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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. And people advocating stricter gun laws can't afford NOT be open about this. "We don't want to take your guns, we want to change attitudes so your grandchildren won't wan't to own guns, and most importantly won't feel the need to own guns". That said - gun show loophole is just that - a loophole. Should be fixed.

I think those who want to keep responsible gun ownership also need to realize they have a lot to win from stricter regulation. With the current culture of short-sighted and reactive legislation, the next ban will be rammed through congress after the next terrible shootout - and that's not the law gun advocates want. I think they are mistaken if they believe they can just use the NRA as a roadblock to keep people buying AR's at gun shows forever. I don't think the political climate a generation from now allows that.

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>That said - gun show loophole is just that - a loophole. Should be fixed.

The "gun show loophole" is a misnomer. It's not a loophole. It's simply the case in most states in the US for private sales you're allowed to sell your gun to another person without checking with the federal government first, something that's not true of dealers.

Yes. It seems like an obvious bug...

"It's not a loophole. It's simply [describes something that anyone can see is a loophole]."

It was an explicit compromise that was added in order to pass the original national background check legislation. A loophole is generally something unintended which this was not.

That doesn't appear to be a universally agreed upon distinction. https://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Tax+Looph...

> A deliberate or accidental provision in tax law that allows an individual or corporation to be exempt from some provision. Most loopholes are deliberate and are created to ensure that the law is not draconian, to please a lobbyist, or for some other reason.

Well, okay. In that case the word doesn't actually mean much beyond "this is the way the law is". What makes the "gun show loophole" rhetoric dishonest is it has nothing to do with gun shows.

Gun shows are a convenient way to find a bunch of private sellers to easily exploit the deliberately created hole in the law.

Sure, you can call it the "private sale loophole" if you want. Go for it. The agonizing over the semantic merits of the "gun show" part of the term is the same tactic as turning any gun argument into a debate over "clip vs. magazine" or "there's no such thing as an assault rifle" stuff - intentional missing of the point to derail a necessary conversation. Might even call that "dishonest rhetoric".

It's not an attempt to derail "a necessary conversation". There's no conversation, since neither side is going to budge. And it's not a semantic argument, either - you're using misleading rhetoric to misrepresent the law as it exists.

>Exactly. And people advocating stricter gun laws can't afford NOT be open about this.

People advocating stricter gun laws have been open about their intentions - it's obvious that such people just want to live in a safer society. Gun advocates just assume they're liars and really just want to come for their guns.

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