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Comment by sammex | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree. Selling a gun to a hunter is not the same as selling a gun to a known child murderer. Both is "just" selling a gun but they are very different in practice.

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You can't take responsibility for what someone will do with your product. This is insane. If someone buy your car, how can you make sure he will not use for kidnap someone?

Of course you can. We just sell cigarettes it’s not our fault problem of people smoke them and get sick?

Absolutely that yes. Cigarette salesmen are performing a valuable service.

People make dumb things like smoking. We already know that prohibition doesn't work. Putting warnings in the cigarets doesn't work either. So, the next thing would be the seller give a speech about how bad cigarets its for each sale?

If you take a look at the history of smoking, it's very clear that education and taxes DO work.

Society is much better when we have individual freedom and responsibility, which includes the ability of people to make bad decisions.

And here “freedom” means you are forbidden from discussing certain topics at work?

Yes. The environment and time is controlled by your employer to maximize productivity for the business. You're free to do whatever you want on personal time, including not working for a company you don't like.

Usually people making your argument also say that private corporations can and should moderate speech. Do you support that? If so, then why do you disagree with workplaces banning topics?

Setting aside whether business can or should regulate employee speech: can you expand on how them doing so makes people more free?

You're misunderstanding the concept. Individual freedom means you're free to make your own choices and then take responsibility for those choices. This freedom is protected by your rights granted by the state.

Corporations setting workplace rules have no impact on your freedoms. You're free to work there or quit, or suffer the consequences of breaking their rules.

Yes you can, and this is why know-your-customer laws exist. This isnt black and white, and depends on the kind of transaction. But if I’m selling cars, and someone comes in looking shifty, and says they want a big SUV to mow people down with, then claiming “I’m just a merchant with no responsibility on end use” is honestly weak bullshit.

> looking shifty

How do you decide this? Your intuition? The clothes someone is using? The way his talk?

If seller offers guns to general public (e.g. gun shop) and child murderer does not have restriction on gun ownership as a part of their sentence, then not selling gun is not a political action, it is an extra-judicial punishment.

Yes, but this distinction doesn’t require a corporate policy to implement. One transaction is legal and the other is not.

Would you like to mandate background checks for every potential customer?

ya, one would be illegal

Does your view change if the gun was sold to a republican vs a democrat? Or a communist?

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