Hacker News Reader

Comment by ok_dad | Hacker News Reader

Remember, guns are for the "well regulated Militia", so regulating gun technology and access to them are inherent in the 2nd Amendment, IMHO.

Therefore, I propose:

- Regulate access to guns; require training, background checks, and a database of gun owners that is cross-checked against mental health records and criminal legal records - Regulate gun tech for civilians; don't allow magazines or speed-loaders for civilian guns, so it takes longer to reload (will help with how easy mass-shootings are now) and disallow other features that are designed to make killing in battle more efficient (basically just allow hunting and target-shooting guns with reduced reload efficiency) - Cover mental health (and other medical procedures) for all Americans

View on HN

Mental health checks sound like a good idea, but there is a risk that it prevents people from actually seeking help.

See the way mental illness is treated in aviation - mental health care is inaccessible to pilots because seeking help for serious issues will put a black mark on your record and end your career. So pilots with serious mental health issues intentionally avoid getting help.

Not that it's a bad idea just that it's not as easy as it seems. Penalties for seeking medical care push people away from seeking care and in turn make the health issues worse.

Yea, I've been through mental stuff as well in a career where it runined my future (I had to switch careers), but honestly if a mental health doctor thinks you might be a danger, then perhaps you shouldn't own guns for a period of time. Perhaps a system where doctors can report "this person is a danger to themselves or others at this time" and then after 1 year the report is scrubbed from the database. I do understand this is a "slippery slope" and perhaps it is hard to not have "false positives" (aka: people who lose access to guns who shouldn't have), however I prefer a small rate of "false positive gun removals" to a small rate of young children getting shot in the face. To me, as someone who has owned guns and even concealed carried them for several years, I would happily trade all of my guns and the perceived "defense" they provided me for a reduced mass-shootings rate.

I don’t disagree that gun legislation is the solution, but the democrats are all but certain to lose in the midterms, so it’s unlikely anything will be passed.

Mental health records generally are sealed like all medical records. Are you proposing they be accessible?

For instance the Virginia tech shooter received mental health care most of his adolescence, bought a gun legally and still committed the worst school shooting to date.

My question is around stopping an active shooter once it’s happening.

Involuntary mental health holds or longer commitments are already included in today's mandated background checks. It's limited to those because we don't want to dissuade people from seeking mental health treatment, especially former military or others who really don't want to be disarmed by the state.

In my experience, many people proposing additional gun legislation really have no idea what's been in place in many states and/or the entire country for years (e.g. background checks on almost all gun sales, waiting periods, magazine restrictions, weapon restrictions, etc.). Also, it doesn't help that studies have been done by decidedly anti-gun organizations that show universal background checks do nothing to reduce gun crime and even suicide [0].

The best way to stop an active shooter is obviously to prevent the crime. The next best are trained individuals with firearms, and since time is of the essence you might want them already onsite. We have armed guards for banks even though the money is generally FDIC insured. We have armed guards for cash transfers and even coin pickups from grocery stores. Yeshivas often have armed guards — why can't we harden secular schools? And no, literally no one is saying teachers have to be armed.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10472...

> Yeshivas often have armed guards

Awesome, now we're comparing America's problems here to what is effectively an occupied war zone.

Perhaps further mental health related laws are a no-go, however reducing the effectiveness of firearms through restrictions on features seems like a no-brainer. Remove the ability for a shooter to pull the trigger more than once per 5+ seconds and require them to concentrate on reloading while their heart is pumping and they are shaking and you will likely reduce the deaths from any one shooting spree.

Yeshivas in the United States, unless of course you consider Los Angeles or NYC an occupied war zone.

> My question is around stopping an active shooter once it’s happening

This is like treating the symptoms, not the disease. Cops should be sufficient for stopping an active shooter, and if they are not then that's their failure. It's society's failure to let it get to that point in the first place.

Sure, but sometimes you have to treat symptoms. If an active shooter does happen to come to a school they need to be neutralized way faster, not an hour

I think you both agree there. How do you make cops that are willing to neutralize them? Clearly more funding, weapons, and power doesn't work.

Agree, but we've been trying to treat the symptoms for decades now and it is just getting worse.

> Remember, guns are for the "well regulated Militia"

That’s a willful misinterpretation of the 2nd amendment that has been specifically rejected by the Supreme Court.

It’s also contrary to many state constitutions, which provide an even more definitive individual, affirmative right to bear arms.

>That’s a willful misinterpretation of the 2nd amendment that has been specifically rejected by the Supreme Court.

It was the correct interpretation of the 2nd Amendment as supported by the Supreme Court for two centuries until they changed their mind in 2008, and even then four justices dissented.

What the Constitution says and what Constitutional rights exist and in what form comes down to the subjective interpretation of the court, and as history has shown, even recently, that interpretation can turn on a dime.

>It’s also contrary to many state constitutions, which provide an even more definitive individual, affirmative right to bear arms.

Those constitutions were either updated after Heller or else were unconstitutional prior to 2008.

> It was the correct interpretation of the 2nd Amendment …

Hardly; your interpretation was incorrect when considered against the contemporaneous definitions of both “regulated” and “militia”

Contemporaneous writings by the bill of rights’ authors only further bolsters the argument against this creative reinterpretation of the second amendment proposed by modern prohibitionists.

> Those constitutions were either updated after Heller or else were unconstitutional prior to 2008.

You’re arguing that Colorado’s constitution was unconstitutional from when it was written in 1876 until 2008?

“The right of no person to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall be called in question …”

See article 2, section 13 of the original 1876 Colorado constitution:

https://archives.colorado.gov/sites/archives/files/Colorado%...

It has remained in its original formulation ever since:

<https://advance.lexis.com/documentpage/?pdmfid=1000516&crid=...>

> willful misinterpretation of the 2nd amendment that has been specifically rejected by the Supreme Court

I can interpret the text how I want, regardless of the opinion of a captured, political organization like the SC.

> It’s also contrary to many state constitutions, which provide an even more definitive individual, affirmative right to bear arms.

See: Article VI, Paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution (again, I reject the SC's opinion on these matters, so I believe the supremacy clause should override those state's constitutions)

I'm not going to reply to you again, though, because clearly we have different base axioms we're starting from here.

It's true, you could also interpret the first amendment to mean that you have freedom of picking any religion you want, but you still have to pick a religion.

That wouldn't make it reasonable, but you could.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com