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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

I agree 100%. As someone who owns guns, I don't want to have them taken away. But I don't want criminals to have them. Personally I would give up mine if everyone else did, including the police, but that isn't going to happen. And at this point there are so many guns in the US that I'm not sure what a realistic solution is. Even if we could get past the politics, mass confiscation would probably be ineffective (to make it work would require the use of significantly more force than US citizens will accept and far more police than we have, or near universal compliance).

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I have no idea how things really work in e.g. Switzerland or Israel, but one can imagine a stylized regime where every healthy adult undergoes military training, serves for a period of time, learns to use a rifle which they keep, and all other guns are heavily restricted or outlawed, especially handguns. And the rest of the military can be dispensed with.

And then, stringent training can be mandated for drivers too! Just make simulators of the quality used for pilot training and require people to pass difficult tests where they react to unexpected events while driving.

The hard thing about making guns illegal is that criminals will still have them...

This cliché bugs me, because it is repeated so much, and it is generic - you can say "if you make X illegal, only criminals will have X" about anything and it's just as obtuse.

Making something illegal for law abiding citizens is the point!

When someone (either in authority or anyone) sees a person with X, and it's legal, then they don't know if it's a criminal or not without further investigation.

When they see a person with X, and it's illegal, then they do know it's a criminal. This is an enormous advantage to enforcement, if that is the goal.

Obviously you can, and many people do, make arguments based on crime statistics that outlawing guns works, but I prefer a logical approach.

It isn't obtuse. Maybe you could try making your argument in a less inflammatory way, and those with a different view from yours could see if there's a way to understand one another?

You seem to be objecting to both the tone and the actual meaning of the word. Since I stand by the meaning, perhaps there is a better way to express it. But if you still disagree with the meaning, perhaps you could elaborate.

A phrase I've seen on HN is "thought terminating cliché". Would that be a better way to express my opinion, by calling it that?

You are interpreting the phrase specifically in a way as to make it a tautology, rather than responding to the "strongest plausible interpretation" as required by the site guidelines.

Currently both anti-social and pro-social individuals possess firearms. If possession of firearms is criminalized, those who tend toward pro-sociality will give them up disproportionately. Such a policy would therefore tilt the balance of power toward those with anti-social inclinations. This is a bad outcome.

I didn't mean to express that the outcome was good or bad.

And I don't take a position on whether the authorities are grouped with the "anti-social" crowd. Some people would say they are.

Purely for the sake of discussion, I presumed the conceit that there is a "justice system" which is "pro-social".

In that context, it seems clear to me that criminalizing things is a very useful tool.

If you reject the premise, you might be perfectly correct, yet I would still expect people to be addressing those who believe there is a "justice system".

Surely all sensible anarchists can imagine believing in "law and order", and assume that a random person probably does?

Even if one doesn't believe there is a justice system, one might believe there could be. I automatically assume anyone who wants to discuss topics like crime and justice believes in the concepts.

The judgement "obtuse" comes with the sense I have that the context is otherwise violated.

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