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Comment by lwhalen | Hacker News Reader

Good. The gov't has no more a right to track my guns as they do my book purchases. "Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a gov't agency.

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Hopefully, you don't own a car or motorcycle; you'll want to stick with bicycles, because the government already tracks your vehicle purchases.

What about property purchases? Without a county domain registrar on titled property, it's your word versus somebody else's that you own your property. You won't want to buy real property since the government tracks that too (and for centuries) and it's publicly searchable. The government jackboots will say you don't own the land you stand on without that, just like the thugs of the InterNIC/ICANN do regularly with centralized DNS. In short, don't buy real property.

You'll also not want to buy a plane ticket, as those are tracked as well.

Don't open a bank account--your bank will regularly report about you, especially large transfers of money. Find a nice hole in the ground on your untitled real property and convert to metal. Or use Bitcoin if you trust the system enough.

Definitely don't use a cell phone--they can find you.

I use most of these in order to function in society. That does not preclude me from not wanting them to be tracked. As you so neatly pointed out the alternative is to not live at all.

People don't use books to kill, maim and disfigure other people, they use guns.

There are zero logical reasons to prohibit a database that maps gun metadata to the gun record (search by name is actually detrimental to proper investigations). I've heard lots of emotional reasons, but I haven't heard a single well reasoned logical argument. Just a lot of reductio ad absurdum.

They can use books to inspire other people to kill, maim and disfigure other people.

Sure, buying an orange peel can result in death too. Guns just happen to be especially efficient at it.

Mein Kampf, periodicals like Der Stürmer, The Communist Manifesto and the many other books like What Is to Be Done?, they were part of vastly more leveraged ways to end up killing people with guns, gas, or starvation/overwork than any single gun, or the collective guns in civilian hands, which, of course, weren't an issue in the disarmed populaces that were genocided in the 20th Century by the 10s, probably 100s of millions.

Well, not that I agree with it entirely, but here's my understanding of the argument (which might be entirely wrong):

Going way back, the 2nd amendment entitles US citizens to own firearms because it's supposed to be a government for the people, by the people. If the people no longer support the government, they can revolt (ala american revolution). At the time, citizenry owning firearms was sufficient for a revolution to be successful. See 3rd amendment, as well.

So, the 2nd amendment was really an escape clause for citizens if they no longer wish to support the government. It just happened to be written as a gun measure. Having a governmental database controlling gun ownership thus violates that intention.

Is there an argument in here? None of that has anything to do with having an registry of who bought a gun.

Vehicles have to be registered, and so should guns. For essentially the very same reasons.

The argument is that a gun registry defeats the intended purpose of the second amendment, which (indirectly) is to prevent the government from stopping a popular revolution.

When you say indirectly, you gotta make the connection for it to be an actual argument. Something like "when the government has a list of every gun owner, they could stop a popular revolution because (X insert here)".

You can't hand wave it into being. I don't see the connection to a registry at all. So you're an evil dictator and want to kill that revolution, what good is a list of 150m individual persons? What good is the mapping from "identification number" to "gun owner"? Is it important which "guns" participate in the revolution? Can anyone tell that?

The "indirection" here is on the intention of the 2nd amendment, which while written to provide for gun ownership is actually intended to provide for popular revolution. Having said that, yes, I left out why a gun registry might restrict the probability of a revolution unstated.

Let's imagine it's 1860, and the local ex-slave population is acting up. But, you have a registry of all ex-slaves who own guns. You drive around with a posse and confiscate them all before a popular revolution gets going. Is that in the best interests of the local people? Probably not, thus a registry in this context could be used to suppress the citizenry.

The same thing is true today, but realistically there is no way individual gun ownership in 2016 is going to be sufficient to for a population to successfully revolt. It's not like we are letting people own gunships. However, the 2nd amendment hasn't been updated to reflect modern reality. In a lot of ways, this boils down to an "originalist vs living constitutional" argument.

But in that story it's the decision to use the database to carry out confiscation which is unconstitutional, not the existence of the database in the first place. If a government decided to confiscate all the cars from Hispanic people by using their vehicle registration database, that would be unconstitutional too - but that doesn't mean having a vehicle registry is invalid.

Practically everyone owns a car. There'd be some pretty obvious writing on the wall if a small vocal minority demonized cars and convinced the gov't to confiscate them from one minority (racial or otherwise) everyone else would catch on quick. Not as many people have skin in the game in terms of gun ownership.

Why don't you trust the populace with their guns rather than ask the populace to trust the gov't with a registry? For X amount of bad things to happen (where X is a large number) you need a lot more coordinated or systemically encouraged action in the first situation whereas in the latter a few insulated members of the elite and a loud lobby by a few interest groups would suffice.

Sure, but the premise here is that the population no longer trusts the government to serve their best interests, nor perhaps abide by the constitution.

It's all about checks and balances. The second amendment gives some power to the people to revolt (in theory), as a check against government power. If the people need to trust the government not to do something unconstitutional (i.e. not confiscate weapons) for that to be effective, then the check is no longer useful and it defeats the purpose of the second amendment.

How does collecting a gun database prevent a revolution? Concretely, what's the argument here other than "surveillance is bad"?

Using such a database to deny a citizen the right to purchase a gun would be one way, for example, but I don't see that mentioned here.

A gun database enables mass confiscation, and historically a gun database precedes mass confiscation by a few short years.

Historically? When has this happened in the past?

Off the top of my head:

Nazi Germany, initially using "well intentioned" Wiemar law, in fact (the period after the WWI defeat was very chaotic and bloody). See this book by the #1 RKBA legal scholar for all the details: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1598131613/

The description also helps confirm this next example:

Any country they invaded with registration lists, including the Netherlands; perhaps the #1 US RKBA activist of the 20th Century got started down that path in basic training after WWII, when a refugee from there related an atrocity he'd witnessed, where a whole family was machine gunned in the village/town square after the head of the household couldn't produce a handgun the register said he had.

The above examples are particularly instructive since by definition you can never know who might in the future use such data for ill.

Soviet Russia if I remember correctly; in fact, if I remember correctly, there was not a single genocide in the 20th Century that wasn't proceeded with the pattern, aside from China, where the Communists instead dried up the supply of guns held by the population by imposing "rifle taxes" on the wealthy. Basically, their life was forfeit unless they supplied the Communists with a certain number of guns, and they moved heaven and earth to do that, not that it did them any good in the end.

Of course, the poorer the population in general, the easier it is to pull of such a gambit, or a registration followed by a confiscation, so many fewer have guns.

Communist Cuba, for sure. They came up with a catchy slogan, got too many people to register, confiscated the guns, and then gangs of them started having fun with their class enemies.

As noted elsewhere in this discussion, in smaller numbers for select types of weapons, with of course the option to remove them from the state, this has happened in California when the status of the obsolescent (but certainly effective, e.g. used by the recent Dallas cop shooter) SKS, and in New York State. Something like it might be playing out right now in Massachusetts as their AG decided to redefine their "assault weapons" law, but she's still changing her not actually all that official position on it (i.e. it's published in unofficial venues like the office's web cite, no proper rule making process was followed).

Another case of antiquated laws losing touch with current realities. Are people really that naïve to think that a few handguns or rifles will matter against a government with superior weaponry?

This isn't the 18th century anymore; handguns and assault rifles won't stand up to tanks and jets.

Granted this is a massive over simplification, but during the Revolutionary War a bunch of farmers with the simplest of firearms did pretty well against better equipped, organized, trained soldiers.

In many fights of this type (internal) victory doesn't necessarily require militia A defeating army (with tanks) B. It can come from militia A being a large enough PITA to warrant a change in plans, or gathering enough popular engagement and outrage to make a difference, or for members of Army B to say "hey I don't want to shoot (or be shot by) my neighbors in Milita A". FWIW I am not a proponent of armed revolt against our government, but I think your question regarding AR-15s vs M1 Abrams isn't capturing a possible/likely reality.

That's a heavily romanticized vision of the American Civil War. The revolutionary army was composed in a good part of pre-existing militia from the colonies, which was later expanded with enlisted civilians.

Like I said, super simplified. But surely you aren't arguing that the revolution army was trained or equipped to the same degree as the British Army?

I don't see why you're being downvoted, but: trained and well-equipped people with hunting rifles can form an effective guerrilla. However, whether they could do much in the US today other than harass the civilian population, much in the same way as violent gangs in the inner cities already do, is highly questionable.

The guy in Dallas got a pretty good body count with zero local support. Local support counts for a lot, just look at Vietnam, Iraq and so on.

Ask the south Vietnamese government how all that superior firepower kept them in power.

And the peoples in the "sandbox" who have or whom are out waiting us.

But you're OK with the car registration system? And the cell phone IMEI database? And the no-fly list?

Edit: I should have been more general with the "you". Only the opposition to the gun database has succeeded. There's no general conversation about privacy; there's no coalition of pro-privacy orgs with a consistent view on what should and should not be stored in databases. Why is this?

As someone who agrees with the OP I am definitely not a fan of the no-fly list and other centralized registration databases.

> But you're OK with the car registration system? And the cell phone IMEI database? And the no-fly list?

uh, did he say he was?

i'm sorry, did i neglect to read half the article, or half his comment, where these things are mentioned?

Cell phone database is questionable, and cars are for those on the road. And I'm not liking the idea that in the near future, plate scanners will know where I'm going all the time. I should be able to move without the government knowing.

Of course, book is a deadly weapon.

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