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Comment by proc0 | Hacker News Reader

The glaring problem is that police can't stop crime from happening. Some cities have rampaging gang violence, which often are gun-free zones. It seems to me this is a higher priority problem to solve before attempting to disarm everyone... which would encourage the existing law breakers to break the law even more and to claim many more victims. It's setting people up for much more suffering, and also no guarantee that the "bad guys" will never acquire guns.

Take the guns from existing criminals first, it's already illegal. This is why some think there are ulterior motives here, and disarming the public may have other purposes, like police enforcing the whims of those in power.

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You're missing the point of stricter gun control laws. No one thinks that criminals will just "follow the laws" and give up their guns. The point is that the vast majority of armed criminals don't machine the weapons from the metal on their own. There is a supply chain, and some link in that chain are not criminals. Stricter regulations will impact that supply chain and make it harder for people to obtain guns who shouldn't have them. (It's also not "all or nothing"; we don't need to ensure that no criminals ever acquire guns. Any reduction in the number that do saves lives.)

Laws restricting public carrying of weapons aren't geared towards stopping career criminals, they're geared towards preventing injury and death caused by "lawful owners" accidentally, or intentionally but recklessly, firing their weapons in public, thinking they "needed to" or "should" do it. If someone wants to carry a firearm in public, it means they believe there is a situation where they will need to fire it in public. And as we know, humans are fallible and often think they "need to" do harmful things in situations where they don't. Those cases are what public carrying laws are intended to curb.

(BTW, most deaths due to firearms occur not by thugs/gangsters/career criminals, but by lawful and, prior to the incident, "responsible" gun owners making mistakes.)

Not to put a fine point on it, but everything, and I do mean everything you are saying is a lie, to the point of blood libel.

I'll just point out the most provable one: in 1980 there were 1,955 fatal gun accidents, in 2019, the most recent for which the CDC has numbers (they've been preoccupied) 486. During that period, the population increased by about half, the guns owned by it more than doubled. In part because they become a lot more useful outside of states like New York because we went from two states, Washington and Vermont that were Shall Issue or better to 43, with 74% of the population. Per million residents 8.6 to 1.5 accidental deaths.

Your claim completely flies in the face of 41 states allowing any citizen of good standing, not even a licence required in 24 with another next year, carrying concealed.

I'm not sure what you think the numbers you mentioned "prove"; you listed numbers for accidental gun deaths without comparing them to the total number of gun deaths. The questions we're discussing are "are more than 50% of gun deaths attributable to unintentional gun killings?" and "can regulations about who can carry guns, where, and when reduce that number?" Your statistics don't address either question.

"Take the guns from existing criminals first, it's already illegal."

AKA Bloomberg's "Stop and Frisk" policy. Pretty sure that's already illegal/unconstitutional.

"This is why some think there are ulterior motives here, and disarming the public may have other purposes, like police enforcing the whims of those in power."

"The Second Amendment is not about duck hunting."

>The glaring problem is that police can't stop crime from happening. Some cities have rampaging gang violence, which often are gun-free zones.

It's not a glaring problem that police can't stop crime from happening - that isn't their purpose, and barring the use of Minority Report style telepaths in jars of goo, not even feasible.

>Take the guns from existing criminals first, it's already illegal.

We do, after they commit crimes. What legal means are you suggesting to take guns away from people before they commit crimes?

> We do, after they commit crimes.

I would be surprised if most gun violence is first time offenders that don't repeat because their gun was taken away. I would guess they keep getting illegal guns and continue living that life and putting everyone around them at risk.

> What legal means are you suggesting to take guns away from people before they commit crimes?

More prison time, perhaps, but not without prison reform of some kind, which is another problem. However, removing people from society for long enough time should make everyone else think twice.

Granted, first time offenders who go insane is a different problem. My point is there are other bigger problems, and the fact those are not solved by gun control suggests it won't solve it for these other edge cases.

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