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This will have about as much protective effect against the criminally-motivated as putting up "gun-free school zone" signs.

• badgar 14y ago
  I always thought school zone laws existed not for deterrence but to provide for stronger punishments, and that the signs are there to help law-abiding citizens carrying weapons from unintentionally breaking the law.
  • smokeyj 14y ago
    > school zone laws existed not for deterrence but to provide for stronger punishments I imagine stronger punishment is supposed to be deterrence. When your only tool is a hammer..
  • nthj 14y ago
    That's really weird reasoning. If we applied that reasoning to highway construction areas, you'd see "vehicle-free zones" for fear of somebody speeding. But we don't, so instead, we just have "traffic fines double in construction zones." Which makes sense, and presumably people drive more carefully in construction zones. If you want to double the murder punishment in school zones, there is your deterrence. Preventing law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves & others in the statistically most-likely place for a mass-murder makes no sense whatsoever.
    • scarecrowbob 14y ago
      Well, there are a lot of crimes that people engage in other than murder, and many of them involve weapons. It's a much different thing to be caught selling drugs, soliciting sex, etc. in a school zone from a punishment standpoint. All that aside, I don't trust other parents with handguns around my children, and am perfectly okay with laws preventing people from carrying around my kids. Most of the people I know who are deep enough in their fantasies about their handguns are, and this is just my belief, just as likely to accidentally shoot a child as they are to do any good with a weapon. You might disagree, but it isn't true that prohibiting weapons around a school has absolutely no sense about it.
      • Dove 14y ago
        just as likely to accidentally shoot a child as they are to do any good with a weapon You know, this isn't the first time I've heard this sentiment, and -- without meaning offense -- I think it reflects a simple ignorance of the practical realities of handling firearms. I don't know whether you're referring to someone trying to shoot an assailant and missing, or simple failure to follow safe handling, but . . . I think maybe an analogy will help. From my perspective, it's as if someone said, "I don't want strangers driving cars near schools, because I think there's a significant risk they'll run over children accidentally." From my perspective, I know how much control a driver has over a car, how well they pay attention, the rules pedestrians follow and how well drivers respect them . . . and I'm not really worried about it. Every morning, I see bazillions of children walking to school, passed by bazillions of strangers driving cars right next to them, and I just don't give it a second thought. The person I'm talking to does, though. He seems to think cars drive up on the sidewalk all on their own, all the time. Sure, a malicious person could run over a child. Sure, a crazy or drunk or just irresponsible person could get a hold of a car and do a lot of damage. But those are both rare problems and not really specific to cars (or helped by laws). A normal person, in a normal traffic situation, will spend their whole lives driving and absolutely never be danger of accidentally shooting a child. I hate it when people say, "Your opinion on a topic isn't valid if you haven't done X," but I'm going to say something really similar. Not as a way to invalidate your opinion, but . . . I really do think that folks who claim to have a serious opinion on gun issues should at least spend an afternoon at a range once. Spend $50, take a class, rent a gun, and work through a box of ammo. It's fun, and you'll learn what guns are, how they're safely handled, how dangerous they are (and aren't) when handled responsibly, and . . . well, for lack of a better way to say it, learn how much control even first-time shooters have over them. I know that comes off as a snarky, "I know more than you" post, and it's not intended that way, really. It's just that I really do think a lot of the fear of guns is fear of the unknown. I honestly wish a firearms safety course was routine, like driver's ed, and then maybe we'd all at least understand the object we're talking about.
        • wwweston 14y ago
          While I don't know exactly what the poster you were responding to meant, it's possible that rather than meaning: "I think it's possible someone carrying may choose to intentionally shoot a child at any moment." he meant: "I think that (a) accidents happen in general and (b) should a specific crisis situation emerge and someone carrying uses their gun to respond, they are likely enough to shoot an innocent bystander accidentally vs successfully using it to stop an assailant." As someone who has spent a few afternoons at the range and even in the hills shooting junk, I certainly don't think someone is a threat just because they've got a gun. But I'm less sanguine when I think about the increased accident/incident rate, and I'm not sure how well most people would do with a gun in a confrontation vs recreational situation.
• noahc 14y ago
  I agree with you, but this should not be the #1 comment on HN. There's a lot of interesting things going on here. But, specifically, I want to comment on the disconnect between legislators and reality caused by isolation from various aspects of everyday life due to the nature of specialization. A lot of folks complain about lobbyist, but this a critically important role they play. They don't buy their votes as many suspect, they instead educate the congressmen they work with into believing what they believe. Or, a slightly more realistic phrasing is that they provide congressmen with the ideological ammunition they use on the floor and in the press to push their agenda. In this case it's rather trivial, because currently 3d printed all plastic guns and magazines are mostly non-viable which explains why there are no lobbyist to help correct congress when they go astray. But the next time you call lobbying bad, just remember that lobbying is an important part of having informed legislatures.
  • nitrogen 14y ago
    I agree with you, but this should not be the #1 comment on HN. HN comments are sorted by age as well as number of votes (and supposedly the reputation of the poster, in some cases), so being in the top spot may not mean that it's the highest voted comment, and may be temporary. But the next time you call lobbying bad, just remember that lobbying is an important part of having informed legislatures. Surely there's a better way, like maybe the Congressional Research Service? Or legislators actually -- and I know, this is a radical suggestion -- learning on their own about the topics on which they legislate?
    • noahc 14y ago
      You're right on the first point. However, as a first approximation the top comment is likely the highest upvoted comment, particularly when the name isn't one of the top 10 posters on HN. The CRS and CBO do provide a useful service. But, it would be impossible for each congress person to research the effects of a tariff, increasing pre-k funding to the states, chimpanzee sanctuary funding needs at the NIH as well as the changing feelings related to technology, copyright, gun control and how it effects their various constituents who all have their own interests. It's much easier and more practical for lobbyist just to hand them a "fact sheet" that says: "This bill will save 240 lives this year in your district." or "This bill will provide 430 jobs in and increase the tax base 2 million dollars in your district" Of course, maybe you meant "hand all this off to an LA" which they already do to some extent.
• wwweston 14y ago
  > This will have about as much protective effect against the criminally-motivated as putting up "gun-free school zone" signs. Even if what you're saying is true, one could argue that means "some protective effect." Yes, it's probably true that someone who intends to ignore the law and most moral codes and commit a crime with a firearm will almost certainly ignore a sign and the associated additional legal penalties. "Gun-free" school zones are not really meant to address that problem. They're an attempt to address the problem of crimes/accidents committed with firearms brought into a zone without intent to commit a crime, but that end up being used criminally anyway in a confrontation or when they end up out of original hands, etc. Given that these things happen, restricting access to firearms in a place like a school probably has some marginal positive effect (you can credibly argue there may be a negative effect too -- not having anyone armed in a school represents a targeting opportunity -- but the intelligent response to this is probably to figure out what reasonable exceptions might be rather than throwing up your hands and letting any student or visitor carry). Similarly, I think it's possible that making attempts to restrict the legal manufacture of high-capacity clips will have some positive impact -- probably a greater one, since the larger scope makes leaks through neighboring less-restricted zones less likely. It will remain true that where "criminally-motivated" means someone with resources and strong resolve, they will be able to acquire not only high-capacity clips but probably just about any form of contraband they'd like. It's also true that by placing restrictions on the process of making of high-capacity clips, the bar for sufficient resources and resolve will be at least somewhat higher: there will be fewer made, fewer people making/distributing 3D printable designs, introducing scarcity, making it harder to do. Would this be an absolute deterrent? No. Some people will still do that. Is the lock on a door an absolute deterrent? No. It raises the bar: you need to be more determined and you face additional risk of being conspicuous while breaking in. Seat belts don't protect you from many risks of driving. Sometimes, making improvements in the margins is how you get things better. Now, that's not to say that there might not be other problems with any given measure. Personally, I think if you're going to ban manufacture of something, focusing on the method is probably a bad choice. There's also the question of tradeoffs -- what does it mean to "ban" 3D printing something? Does it mean every 3D printer gets a regulator or a monitor? That might be too big a cost for the benefit.
  • hkhanna 14y ago
• jdietrich 14y ago
  That's a terrible argument. No law can ever prevent crime, but we don't just give up on the idea of the rule of law. Banning certain classes of firearm won't make them disappear completely, but it gives law enforcement the opportunity to reduce their availability substantially. Here's the story from the UK. We banned handguns altogether in 1997, after a school shooting that left seventeen dead. We had been slowly restricting gun ownership over the previous decade, but this time we really bloody meant it - there was a major programme of amnesties, ultimately leading to a minimum 5 year sentence for possession of a handgun. Initially it didn't have a huge impact on criminal use of firearms, partly because of the number of guns already in circulation, partly because the IRA were still fairly active and had extensive gun-running apparatus. Bit by bit, the police started to turn the tide. The headline statistic is 58 firearm fatalities in 2010/11 (<0.1 per 100,000), but that doesn't really tell the story. The great success of British firearm legislation is revealed when serious organised criminals are arrested. More often than not, illegal handguns in the UK are in fact converted replicas and blankfirers - crude and unreliable homemade weapons. Illegal firearms are often seized with half-empty magazines, not because the weapon had recently been used but because the owner couldn't procure enough ammunition to fill it. That's an astonishing success that massively undermines the usefulness of firearms to criminals. You can't fully control guns, but you can get damned close if you've got an electorate that wills it.
  • pionar 14y ago
    There's a big difference in controlling guns on an island and controlling guns in a country the size of the US. Also, handguns have nothing to do with this. Some areas (Washington, D.C.) already ban handguns. This is about assault rifles. The problem is, these are all overreactions to a horrible event. In 2010 or 2011, "long guns" (shotguns, rifles, etc.) only accounted for something like 300 homicides in the US. 300 out of about 300,000,000 people. Way too much effort for the benfit of cutting that by MAYBE 10-20 percent.
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
• OGinparadise 14y ago
  Don't forget the xx year mandatory sentence they'll give you if you get caught. Changes the equation for all, but hardcore criminals