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Comment by elforce002 | Hacker News Reader

As a foreigner I find this subject very complex since the right to bear arms in on the US constitution.

To change or "rewrite" the constitution trying to deal with this subject could dissolve the US.

Banning guns altogether (rather improbable) will only leave law abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals.

More protection in schools could be a starting point to address these awful events.

I'm still in favor of law abiding citizens having a way to defend themselves. My Dad and Mom were almost killed by a burglar with an illegal gun while they were at home!. A burglar got inside my house while my pregnant wife and me were sleeping. If she were to go to the bathroom or anything else, I couldn't possibly imagine what would happen.

For context, it's practically impossible to buy a gun in my country. I wouldn't recommend anyone to vote for laws restricting any law abiding citizen to defend themselves and their loved ones.

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This really isn't the shape of the policy debate in the US. Nobody is seriously talking about rewriting the constitution or banning guns outright. The fundamental issue is that there's a politically powerful minority that is able to block essentially all meaningful attempts at any kind of gun regulation and they do. That's it and it's not likely to change in the short term.

I live in California, where it's illegal to have a magazine that can hold more than 10 bullets (a standard Glock 17 holds 15+1). It's also de-facto illegal to own an AR-15, since you have to neuter the gun in all sorts of crazy ways for it to be "California legal". You also can't buy any recent (recent meaning, in the last several YEARS) handguns due to the also-obviously-illegal-yet-still-a-thing CA handgun roster.

You're right that nobody is seriously talking about rewriting the constitution; rather, states and other actors are just outright passing laws that blatantly disregard the second amendment. So it's actually worse than that. It'd be better if they were honestly just trying to remove the second amendment from the constitution rather than just de-facto abolish it through ridiculous measures.

> Nobody is seriously talking about rewriting the constitution or banning guns outright.

https://deadline.com/2022/05/michael-moore-repeal-second-ame... https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/texas-school-sho... https://newrepublic.com/article/166628/democrats-repeal-seco... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/john-paul-stevens...

The final piece linked above is from a Supreme Court justice!

Meanwhile, in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31517777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31517768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31514876

The qualifier was 'seriously'. As one of the sibling replies says, it's a fringe view. Retired (and sitting) Supreme Court justices can and do have fringe views.

> Nobody is seriously talking about rewriting the constitution or banning guns outright.

That's simply untrue.

> The fundamental issue is that there's a politically powerful minority that is able to block essentially all meaningful attempts at any kind of gun regulation and they do.

Such regulations are drafted in ignorance and have far more to do with making guns less scary to ignorant people than in actually affecting public safety.

> Nobody is seriously talking about rewriting the constitution or banning guns outright.

People are talking about both, but they are on the fringes. OTOH, they are convenient for the defenders of the status quo to elevate to the level of principal alternative, because it helps deflect from the real debate, which they don't want to have.

> Banning guns altogether (rather improbable) will only leave law abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals.

How do you imagine this works? I’ve been ‘at the mercy of criminals’ my entire life, but I’ve never had to fear getting randomly gunned down in my school, or on the street, or in a bar brawl.

I do not see how a sensible person would ever choose the alternative.

Your fear, or lack there of, may or may not reflect reality. It's not really a good basis for an argument.

The right to bear arms is based on the idea that a person has the right to defend themselves, their life, loved ones and property.

This basis is plenty sensible. Plenty of history is filled with violent criminals, governments, invaders, marauders, rioters, pirates. And it is sensible to suppose that, even if not present now, the future will have them too.

>Banning guns altogether (rather improbable) will only leave law abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals.

Is that statement true though? The only person I know who owns a gun is a farmer and he never shot a criminal but wild boars. In the countries I lived(2 Western Europe, 1 Eastern Europe, 1 Middle East) no one I know ever shot at any criminals, any criminals were dealt through the police, we actually never saw the criminals because they avoid the confrontation even if you don't have any arms. The only time I was a victim of a crime where I was confronted by the criminal, it was when a person really high on drugs tried to rob me on a train. I wouldn't be shooting that person anyway, I simply notified the security at the train station and professionals took care of it. The rest of the times the criminals I encountered are usually things like selling me fake SD cards, which is also something I wouldn't shoot people for(though I wouldn't oppose capital punishment for fake media storage).

Is this different in the US? Are people shooting at criminals all the time? Will a JavaScript programmer in Austin be defenceless in the face of the dangers in Texas if they made the guns illegal? What's the situation on the ground? What is the number of criminals shot per year by an average US citizen?

It's exceptionally rare to shoot at criminals or even to use a gun in self defense. When a person in the United States purchases a gun, the three most likely occurrences where that gun will be used to shoot a human are:

1. suicide

2. murdering a romantic partner

3. murdering a stranger after an argument or while the owner is committing a crime

Harvard has a good site that summarizes current research on how guns are used in the United States.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-own...

Per the CDC, defensive gun uses are estimated in the hundreds of thousands per year. It is not "exceptionally" rare to use a gun for self defense (even if actually killing someone with a gun in self-defense is relatively rare).

> More protection in schools could be a starting point to address these awful events.

The evidence in this area shows that increased police presence in schools does not reduce the amount of school shootings, but does increase the number of students arrested.

> Banning guns altogether (rather improbable) will only leave law abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals.

So, ah, what are the Police for?

Also, hundreds of millions of people in developed countries without guns around the globe live "at the mercy of criminals" but experience less crime, less violence, less homicides and less gun deaths than people living in America.

Your statement makes no sense.

Well, I have first hand experience being at the mercy of criminals. Do you think the police is always available when crime happens? How many cops would any country, let alone a city, need to provide safety for every citizen?

Your statement makes no sense.

> To change or "rewrite" the constitution trying to deal with this subject could dissolve the US.

As an American, this is a risk I’m willing to take.

Okay. In practice, how do you plan on achieving this? What steps can we take to “rewrite the constitution” (other than an actual revolution overthrowing the current political system, which… would require guns and even then would probably be impossible)

There are literally very clear steps to amend the Constitution. It’s not like Steve grabs a pitchfork and YOLOs his way to no second amendment.

> An amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, or, if two-thirds of the States request one, by a convention called for that purpose.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/our-governm...

It’s not as rare as you might be imagining. The last amendment was finalized in 1992.

I’m familiar with how the constitution is amended.

Given the structure of the political system in the US, it is impossible for a two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress to agree on any even mildly controversial topic. You’ll note that the 1992 amendment was about a boring and uncontroversial topic. The last one that had anything to do with a cultural hot-button issue was the repeal of alcohol prohibition, in 1933, when the political system operated completely different to how it does now.

So, yes there’s a mechanism. But getting together enough votes to activate that mechanism is impossible in the actually existing reality of the United States. So, now what?

> I’m familiar with how the constitution is amended.

It didn’t sound like you were.

Let’s start with one state or 1 member of congress saying they want to amend the constitution. Then get a 2nd and perhaps a 3rd. You can probably see where this is going.

It is absolutely not impossible for 2/3 of Congress to agree on a controversial topic. Believing that is very defeatist.

We can also just sit around and wait for the next school to get shot up and act confused again.

> You can probably see where this is going.

Yeah, I can. It will get to about 49 or 50 senators (at the absolute maximum) and then stall out. Many of those senators, especially in marginal states like Arizona, will then become subject to difficult primary and general election challenges, dissuading anyone from trying again anytime soon.

> It is absolutely not impossible for 2/3 of Congress to agree on a controversial topic.

Provide even one counterexample, then.

> Believing that is very defeatist.

Yes it is. I’m a defeatist on this subject. Things don’t magically become possible because you really wish they were. Sometimes defeatism is the factually correct position. But you’re making moral/emotional arguments, not factual/logical ones.

I’m also a defeatist on such subjects as whether I’ll live forever, or whether I can win the lottery and stop working, or whether Iran or Hong Kong will become a democracy anytime soon.

> Provide even one counterexample, then.

I don’t need to. It should be obvious why it’s true.

You're not really following this through to it's logical conclusion.

If you want to get rid of the 2nd Amendment, yes there is a process for this. So let's fast forward and imagine that, somehow, you've gotten enough people and States on board with changing the Bill of Rights, and to keep it simple the 28th Amendment simply says "the 2nd Amendment is hereby REPEALED".

But then what? Pass laws that do, what, exactly? Confiscation?

>It’s not like Steve grabs a pitchfork and YOLOs his way to no second amendment.

Well ... the original founders of this country did, in fact, YOLO their way to a new one. They did it with guns though, not pitchforks.

Confiscation is one option, yes. Voluntary buy backs another. Making essentially everyone who owns a gun feel embarrassed and like a social pariah is another. Choosing to buy a gun should be thought of as one of the stupidest decisions the average person can make.

It’s called changing our culture and it doesn’t happen overnight.

Like I said in another comment, another good option is to just say, “Welp, this won’t work.” Then acted surprised when the next school gets shot up.

Can you explain how you think confiscation would work?

So let me get this straight. You think gun ownership is a major problem, and that to get people with guns to get rid of them your solution is to ... bully them?

How does this bullying work in places that have high levels of violent crime?

> How does this bullying work in places that have high levels of violent crime?

Slowly.

>>>It’s called changing our culture and it doesn’t happen overnight.

So why don't we dump our energy into figuring out why we have so many socially-maladjusted young men who are lashing out violently? Then we can reduce the number of murdered children AND still keep our guns.

I mean, even in developing countries that are awash in weapons you don't see lone-wolf teenagers gunning down schoolkids regularly; school attacks are usually due to organized terrorist movements. Something is seriously broken in our national psyche and we refuse to address it.

> Choosing to buy a gun should be thought of as one of the stupidest decisions the average person can make.

Yeah, we're not at that point. We aren't remotely close. Recently polling shows the country split almost 50/50 on support for stricter gun laws [0]. If we ever do reach the point where popular sentiment reflects your quote then you've _already_ won, and changing laws to ban guns isn't much more than an afterthought.

If somehow you managed to push through a gun ban before the country has changed, you're going to see a revolt. What do you do when police departments refuse to enforce the law? Probably entire state governments as well? Are you going to send in the army to go door to door confiscating guns? Assuming that the soldiers are willing to follow orders...

Barring a major flip in US culture - which doesn't appear to be remotely likely in the near future - the only possible outcome of a ban on guns is civil war. That isn't dramatic right wing propaganda. The right to bear arms is enshrined in the US constitution and upheld by the Supreme Court. You may not like the fact that it is, and you may not think that it should be _but it is_. If we reach the point where constitutional rights are meaningless then the entire US system of government has failed, and its demise won't be a pretty thing. I hope you're smart enough to realize that a US civil war in the modern era would be incredibly bad for everyone and would probably result in the deaths of millions.

0: https://news.gallup.com/poll/357317/stricter-gun-laws-less-p...

You don’t have to actually rewrite it, amendments to the constitution don’t have the be consistent with those that come before it. Prohibition and repealing prohibition for example. If you somehow had enough political will you literally dissolve the US then you have enough to amend the constitution many times over.

It's not necessarily rewriting the constitution, and could take decades, but ensuring liberal judges get a majority on the supreme court is all it really takes in order to reverse the 5-4 D.C. v. Heller (2008) decision that first affirmed the 2nd amendment grants individuals the right to handguns for private use outside a militia. It's congressional legislation from there. Roe v. Wade already showed it's possible to overturn an opinion that grants individual rights.

Indeed, you’re right. The Supreme Court is the only remotely plausible way policy on gun control, or any other cultural hot-button issue, can ever change in the US.

However, given the present composition of the Supreme Court, it’s reasonable to assume that they will not do anything meaningful on this subject for decades, at least.

> The Bill of Rights feels intense today, but try reading it in the mindset of someone in 1791. A few years removed from Louis XVI selling Divine Right of Kings. Then suddenly “Hell no, also we’re gonna say and print whatever we want, you can’t search us, and everyone gets guns.”

Source: https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1525640468129673216

Right to bear arms is one of the most profound ideas of the American constitution.

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