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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

Sure. There are people who think guns are harmless and do not need to be regulated. There are those who do.

At the end of the day guns do not shoot people on their own, though.

Yes, but gun regulations don't operate under the assumption that guns shoot people on their own. They operate under the understanding that people who do damage can do much more damage with guns than without.

Pretending that any of the regulation of guns or AI is done with the understanding that they are anything other than powerful tools that can be used by humans to do profound damage is a strawman argument. We all understand that guns don't shoot people on their own. Don't oppose regulation by characterizing the opposing viewpoint as something it isn't.

I'm well aware of the distinction. I'm simply saying that it is a fact that guns do not shoot people on their own. Some countries regulate differently, obviously. You also seem to think governments, which are made by the said humans that can do "profound damage", are infallible.

At the end of the day you either democratize the access, or you don't. Those who want to break the law will break it either way. All you are going to do is punish those who follow the law by not giving them access.

For what it's worth - I couldn't care less about guns and wouldn't mind their banning. However I trust my government. If you do not, I would not want guns to be banned. But that's the thing - a government I don't trust would not want citizens to have guns to begin with, and thus the dilemma.

I don't think governments are infallible, and I didn't argue as such. I don't agree that regulations are inherently bad. If you want to race to the bottom, I can easily pull out some extreme scenario of giving AK-47's to every citizen upon graduating Kindergarten, but it would be a stupid argument based on nothing you've actually said, other than taking your point to the most extreme extent. Please give me the courtesy of not assuming I hold the most unreasonable extension of my argument as well. It only sabotages the conversation.

People driving drunk do profound damage as well. Cars don't kill people on their own. Would you agree with making drunk driving legal again?

When a tool allows a person to do a lot of damage, it should be regulated to prevent bystanders from taking the brunt of other peoples' bad decisions. A race to the bottom doesn't really help anybody.

If you're going to argue that every tool that allows people to do harm should be not regulated at all because the tool isn't anthropomorphized, I'm not sure how we can have a discussion at all about it.

> People driving drunk do profound damage as well. Cars don't kill people on their own. Would you agree with making drunk driving legal again?

No, because drunk driving inhibits your ability to operate a vehicle lawfully.

a better example would be using your phone while driving. should this be illegal? it's well documented that using your phone, even if hands-free increases car accidents. should phones be designed to automatically shut off while in a vehicle?

your ak47 example is also just silly. please use better examples to make your point.

It is still a regulation, and supports the argument that a tool that can be used to do damage should have rules to reduce the risk and severity of damage where reasonable.

There are already laws governing phone use while driving in many places. In my experience, people using phones while driving can be extremely dangerous, and I've often wished that people couldn't do so.

My AK-47 example was intentionally silly, and was framed as something silly and extreme, as a direct comparison to you accusing me of believing that government was infallible. I'm not sure why you're pointing out that something I explicitly pointed out as extreme and unreasonable is extreme and unreasonable. That was the entire point: that we will get nowhere by attacking straw men.

Given that Switzerland allow guns, this idea is that guns will make it worse is wrong. People don't need guns to make significant damage. Because guns are harder to get in Europe, nut-jobs used trucks.

The solution is to educate people to do less self or other's harm. To understand how to operate with these things.

But educating people is expensive and difficult. It also sometimes backfire in creating a population that's much harder to persuade. So yeah let's regulate these idiots to death...

I don't disagree with you, and I find Switzerland a really interesting example. Building good education, good culture, and good social values is often a much healthier outcome than regulation. In my experience, trying to build effective, reproducible education is not just expensive and difficult, but nebulous as well. A lot of American attempts to better their education systems have been expensive for questionable benefit.

I'd much rather have a good culture than good regulations, if I had the choice. I think most people would, but there's no sure path to get there. Switzerland has some magic sauce that other countries would be hard pressed to replicate at scale.

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