3 ms·

I don't understand the problem solving mindset that thinks banning guns would solve the problem of a person intent on causing harm. In the U.K., where I feel g

I don't understand the problem solving mindset that thinks banning guns would solve the problem of a person intent on causing harm. In the U.K., where I feel guns are only showpieces (do even cops have them?), stabbing is a known problem. In India, where ammo is way more expensive than machetes and knives, people are literally murdered with them. The only argument I can understand, when it comes to banning guns, is that it reduces the blast radius that an evil person can have. So what's next, lock down the air, radio, roads, internet, water, food supply chains because these are all attack vectors? If that's the proposal, what's my plan when coyotes and mountain lions attack my child and I on our regular walks on rural property?

cultofmetatron 6mo ago
guns democratize mass murder. With a gun, I can kill a bunch of people before police can stop me. A knife? At best I can kill one or two in a public place before people run away and eventually a different group is going to stop me pretty quickly.
- subhobroto 6mo ago
  - can you build bombs to blow up an apartment complex full of 1000s of people? - can you poison the water supply of an apartment complex full of 1000s of people? - can you drop a harmful substance using a $50 drone onto an open area where of 1000s of people have congregated?
  - nemomarx 6mo ago
    We also restrict the components of those pretty heavily, though. Try buying too much fertilizer without a farm and see who shows up. This isn't a judgement on your general point, but I think bombs and bioweapons and etc are very bad examples for you here.
    - cjbgkagh 6mo ago
      While quasi regulated they just raise the bar of expertise required. Poisons, bioweapons, and explosives are pretty easy to make at scale without using suspicious inputs. At the moment the 3D printing crowd are pretty savvy I’m sure many could hook up a new controller or flash their existing one.
    - antonymoose 6mo ago
      The “Oklahoma City Fertilizer Bomb” style bomb is heavily watched. ANFO just isn’t a good vector for a lone wolf anymore. With that said, any GWOT veteran with explosives training could make enough HME to make a mass casualty event à la OKC all over again. Maybe not all at once, right this second, but it’s a real threat vector. Worse, these training manuals available open-source and easy to replicate. My neighbor is retired EOD, he has all Federal licenses manufactures explosives for the purpose of stump removal, if you can believe it, I’ve seen the process. It’s so easy a caveman could do it. Thankfully, no one really seems to do so. Mostly because manufactured firearms are easier to get ahold of. Or in Europe, smuggled weapons. We cannot forget what insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan did. It’s hubris to say “can’t happen here.”
      - mothballed 6mo ago
        I don't think the licenses are hard to get anyway. The hardest part is satisfying the storage requirements. As a bit of trivia, when congress defunded the ability for felons to restore their firearm rights, they actually forgot part of it. By an accident of history, felons can still get an explosives license.
    - jandrewrogers 6mo ago
      Explosives are a weird case because Americans can just buy industrially manufactured high explosives. Attempting to DIY an explosive that is almost certainly inferior to what you can buy commercially is a red flag. Before 9/11 caused them to tighten up the rules, buying high explosives in the US was cash-and-carry. You could walk in and select different kinds of high explosives from a giant menu. If you wanted something unusual they could special order it. The only real requirement was that you had a non-sparking container for it (basically, no exposed metal) when you carried it away. Most people aren't familiar with this because most regions of the US don't have much need for these types of stores. It still isn't difficult today from my understanding, there is just more paperwork. The more practical hurdle is complying with safe storage regulations since they want some distance between where you store it and the neighbors. You can't just stash a few hundred pounds in your suburban garage.
- dole 6mo ago
  Killers are going to kill. Guns don't democratize it, just makes it easier. Maybe at best YOU could kill one or two: https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/16/china/china-stabbing-yixing-campus-intl https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/16/china/china-stabbing-yixing-c... (8 stabbed to death) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenpeng_Village_Primary_School_stabbing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenpeng_Village_Primary_Schoo... (1 killed, 24 injured) So they should stop you from 3d-printing knives too.
  - nitwit005 6mo ago
    Successful mass murders with a knife are fairly rare. Killing people that way is physically difficult, and it's relatively easy to just tackle you. Traditionally, arson was the means of mass killing, as it didn't have either problem. That's gotten much more difficult due to fire safety.
    - subhobroto 6mo ago
      > Killing people that way is physically difficult, and it's relatively easy to just tackle you I won't argue this as this sounds entirely hypothetical but let me ask you this: if you saw someone stabbing people, would you volunteer to tackle them or would you choose to delegate? One, a knife never runs out of bullets and never needs to reload. Second, a knife doesn't make a sound. I'm unsure of what training you have but a knife is absolutely the tool of choice up close even if you had a gun on you. One can fatally stab dozens of people in a concert without even being noticed or detected. I can't make those assertions about a gun. The point is, a gun in the U.S. has been a weapon of choice but in other countries where a gun is very hard to get, stabbings are equally dangerous and widespread. I have been reading about fatal stabbings in the U.K for a decade now. It's almost as if evil people will use whichever tool they have at their disposal to hurt people and we are just making it more difficult for good people to defend themselves against the evil. > Successful mass murders with a knife are fairly rare I mention 5 myself below but there are more. What I find surprising is how the term "mass murder" seems to be applied almost exclusively when a gun is used, but rarely a knife. If you look for "mass murder due to stabbing", the media almost never frames it with that terminology, whereas they would immediately use it if a firearm was involved for the exact same number of victims. When people hear "mass murder", they likely think of hundreds of people dying instantaneously to a volley of bullets, but that's a distortion of what "mass murder" actually looks like in the U.S: By standard definitions, a mass killing involves 4 or more fatalities. While "mass murders" using a gun get wall-to-wall media coverage, mass murders with a knife rarely make it past local news. If you think these devastating knife attacks are just a myth, here are a few recent ones you can look up right now: - February 24, 2026: A 32-year-old man fatally stabbed four people at a residence in the Purdy/Gig Harbor area. Responding deputies shot and killed the suspect at the scene. - July 19, 2024: A grandmother, a mother, and two children (ages 4 and 5) were fatally stabbed in their Bensonhurst apartment. A 24-year-old family member was arrested. - March 27, 2024: A 22-year-old man went on a "frenzied" spree, killing four people and injuring seven others. The attack involved a knife, an aluminum bat and a vehicle. - March 10, 2024: In a domestic murder-suicide, a father fatally stabbed his wife and three children (ages 10, 12, and 17) before killing himself. It was the deadliest mass killing in Hawaii since 1999. - December 3, 2023: A 38-year-old man used a kitchen knife to kill four relatives, two children and two adults, and injured three others (including two police officers) before being shot by police.
- themafia 6mo ago
  As a citizen with a gun I can shoot you before the police arrive.
  - cucumber3732842 6mo ago
    The powers that be are far more concerned with you shooting the police before more police arrive.
    - cindyllm 6mo ago
      [dead]
lynndotpy 6mo ago
I'm not in the interest of rehashing decades of the same arguments about guns in society on HackerNews, and per Poe's law, I can't actually tell if you're sincere or not. Assuming you are, it bears summary: You basically have it with "it reduces the blast radius". Guns are a great tool for damaging soft tissue to the point of death. Gun control advocates believe, with less access to guns, people will kill less. It is also worth adding that most gun deaths in thbe US are from suicides. Means reduction is well-understood as a way to decrease suicides. > So what's next, lock down the air, radio, roads, internet, water, food supply chains because these are all attack vectors? We don't need to get stuck in a hypothetical, since we can look at other countries and see how they manage these public goods. Guns are unique in that they're exclusively for killing, and provide scant other value outside sport. Notably, nowhere that had success in tighter gun regulation needed to censor 3D printing. This legislation is something 'both sides' of the gun debate should be able to get behind and oppose. There is very little potential benefit for the cause of "gun control", and very much potential harm.
gsck 6mo ago
In the UK to own a gun you need to have a good reason to do so. This is usually by being a member of a gun club, and getting a license to own a gun. Once you have a club membership and a license you then need to start speaking to the police to purchase a gun alongside having a gun box that is secure and certified by the police. Its an awful lot of hassle so the only people with guns are those who are interested in it. Police dont tend to have guns apart from specially trained units(?) so you only see these quite rarely. Northern Ireland is a bit of an exception all police in NI have a gun, and are trained to quite a high standard to just be able to use it. NI's police actually go over to England reguarly enough to help when police with guns are required.

cultofmetatron 6mo ago

guns democratize mass murder. With a gun, I can kill a bunch of people before police can stop me. A knife? At best I can kill one or two in a public place before people run away and eventually a different group is going to stop me pretty quickly.

subhobroto 6mo ago
- can you build bombs to blow up an apartment complex full of 1000s of people? - can you poison the water supply of an apartment complex full of 1000s of people? - can you drop a harmful substance using a $50 drone onto an open area where of 1000s of people have congregated?
- nemomarx 6mo ago
  We also restrict the components of those pretty heavily, though. Try buying too much fertilizer without a farm and see who shows up. This isn't a judgement on your general point, but I think bombs and bioweapons and etc are very bad examples for you here.
  - cjbgkagh 6mo ago
    While quasi regulated they just raise the bar of expertise required. Poisons, bioweapons, and explosives are pretty easy to make at scale without using suspicious inputs. At the moment the 3D printing crowd are pretty savvy I’m sure many could hook up a new controller or flash their existing one.
  - antonymoose 6mo ago
    The “Oklahoma City Fertilizer Bomb” style bomb is heavily watched. ANFO just isn’t a good vector for a lone wolf anymore. With that said, any GWOT veteran with explosives training could make enough HME to make a mass casualty event à la OKC all over again. Maybe not all at once, right this second, but it’s a real threat vector. Worse, these training manuals available open-source and easy to replicate. My neighbor is retired EOD, he has all Federal licenses manufactures explosives for the purpose of stump removal, if you can believe it, I’ve seen the process. It’s so easy a caveman could do it. Thankfully, no one really seems to do so. Mostly because manufactured firearms are easier to get ahold of. Or in Europe, smuggled weapons. We cannot forget what insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan did. It’s hubris to say “can’t happen here.”
    - mothballed 6mo ago
      I don't think the licenses are hard to get anyway. The hardest part is satisfying the storage requirements. As a bit of trivia, when congress defunded the ability for felons to restore their firearm rights, they actually forgot part of it. By an accident of history, felons can still get an explosives license.
  - jandrewrogers 6mo ago
    Explosives are a weird case because Americans can just buy industrially manufactured high explosives. Attempting to DIY an explosive that is almost certainly inferior to what you can buy commercially is a red flag. Before 9/11 caused them to tighten up the rules, buying high explosives in the US was cash-and-carry. You could walk in and select different kinds of high explosives from a giant menu. If you wanted something unusual they could special order it. The only real requirement was that you had a non-sparking container for it (basically, no exposed metal) when you carried it away. Most people aren't familiar with this because most regions of the US don't have much need for these types of stores. It still isn't difficult today from my understanding, there is just more paperwork. The more practical hurdle is complying with safe storage regulations since they want some distance between where you store it and the neighbors. You can't just stash a few hundred pounds in your suburban garage.
dole 6mo ago
Killers are going to kill. Guns don't democratize it, just makes it easier. Maybe at best YOU could kill one or two: https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/16/china/china-stabbing-yixing-campus-intl https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/16/china/china-stabbing-yixing-c... (8 stabbed to death) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenpeng_Village_Primary_School_stabbing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenpeng_Village_Primary_Schoo... (1 killed, 24 injured) So they should stop you from 3d-printing knives too.
- nitwit005 6mo ago
  Successful mass murders with a knife are fairly rare. Killing people that way is physically difficult, and it's relatively easy to just tackle you. Traditionally, arson was the means of mass killing, as it didn't have either problem. That's gotten much more difficult due to fire safety.
  - subhobroto 6mo ago
    > Killing people that way is physically difficult, and it's relatively easy to just tackle you I won't argue this as this sounds entirely hypothetical but let me ask you this: if you saw someone stabbing people, would you volunteer to tackle them or would you choose to delegate? One, a knife never runs out of bullets and never needs to reload. Second, a knife doesn't make a sound. I'm unsure of what training you have but a knife is absolutely the tool of choice up close even if you had a gun on you. One can fatally stab dozens of people in a concert without even being noticed or detected. I can't make those assertions about a gun. The point is, a gun in the U.S. has been a weapon of choice but in other countries where a gun is very hard to get, stabbings are equally dangerous and widespread. I have been reading about fatal stabbings in the U.K for a decade now. It's almost as if evil people will use whichever tool they have at their disposal to hurt people and we are just making it more difficult for good people to defend themselves against the evil. > Successful mass murders with a knife are fairly rare I mention 5 myself below but there are more. What I find surprising is how the term "mass murder" seems to be applied almost exclusively when a gun is used, but rarely a knife. If you look for "mass murder due to stabbing", the media almost never frames it with that terminology, whereas they would immediately use it if a firearm was involved for the exact same number of victims. When people hear "mass murder", they likely think of hundreds of people dying instantaneously to a volley of bullets, but that's a distortion of what "mass murder" actually looks like in the U.S: By standard definitions, a mass killing involves 4 or more fatalities. While "mass murders" using a gun get wall-to-wall media coverage, mass murders with a knife rarely make it past local news. If you think these devastating knife attacks are just a myth, here are a few recent ones you can look up right now: - February 24, 2026: A 32-year-old man fatally stabbed four people at a residence in the Purdy/Gig Harbor area. Responding deputies shot and killed the suspect at the scene. - July 19, 2024: A grandmother, a mother, and two children (ages 4 and 5) were fatally stabbed in their Bensonhurst apartment. A 24-year-old family member was arrested. - March 27, 2024: A 22-year-old man went on a "frenzied" spree, killing four people and injuring seven others. The attack involved a knife, an aluminum bat and a vehicle. - March 10, 2024: In a domestic murder-suicide, a father fatally stabbed his wife and three children (ages 10, 12, and 17) before killing himself. It was the deadliest mass killing in Hawaii since 1999. - December 3, 2023: A 38-year-old man used a kitchen knife to kill four relatives, two children and two adults, and injured three others (including two police officers) before being shot by police.
themafia 6mo ago
As a citizen with a gun I can shoot you before the police arrive.
- cucumber3732842 6mo ago
  The powers that be are far more concerned with you shooting the police before more police arrive.
  - cindyllm 6mo ago
    [dead]

lynndotpy 6mo ago

I'm not in the interest of rehashing decades of the same arguments about guns in society on HackerNews, and per Poe's law, I can't actually tell if you're sincere or not. Assuming you are, it bears summary: You basically have it with "it reduces the blast radius". Guns are a great tool for damaging soft tissue to the point of death. Gun control advocates believe, with less access to guns, people will kill less. It is also worth adding that most gun deaths in thbe US are from suicides. Means reduction is well-understood as a way to decrease suicides. > So what's next, lock down the air, radio, roads, internet, water, food supply chains because these are all attack vectors? We don't need to get stuck in a hypothetical, since we can look at other countries and see how they manage these public goods. Guns are unique in that they're exclusively for killing, and provide scant other value outside sport. Notably, nowhere that had success in tighter gun regulation needed to censor 3D printing. This legislation is something 'both sides' of the gun debate should be able to get behind and oppose. There is very little potential benefit for the cause of "gun control", and very much potential harm.

gsck 6mo ago

In the UK to own a gun you need to have a good reason to do so. This is usually by being a member of a gun club, and getting a license to own a gun. Once you have a club membership and a license you then need to start speaking to the police to purchase a gun alongside having a gun box that is secure and certified by the police. Its an awful lot of hassle so the only people with guns are those who are interested in it. Police dont tend to have guns apart from specially trained units(?) so you only see these quite rarely. Northern Ireland is a bit of an exception all police in NI have a gun, and are trained to quite a high standard to just be able to use it. NI's police actually go over to England reguarly enough to help when police with guns are required.