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Comment by Shacklz | Hacker News Reader

> Whether or not you agree that the people on these lists deserve to be hurt for their political opinions, many innocent people are also being caught in the crossfire.

Not sure if your choice of words is very unfortunate or if there's a sarcastic undertone; because in the US there seem to be way too many innocent people that are caught in the literal crossfire of gun violence. Finding ways to address this with legislation seems, from my non-American point of view, only reasonable - and yes, of course it will also affect and limit people that did not contribute to gun violence; what would your solution be, enforcing it only for people who already committed a crime, so essentially when it's too late to inconvenience them?

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Some people hold opinions on pre-crime approach to crime. Some would even argue that creating lists of potential troublemakers, dissidents, and all around problematic characters is.. not noted for great results throughout history.. including that of US. I personally hold this really controversial opinion that crime should be addressed when crime is committed. Doing it before it is committed breaks the fabric of reality and/or common sense.

The US still has said lists(eg. No fly list and sexual offenders lisssst); are you just more okay with having some people on a precrime list than others?

I can't speak for the person you're replying to, but I'm against any No Fly lists, both for the pre-crime aspect and for the the opaqueness with which its implemented.

Sex offenders, by definition, have committed a crime. So that's not really a pre-crime list. Although, sure, some people may not belong on those lists, and it's pretty life-ruining for them.

Your point reads a bit like this: "These injustices exist that you should be against, so why are you supportive of them?"

And I am really uncomfortable with those as well. I am not sure why you would assume I accept those lists and not others for some reason.

No fly list in particular is an abomination. That said, given that Delta is creating a its own version ( and asking other cartel members to join ), soon we may be revisiting this conversation.

The amount of crimes committed with firearms seems to generally correlate with the ease of access to firearms. Trying to make it less convenient to obtain and own firearms, and this includes registration thereof, generally reduces the amount of firearms in circulation, implicitly also reducing the amount of crimes committed with them.

It's like seatbelt-laws, yes, they infringe your personal liberty to do however you pleases, but they also generally help to reduce accidents and, implicitly, reduce cost for society (and not just in terms of money).

Again; from my outsider-point-of-view, that the US even has to have these kinds of discussions seems so weird to me. There are way too many people dying in the US because of the absurd amount of guns, not trying to address this with legislation (as every other advanced nation managed to do) seems outright absurd.

The vast majority of firearms that are used in crimes are obtained illegally, and thus will not be subject to these lists. The data on this is widely available. This legislation is purely a punitive political measure.

Illegal guns are former legal guns. S&W doesn't run a factory that only sells to criminals -- those legal guns are diverted to criminals, via the generally lax attitudes of American gun owners.

And there will certainly be a great influx of illegal guns once you provide thieves with a state-compiled shopping list of where to find them.

But that will only justify more gun control measures. It's a win-win for them.

Indeed. If every gun were registered, and the gun owner (or gun store, or gun manufacturer, whoever last had the registration) faced personal financial/criminal liability when one of their registered guns was used improperly, it would make people take their guns a lot more seriously.

This is already a thing. I had a rifle stolen some time ago. Shortly thereafter shootings occurred on a freeway nearby with a rifle with the exact caliber as mine. The ATF and DEA were at my house for a chat. Luckily for me, the person that stole my rifle was caught and imprisoned and forensics verified that my firearm did not match the one used in the shooting. I was also lucky I saved the docket number from the Sheriff when I reported it stolen.

I have since left California and moved to a state where everyone is heavily armed. Now my rifles are pea-shooters in comparison to what everyone else around me has. Firearm crime is a very rare occurrence here.

If you are attempting to say that stricter guns laws lead to more firearm deaths, you would be quite wrong. California has one of the lowest rates per capita in the US. This law needs some improvements for sure, but here are the CDC stats for the lowest 10 states (columns are deaths, population, and rate per 100k):

  Delaware (10) 93 973,764 9.6
  Iowa (19) 294 3,155,070 9.3
  Minnesota (27) 465 5,639,632 8.2
  California (06) 2,945 39,512,223 7.5
  Connecticut (09) 190 3,565,287 5.3
  Rhode Island (44) 48 1,059,361 4.5
  Hawaii (15) 62 1,415,872 4.4
  New Jersey (34) 368 8,882,190 4.1
  New York (36) 804 19,453,561 4.1
  Massachusetts (25) 247 6,892,503 3.6

From http://wonder.cdc.gov/ucd-icd10.html

I don't count suicides. My state has a high alcohol consumption rate and high suicide rate (loneliness).

Including only homicide, california is 3.19 per 100k and my state is 2.51 per 100k. Sadly I can't get it to drill down to my county. They also do not include justifiable homicide as a data point.

Everybody else counts suicides. Also, not knowing your state I am willing bet there are confounding factors. The vast majority of firearm homicides are in urban areas.

I am not going to be able to get the exact same figure as you since the way the search form is set up it is pretty easy to get slightly different numbers. But the only state from the last 3 years of data that would seem to fit your comment is Minnesota. Obviously if you move away from some of the largest metropolitan areas in the US crime rate goes down. But that does not even matter. California still falls in the bottom 8 states despite having several large, difficult metro areas, and the highest percentage of its population living in urban areas of any state, at 95%. In contrast, Minnesota is at 17th, with 73.3%.

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