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Comment by hpkuarg | Hacker News Reader

New York's carry laws in particular, and how they play out in practice, is ripe for corruption. In places near the city (i.e. applicable to the majority of the state's population), you basically have to know the police chief or the sheriff to get a carry permit; this should be unacceptable for a Constitutionally-protected right. If on no other basis than this, their laws should be revised.

This can probably be generalized to every may-issue jurisdiction.

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Somewhat related to this case is the way in which the Santa Clara County Sheriff was using concealed carry permits as a way of soliciting campaign contributions from Silicon Valley executives.[1]

[1]https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-23/apple-ch...

Much of NYC is SO dense that it seems absurd that anyone, even police, should be able to fire a gun there. It's almost impossible to do safely in any context.

I understand that people feel compelled to protect constitutional rights, but it often seems to defy some situational realities of the modern world? Are we really expected to forever carry this rule from a time when there were fewer people in the entire country than a single borough in a modern city?

Consider the war on drugs- not just a complete failure, but actively harmful, especially to minority communities, while rich white users continue about their business largely unmolested. You can get anything you want your first time in a visit to any American city inside of an hour. Just stop by a restaurant kitchen. Banning firearms would be about as successful. So the argument is, why criminalize a huge number of people who aren't criminals just because some criminals and mentally ill people use guns? It would lead to another drug war situation.

So I guess if you swing it the other way, the popular rhetoric around drugs is that they'd be better off legal and heavily regulated.

Pro-drug proponents are all for this. Why are pro-gun proponents against more regulation, especially lobbyists?

Regulation is a broad term for this context. I'm sure pro-gun proponents would be more than happy if the government regulated for product safety and quality and are generally fine with age limits and restricting sales to licensed dealers.

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