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Comment by piyush_soni | Hacker News Reader

As an outsider, I've always wondered about this: Since a lot of people in America are so much hell bent on keeping a gun for a hypothetical future situation of government turning hostile (completely ignoring the 'real, actual' killings that are happening very frequently because some psycho got access to what they obtained for their own safety) - will all these people be personally willing to take responsibility and go to jail for (mass) murder if some psychopath gets access to their gun and shoots people because of their negligence? I mean someone sane should be responsible for the continued acts of psychopaths after all.

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I think it's irresponsible to not take reasonable precautions with guns. I keep mine in a GunVault. But mandating that by law and assigning liability to the owner is a slippery slope. I agree it makes sense with guns, but if someone breaks into my house looking for prescription medicines and I failed to adequately label poison, am I liable? If they ban guns and an armed robber breaks into my house, are the politicians who wrote the law liable?

To this and all such similar analogies, sure, anything can be used to kill, but let's talk about only the things whose primary purpose is to kill. Like Guns. Bombs. Canons. etc.

Now one might argue that the "primary purpose" for them is their safety and not killing, but no, it's not. That is assuming safety by creating a 'threat of getting killed' to the opponent.

I know this punishment is little harsh (and should be decided on per case basis based on the level of negligence) - but we should also agree that if there's no punishment whatsoever - this will continue happening. Mass killings is a real problem that needs to be solved, and most of them get access to guns in their mom's drawers or something like that.

Canons? Now I've gotta look up the CDC numbers on canon deaths for last year. I wonder how many died from grape shot vs cannister rounds?

Figure of speech.

I don't think your drug analogy is right, there most certainly are laws that mandate secure storage of dangerous items, explosives, animals, chemicals, etc. A more apt one would be an explosives store owner that locked their front door but didn't store their explosives in a safe. If someone broke in and stole the explosives wouldn't you expect the owner to be in big trouble?

A significant number of guns used in crimes are stolen, so its too bad that more gun owners don't believe in secure storage like you do. I don't get your "slippery slope" comment, could you expand on this more?

If this person poisons a dozen or ppl with your poison - yes the hell you are responsible!

edit: if you were a business that works with poisons and you did not provide adequate security measures, you would be so fined if someone steals the poisons. Then why you as individual wouldn't be responsible for the same thing.

Strange line of argument. But I will be okay if such policy is broad based. All good doctors to be responsible for some one in their professional indulged in massive malpractice, all s/w developers be responsible for someone writing virus or other kind of malware and so on.

The primary purpose of s/w / computers / medical profession is not killing.

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