Comment by dk775 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dk775 | Hacker News Reader

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I understand this works elsewhere, but unfortunately in America we have a long history with firearms. Growing up in a rural area it’s normal, times have changed, AR are seen as normal in places where it was a shotgun or a ruger in the past.

Point is most discussions related to strict control on these rifles to me is mostly pointless, the genie is out the bottle if talking about curbing assault rifles they have been flooding the streets for over a decade at this point.

Me personally I also believe these things make America America, problems and all. It may seem like a weird worldview to some, but some love the fact America has this wild edge to it, it’s not perfect but if you’re living right and being responsible it mostly works out fine. We have old people like everyone else. Making our country work like other counties isn’t as common as looking at what other states are doing in my experience. And states have their own micro cultures that are more or less permissive of this stuff, again that’s what many love about the US

> but some love the fact America has this wild edge to it, it’s not perfect but if you’re living right and being responsible it mostly works out fine

There’s nothing quirky, loveable or wild about school massacres and an aggressive, poorly trained but hyper-militarised police force.

Your “oh shucks, we can’t help it because… well that’s just who we are!” message exacerbates the false notion that positive, widespread societal change isn’t impossible. Which benefits certain people, not least of all gun manufacturers flooding the country with high-powered weaponry.

I don't see people dying to get out of America. But there are plenty dying to get in, so perhaps there's something America has that outweighs whatever you think is going on.

By the way, you probably think far more people are killed by "assault rifles" than really are, judging by your hyperbole. In 2019[1], there were...364. By contrast, there were 328 million people in the US in 2019[2]. That means 0.000001% of the population, which, while tragic, is statistically insignificant.

[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

[2] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2019/popest-n...

(bonus: breakdown of murders by state and by weapon: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...)

Guns are too prolific and necessary. They prevent thousands of crimes every day. In addition to defense, we also use them as pest control for hogs and dear and other things and we are currently not killing enough boars, it's a growing problem, but I digress.

Due to enforcement issues any outright ban will just prevent law abiding citizens from defending themselves. There are certain cities that have failed in the last 10 years resulting in police response times over an hour. In the case of Detroit violence was consistently rising during that time until several perps were shot committing a crime and it was highly televised and then violence receded.

Guns empower women to defend themselves against people who could otherwise physically dominate them, as well as other minority groups who may face violence in their neighborhood. There are lots of countries with armed civilians that don't have school shootings.

There has also yet to be a reasonable technical classification that can identify a so called "assault" rifle from other rifle platforms.

Government tyranny is also real and legitimate threat to the population. Especially today with an ever invasive fed surveillance program, secret courts, and countries that are bypassing the bill of rights by offloading the violations to its allies. Oh and they are still discussing the legality of which and will seem to be in a perpetual legal battle over it. Many people argue you can't fight tanks/drones ect.. with guns but history Hong Kong is an excellent example and they aren't even armed, imagine if they were. They are willing to die for the cause and they would have the opportunity to escalate it to violence. The regime would have likely had to back down.

School shootings are about mental health and bullying and the relationships they have with adults around them. It's easy to make a bomb. If people want to inflict mass violence they will, we need to fix the root issues.

>There’s nothing quirky, loveable or wild about school massacres and an aggressive, poorly trained but hyper-militarised police force.

Neither of which has anything to do with the second Amendment, and ready, free access to firearms. The school shootings have much more to do with our criminally underfunded education system, and so overfunded law enforcement with terrible perverse incentives, warrior instead of Guardian ethos, and the complete dissolution of all semblance of high-trust culture through incubated multi-decade corruption.

Solve the right problems first. When teachers can't even count on specialists to help with the hard cases in schools, and social workers are stretched as thin as they are, that's what sews the field with the seeds of desperation or anger driven slaughter.

And don't think it'd not happen without the firearms. Once you go over the edge, you find a way.

> There’s nothing quirky, loveable or wild about school massacres

This is the result of the negative consequences of a given freedom, and you could say similar things for any given right. This isn't isolated to just the Second Amendment, though, it's true of all rights.

First Amendment: "There's nothing quirky, loveable, or wild about hate speech or anti-Semitism".

Third Amendment: "There's nothing quirky, loveable, or wild about keeping the National Guard from being able to quickly and efficiently respond to medical emergencies in areas far from bases."

Fourth Amendment: "There's nothing quirky, loveable, or wild about letting murderers go free just because of bureaucracy"

I imagine most people would agree with the above statements. I imagine most people would also agree that these rights are all super valuable and provide lots of utility. The "Wild West" aspect of America that most people find appealing, though, is the view that America tends to weight the individual rights side of the balance really heavily (with the tacit acknowledgement that the negative side of things is also bound to be bigger as well).

> and an aggressive, poorly trained but hyper-militarised police force.

No contest here, such police forces are a problem and I think lots of second-amendment advocates would agree.

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