Ask HN: Advances in technology yield deadlier weapons. What do we do about it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Advances in technology yield deadlier weapons. What do we do about it?

5 pointsjMyles13 comments

As with an attack stemming from a major vulnerability in an open source project, mass shootings give us a spotlight on the vulnerability that persists in our fragile flesh bodies in the face of advances in ballistic (and other firearm) technology.

The attack in Las Vegas was not possible with black-powder weaponry (ie, the best weaponry available at the time of the American revolution). It was probably not even possible with an M1 Garand (the semi-auto rifle that gave US troops an advantage in WW2).

Although I think we're all allergic to the ongoing propaganda which muddies the technical specifics of different firearms - which are significant - it is true that that AR15 platform and 5.56NATO round have brought a new capacity to American civilians.

So, I'm looking for good ideas in response to the following questions:

1) Does it make sense to have the same "gun control" policies the world over? Or is it better to have different laws in different places?

2) Does it make sense to have one set of rules for military and police, and a different set of rules for other citizens?

3) Does the evolution of firearm technology demand more restrictive laws?

1) Not now it doesn't. That would have been smart to put in the universal declaration of human rights in 1948, but no one foresaw this coming up. Not that everyone follows the UDOHR anyways.

2) Yes, absolutely. Civilians aren't subject to the same training and filtering as M&P. Nor are they subject to the same rules and oversight. Red blood cells and white blood cells both flow around our bodies, but they have radically different shapes and functions. Of course the analogy breaks down, don't be a pedant.

3) Absolutely. But the sad fact is that legislation is always at least 10 years (more like 100+) behind technology. For the most part slow government is a good thing. No civilization could survive a few generations of whiplash laws, changing from one extreme of values to another and back and forth. It would be a bit like shaking a baby.

In the end I think we need more people from STEAM fields to sacrifice their health, sanity, and well being to serve in government to fight the inevitable entropy that all systems suffer. Why? Practical knowledge and experience vs. career politicians more interested in getting re-elected than solving problems.

You can generalize the situation to a graph with year on the x axis, and something like kinetic energy available to an individual on the y axis. So in ancient times, you'd have chariots, then mounted Knights, then cross bows, then black powder weapons, then automobiles, modern firearms etc. recently jumbo jets (9/11). In the current era, Elon musk is an individual with access to essentially ballistic missiles.

This analysis illustrates that lots of things can be used as weapons, and as using vehicles as weapons indicates, gun control has limited effect if some one really wants to hurt people.

Extrapolating to the future, long awaited flying cars could be another bump on the curve due to much higher velocity and kinetic energy than a terrestrial vehicle. Then there was the character in Snow Crash that had a nuclear warhead he carried around wired with a deadman switch that set it off if he died. See also techno anarchism.

I would argue that gun control is a "local" problem so there is no need for uniform worldwide policy and regulation (unlike e.g. global tragedy of the commons problems like global warming)

Many countries have different rules for military/police and citizens when it comes to regulation of firearms.

Extreme thought experiment: suppose technological breakthrough makes it possible for John Random Citizen to cheaply home manufacture a nuclear bomb / weaponized smallpox etc. understatement: it may be a good idea to heavily regulate this given that some tiny but nonzero fraction of citizens are violent/angry/suicidal. I'd draw the line well before this (but I'm not from north america)

I think the downsides are much bigger than a few dozen people killed a year. Yes, it's a tragedy. But gun homicide rate in the US is not terrible, and most of it happens between gangs rather than civilian shootings. Many of them will get guns from other sources anyway, and like banning drugs or alcohol, it will give criminals more sources of income.

Disclosure: I'm not American and I think someone needs to keep Trump in check.

We should be looking into motive and psychological makeup, was the person on antidepressants for example? I feel all of those non religious based mass shootings were done by regularly medicated people - they were normal for years and all of a sudden snapped... more needs to be done testing long term effects of medications designed to change peoples brains...

This might already be obvious, but to my way of thinking, the answers are:

1) No

2) No

3) In the case of the USA, no.

I think gun restrictions work very well in some places, but I'm terrified of having a ban on guns inside the belly of the imperial hegemon of the world.

Setting aside guns for a moment, the Las Vegas attack could have been just as easily, and far more cheaply, accomplished with high explosives or a nerve agent; both of which can be simply manufactured with common, well-published knowledge and little more than a high school glassware set.

The assailant yesterday decided to save himself a few hours under the fume hood, and just buy a fully automatic firearm (probably on credit, because he's going to off himself anyway) after passing a background check and getting his tax stamp.

Similarly, there's a disturbing trend in recent years where people figured out you can just drive a truck/van through a crowd.

One option could be to ban/heavily regulate use of trucks/vans. Another option could be defensive architecture (build bollards everywhere). Another option could be to fund extensive surveillance efforts. Yet another option could be to treat it as a mental health issue (it often isn't "terrorism"). Another option could be to decide that the cost of any of these options exceeds the benefits, and it is best to leave cities vulnerable to this kind of thing.

> to decide that the cost of any of these options exceeds the benefits, and it is best to leave cities vulnerable to this kind of thing.

This is the hardest option to swallow, but if you honestly care about individual Liberty, it's likely to be the preferred one.

The biggest problem with this discussion is that that option is thrown aside so quickly, no matter how logically it is presented.

Not to mention, the technology to manufacture fully automatic weapons (especially if the intention is to fire into a crowd indiscriminately) is straightforward.

Anyone with a machine shop and standard industrial materials can build an open bolt machine gun. There are about seven or eight parts involved if you want to be able to stop firing in the middle of a burst, about five parts if you don't care.

If the parts are crude enough, and the aim doesn't matter that much, you don't even need modern manufactured ammunition.

Machine guns are hard to make. They may be theoretically easy, like building something like Facebook. But something portable that doesn't jam or fall apart is much harder.

Hard to do isn't a deterrent, it's a market. Making it criminal simply creates a criminal market.

It's a cost. If it costs too much, someone might go for another option.

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