8 ms·

I appreciate your honesty, it's rare in discussions like this. Do you want semi-automatic handguns to be regulated the same way as semi-automatic long guns? Ex

by 28226 7y ago

I appreciate your honesty, it's rare in discussions like this. Do you want semi-automatic handguns to be regulated the same way as semi-automatic long guns? Exactly what problem would licensure solve?

tptacek 7y ago
Keeping high-powered weaponry out of the hands of complete and total fuckups, who dominate the list of spree shooters with high casualty counts. And potentially mitigating (obviously not solving) proliferation. Within Constitutional limits (and without wading into a protracted argument about what those limits might be; Heller was 5-4!), devolving this question back out to the states, so states that overwhelmingly support restrictions regain some knobs to accomplish that (through licensure requirements). Letting the Laboratories of Democracy do their thing. I don't see a fundamental reason why we'd want to take most semi-automatic rifles away from most owners, because while I don't actually believe most owners derive any practical benefits from them (I think overwhelmingly they're a hobby, not a tool), I also don't see what the point of reclaiming a firearm from someone who simply isn't going to abuse it would be.
- 28226 7y ago
  Does a semi-automatic handgun qualify as "high-powered weaponry?" The "Laboratories of Democracy" idea is unrealistic for firearms, and most issues. States don't control their borders. Though, it's against federal law to buy a handgun from an FFL out of state and a long gun can only be purchased out of state if said long gun is legal in a buyer's home state. In general, do you think that gun crimes (e.g. possession of a firearm by a felon) are adequately prosecuted? I'm not interested in talking about the US Constitution. We both already know each other's arguments. I'm not even interested in changing your opinion. I'm a lurker, but I've read your comments for years and respect you. The logistics of your ideal scenario interest me. Canada gave up on registering long guns because it was infeasible. Would you support a law requiring background checks for all purchase of firearms under the condition that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is made available for all citizens to use (not just FFLs), free of charge, using a driver's license number of the potential purchaser? Do you think that the progression of low-cost CNC machines, such as the Ghost Gunner, is a hurdle for the gun control measures that you want implemented? The serialized lower receiver is what is considered a firearm in America. Do you want to regulate all firearm components, such as barrels, handguards, etc?
  - tptacek 7y ago
    No, semi-automatic handguns would not. The idea that state-by-state (or, just as likely, county-by-county) gun regulations couldn't work flies against reality; they won't keep criminals from bringing guns in, of course, but no regulation will, and that's not the intent. I'm less interested in the general crime argument. We're not having school shooting drills because of gang shootouts in Camden. Prosecution of gun crimes is unlikely to be the intervention that solves that problem. I generally support all viable gun control proposals; background checks are fine, but won't really address the proliferation and mass casualty problems. I absolutely do not believe, even a little bit, than amateur gunsmithing is a meaningful factor in gun policy. I understand that the receiver is, legally, the important part of an assault rifle; I don't so much care about firearm components. As I've said elsewhere, I'm also not generally interested in confiscation of firearms; most people who own them should be able to keep them. Ironically, with licensure, we could probably eliminate a lot of weird NFA regulation as well.
    - sunkenvicar 7y ago
      Canada has mandatory federal licensing. Why do you want mandatory shall-issue licensing in America? Federal or state? I’d like to know your reasoning.
  - kelnos 7y ago
    > The "Laboratories of Democracy" idea is unrealistic for firearms, and most issues. States don't control their borders. The problem with this kind argument is always that, of course, people who want to do something that happens to be illegal, and are fine with doing illegal things, will just do it anyway. Well, yeah. If that weren't the case, all law enforcement officers could immediately retire. Certainly you can't prevent people from bringing contraband of any kind into your state (especially when it's legal in the state next door), but you can set penalties high enough to deter most people, and aggressively enforce those penalties when someone is caught. If we're talking about reducing the number of mass shootings, and we truly believe that keeping certain guns out of people's hands will do it (which is of course debatable), then outright bans will likely get us most of the way there. If your random potential mass shooter can't get hold of any useful-for-mass-shootings weapon legally in the state where they live, they probably just won't go that route. Or, they'll use much less effective weapons and cause much less harm. If, on the other hand, we're talking about organized crime, gang violence, etc., then sure, those people will likely manage to get their hands on banned weapons. But (for better or worse), I don't think the US public is quite as worried about that right now.
- jakeogh 7y ago
  We can print these. It's only going to get better. You are ultimately making an argument for DRM. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20873414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20873414
  - tptacek 7y ago
    I absolutely do not think the ability for people to manufacture their own guns has any bearing on any of this. Gun nerd forums are rife with people observing that a full-auto conversion isn't rocket science either, and the immediate responses are always "you'll go to prison for 10 years". "Printing" has nothing to do with it. Computer nerds didn't invent machining.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - michaelt 7y ago
    You can already build a gun with entirely legal machine shop tools - like the brit Philip Luty's submachine gun [1] Luty was arrested with the gun and ammunition and -quelle surprise - jailed for possession of an illegal gun. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIhGCRIQnCA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIhGCRIQnCA
- simonh 7y ago
  I'm a Brit, so a complete outsider so bear with me. It seems to me the mass shooting, and gun crime issue generally is the responsibility of the gun lobby to solve. If a constituency wants to have a certain set of rights, and those rights have negative consequences on the rest of the population, it's the responsibility of that constituency to come up with a workable way to regulate itself. If it abrogates that responsibility, it should be prepared to forfeit those rights. So what is the US gun community's answer to shooting sprees and gun deaths in general? It's clearly a real problem, so what's the answer? I'm not interesting in hearing why this or that gun control legislation can't work or is unfair. It's up to you, it's your problem to fix. What's your solution?
  - tptacek 7y ago
    The problem is that we're beholden to a Constitution written in a time where personal possession of firearms was a much more practically relevant issue than it is now, and you take the good with the bad. And: there's a lot of good that comes from not cracking the Constitution back open and mucking with it.
  - mendelmaleh 7y ago
    In the same way stabbings are not a UK knife community/constituency issue they need to solve. It's a problem bigger than that.
  - akerl_ 7y ago
    I don’t think that’s generally true. To draw a comparison, are there other rights where the same thing plays out? What are other examples of rights where we expect the people exercising their rights to come up with a solution for people who abuse the right? Speech? Religion? It seems pretty clear that society as a whole is responsible for finding a way to maintain safety and stability in combination with upholding the rights the society has established. We don’t demand that the solution to radical religious extremists be proposed by churches or else we ban churches.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      People routinely make those demands of mosques, though.
- ascagnel_ 7y ago
  > devolving this question back out to the states, so states that overwhelmingly support restrictions regain some knobs to accomplish that (through licensure requirements) The issue with this is that there are no border or customs checks between US states (with some rare, ad-hoc exceptions). The result of this is you get states like Indiana and Virginia selling weapons with relatively few restrictions that travel up an "iron pipeline" to cities with more restrictions like Chicago and New York. The federal government is supposed to regulate interstate trade, but has decided that they won't regulate interstate transfer of guns _in this way_, so the most lax state law will de facto become the baseline for an entire region.
nextlevelwizard 7y ago
>Do you want semi-automatic handguns to be regulated the same way as semi-automatic long guns? All fire arms should require a licensed operator. >Exactly what problem would licensure solve? It would keep guns in the hands of responsible, law-abiding people. We've collectively decided that to be fit to drive a car you need to take classes on how to drive it and you have to have a valid license. Why this doesn't apply to guns is beyond me. People shouldn't be able to buy guns without knowing how they work, how to maintain, and how to operate them.
- HBKXNCUO 7y ago
  >Why this doesn't apply to guns is beyond me. Because people aren't concerned that in a decade or three, politicians are going to use the registry of motor vehicle licenses to help them in confiscating motor vehicles from normal people who want to keep them around in order to protect their families.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Which is of course irrational; motor vehicle licensure is far more powerfully coercive and has more public policy goals than firearms licensure. The political psychology point is well taken, of course; the problem with all gun control proposals in the US is that they're perceived, with some validity, to be a slippery slope towards universal confiscation, the same way abortion regulation is perceived as a slippery slope to a universal ban. But in the airless vacuum of a message board we should be able to discuss the proposals on their merits without being chained to partisan political analyses.
    - HBKXNCUO 7y ago
      By suggesting their concerns are irrational, are you saying you think it's more likely that registries of vehicle licenses are going to be used to perform vehicle confiscations than that registries of firearm licenses are going to be used to perform firearm confiscations?
      - 7y ago

by 28226 7y ago

tptacek 7y ago

Keeping high-powered weaponry out of the hands of complete and total fuckups, who dominate the list of spree shooters with high casualty counts. And potentially mitigating (obviously not solving) proliferation. Within Constitutional limits (and without wading into a protracted argument about what those limits might be; Heller was 5-4!), devolving this question back out to the states, so states that overwhelmingly support restrictions regain some knobs to accomplish that (through licensure requirements). Letting the Laboratories of Democracy do their thing. I don't see a fundamental reason why we'd want to take most semi-automatic rifles away from most owners, because while I don't actually believe most owners derive any practical benefits from them (I think overwhelmingly they're a hobby, not a tool), I also don't see what the point of reclaiming a firearm from someone who simply isn't going to abuse it would be.

28226 7y ago
Does a semi-automatic handgun qualify as "high-powered weaponry?" The "Laboratories of Democracy" idea is unrealistic for firearms, and most issues. States don't control their borders. Though, it's against federal law to buy a handgun from an FFL out of state and a long gun can only be purchased out of state if said long gun is legal in a buyer's home state. In general, do you think that gun crimes (e.g. possession of a firearm by a felon) are adequately prosecuted? I'm not interested in talking about the US Constitution. We both already know each other's arguments. I'm not even interested in changing your opinion. I'm a lurker, but I've read your comments for years and respect you. The logistics of your ideal scenario interest me. Canada gave up on registering long guns because it was infeasible. Would you support a law requiring background checks for all purchase of firearms under the condition that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is made available for all citizens to use (not just FFLs), free of charge, using a driver's license number of the potential purchaser? Do you think that the progression of low-cost CNC machines, such as the Ghost Gunner, is a hurdle for the gun control measures that you want implemented? The serialized lower receiver is what is considered a firearm in America. Do you want to regulate all firearm components, such as barrels, handguards, etc?
- tptacek 7y ago
  No, semi-automatic handguns would not. The idea that state-by-state (or, just as likely, county-by-county) gun regulations couldn't work flies against reality; they won't keep criminals from bringing guns in, of course, but no regulation will, and that's not the intent. I'm less interested in the general crime argument. We're not having school shooting drills because of gang shootouts in Camden. Prosecution of gun crimes is unlikely to be the intervention that solves that problem. I generally support all viable gun control proposals; background checks are fine, but won't really address the proliferation and mass casualty problems. I absolutely do not believe, even a little bit, than amateur gunsmithing is a meaningful factor in gun policy. I understand that the receiver is, legally, the important part of an assault rifle; I don't so much care about firearm components. As I've said elsewhere, I'm also not generally interested in confiscation of firearms; most people who own them should be able to keep them. Ironically, with licensure, we could probably eliminate a lot of weird NFA regulation as well.
  - sunkenvicar 7y ago
    Canada has mandatory federal licensing. Why do you want mandatory shall-issue licensing in America? Federal or state? I’d like to know your reasoning.
- kelnos 7y ago
  > The "Laboratories of Democracy" idea is unrealistic for firearms, and most issues. States don't control their borders. The problem with this kind argument is always that, of course, people who want to do something that happens to be illegal, and are fine with doing illegal things, will just do it anyway. Well, yeah. If that weren't the case, all law enforcement officers could immediately retire. Certainly you can't prevent people from bringing contraband of any kind into your state (especially when it's legal in the state next door), but you can set penalties high enough to deter most people, and aggressively enforce those penalties when someone is caught. If we're talking about reducing the number of mass shootings, and we truly believe that keeping certain guns out of people's hands will do it (which is of course debatable), then outright bans will likely get us most of the way there. If your random potential mass shooter can't get hold of any useful-for-mass-shootings weapon legally in the state where they live, they probably just won't go that route. Or, they'll use much less effective weapons and cause much less harm. If, on the other hand, we're talking about organized crime, gang violence, etc., then sure, those people will likely manage to get their hands on banned weapons. But (for better or worse), I don't think the US public is quite as worried about that right now.
jakeogh 7y ago
We can print these. It's only going to get better. You are ultimately making an argument for DRM. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20873414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20873414
- tptacek 7y ago
  I absolutely do not think the ability for people to manufacture their own guns has any bearing on any of this. Gun nerd forums are rife with people observing that a full-auto conversion isn't rocket science either, and the immediate responses are always "you'll go to prison for 10 years". "Printing" has nothing to do with it. Computer nerds didn't invent machining.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- michaelt 7y ago
  You can already build a gun with entirely legal machine shop tools - like the brit Philip Luty's submachine gun [1] Luty was arrested with the gun and ammunition and -quelle surprise - jailed for possession of an illegal gun. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIhGCRIQnCA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIhGCRIQnCA
simonh 7y ago
I'm a Brit, so a complete outsider so bear with me. It seems to me the mass shooting, and gun crime issue generally is the responsibility of the gun lobby to solve. If a constituency wants to have a certain set of rights, and those rights have negative consequences on the rest of the population, it's the responsibility of that constituency to come up with a workable way to regulate itself. If it abrogates that responsibility, it should be prepared to forfeit those rights. So what is the US gun community's answer to shooting sprees and gun deaths in general? It's clearly a real problem, so what's the answer? I'm not interesting in hearing why this or that gun control legislation can't work or is unfair. It's up to you, it's your problem to fix. What's your solution?
- tptacek 7y ago
  The problem is that we're beholden to a Constitution written in a time where personal possession of firearms was a much more practically relevant issue than it is now, and you take the good with the bad. And: there's a lot of good that comes from not cracking the Constitution back open and mucking with it.
- mendelmaleh 7y ago
  In the same way stabbings are not a UK knife community/constituency issue they need to solve. It's a problem bigger than that.
- akerl_ 7y ago
  I don’t think that’s generally true. To draw a comparison, are there other rights where the same thing plays out? What are other examples of rights where we expect the people exercising their rights to come up with a solution for people who abuse the right? Speech? Religion? It seems pretty clear that society as a whole is responsible for finding a way to maintain safety and stability in combination with upholding the rights the society has established. We don’t demand that the solution to radical religious extremists be proposed by churches or else we ban churches.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    People routinely make those demands of mosques, though.
ascagnel_ 7y ago
> devolving this question back out to the states, so states that overwhelmingly support restrictions regain some knobs to accomplish that (through licensure requirements) The issue with this is that there are no border or customs checks between US states (with some rare, ad-hoc exceptions). The result of this is you get states like Indiana and Virginia selling weapons with relatively few restrictions that travel up an "iron pipeline" to cities with more restrictions like Chicago and New York. The federal government is supposed to regulate interstate trade, but has decided that they won't regulate interstate transfer of guns _in this way_, so the most lax state law will de facto become the baseline for an entire region.

nextlevelwizard 7y ago

>Do you want semi-automatic handguns to be regulated the same way as semi-automatic long guns? All fire arms should require a licensed operator. >Exactly what problem would licensure solve? It would keep guns in the hands of responsible, law-abiding people. We've collectively decided that to be fit to drive a car you need to take classes on how to drive it and you have to have a valid license. Why this doesn't apply to guns is beyond me. People shouldn't be able to buy guns without knowing how they work, how to maintain, and how to operate them.

HBKXNCUO 7y ago
>Why this doesn't apply to guns is beyond me. Because people aren't concerned that in a decade or three, politicians are going to use the registry of motor vehicle licenses to help them in confiscating motor vehicles from normal people who want to keep them around in order to protect their families.
- tptacek 7y ago
  Which is of course irrational; motor vehicle licensure is far more powerfully coercive and has more public policy goals than firearms licensure. The political psychology point is well taken, of course; the problem with all gun control proposals in the US is that they're perceived, with some validity, to be a slippery slope towards universal confiscation, the same way abortion regulation is perceived as a slippery slope to a universal ban. But in the airless vacuum of a message board we should be able to discuss the proposals on their merits without being chained to partisan political analyses.
  - HBKXNCUO 7y ago
    By suggesting their concerns are irrational, are you saying you think it's more likely that registries of vehicle licenses are going to be used to perform vehicle confiscations than that registries of firearm licenses are going to be used to perform firearm confiscations?
    - 7y ago