Comment by hermitdev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hermitdev | Hacker News Reader

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Let me preface by: I don't mean to offend, but I think your perception is fundamentally wrong.

Rural folk don't want help from your "our" because their situation is different than yours. What works for major metropolitan areas doesn't work for small or rural schools. In an area where likely career paths involve working on or inheriting the family farm or ranch, more urban-centric curricula don't make sense.

It's not that rural people in the US are more insular, it's that they need to be more independent. For instance, when the nearest ambulance may be an hour away, you learn to deal with emergency medical issues yourself, or you or your loved one die. When that ambulance cannot get to your house when the husband is having a heart attack, the wife somehow manages to get her husband into a vehicle to meet the ambulance somewhere the ambulance can reach. When the nearest sheriff is likewise an hour away when you call for help, if you even have 911, the sheriff is likely going to assume you have a shotgun, tell you to get it out, load it, and use it, if necessary.

It's not that rural people in the US are insular or unaware of the rest of the US, it's that their situations are entirely different from what city dwellers encounter. Ambulances, police and fire response aren't just a few minutes away. It can be hours before emergency services arrive.

And likewise, getting to even your local school that graduates at a HS level can take an hour or more. Getting to a college or university likely will take even longer.

edit: grammar, spelling, minor bit of clarity.

Since you mentioned having a gun, this is one of the huge differences between your average liberal elite and the average rural dweller.

People on the left simply don't understand the difference of living on your own. The independence is completely at a different level. You may very well need a gun to fend off some crazy banging at your door that won't go away. In the city, you have the assumption that the cops will swoop in when you call 911 (albeit a very mistaken assumption).

There is a lot of pundit handwaving going on right now saying that it's all just money that keeps gun laws from being passed, but people forget where the NRA gets its money. It's from individuals (and for the PAC, they don't even allow corporate donations).

There are lots of people that truly see any gun laws as government overreach from a bunch of politicians who are usually flanked on both sides with gun toting body guards.

Well, sorry for that tangent.

Does the possibility of needing to fend off some lunatic outweigh all the negatives of loose gun control? Rural residents will still be able to own a gun but maybe they should pass a psych test first and maybe that gun shouldn't be military grade.

The laws banning military grade weapons already exist -- the civilian AR-15 is not an military grade M-16, it is difficult to obtain an automatic weapon, destructive devices are banned-ish.

Fundamentally the problem is that gun ownership is a core American ideal (to enough electorally well placed people), so outright bans are infeasible and other restrictions cause a race by manufacturers to innovate around the restrictions.

The gun you want for reasonable home defense / deterrence in a rural setting is a shotgun, no? Very different to the assault rifle proxies typical used in mass shootings.

Assault rifles are automatic. We haven't been seeing automatic weapons in mass shootings.

You might mean "assault weapon," but that's a poorly-defined political term that can include cosmetic attachments and colors.

And plenty of people get AR-15s for home defense.

You are missing OP's point. A shotgun is a far better home defense weapon than an AR-15. So is a handgun. The AR-15 was very carefully designed for intermediate range combat.

It depends. The best gun is the one you're most familiar with shooting. If the one you'll spend the most time shooting is an AR-15, then it's that one.

It's also irrelevant. Home protection isn't the only reason you'd have a gun in a rural setting. They're also quite excellent for keeping groundhogs and coyotes off of one's property, and for recreational purposes.

This mindset of people who know nothing about guns (e.g. not knowing what an assault rifle is) claiming "You should only be allowed to have what I think you need" is the exact problem at the heart of this discussion.

> It depends. The best gun is the one you're most familiar with shooting. If the one you'll spend the most time shooting is an AR-15, then it's that one.

So what you are saying is that banning the AR-15 shouldn't be problematic for people, because they can simply become familiar with other options like shotguns, making them the best gun for them?

> It's also irrelevant. Home protection isn't the only reason you'd have a gun in a rural setting. They're also quite excellent for keeping groundhogs and coyotes off of one's property, and for recreational purposes.

> This mindset of people who know nothing about guns (e.g. not knowing what an assault rifle is) claiming "You should only be allowed to have what I think you need" is the exact problem at the heart of this discussion.

I think the exact problem is not "you should only be allowed to have what I think you need". Every regulation and law in existence is a variation of "you should only be allowed to do X to the extent I think you need". A speed limit is functionally equivalent to the statement "you should only be allowed to drive as fast as I think you need". They are all attempts at balancing utility (how fast you can drive) and costs for yourself and those around you (getting in a crash).

The actual problem is the mindset of people like yourself claiming the utility of weapons like the AR-15 for tasks like groundhog control and recreation outweighs the costs of AR-15s being used to take human lives.

> So what you are saying is that banning the AR-15 shouldn't be problematic for people, because they can simply become familiar with other options like shotguns, making them the best gun for them?

Why stop there? They can learn Jiu Jitsu and not need the shotgun! All things are possible when we are just speculating about how to take others' rights in theoretical scenarios we won't have to deal with ourselves.

The AR-15 is a fun gun to shoot, which is why it is popular.

> I think the exact problem is not "you should only be allowed to have what I think you need". Every regulation and law in existence is a variation of "you should only be allowed to do X to the extent I think you need". A speed limit is functionally equivalent to the statement "you should only be allowed to drive as fast as I think you need". They are all attempts at balancing utility (how fast you can drive) and costs for yourself and those around you (getting in a crash).

Speed limits are something we all understand culturally, and are not set at the federal level.

If huge swaths of the country had no cars or roads, they might clamor for federally lower speed limits every time there was a bus accident. "The actual problem is the mindset of people like yourself claiming that going 10 MPH faster outweighs the real loss of human lives." And that's basically what happens with guns any time there is a mass shooting.

> The actual problem is the mindset of people like yourself claiming the utility of weapons like the AR-15 for tasks like groundhog control and recreation outweighs the costs of AR-15s being used to take human lives.

The second amendment's purpose is for the gun's use for the purpose of taking lives. Nobody's arguing groundhog control is the only valid use case for having a weapon. Valid use cases include as a check against government tyranny (as protected by the second amendment), home defense, as well as the other reasons I mentioned.

And if you're going to complain about the AR-15, you have to state where you draw the line. Presumably a ban of AR-15s alone wouldn't accomplish your goals. What guns and gun features are you proposing banning?

As you say, the 2nd amendment is about taking lives (or more accurately anout maintaining a well regulated militia), so I could care less if a given gun is “fun” for people living out their tacticool fantasies. The 2nd doesn’t guarantee the right to have fun.

An AR-15 is a good all purpose weapon. Great for intruders but also excellent for shooting racoons or opossums that are killing your chickens. Or coyotes that are chasing your cows. They are also good for use in a well regulated militia, being necessary to maintain a free state and all.

You know what the difference is between an AR15 and your typical .30-06 hunting rifle? Beside the fact that the 30-06 will do more damage, it is usually brown wood instead of black. That is why people are scared of the AR15, it's black. You can throw a big clip on any semi-automatic hunting rifle and it will be just as deadly.

Plenty of semi-automatic hunting rifles have a small magazine with a plate that closes over it and won't accept a larger magazine without modifications.

You're right that "semi-automatic" deserves more focus than "black".

I do wonder how likely it is that the "typical" hunting rifle is actually bolt action though.

Bolt action are usually cheaper, but a semi-auto hunting rifle is exceedingly common as well.

But people don't need AR-15s for home defense. Muskets would be fine for home defense, and coincidentally were what was standard at the time the 2nd amendment was passed. People don't need anything more than a musket/shotgun type weapon for home defense, and we need to have laws that make sure the process to get these prevents them from getting put in the hands of the wrong people.

The second amendment wasn't passed for home defense, nor should our basis of law be "what people unfamiliar with guns think others should use for home defense."

Unlike a shotgun, the AR-15 is usable by frail people. You can be 90 pounds, be on blood thinners, have weak muscles and bones, and still practice with an AR-15. Essentially, a requirement to rely on a shotgun would be discriminatory, particularly toward women and the elderly.

Last April in Oklahoma, a home defense situation with an AR-15 made the news. There were 3 armed intruders that got killed with only 2 rifle shots. That is a great example of just how effective the AR-15 can be in home defense.

Where are you talking about? Because as a rural Illinoisan, none of this rings true. Response times aren't anywhere like a major metropolitan city, but they are not nearly as abysmal as you're saying.

Also, assuming kids are going to be working on "the family farm or ranch" is ignoring the past 50 years agricultural consolidation in America. The economic landscape of the rural midwest has changed a lot in just my lifetime.

Thank you, this is more in keeping with what I meant (though I might have done a clearer job saying it.) The place I have in mind is admittedly denser than what you describe, and is in many ways the worst of both worlds, but I think the lessons are similar. My home town is one of two 20,000 person towns in a 1000mi^2 county of 120k. Any time you have the combination of major repairs needed at schools and budget shortfalls at either the town schools or the county schools, the idea of consolidation gets floated around. My hometown is a town of 20k with about 950 in high school: enough for some variety, but not enough for all the really fancy stuff that the huge new schools have. On the other hand, the fastest speed limit along the school is 25mph, and it borders the walkable part of town (the rest of the town having been built after WW2.)

It seems like someone is always talking about bonds and matching funds from the state to build some monstrosity at the edge of town so it's only reachable by bus.

The problems of the school are many, but facility is not very high up on the list. The lack of smartboards, likewise. All the best teachers/professors I ever had used whiteboards or blackboards, and plenty of them held classes in buildings 3 times as old as my high school, with trashcans in the hallway to catch the rainwater. That's not to say there's not a place for new things in education, but thoughtful use of it doesn't require brand new everything.

I honestly believe that smartboards reduce the quality of education. The majority of my teachers who have used them didn't teach with rigor. I believe that the use of a board one has to write on forces them to know their material better.

As a former rural resident, I want to add that laws designed for cities often don't make any damn sense for rural areas. I basically always carry a small pocket knife, and a while back I got hit with a hundred dollar fine (and they took the knife) for having it on the NY subway, and I was furious for days afterwords. In a small town that sort of thing just doesn't happen.

Yeah, that'd be quite a shock. The thing that strikes me first is how much less appealing it'd be to bring lunch to work if I couldn't cut anything for it at lunch time. And then there's the inconvenience of not having my knife at work, which would come up at least several times on even the slowest days.

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