trained, out-equipped and whatever the out- equivalent of the state having sheerly more options, is.
- jbattle 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff
- tengbretson 7y ago
  > Armed civilians don't mean civilians stand a chance against the police or military. They're outnumbered, outfunded, out-trained, out-equipped and whatever the out- equivalent of the state having sheerly more options, is. You're missing the point of an armed population and its ability to fight tyranny. First of all, the military has almost nothing to do with any of this. Tyrannical regimes have to maintain order at a hyper local level, which means either by police or police-like forces. Secondly, it has almost nothing to do with going "gun to gun" and shooting out a winner. Level of violent escalation and public support for the regime is the name of the game. When a population is disarmed a government can make political dissidents just disappear in the middle of the night without a sound. When there's even a possibility of an armed population it means if they want to take out opposition they're rolling up with armored vehicles, swat teams, choppers, the works. This sort of event gets noticed! It requires an explanation. It means live coverage, newspapers, choppers, etc. How many bloody shootouts can a regime survive while retaining public support? How many Wacos could the US have had and still maintain social order?

homonculus1 7y ago

Why do you perceive mass disarmament of non-police and non-military as an acceptable alternative to mass surveillance? They both present the same issues of: -selective enforcement; -persecution of minorities; -suppression of political rivals; -inherent asymmetrical concentration of power into the established elite; -history of abuse by totalitarians; I'm genuinely unable to wrap my head around taking a pro-liberty stance on one issue and a pro-authority stance on the other. Yes, criminals abuse our common freedoms, but governments have always had vastly greater ability to abuse their power. And crime is already marginal, and falling!

homonculus1 7y ago
To those of you who disagree, please feel free to explain why.

randyrand 7y ago

Even in your perfect society there will still be unhappy people that want to do harm to others, and there are many ways to do mass violence without guns.

robdachshund 7y ago

You do realize that banning guns does absolutely nothing to stop gun crime, right? It already illegal to use weapons to commit crimes, and in the vast majority of cases the guns used in these crimes were obtained illegally.

madengr 7y ago

There is historical precedence of gun bans and wealth redistribution leading to gulags and concentration camps.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]