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Comment by ricky_clarkson | Hacker News Reader

What will you do with the concealed weapon? Shoot his bullet in mid-air?

I would like to nominate firearms, and especially the political landscape around firearms, as an informally off-topic subject for this site.

Everyone that has an opinion about this topic has a strong one (even me), and I've never seen a forum of any charter not fall into 1) banal, uninformed bickering or 2) scary monoculture or homogeny of thought, relentlessly punishing dissenters.

The value of HN (to me) is that it is well tended, and this looks like an additional loss of focus that isn't welcome in my opinion.

I think the basic motivation for carrying a concealed weapon in situations like these is what if the guy never plans to stop killing? What if he just carries on hunting people for so long as his ammo lasts? That gives you a possibility of making a difference by putting him down early.

Likewise, why bother wearing body armor, they'll just shoot you in the face! Except... sometimes whether by their aim sucking or not having time to aim properly, and etc., it does matter. Chaotic situations like these have many possible challenges to present you, some of which a concealed weapon can help you with.

I think a lot of people have hate for guns and hence irrationally choose to ignore all the utility of them, in this case by suggesting a situation where it is ridiculous to stop bullets with more bullets, essentially a strawman argument, ignoring all the situations where you can use bullets to prevent someone from firing more.

I think it's the placebo effect. That's why I carry a homeopathic concealed weapon: a small vial of water with some floating specs of rust in it.

You mean you are carrying a small vial of water that says it has rust in it, but doesn't actually (or at least has a very low probability of having a rust molecule).

That's more correct, actually, and I used to use one of those. But I decided it didn't have enough firepower. Now I prefer my homeopathic Death Star, in case I get attacked by a whole planet at once.

It's also completely useless for the police to carry weapons. After all, the best we can possibly hope for is that they might shoot someone's bullet in mid air.

Therefore, I propose we stop giving weapons to the police as a cost saving measure.

British police don't usually have guns, and I always felt safer for it when I lived there, fwiw.

Yes, but they have surveillance cameras everywhere. It's a bit Orwellian.

Most of those cameras are privately owned, and on private property. I'm ok with that.

Does the state have the right to demand and view the tapes?

Maybe you felt safer, but the numbers suggest your feelings were incorrect.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/798708/posts

Note: I realize the US has high murder rates. Murder rates are not indicative of general safety, since most murders consist of one crook killing another. To put a face on it, think Tony Soprano or Stringer Bell taking out the competition. Most robberies (at least those reported in crime statistics) consist of a criminal robbing a civilian.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4713753.stm

Maybe prevent the deaths of two or more people? Is this really so far-fetched?

If you knew that everyone else had the potential of carrying a concealed weapon, would you be at likely to shoot someone else?

In my state, Florida, it's relatively easy to secure the paperwork to carry concealed, and it tends to be a strong deterrant here.

If you knew that everyone else had the potential of carrying a concealed weapon

...then I would probably never leave my house.

Then it's good for you that only the bad folk carry....

I think people have the capacity to be both good and bad, depending on often quite random stuff that happens to them.

I'm just glad to live somewhere that the majority of people, "good" or "bad", don't carry - I'd hate to live somewhere the opposite was true.

> I'm just glad to live somewhere that the majority of people, "good" or "bad", don't carry - I'd hate to live somewhere the opposite was true.

How do you know that the majority of the bad folk don't carry where you are?

I've been places where everyone was carrying. Why should that have bothered me?

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