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Comment by barnaclejive | Hacker News Reader

That is an interesting anecdote. Here is another - No engineers I've worked with cared about guns at all.

Are you sure? Most gun enthusiasts at tech companies are in the closet. Had I known just how much my bosses hate guns (all the way up to the CEO), I would have kept my mouth shut about my hobby.

It would be an amazing coincidence if none of your coworkers were interested in guns. Around 30% of Californians have at least one gun in their home. Naively extrapolating: that means if you have 15 coworkers, there is a 99.5% chance that at least one of them owns a gun. Even if only 10% of bay area techies have guns, the odds that at least one of your coworkers has a gun is still over 80%.

When my hobby became publicly known at work, I suddenly discovered I had quite a few coworkers who liked guns. They were quiet about it at work because they were afraid (rightfully) of hurting their careers.

Back in the early 2000s I worked at a company where we did a fun “Bring Your Gun to Work day” on Wednesdays. Instead of going to a restaurant at lunchtime we went to the shooting range instead. Was a really popular activity, probably 1/3 of the office participated. Some people brought several guns to try.

Good times! Could never do this these days in Silicon Valley though :(

Honestly I would rather there wasn't a "bring a lethal weapon" to work day. How very American.

If you want to go down to the range after-work, by all means do so, but the way you Americans trivialise a toy good for nothing but war in many cases is really fascinating.

Trivialize is probably not the right word. Exercising our right to bare arms is built into our constitution.

Firearms are most definitely not toys. A bring your gun to work day is a way for coworkers to bond outside of work as well as a great learning experience for the ones without much knowledge on how to safely and responsibly handle a firearm. It’s also a lot of fun shooting targets.

"but the way you Americans trivialise a toy good for nothing but war in many cases"

Ever heard of hunters? A LOT of people hunt. Also, until relatively recently it was common for american kids to bring guns to schools, and leave them in their car until after school so they could go hunting, etc. Instead of addressing things like mental health issues, it's easier to demonize guns because the politicians don't actually have to do anything other than introduce token legislation.

It's a right written in the constitution, and only referring to guns as "weapons of war" is political rhetoric. And hunting is not the only reason to own a gun- that's also political rhetoric.

Unfortunately, most of your “conservative” coworkers have also learned to keep their non-woke beliefs to themselves, lest they lose their job.

Heh. Purely coincidentally, the only people I've known to have any guns were my engineering schoolmates (brought them to school -- apparently that would be a cause for panic and a SWAT deployment in the US but it's kind of a "meh, whatever" thing around here in .cz.)

Depends which part of the U.S. you're talking about. In 10 states campus carry is allowed. In a number of other states, the campuses can choose to allow it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Campus_carry_map_of_US_st...

There's also some overriding laws, depending on the state. For instance, some states consider dorm rooms or personal vehicles to be an extension of ones private residence, and therefore not subject to firearm restrictions.

Yeah, Czechia is full of surprising moments. I remember my classmate bringing knife that could reliably kill somebody to school and spreading butter on his bread with it. The teachers noticed, made some stupid joke about it, and continued lecturing.

Anecdote: I went to science/tech magnet school, and quite a few of us were interested in guns. Same thing in engineering school (though that was GA Tech, so kind of a gimme).

Potato guns?

Vegetable artillery.

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