This is how I've felt as a gun owner over the last two decades, translated into computing:

Imagine that someone in California hacked into a power station and caused a blackout. Police responded and found the hacker and their equipment. Shortly thereafter an "anti-hacking" bill appeared in the state legislature to prevent a repeat of such a disaster. The attacker used some strange system called Ubuntu which most computer users have little or no reason to have, so that was specifically outlawed in the state (while any other Linux distro is fine). They had a quad-core CPU, 16 gigs of RAM, and a USB 2.0 keyboard for "faster hacking"; the bill mandated a limit of 9 gigs, 2 cores, and PS/2 connectors only. The attacker also used something called the "TCP protocol" (misnomer intended); the bill also mandated that the protocol include a 4th and 5th step transmitting "I am not a hacker" and acknowledging "You will be prosecuted with a felony under California SB1137 for improper use of this TCP protocol".

The bill passes and no more hacks occur. Other states don't want to be seen as soft on crime, so they draft copycat bills and randomly ban openSUSE, Gentoo, and trackballs with more than 6 buttons. Within a few years computer enthusiast sites pop up detailing which states are safe to travel to with your laptop. 1 gig RAM chips get unexpectedly expensive as everyone wants to get up to that 9 gig limit in restricted states. California legislators visit university computer labs disapprovingly and talk about closing the "Linux loophole". Activist groups lobby Congress, maintaining that the Founding Fathers never could have conceived of computers as an evolution of the printing press and therefore the 1st Amendment did not apply to electronic devices or communications. Programmers everywhere grumble about coding for two different communication protocols depending on whether or not your users are in California (but it's such a big market you can't ignore it). Your mother wonders why you can't just get your work done on an 8 year old laptop running Windows 7, it's good enough for her web browsing!

The contractor maintaining the power plant control system again leaves the web admin panel open and unsecured after testing from home and forgetting to unflip a poorly labeled feature flag on the production server.

Lockpicks might be a better example. Many similar arguments apply: their use is to open doors without the correct keys, which only a few specialized professions should have a legitimate need to do. Yet on the other hand we ought to be able to tinker with our private property, evaluate its security (bad guys will get lockpicks anyway), let ourselves in if we get locked out, publish security research on "unpickable" locks and participate in locksport.

Or for a more direct computing analogy, Metasploit. It is unambiguously a hacking tool, but it remains legal because bad guys will always get hacking tools, and the good guys need to be able to evaluate their defenses.

Target shooting is a sport all on its own, and is probably the single most prevalent application of firearms in the US.

Sure, and locksport isn't just practice for burglary. The point is guns are a lot closer to specific forced-entry tools (lockpicks or Metasploit) than to computers in general.

target practice is to racing, as shooting people (or hunting) is to a road trip.

running over people doesn't require that much speed, but lots of agility. if you're driving really fast,a person will get out of the way, and you won't be able to turn fast enough to intercept them.

There are somewhere around 300 million guns in the United States. There were around 30,000 deaths by firearm (including homicide, suicide, and accidents) in 2013. So... approximately 1 out of every 10,000 guns was used for "killing" in that year.

If their only use is "killing", one is forced to conclude that they really aren't very good at it.

If guns are "designed for killing", why is only one out of 10,000 used for that purpose in a typical year?

Can you think of another example of a consumer product that's "designed" for a particular purpose that has that low a rate of actual utilization for that purpose?

Most successful defensive gun use incidents don't involve anyone even getting shot, much less killed, and that's leaving out all the ones that are simply used for poking holes in pieces of paper.

I haven't look up the actual usage rates, but I suspect things like smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, air bags, and (emergency) parachutes, are very seldomly used for their intended purpose.

Fire extinguishers, perhaps.

http://www.chutingstar.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?dir=d...

Look - if you like guns, just say you like guns. People are allowed to like guns.

But, throwing around an illogical argument as a logical one isn't going to help in persuading people - well, at least not people who follow logic.

Again, even ignoring target shooting and the like, guns are not "designed to kill". They are designed to persuade other people to conform to your will.

This can be both legitimate ("stop beating me up/robbing me/raping me/invading my country") or illegitimate ("give me your money/body/country").

Note, and note well, that even most illegitimate uses of guns don't actually require killing. In fact, it is counterproductive. Robbers who kill their victims have to paw over a dead, bleeding body to find the wallet (or have to figure out how to open the safe themselves, or whatever). Most rapists don't want to rape a corpse (yeah, there are exceptions, but most rapists aren't sick enough to do that). Historically, most conquering armies weren't after total genocide -- they wanted to enslave the population and force them to do useful work. Dead slaves don't work.

So, no, the purpose of guns isn't "killing", even if you restrict yourself to illegitimate/criminal uses. I can't help but think that you've formed your opinion of guns from watching TV, and have little or no practical, hands-on experience with them. Is that correct?

You're not going to rob me with a blancmange.

That doesn't make the IRS "designed" to put people in prison.

Prisons are very much designed to put people in prison. That's why they're all full.

Take a knife, for example - designed to kill. Small knives, big knives, single-purpose knives, ceramic knives, and even customizable knives. Cutting living things kills them, so knives are "designed to kill". While not as destructive as guns, they account for a non-negligible ~12% of the annual murder toll. Knives even cause way more serious non-fatal injuries per year than guns, but you don't hear anyone bleating "DESIGNED TO KILL" about them because they're mostly not scary.

I like guns, and most of mine _are_ actually designed to kill living beings: animals I am legally authorized to shoot. For 51 weeks of the year I shoot what averages out to 2-3 rounds per day per gun at paper. I do it with my family, my friends, and when I need to settle my nerves and meditate after a rough day. One week a year, I shoot the given gun once, maybe twice. I would argue that while their design certainly involves killing, their purpose to me is practicing fine motor skills and concentration, with an ancillary effect of giving me the excuse to go hiking for a week and put meat on the table for a large portion of the year.

As far as smart guns go, it doesn't matter what the use of the gun is. It's an ineffectual feel-good measure that will primarily affect law-abiding citizens. Hell, that's why gun control is such an issue - because most gun owners fall extremely deeply into the "lawful" D&D dimension. If we didn't care, you could pass whatever laws you like and we'd ignore them, but we don't like falling afoul of laws, intentionally or not.

I had to go back through the thread to see who used the word 'design' first, and it was actually me. But, given that I don't have an argument against guns, I'm confused. Is the design perspective one that's frequently used by gun regulation advocates? I used it only because when I thought of the question, 'for what purpose are guns manufactured?', 'killing' was the first thing that came to mind. Actually, now that I think of it, I'm surprised that the gun industry doesn't seem do anything to change people's perceptions of guns. They'd probably have a huge impact with a moderate campaign to soften the image of guns.

Also, it may be interesting for you or other readers to know that as a 3rd-party observer, I didn't feel an emotional response to the parent's point. To me, it seemed like a rational argument. On the other hand, your comment actually gave me a very strong negative emotional response. So, if the goal is to convince people like me to side with guns, you may want to alter your approach. Again, it could be extremely effective to your cause to soften the image of guns and gun owners. Personally (as someone who even grew up with guns), guns scare me, and strong gun advocates scare me even more. Where I live, the gun advocates display a very aggressive and dangerous image - from their vehicles, to their clothing and appearance, to their mannerisms and rhetorical approach. Softening that up would probably have a huge impact.

As far as "design" goes, it was just an argumentative tangent. I've had it thrown out at me before, but it's not a major thing as far as I know.

However, since you brought it up, do you have issue with 'smart guns' given that apparently most guns are purchased only to ever be used at ranges?

Sometimes you just want something to show off. Shrug

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/us-to-renegotiate...

I haven't seen ANY politician coming out and saying they support encryption. As soon as the Apple and FBI case came out, you saw both republicans and democrats divided even on this fairly simple case:

Democratic congressman Mike Honda of California has come down firmly on the side of the tech company, saying that the DoJ sought to increase its authority “with the tyrannical impulses that were the very reason our country was created”.

By contrast, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California called on Apple to cooperate immediately following the “terrorist attack in my state” and threatened legislation, though she said she “hope[d] it would not be necessary”.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/29/apple-fbi...

If the tech industry wants to push the needle forward, then they have to get in the game. As of 2016. I haven't seen many people in the industry rushing to try and educate the politicians in Washington. Sure, they like to write articles and stand on the side of Apple and other companies, but that doesn't count for much in my book.

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/google-facebook-amazon-lobbying...

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/09/which-tech-...

And this database would suggest some tech companies fall into the 5th highest spending industry: https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2015&inde...

So, a better question is, why, despite these efforts are we still seeing this? A few reasons, I'd guess...

1) Lobbying efforts by other industries and groups (law enforcement has a vested interest here, for example)

2) A tendency to wanting to look tough on crime and terrorism, especially going into an election year. Moderation and wise restraint are always a tough sell in politics

3) The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit - politics edition. http://quillette.com/2016/02/15/the-unbearable-asymmetry-of-...

4) A propensity on the part of many in government to want to hold more power (closely related to point 2, but more self-serving).

No, unless you consider punching holes in a piece of paper or a "tin can", or busting a clay bird to be "destruction", most are "not primarily designed for causing harm", and when it comes to self-defense, the resulting harm is praiseworthy and not to overall be deplored. Hunting, well, I only debate that with vegetarians.

> when it comes to self-defense, the resulting harm is praiseworthy and not to overall be deplored.

Bullshit. There is nothing at all praiseworthy about shooting a person, self-defense or otherwise. This is one of the most pernicious ideas advocated by those who defend guns, and makes it very difficult to discuss the related issues rationally. There is nothing praiseworthy about blowing a hole in another human. It should always be deplored, and we can do better than this. At best, shooting someone is a failure of finding a non-lethal avenue of resolving a problem. At worst, defending it as praiseworthy in certain circumstances reveals a moral and ethical failure to value life, and a potential bloodlust for taking life in circumscribed scenarios that absolve people of the need to recognize that what they've done is wrong.

Again, we can do better.

Firstly however, I'd like to apologize for the tone of my response below. While I stand by my post's general idea I feel it was poorly worded and came out unnecessarily hostile and combative, along with overly dismissive of your point of view. I'm going to leave it up unedited if for no other reason than to serve as an example of how not to engage in these discussions. In particular, I really shouldn't have made any assumptions about your specific background and again, my apologies.

The exact reasons why I disagreed so strongly with your post are proving difficult for me to illustrate beyond what I've already written. In essence, by painting the act of self defense as being morally or ethically ambiguous, I feel that you are essentially dismissing the experiences that those like myself, who have had to endure violence first hand, have had. I fully accept that I may be misreading your intent here but it comes off as somehow equivocating a defensive response to violence with using violence to prey on others.

Its also upsetting to me because I run across similar sentiments in my daily life that I find troubling. While I consider myself fortunate to both work and socialize with people of many different classes and races I find certain attitudes held by most of those who had the luxury of middle-upper class upbringings regarding being poor to be problematic. I understand this may not be the case with you and I overreacted.

All too often however I come across people espousing views on what it's like to be poor or be surrounded by violence without ever having been poor or surrounded by violence. It comes off as dismissive of my experiences.

It also showcases the problem of racial and economic segregation that is becoming increasingly widespread in the US whereby the burden of being poor and living around violence is increasingly being cordoned off from the rest of society. To me this is expressed by views such as yours that hold self defense as morally ambiguous. It's telling that not a single person who I grew up around would ever consider their right to self defense, even if using deadly force, to be problematic. The only people who I've ever heard espouse these views have never encountered violence at all. I understand that this may not be you, and that there probably exist people who have been victims of violence and still view deadly force as unjust, I've just never met any myself and this surely distorts my perspective.

I'm unsure if this post makes a coherent argument that explains my views succinctly but I hope it helps.

Either way, sorry about the tone of my previous comment.

I will also add that I spent a good part of my youth living in an area of Oakland, and before that Houston, that was brutalized by a bizarre concoction of gang violence and police corruption mixed with a healthy dose of community apathy.

With all that being said I find your comment extraordinarily naive, paternalistic and offensive. To suggest that citizens, especially those of communities that have been systematically disenfranchised both socially and economically, should feel shame in defending themselves from criminal elements that seek to prey on their condition is absurd.

I certainly don't celebrate the death of another human being and hope that we as a society can find non violent ways of addressing grievances, but to conflate self defense, even when it results in unfortunate death, as bloodlust is insulting.

I usually tend to refrain from drawing conclusions about a poster's personal background on the basis of comments since it's rife for misunderstanding but in this instance I find it hard to bite my tongue. You sound like the product of an extraordinarily privileged life. Perhaps not Gates or Zuckerberg levels of privilege, but privilege nonetheless. The type of privilege were you viewed the police as friends of the community, the type were you didn't have to fear being shot, or stabbed, or bludgeoned, or run over multiple times (something that actually happened to a childhood friend) by the gangs that controlled your neighborhood. The type of privilege were as a child you could be outside after sunset, the type were you didn't have to run from the bus stop straight home every afternoon to avoid being jumped.

The funny thing about privilege is that those who are its biggest beneficiaries are often the least aware if its existence. To suggest that those of us who didn't grow up with the privilege of safety from having physical violence visited upon us or our families and friends as a regular occurrence should view the idea of self defense, even when resulting in death, as being ethically or morally ambiguous represents an almost sociopathic level of delusion.

I was born & raised in & around Los Angeles. My parents were pregnant before graduating high school with my older sister. 15 months later, I was born. The family was all-American, all-military. Air Force. Dad worked for his dad in a print shop. Mom worked in a nail & hair salon. They offered us the best they could. I learned at a young age what bankruptcy was, & the impact it had on adults who were struggling to keep their heads above water.

My earliest memory is walking out of our apartment in Canoga Park to find my mom's car up on blocks because someone stole the wheels & tires off her little Mazda. I think I was around 3. Years later, I was still squeezing my now-6-foot-tall self into the back seat of that car. There was a lot of violence & crime in Canoga Park.

But that was child's play, & nothing compared to the violence in my home.

Until I was nearly 11, my father was an uncontrollable force of violent rage. The kind that results from a severe chemical imbalance, not the alcoholic kind--I've seen alcohol pass my dad's lips maybe 3 times in my whole life. He never touched the stuff. Never touched drugs. Never even smoked a cigarette. He was a gym rat, & an enormous man. Lucky for me, though his massive hands were rarely quiet, I was not the target. My mother, on the other hand, learned to take her hits well--both from life & from him.

My earliest memory of a firearm was the one I saw my father point into my mother's face. I was about 5. We'd just moved into a new home they had built. My sister & I watched in horror from the hallway as he pressed the muzzle into her face. My sister, just 6 years old, ran into the room & began yelling at him to stop. Terrified, I hid behind one of those tall floor speakers that were so the rage at that time. Shaking uncontrollably, I couldn't help but peek out from behind the speaker, just waiting for the gun to go off. Words I do not recall were yelled at my sister, & she went scurrying back down the hallway. She & I were like twins. & twins stick together. I overcame my petrifying fear & ran back down the hallway after her. We went to my room. She was never very good at thinking through anything--still isn't. She was unbelievably good at simply acting with no thought of consequences. I, however, was always the thinker. Hiding in my room with my sister, away from the horror unfolding in living room, I was able to think. We grabbed my [other] infant sister, & I kicked screen out of my bedroom window--oh, praise the southern Californian ranch-style, single-level homes!--so we could escape the house. We ran from the house, trying to find a neighbor with a phone. We hadn't really learned about 911 as I recall, or perhaps we were just scared to fucking death, & couldn't recall the digits. My sister & I discussed how we needed to call my uncle, the only other bodybuilding man we knew who was even bigger & stronger than our massive dad. But we did not know his phone number. At this point, my memory gets pretty hazy. I cannot for the life of me remember how we wound up back inside the house. But we did. My mother somehow talked my father into leaving the house--and the gun. While he was gone, we rode with her in that shitty little Mazda some distance away. We thought we were leaving--it would have probably been the dozenth time I could remember. I realized we weren't when my mother pulled up to a dumpster behind a store, & I watched her throw the gun inside. She was, of course, punished pretty severely when my father found out.

From age 5 to 10, living in that house my parents built that my father so routinely did his best to destroy, my father worked in the valley. He would stay close to work Mon-Thur, & only come home Fridays for the weekend. So, it was basically 5 years of 4 days of peace with a mother who grew increasingly hardened, & a father who'd come home just as we were all feeling relaxed to fuck that all up for 2 days & 3 nights. Of course, I never had the slightest idea that in many ways, he simply couldn't help it--and please don't misunderstand that statement as being any kind of excuse for his behavior.

When I was 10, in the 7th grade--I skipped from 3rd to 5th grade--we moved to a new house. I began to learn very quickly about gangs. I knew kids with guns at school. Kids had no shoes because they'd been stolen while walking to school that morning. Same with jackets in the winters. I learned to identify the kids in my schools who were involved in gangs. I learned how to keep my ears open & pay attention to what was around me. I still got the shit beat out of me from time to time. I learned not to be afraid of any single one of these fuckers, & they knew they had to knock me out to shut me up because I wasn't going to back down just because some punk or bully was wearing colors. I also learned about crooked cops. They were everywhere. Oh, there were definitely some good ones to be found. But at 35, I still eye every cop with suspicion. I can't recall a time since I was about 8 that I felt police were a friend of the community.

With a military family, it was inevitable I would learn to fire guns. Everyone in the family had them. I learned to take them apart, clean them, & rebuild them by the time I was 10. I began shooting them when I was about 12. I've fired many. I don't own a single one, & I probably never will. First impressions stick harder than anything else.

It was during this time my father swallowed a bottle of pills. He'd apparently had enough of himself & couldn't cope anymore. The pills were supposed to help him somehow find balance. Instead, they drove him way over the edge into what I assume he thought would be the eternal arms of endless rest.

He failed. I was made to visit him in the hospital. My mom brought my sisters & I to see him and, sitting in a cold room at a table, I saw my father cry for the first time. I hated him for it, & refused to allow him any of my sympathy. I became a little terror for a while. I kind of checked out emotionally & mentally. School, which had always been an effortless straight-A achievement, took a nose-dive. Suspensions. Cut classes. I'd leave school part way through the day & walk miles back home, coordinating my arrival with when the buses dropped my sisters off.

As my 11th birthday approached, I recall a clear, radical thought: I simply couldn't keep looking to my parents for answers. They were a fucking mess, & barely able to take care of themselves. If I was going to figure out how to navigate life & the world around me, how to not let my life so far have any chance at fucking me up, I was going to have to start tackling it on my own. So, that's what I did. I started reading everything I could get my hands on. The Bible. History. Science. Math. Literature. Philosophy. I began to learn the contours of what I could get away with, & what would make my parents' eyebrows raise. I was looking for something, anything tied to something stronger that could pull me ashore. I found that in knowledge, education, studying, questioning everything I was told, interrogating everything--including myself--to discover just what it was made of.

When I was 17 & learning how to drive, my dad told me he was proud of me for the first time I could recall. Like, a genuine moment I could tell he was facing the fact that I'd just told him & my mom I couldn't stay at home anymore & had to go. I nearly drove the car off the road as, for the first time in 6 years, I teared up & began crying. We were both choked up, & I tried--as I usually do in difficult situations--to lighten the mood by joking that was one hell of a way to risk our lives.

That bottle of pills was my dad's salvation. He was never the same after that. He never raised his hands again. He was transformed. He's such a different person in many ways today because of that moment. I'm proud of him for eventually finding a way out of the darkness. Sadly, he's never been able to forgive himself, even though my sisters & I most certainly have. Some years after my sister & I moved out of the house, my mom told me that he spent almost every night of that first year we were gone crying himself to sleep. In his mind, he's never really stopped being that monster he was before he tried to die.

That bottle of pills was my salvation. I was never the same after that.

---

So, random internet stranger, I am not the product of an extraordinarily privileged life. Except that I was born white. & male. & had a computer at 8, which was the luckiest break I ever had (after being white & male). I never thought growing up that I would ever make it to being 20 years old.

And no, random internet stranger, what I said was neither naive nor paternalistic. Nor is it borne of some sociopathic level of delusion. That you are offended by someone taking a strong stance against violence of all forms is for you to own. We don't have to agree, but please do yourself & everyone else a great favor by not thinking you could possibly ever definitively & accurately intuit someone's personal background on the basis of their comments & the positions they take on things.

I recognize precisely where my privilege lies. I have long known of its existence, before it even became popular to talk about privilege. That you imagine a life of posh privilege as being the life that would cause a person to take a firm position on something shows only a gaping lack of imagination on your part.

Interestingly enough, while we clearly differ on this issue we both seem to share some similarities in our childhood experiences. I suppose the lesson for me from all this is the understanding that while it may be convenient to assume that those who hold differing opinions from myself must have had vastly different experiences, this isn't necessarily the case. While we probably won't find much common ground on the issue at hand I think it's rewarding to engage in these discussions, my overly dismissive language notwithstanding. It's enlightening to know that even those with somewhat similar experiences can have vastly different viewpoints and reactions as a result of those experiences, this certainly makes for an interesting world.

I too tend to dislike speaking about my private life and I regret that my post resulted in you feeling the need to talk about yours, although I appreciate you taking the time to prove how misguided my initial post was. I'm not particularly good at expressing my views, whether written or spoken, and thus don't engage in these kind of discussions often. While its wonderful to be able to engage with others online, it is too easy to be dismissive or hostile to others in a way I would never be in person. I will certainly try and keep that in mind the next time I post.

I find your strong stance against violence in all its forms to be admirable. It's not something I find myself capable of accepting but as you said that is more of a reflection on me than you. Perhaps you are a better man than I.

In any case, I apologize for the content of my initial response. I'm embarrassed by my rush to judgement and hope that you find my apology sincere.

However, allow me to assure you there's no chance I'm in any way better than you. We are different, that's all.

I spent a long while replying, and then editing that reply down because I learned there's a comment length limit on HN. After finishing that, I saw your other reply. I appreciate your kindness. I wanted to reply further (and still do), but it was getting late on the East Coast, and I needed to step away and somewhat just deal with speaking so frankly about my past.

For what it's worth, I'd be happy to keep talking offline if you'd want to. My email is in my profile. I'll return to reply to some other comments and issues raised here.

I completely understand your unease with sharing such personal detail, I myself tried to make my post intentionally vague which results in much less valuable substance than what you have shared. Your experience is powerful and well told and although different in terms of the source of our childhood misery, I drew parallels with my own. I understand if you decide to delete it however.

I'm rather new to HN and wasn't aware of a comment length limit either, thanks for pointing it out.

I'm glad to hear that you and your father have made peace.

I look forward to reading your subsequent comments, and in particular I look forward to the next time we might disagree. I assure you I will put more care into crafting my response as I greatly value having someone who can challenge my views, even if that only serves in them being strengthened.

Enjoy the rest of your night.

Does that mean we vilify their ownership and gradually make the many responsible owners felons for the actions of the miscreant few? I'm not going to argue that these devices are somehow as destructive as guns, but an object's design origin shouldn't nullify its value for current use.

We can do better on violence and valuing life as a race and society, but insisting it start with eliminating a set of hobbies whose participants are overwhelmingly responsible, law-abiding, and civic-minded is itself a pernicious idea.

I can no longer edit this post. Apologies for the mistake.

What's you "better" for when a thug is using lethal force on an innocent?

This is one of the most pernicious ideas advocated by those who defend guns, and makes it very difficult to discuss the related issues rationally.

Yep, as long as you have such disdain for legitimate uses of guns you're certainly not going to be able to discuss the issue "rationally", you've already made up your mind.

And if you think I view all human life as equal, you're sorely confused, which is further supported by you suspicion of bloodlust being a part of this.

There are many people for whom I'd give my life, without the slightest hesitation, to ensure their safety and survival. Obviously, my teenage sons. And my family members. And my closest friends. Hell, even my ex-wife.

There is no way I would take a life for anyone. That's a universe away, and a wholly different thing.

I would do all I could to de-escalate a potentially dangerous situation. I would physically fight and attempt to subdue an attacker who threatened me or those I love most dearly. I'd do all I could to diffuse a violent confrontation and disable a threat. But I would not kill for it.

I reject the notion that, where a human life is concerned, there is a "legitimate" use of guns. And yet, despite what you assume, I am most capable of discussing the matter rationally and unemotionally. That I take a strong stance against violence and, as you put it, have made up my mind on that point, in no way prevents me from engaging the matter in rational conversation. Moreover, as with all things, I am and have always been open to allowing my currently staked positions to be changed by a preponderance of convincing evidence and argument that proves more rational, reasonable, defensible, and warranted. As far as taking lives is concerned, however, that climb is far steeper than many other issues.

That you don't view all human life as equal is your own issue to grapple with. I'm in no way confused. I think you may have overreacted to my using the term "bloodlust" in a very specific and narrow context, but I anticipated it being something that would likely incur a rather visceral response. I can only encourage you to view all human life as equally worthy of protection, and really, really difficult to take flippantly.

There is no way I would take a life for anyone.

These simultaneous positions are rational???

In what situations would you be able to a) give your life for another in which that selfless act would both "ensure their safety and survival" but could not entail the taking of a life?

Do you really consider the human life of someone trying to kill your loved ones as equal to those loved ones?

No, I believe in the concept of the outlaw, the person who's put himself "outside the law" in a sense, at least for the duration of his lethal threat, and who can be legally opposed with lethal force (which actually means the whole situation is within the law, hence my weasel words). I do not view such human lives as equal to those of the innocents they predate on, for the duration of their lethal threats.

(Although, to make crystal clear, my legal and moral response is to use lethal force on them if necessary, killing per se is no legal, but the job of the judiciary after due process. Of course killing is a likely outcome when using lethal force, but stopping the lethal threat is the legitimate outcome, killing an unfortunate common result.)

Yes, I consider all human life to be equal, whether it is the life of a loved one, a stranger, an asshole, or what-have-you.[1]

[1]: I'll admit that I have a difficult time coming up with a realistically successful non-lethal solution to the problem of individuals like Hitler, Stalin, et al. I admit the need for certain nuances, and find there to be a strong moral and ethical case to be made for removing a singular threat posed to millions of human lives. However, I still remain firm on the principle that taking a life, even of one such as Hitler, should be a last resort after all other options have been exhausted. And even then, I would hope the decision to be one that those who made it agonized over, and accepted with heavy hearts that they'd decided to kill.

(Although if you want to maintain the lowest risk anyone will be killed, you'd never call the police in the US, full stop.)

I believe strongly that LEO should be barred from carrying lethal weapons, and most certainly should be barred from possessing and utilizing former military hardware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biathlon

E.g. https://www.google.com/#q=ruger+10%2F22+biathlon

The Ruger 10/22, which lists at $260 to $400 from what I just found on Google from Ruger, has an awesome ecosystem and is relatively easily worked on.

Heck, everything can be bought from someone else (all patents expired by now), and I'm sure there are many alternatives that could get you started.

Also see http://www.gunbroker.com/All/BI.aspx?Keywords=biathlon e.g. there's a Russian rifle which often goes for less than a thousand there. As well as an Anschutz with "Walnut German Stock" for the usual $$$$$$.

I have one that was a gift for my 12'th birthday. I'm 45.

Not even close. E.g. they annually procure by an order of magnitude less small arms ammo than the 12+ billion produced in the US alone for civilians every year (and that doesn't count the seconds that ATK sells to us from Lake City).

Similarly, by now we civilians are every year or two buying as many new guns as all the governments in the US have in their active inventories (not going to count old stuff in Cosmoline, which they should sell more of to us, next up are 10,000 M1911s, maybe).

Nope, any existing companies that manufactured so much as one smart gun would be boycotted by us civilians and go out of business, as Colt is close to doing for various reasons including depending too much on the DoD, and, yeah, that smart gun flirtation and general cooperation with the gun-grabbers.

You also neglect the detail that the police response was of little consequence as the hacker had committed suicide before they police was at the scene.

I'm unsure what the web panel remark can mean concretely, exactly what did the children at Sandy Hook Elementary do to cause a "blackout"?

Also, of the 12 deaths wikipedia reports as "contributed to" by the blackout, one is someone falling off a roof while trying to break into a store, and another is some guy taking the stairs and dying of a hearth attack.

No other US blackout listed on wikipedia mentions any deaths, including the article about the 1977 blackout with widespread looting, but I'm sure you have a good reason to say deaths are frequent.

For an analogy to be helpful it crucial that the two aspects being related share characteristics, and school shootings don't share many aspects with blackouts. A school shooting is highly localised, even if the location my vary; blackouts need to happen over a very wide area over an extended period of time to be of importance. A school shooting is an active act of killing, a blackout only increases the lethality of already present dangers.

Also, the concept of "negatives that legislation would attempt to prevent" describes things like racial discrimination, poor quality control of seatbelt manufacturers, improper handling of meat and chemical weapon sales to dictatorships as per your "the scale of the concepts doesn't necessarily have to match". Good luck getting much out of the analogy between the Northeast blackout of 2003 and selling weapons to Saddam Hussein.

Analogies are limited by nature. Every analogy has holes. The important comparison here is "crime/tragedy occurs" -> "legal system responds with near-random actions that may or may not prevent a recurrence of the same in the future, that subject-matter specialists claim will be ineffective".

How about decades of experience. Vermont never banned carry in any form, and now has been joined by 9 other states in "Constitutional Carry", many for some years. Washington state went shall issue in the early '60s. Florida started the modern wave in 1987. "Normal" states like Colorado have allowed concealed carry on the grounds of public colleges for years.

Experience, especially in the "50 Petri dishes" of the states, is one of the ways we figure out such things, and this "proliferation" has been a wild success.

I've read a lot of stuff around concealed carry over the past decade for internet debates, and interestingly, concealed carry debaters will claim absolutely any reduction in crime rate as being due to concealed carry (despite no clear link), which started proliferating rapidly in the '90s... and totally ignore things like the incarceration rate, which rose rapidly in the '90s as well.

You're fighting someone else, I make no such claims, I'm pretty sure simple demographics, particularly the wave of young men in the Baby Boom, is the biggest factor, and swamps all others to the point it's hard to discern any other cause. Although perhaps if we'd locked up those criminals at the rate we'd locked up previous generations it would have gone differently.

All I claim is that at worst it's Mostly Harmless.

Every time a shall issue regime or better has replaced a more restrictive one, look at colleges as of late since we've run out of states with Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa joining the party, we're assured by our betters that this will result in "Blood in the streets!", "Dodge City!" and all that. You yourself referred to this change with the loaded term "proliferation", and have shown no sign you welcome it, so my limited defense ought to be enough.

And, no, I'm hardly taking up the arguments of every person in the Internet debates, which have raged through this entire modern Florida and on period of shall issue laws. You have a beef with them, address it to them.

Me, I don't "feel as uneasy about that proliferation" because before it happened I had more trust in my fellow Americans, and now with decades of hindsight and these laws or better (Constitional Carry in 10 states) now covering 43 states and 72% of the population, we know it's Mostly Harmless.

Cars can kill people, but they are primarily used for transportation.

Guns have no other purpose but to kill. You may use it for other stuff (sport, in general). But it was created to kill something. Any analogy where you take some other object that has the potential to be purposefully misused is pretty much invalid when you're talking about the other object's primary purpose.

I hate the idea of smart guns, but politics are a distant secondary concern.

Firearms fail all the time, even the simple reliable ones. Bad primers, failure to eject, failure to cycle, stovepipes, etc. It takes education and then repeated training to know how to deal with failures. In a pressure situation you revert to your lowest level of training; muscle memory will give you the best chance to respond appropriately.

Just dealing with mechanical failures quickly and correctly takes very intentional practice.

The last thing I want to have is another thing that can fail in a pressure situation that can't be resolved via trained response. E.g., for a bad primer or failure to eject I can do what's called a tap/rack/bang drill. But there's nothing I can do to train for some type of software failure or battery being dead or some other type of non-mechanical failure that bricks my firearm.

[1]Former because the NRA"s lobbing efforts and powers are ridiculously overstated. Their entire entire existence as near as I can tell is to sell their member's names to third parties. I've never received as much crap snail mail and email as I did during the year I belonged to the NRA.

Seriously, the idea of smart guns is really stupid. Can you build a system that's 100% reliable? No. Then people will die unnecessarily because of this legislation and, of course, no gun owner will want this optional piece of equipment with a nonzero failure rate. I'm glad no gun company wants to make this idiotic and dangerous technology.

(For those who claim the "gun companies" run the NRA, no, more than anyone else, it's run for the benefit of its PR firm (and of course the current entrenched executive leadership, who have made sure another Cincinnati revolt is impossible).)

While they, thankfully, haven't had to fight any big national gun control initiatives for some time, they are still very active at the state and city level. See their recent lawsuit against the City of Seattle and its new gun tax.

They are the only other effective one as I count them, but you have to donate money to them, a simple membership will just line the pockets of whomever is mailing out their stuff.

I saw a reddit post of a guy who accidentally shot his foot: known as a Negligent Discharge. In the comments the general conclusion was not to blame the gun maker, but rather to blame the poster for failing to abide by the fundamental rules: 1. keep the gun pointed in a safe direction 2. keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot 3. keep the gun unloaded until ready to use 4. treat all guns as if they are loaded

I suspect that gun owners feel that smart guns also "cheapen" the safety ritual (which could be disastrous).

1. Every firearm is loaded. 2. Don't point it at anything you don't want to destroy. 3. Trigger finger stays indexed until sights are engaged with target. 4. Know your backstop.

I can't say as I've thought that these guns (I just cannot bring myself to use the adjective "smart" in reference to this idea) would cheapen these rules.

It's more that it's yet another idea proposed by people that don't have enough experience with firearms to present an educated opinion coming up with a scheme that to other ignorant parties thing sounds like, to quote amother commenter "a gimme."

The former is critical for all sorts of things like hunting and self-defense, although a few of the "accidents" I've read about sure smelled like murders to me.

Don't forget the power supply, and don't undercalculate antenna design needs (it probably won't work incorporated into the handle of a pistol). The electrical draw will probably need to be pretty beefy in order to be as reliable as the rest of the gun's mechanisms, and what happens when the gun is being carried or stored in -20C temperatures? What about off-hand shooting when your normal shooting hand is unusable or it's dangerous to shoot from your normal side?

In order to be both universal and not introduce unreliability, the solenoid would likely have to be introduced as a secondary safety. How many firearm designs would even support a secondary safety?

Technology fails.

The NRA hates smartguns for at least 3 reasons. First is the government is trying to force an unreliable and complex feature onto a product that needs to work every time. Second is the government has no plans to use it themselves, which speaks volumes about what their LEOs and the US military thinks of the reliability this technology. Last is the government is trying to solve a people problem with technology. BTW, these people problems are the result of Democrat's policies in gun-free cities such as Chicago, St Louis, Oakland and Baltimore.

This. This is my biggest problem with smart-gun tech. We still haven't managed to figure out how to write software for hundred-million-dollar space projects that doesn't crash (the Japanese Hitomi satellite[2] being the latest of many); how on Earth are we going to implement smart gun technology correctly?

(actually, I would argue that we still can't write durable software in general, and as such we should avoid integrating it into important things such as guns and cars until we can improve our development skills)

[1]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2086422-japanese-satell...

As the author's prior article in the series notes, such technology will almost invariably be easily bypassed. Criminals will, unfortunately, remain criminals, and will disable the technology or continue to buy guns underground. None of this even addresses the fact that many murders are perpetrated by legal owners of said guns, which this technology would do nothing about.

As is usual with such things, if smart-gun technology were legislated its only measurable effect would be on law-abiding citizens, adding yet more potential felonies to the maze we traverse daily.

I think we should have mandatory breathalyzer ignition locks before electronic gun locks. Which is to say, I think both are bad ideas for approximately the same reasons.

Hard technical arguments of feasibility and reliability tend to have little effect on those that espouse this form of gun control. They'd typically prefer the guns not be there in the first place, and don't particularly care how feasible or reliable the result is. Social arguments, however, tend to affect them more, or at least can put the argument in a place they find harder to dismiss. We need both parts to make the strongest argument.

I don't know about the other three cities, but you can concealed carry in Chicago and that has been the case for almost three years now.

-Take a 16 hour course. There are only a handful of companies that can offer the course and they're fully booked year-round

-Pay $150, one of the highest CCW permit fees in the nation

-Hope that you aren't one of the 800 applicants/year that are inexplicably denied (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-07-04/news/ct-concea...)

So yes, you can technically get a CCW in Illinois. It's also obvious that the state has thrown as many roadblocks as they legally could in the way, ironically bolstering the NRA's argument that any "common sense" requirements around gun ownership will be used as de facto restrictions

Unless your implication is that Democrats are the "people problems?"

those don't seem like times when it is critical to work every time.

And you have clearly never been in a marksmanship competition.

Just skimmed it (too much going on right now to look at it in depth), but I'm seriously impressed they did so much work to get in things like the classic "shoulder thing that goes up". In their defense, New Jersey's law is, as I recall, much older.

I'll mention one other bottom line: we wouldn't even consider it prior to all law enforcement officers in the nation being required to use them, and only them.

I hated shooting next to law enforcement in general, they were bad shots and had poor gun handling skills. I think because they were paid to carry guns they thought they were "professionals" and didn't put the same effort into training and cultivating a mindfulness around firearms.

And lets not forget how the cousin of your boss that enthusiastically read some tutorials on the net is a much better programmer than you.

Or maybe the argument magically only applies in the realm of gun use?

Hours of training are hours of training.

The GP argued that "People who are into something for fun are more likely to out effor into getting good at that thing." (emphasis mine).

> And lets not forget how the cousin of your boss that enthusiastically read some tutorials on the net is a much better programmer than you.

If you're in it just for the money then quite possibly. I can quite easily tell for whom programming is not just a job but also a hobby, and for whom it's just a way to make a living - coding skills tend to be much stronger in former.

Enthusiasticly reading some tutorials on the Internet isn't really what I'd consider "into" something, but there are absolutely amateur programmers that are far better at programming than a 9-5 enterprise "code monkey" level programmer with no interest in the job apart from the paycheck.

Any murder is too much murder, but I certainly wouldn't describe it as common. Cops are nearly as likely to die of a car accident as they are of getting shot. A cop friend of mine was going on about how the recent media focus on them has made things so dangerous - officer murders were up by 15%! I asked him if that translated to an increase of 5 or 6 a year, and if that was actually above the noise floor - he responded with a blank stare - "15%."

For those who don't know, you have to press a button about over where the trigger is, inside the holster. If you keep pressing into your draw, you may as many have found out continue and press the trigger while it's pointed in a unfortunate direction.

Ah, also a Safepacker in winter weather, which is not even clearly a hostler: http://www.thewilderness.com/safepacker-concealment-holster/

And, yeah, slow is a good word to use there ^_^.

(#1 one overriding reason is that since I was a teen the M1911 fits my hand like a glove, and I can shoot it very well. And 8 round magazines weren't a big forfeit when I started buying handguns after leaving Massachusetts and the Federal AW ban was in effect.)

Although the grip angle of Glocks is just plain wrong for me, I've read that I ought to try the Springfield XD if I wanted to go in that direction. Which I don't, for concealed carry I believe an external hammer is essential for holstering safety (put your thumb on it and either stop the drop if SA or feel it rising if SA/DA or DAO).

And, yeah, given that I can shoot most guns well/very well (a couple of years of JROTC rifle team with Winchester 52s, after informal starting in 1st grade or so, made a big difference, but don't ask me to wingshoot), yeah, I should give something different a serious try just to see. I'll put it on my list.

The Serpa has a secondary retention feature -- the button is blocked when there's upward pressure on the gun. It is not easy to snatch a gun out of a Serpa.

Stress does funny things, also "Just avoid holding it that way" isn't good advice for things like guns.

> ...with a non-Serpa nobody blames the holster...

That is the point. Normally the user would be blamed, but the design is bad enough that the equipment is being blamed, IDPA even banned it.

IDPA never banned the Serpa. Some ranges / organizers have.

You are correct about the IDPA ban, my mistake. It makes me wonder though, I can't think of a similar case of a safety rule being so charged. Green tip 5.56 is the closest thing that comes to mind, but that is more to do with property damage than safety.

Unless cops die of car accidents significantly less than the base rate, that is not reassuring.

We need a few things:

1) Funding alternatives to incarceration. People that go to jail tend to have a frequent flyer card.

2) Law enforcement sharing of critical data on offenders.

3) Funding treatment and therapy programs for drug abusers (ABUSERS, key word. I know this isn't a popular opinion on HN, but ABUSE and USE are two different things)

4) Finally, we need to wake up and realize there ARE bad people in the world, and unless you live in a small community, you can't have 100% safety. You can react by protecting yourself (yes, carry concealed), or if you're not comfortable with that, take a professional classes on how to survive extreme situations. Your safety at the end of the day is your responsibility ultimately.

I've linked some articles that touch upon this attempt by Colt.

NRP Article: http://www.npr.org/2016/04/07/473416699/how-an-idea-to-devel...

Hacker News Discussion of Article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11462297

he explained that it was only supposed to fire if the shooter was wearing a special wristband with a little radio frequency transmitter inside. The CEO put on the wristband and went to pull the trigger. ... And it didn't shoot. Just silence.

An "oops" which is entirely unacceptable for any law enforcement/self defense use case.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/04/08/473581490/episo...

Both cases are examples of government attempting to interfere with a technology to further some legitimate public government interest (catching criminals, reducing accidents) while compromising the private interests of citizens (effective self-defense, privacy).

[1]: Okay maybe not everybody but based on my anecdata it's everybody.

The fact that the government is bad at regulating these things doesn't mean that any step they take will be bad. The details matter, and it doesn't mean you should terminate any regulatory effort before it is defined.

In many (maybe all) of these areas, some regulation is needed.

For whatever reason, gun control is the one area where politicians refuse to consult specialists, thus resulting in bills as ridiculous as the AWB.

If background checks were more limited in the kind of background they checked for, say only restricting people who had injured someone using a firearm, then there might be fewer objections.

And felons who want to buy a gun for nefarious purposes are either smart enough to pay up and get an unregistered one on the black market (so you're not targeting them with background checks) or dumb enough to get one at a local gun store. But the dumb ones are still felons, which means they likely have criminal connections, and if they need a gun they probably can find another way to get one. So by stopping them from buying a firearm legally, they're more likely to end up with unregistered weapon, which makes the DoJ's job harder. I concede that a fair number of them might be inconvenienced enough to just not buy a gun, but then many of them will just go on to stab people instead of shooting them. The number of actual lives saved by background checks is probably much lower than people think.

Further, background checks are notoriously unreliable, turning up plenty of hard-to-resolve false-positives and dangerous false-negatives.

And then there's restrictions on mental health conditions. The problem with these is that people like guns, and if someone who likes guns thinks they might have a mental health disorder like bipolar or schizophrenia that would perclude them from owning one, they won't see a doctor. The result is that they won't get treatment and are more likely to hurt themselves, and indeed, others. Shootings and violent crime have been declining for decades, but the lives of the mentally ill have not been improving. I find the mental health problem much more important than the gun control issues to the proper functioning of our society, it's just that gun violence is more visible. This is a hard problem, and there will have to be compromises but it has to be part of the debate.

I don't know why the NRA opposes background checks, but there are good reasons to.

On a hypothetical level, even if I did support the current laws barring convicted felons of certain rights in perpetuity, I would still have a problem with the way this is being administered today. I’ve read some pretty damning reports on some of the discriminatory practices that continue at the institutional level within the broader criminal justice system which seem to primarily affect certain segments of our population. Poor people, particularly minorities and specifically black males, face some very specific challenges when it comes to things like selective enforcement, pretrial plea bargains, rates of conviction and length of sentencing. At this point I can’t really describe our justice system as anything but blatantly discriminatory.

Even in a more equitable and just system, I personally wouldn’t support the taking away of rights in perpetuity, and I certainly don’t support it when it seems to have such a deliberate and specific impact on certain groups.

A possible alternative I thought and have always wondered why it doesn't get used would be some sort of private public key cryptography where the seller would get a signed certificate proving they ran a background check and it's result, but the government wouldn't store anything.

Bingo, and the imposition of a registry would inevitably spark our next hot civil war. Best to avoid that....

where the seller would get a signed certificate proving they ran a background check and it's result, but the government wouldn't store anything

Unfortunately, a lot of people are really really bad about keeping records. It would also be open to abuse by the government seizing and disappearing the certificate of someone they wanted to persecute. Heck, the government sucks here, the BATFE's machine gun etc. registry is in horrible shape, and they sometimes abuse that.

We gun owners know our 20th Century history.

Note we're talking about a nation wide gun registry, you're a criminal if all your guns are not listed on it.

And we're talking about a registry, not a conspiracy to secretly make all gun-owners criminals. If you insist they're the same, that's your problem.

And since they serve no good purpose, and are promoted by people who are not shy about signaling their ill will towards us, we're allowed to take the imposition of one as a solid signal what what's to come.

You say "And we're talking about a registry, not a conspiracy to secretly make all gun-owners criminals."? Prove it.

And let's be clear, in this putative Civil War 2.0, we're threatening to kill gun-grabbers wholesale and retail, with guns being one of the least effective means when compared to tactics like killing Blue cities. People kill other people, guns are inanimate objects.

But if you think our contingent threat is rhetorical, you're a fool. If you live in a fragile Blue city like San Francisco, you're doubly a fool (did they get around to closing the last power plant in SF, or was it on the peninsula? I remember Willie Brown commenting, after a major localized blackout, that maybe that wasn't such a good idea...).

And it's not just smartphones, all will at minimum triangulate to the nears cell towers while on.

There are probably a good deal of people who wouldn't mind amending the Constitution to rid it of the Second Amendment but who still view the 4th Amendment favorably. It would be very difficult to enforce a policy of mass confiscation without the aid of a national registry that wouldn't be a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Last time I checked, which was decades ago, the national ACLU, which has no respect for the 2nd Amendment at all, did have such a 4th Amendment objection.

This idea of the NRA as a manufacturer-driven astroturf organization seems to have been made up out of whole cloth over the last 5 years or so and is only sustainable to the extent that its proponents avoid actually talking to any gun owners.

This cartoon does a great job of explaining the average NRA members view of what it means to meet the gun control lobby "halfway" on an issue:

http://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2013/11/08/cake-and-comprom...

I'll link another piece I wrote on this topic, which is way too long and incoherent and should have gotten edits but didn't:

http://www.alloutdoor.com/2015/11/12/why-fake-moderate-gun-o...

For discussion of the evolution of the NRA into a hard-line, no-compromise lobbying group, see the last section, "NRA: The Original Moderate Pro-Gun Group".

Never mind belligerent crazy people, I can't remember a single TV show or movie in the last thirty years that depicted responsible gun owners, i.e. the vast majority of gun owners, in any positive light. Can you? Every time I see a gun on TV it's either used by a police officer or used in a crime of some sort. Test me on this next time you see a gun shown on TV or in a movie that comes out Hollywood.

This sort of thing was dropped from the dramatization of a novel by a totally PC woman black? author, I could probably find a reference if anyone is interested.

At minimum this is part of a wide spectrum culture war which these gun-grabbing politicians are on one side of, at worst, well, we gun owners know our 20th Century history (see above).

I fail to see how the gender or sex of the author has anything to do with anything, but it's good to know where your own biases lie.

Putting that aside, you seem to be under the impression that there's some kind of Hollywood conspiracy, when in fact when you're adapting a novel you usually leave out a bunch of stuff. You stick with what's important. Despite what you might think, Schindler's List is not meant to be read as a story where the gun is the hero. You would be rather missing the point of it to take that view.

Also, the parallels with how legislators cluelessly approach the adoption of any new technology were painfully clear.

What would they get in return? The absolutist/fundamentalist interpretation of the 2nd Amendment does not admit of compromise, and sets up a world view in which compromises and "reasonable middles" cannot exist; from that stance one either wins completely or loses completely, which is not coincidentally the rhetoric often used to work supporters up into a frenzy.

The right to own new machine guns made after 1986, and aren't additions before that that are not already in the pool of 200,000 forbidden?

Nationwide concealed carry reciprocity, like with drivers licenses.

Related to the above, enforcing shall issue concealed carry on the entire nation.

Removing the many state restrictions on magazine size, and against "assault weapons", which the Congress has explicit, original Constitutional power to do, forget about the 2nd Amendment.

Removing post-Reconstruction laws like the sheriff's permit to buy a handgun in North Carolina.

In general, there's a host of "flypaper" laws that are designed to make it harder and more dangerous to keep and bear arms, and only serve such purposes, that clearing away a bunch of them would be a big thing for us.

Reform the BATFE.

That's just off the top of my head in 2 minutes.

Heck, flip the law around as is done in some countries: require them, or at least require that they be provided with all new guns. It's a health and safety measure to prevent hearing loss.

BTW, the problem is the name. Silencers don't actually silence. Pretending that they do is feeding the idea that they are for assassinations.

In part, it's because handguns in concealed carry are now by daily bread and butter use of guns, and they're impractical in that use case, and would hinder retention in a home defense case.

But, hey, a compromise where I could own a full auto suppressed P90 (a post '86 design) for home defense and the like, yeah, I could get behind that, and Henrietta would no doubt approve.

Example: an individual may own an AR-15 lower receiver, or even machine one themselves. If, however, they drill one 5/32" hole too many in that receiver, they are guilty of a felony. If they own a pistol based on the AR-15 platform and disassemble it at the same time and in the same space that they're disassembling and cleaning an AR-15 rifle, they are committing a felony. These examples are thanks to complex rules based on "compromises".

Gun owners have given up rights time and again, to zero gain of their own. That's not a compromise. A compromise is your asking me to give you half of my cake in return for half of your pie.

My question is simply: what is the thing they would like to gain? The NRA's modern reinterpretation of the Second Amendment (and make no mistake: they are pushing a modern invention, not a historical understanding) does not appear to allow the possibility that any compromise would be reasonable. Hence anything which is not a complete and utter victory is immediately spun as a complete and utter defeat.

It appears you choose to categorically reject returns in the same space as losses; what do you wish, that we exchange something trite like steaks and sexual favors in return for all firearms? Do you believe firearm rights are somehow perfectly fungible? If so, it would appear you yourself are insisting on complete, utter victory.

I cannot begin to speak for others, but ask not for complete victory. Rather, I wish we would make steps back in what gun owners regard as a positive direction. The seven options hga gave above are not a linked list, they are several options. Even one would be regarded as a victory.

So, given the lack of support for a guaranteed individual right, what exactly do you feel is being infringed? If there really is a possibility of compromise, then why is even the tiniest hint of the possibility of a suggestion of perhaps trying to implement a sensible background-check and registration system guaranteed to stir up such disgusting rhetoric from the allegedly "reasonable" people who oppose it? It's gone far beyond just basic hyperbole like claiming that any regulation actually consists of outlawing and confiscating all guns from all people (though that's still a popular one), and well off the deep end into suggesting that the murders of children have been faked by paid actor "parents" in order to give support to the gun-confiscating plan.

Again: it's very very clear what the proposal from those folks is, and it's all-or-nothing with no compromise possible.

In District of Columbia v. Heller, 478 F. 3d 370 (U.S. 2008) https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html, the court held that the Second Amendment does guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms unconnected with militia service. In particular, the District of Columbia's law banning possession of usable handguns in the home for self-defense violated the Constitution.

In McDonald v. City of Chicago, 567 F. 3d 856 (U.S. 2010) https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-1521.ZO.html, the court held that the right of self-defense in the Second Amendment is a fundamental right and its guarantees are applicable to the States by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Legislation similar to that in Heller was struck down as unconstitutional.

I encourage you to read both opinions (and the dissents), even if they are laden with constitutional legalese and references to language from hundred-year-old opinions. You can argue all you want about your own opinions, but the opinions of the Supreme Court are the law of the land and are binding on every other court in the United States.

The problem is that you keep talking about compromise and an all-or-nothing attitude, but ignore the fact that gun owners have bent over backwards over the past century and you offer nothing but more limitations. How, exactly, is that compromise? Imagine this conversation:

  Lion: I want to eat you
  Gnu: No
  Lion: Fine, let me bite you
  Gnu: No
  Lion: Be reasonable, compromise with me here - let me nibble one of your legs, you have four.
  Gnu: You've already eaten my cousin and sister, and I like all four of my legs just the way they are, thank you.
  Lion: Being alive provides no guarantee whatsoever of a right to four legs.  Your four legs make me feel unsafe, you could kick me. I insist you let me have one.
  Gnu: No, I'm just fine the way I am.
  Lion: You just have an all-or-nothing attitude, all I'm trying to do is be sensible here.  I need to eat so I can hunt you next week.
  ...

As far as "sensible background checks" go, they already exist. You already cannot own a firearm if you fit a fairly broad list of disqualifiers, and attempting to buy a weapon at a licensed dealership and undergoing the already compulsory (if inaccurate and problematic) check will result in your wasting $20 and going home empty-handed. The "sensible" most people seem to be attempting to espouse today is reaching into private activities. If my father wishes to give me a gun that has been inherited over 3 generations, why must we go to the gun shop and pay them $20 to tell him he can? Why would I agree to risk a felony charge by loaning my brother a rifle for his two-week hunting trip without a $20 visit to the gun store?

"But the gun show loophole" you might say - if a licensed dealer sells an individual a firearm without undertaking the proper background check, they should lose their license. That's my opinion. If a private citizen sells another private citizen a firearm without undergoing a background check, nothing has changed or will change that. All you're doing is putting already extraordinarily lawful citizens in yet greater jeopardy of committing a felony.

Other than our fundamental disagreement about the Second Amendment, I perceive a core issue here: gun control advocates fail to take criminals into account. Criminals don't buy guns at gun shops that run background checks, they don't register them (ask California and Chicago), and they illegally modify guns (removing serials and shortening weapons). No proposed measures (even complete disarmament) would put even a dent in that, and criminally-owned guns are disproportionately represented in firearm crime.

So what, exactly, do you propose registration and further background checks would solve, and what assurance can you offer that civilian disarmament is not the end goal of all involved?

My interpretation of the Second Amendment is the only logical conclusion one can reach following a review of commentaries on it, and on the general view toward and position of firearms in the United States at the time of the drafting of the Constitution. Since that doesn't match the interpretation preferred by the NRA and its fans in the present day, the onus is on them to demonstrate how or why a genuinely new absolute individual right should be introduced and protected, and what we could gain from it.

Since most people I speak with that advocate gun control also advocate eventual complete disarmament as the end goal, why would I believe something different would happen?

Plenty of countries have strong regulation and much lower murder rates than we do, and haven't felt the need to move to complete disarmament. Nor have I advocated for it. You have, however, precisely as I predicted someone would, jumped immediately to that particular hyperbole in an attempt to cover up the fact that you can't refute the reality of successful gun control existing in the world. Same for the insipid "only outlaws will have guns" objection. Gun control works, has worked and continues to work in many free countries, and you're still trying to deny it by parroting tired old memes. All that's missing from what you presumably thought was a smashing knock-down reply is the Navy SEAL leading the class in the Pledge of Allegiance and the bald eagle swooping in to shed a tear as the liberal atheist professor runs from the classroom.

If you wish to discuss success of gun control elsewhere in the world, so be it. Please point us to appropriate research literature that identifies a causative link between gun control and proportionately reduced crime rates. I particularly enjoyed slatestarcodex' writing on the matter, but even he with good numbers and well-considered statistics is not as confident as you. Sweden and Norway, for example - rather strict gun control, reasonably low crime, but if you've spent time in-country you know there's a significant cultural factor there. Rather than gun control causing their relatively low crime rate, I'd assert that their culture has actually dictated both the crime rate and the gun control, but that's anecdata. Let's have some real discussion with real numbers and not hand-wavy statements about free countries.

Thus far, the Supreme Court disagrees with your interpretation of the 2A, and likely my own as well. I expect they come to a far more reasoned and logical analysis of it than either of us can, but for most of US history they have been on the individual-freedom side of its interpretation.

I don't know why you keep insisting I propose some nebulous "reasonable compromise" so you can batter down that strawman, I'm hardly the average "NRA type". If, however, that's what it takes for you to engage in civil discourse I'll again point out hga's list above.

Take, for example, nationwide reciprocity - this could actually further your apparent goal of universal registration and background checks, but appears to acknowledge some right to gun ownership which you also appear to vehemently oppose. "Shall issue" also falls into this category.

Allowing new machine guns is also inherently palatable to universal registration and background checks. Those weapons already require stringent registration and checks, and allowing manufacture of new ones would not change that, it would just stop artificially limiting the pool and accordingly the price. Long guns are already a minuscule part of crime rates and increasing the market without changing the registration requirements would not likely change the crime rate.

Repealing silly state-level ankle-biting laws regarding mostly cosmetic features that make it more dangerous for the law-abiding to keep and bear arms would have a positive effect on national standardization, which could also lead to an improved case for universal registration.

Reforming the BATFE would go a long way toward not continuing to alienate the gun-owning public with arcane, cryptic rules that place one at the risk of felony for simple acts, and would again be easy to align to a case for registration and checks. Streamline, simplify, control.

What do _you_ view as a "reasonable compromise"? This entire conversation has been one-sided, I've formed and expressed opinions, attempted to discuss what you wish to discuss, and you keep moving the goalposts. Seriously, let's get on with discussion of successful gun control in other countries. I've actually been seriously considering moving to a Scandinavian country and have, of course, been carefully reviewing the relevant statistics and requirements. I'd actually be able to take most of my guns.

Finally, ignore my assertions of what I think registration and checks are about. Tell me what they're about - how will they benefit us, what is the expected result, and so on? What's great about them? Why should we take another step toward the "you have zero rights" end of the spectrum?

Well, I think that's true. But you jumped straight from that to universal disarming, which doesn't follow. Not having a right to a thing does not automatically ban the thing; it simply means the thing becomes a privilege to be granted or withheld/revoked. A driver's license works the same way: you don't have an automatic inherent right to a driver's license, but that doesn't in any way imply an agenda to revoke all licenses and ban driving.

Take, for example, nationwide reciprocity

Does nationwide reciprocity actually make sense? Plenty of things require re-licensing or re-certification when switching states, and yet we still manage to maintain quite good records on those things. So this:

could actually further your apparent goal of universal registration and background checks

does not follow from reciprocity. All reciprocity does is let the least-restrictive state set the rules for all states, and that's not going to help with making registration or background checks work.

Allowing new machine guns is also inherently palatable to universal registration and background checks.

Why do people need machine guns? With driver licensing there's a good argument to be made that in most areas of the country a car is basically a necessity of holding a job, being able to obtain basic goods like food, etc., and there are still a bunch of requirements a vehicle has to meet to be driven on the public roadways and a bunch of modifications that can make a car no longer legal. So what positive good is served by people owning machine guns, or the modded guns you keep bringing up? You've argued no logical connection between making these things legal and increasing the effectiveness of registration systems; that's on you to demonstrate.

Repealing silly state-level ankle-biting laws regarding mostly cosmetic features that make it more dangerous for the law-abiding to keep and bear arms would have a positive effect on national standardization, which could also lead to an improved case for universal registration.

Reforming the BATFE would go a long way toward not continuing to alienate the gun-owning public with arcane, cryptic rules that place one at the risk of felony for simple acts, and would again be easy to align to a case for registration and checks. Streamline, simplify, control.

Let's stick to cars for a moment because this hits an actual important point. We already live in a society in which strictly-enforced but largely arbitrary laws regarding cars, their registration, upkeep requirements and traffic rules are routinely used to put people into permanent life-ruining revolving doors of debt and incarceration.

And there's the rub: guns are not unique in this respect. Cars aren't unique in this respect. There are lots of these bits of awfulness which are used to selectively make peoples' lives hell, in all sorts of areas. So if you want to simplify complex codes that primarily get used for selective prosecution, or attack selective prosecution from another angle, then by all means do so. Just don't treat it as something unique to guns, and don't push it only in the context of guns. Because frankly, I'd much rather work to get a poor person out of endless fines, fees and jailings over a traffic stop than work to get you a machine gun. It might turn out getting that person out of fines/fees/etc. ends up getting you the machine gun you want, but I want to see evidence of you on board with the plan for a reason other than your own desire for the machine gun before I'll trust you on the matter.

What do _you_ view as a "reasonable compromise"?

First: giving up on the idea of militias rising against the federal government. If it ever became necessary, and if the military stayed on the government side, well, we're getting really good at taking out resistance from the safety and comfort of a control room hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the action. Some dudes with camo and rifles aren't gonna cut it. And if the military doesn't stay on the government side, well, the arms are gonna be available. So that one's right out, and I'd argue for repealing the Second Amendment entirely to make it crystal-clear.

Then: registered and tracked ownership of firearms, sale and possession heavily taxed along with tax on ammunition, no sales permitted without full strict documented background check, immediate confiscation after any incident indicating unfitness to own, mandatory requirements for secure unloaded storage at all times the gun is not in use, ownership limited to well-defined types of firearms, ownership solely for the purpose of collectibility/historical value or for sport, use restricted to areas explicitly designated for such purposes. No open carry, no concealed carry, and anyone who wants a gun for the purpose of shooting other people (and self-defense is "for the purpose of shooting other people") automatically forbidden to ever have one.

Worried that criminals will still illegally get guns? Well, we're already busy starting to decriminalize drugs, so let's find another use for that enforcement money and prison space and devote the same bloated budgets, paramilitary tactics and crushing mandatory sentences to going after illegal guns. Make illegal use or possession truly carry the kind of penalties drugs carry right now. Forget multi-strike or "career armed criminal" laws. Make any crime committed with, or while carrying/brandishing, a gun into a "hard 50" or even just life sentence, first offense. Harsh prohibition hasn't worked with drugs because they're addictive and lucrative and large numbers of people will work to get them no matter what. Imposing these kinds of rules on guns would still allow the "fun" people want them for (owning a cool collection, shooting down at the range, going on a hunting/camping trip, etc.), which is the typical problem with prohibition attempts. Raise a few generations with these norms and the ingrained culture of using guns as tools to solve problems (where "solve the problem" means "kill someone" to the person wielding the gun) -- which we certainly have in this country -- will fade into the history books.

... and you have the unmitigated gall to claim that those of us on the other side of this issue are "all or nothing".

He seems to be unaware that those people have to go home to sleep when they're off their shift.

The US has never fought a war without a secure rear (well, eventually the Confederates found themselves in that situation, and they of course lost). It won't go well if this comes to past, and [censored by dang], but I really don't see the military any time soon, even in the middle of their Fundamental Transformation, lining up on the side of those who hate them with a burning passion. Especially the front line trigger pullers, which, of course, does not exactly include the drone operators.

If that transformation continues and succeeds, they'll be so much less a threat they'll probably only play a minor role, whatever side they take.

What I propose still allows people to own and use guns for the things they enjoy owning/using guns for, while going after the problem usages. It's not a complete ban, and in spirit it's similar to how gun control actually works in some countries. What's "all or nothing" about that?

Your proposal is a wild fantasy with as much grounding in reality as "Dear Hustler" stories. I'll even be so bold as to assert you likely haven't even read the relevant regulations from the countries you allege you're borrowing your "spirit" from; I have. I must admit you have certainly turned quite an epic troll here.

Still looking forward to reading your exploration of the causative link between gun control and reduced crime rates in free countries.

(it really does seem like your objection is "I'd no longer be allowed to own a gun for the purpose of killing other people", and my objection, of course, is that this isn't already illegal)

There are many vastly greater ills that plague our society; it is regrettable that intelligent people like you choose to waste so much hate and energy fighting something that has such a relatively miniscule effect on society. Prison reform, for example. Smoking cessation, for another. Drug law reform or repeal. There are myriad more solvable and more effective ills to correct that have actual strong causative effects.

I'm not interested in continuing this conversation further, whatever followup you may make.

[edit: dropping an errant comma]

Are you basing this on your own research, or are you relying on other people who wish to see guns banned in the US?

Depends on who is writing the "historical understanding". Are we talking about the courts, or the people who actually ratified the constitution?

One who many have made clear has no room for us at all, e.g. the couple in who's home now President Obama launched his political career planned on liquidating 25 million Americans who they judged couldn't be reeducated, adjust for population growth and that's now around 37 million, well over 10% of the population.

And it's only murder if my side loses, the winners after all write the history books. You should be happy for the fair warning of the folly of your actions, should you initially succeed in them.

That's something of a no true Scotsman argument, where any compromise offered by the other side can be rejected as unreasonable.

Besides, why should we be expected to compromise on our civil rights? What other civil right could acceptably be demolished over time?

If the NRA wanted to solely juice sales and sell more guns they would give heavily to elect more Democratic candidates. The current presidency has been great for sales [0].

0 - https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports/nics_firearm_...

(I consider myself to be a right-winger, as I am certainly pro-gun and pro-business, and straight as a rail, but I never heard about LGBT lobby concept, except in jokes about fashion. LGBT guys and gals are fun.)

- Buying new now no longer has additional hassle compared to buying used, since the difficulty of the latter has been increased.

- Two people are now forced to go into a gun shop where they wouldn't have before. They might browse for accessories or maybe a new piece.

This is rather similar to the software industry's attacks on the ability to resell. If the NRA was just a lobby for gun businesses, why would they not support private sales bans? They should want this kind of captive audience.

But this is in no way mutually exclusive from representing the interests of citizens who want to buy and possess those firearms.

It makes total sense that an organization lobbying against outlawing a product would be supported by both the manufacturers and consumers of that product.

NRA member here.

I neither manufacture nor sell firearms, and the NRA represents my interests re: gun ownership.