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Comment by lobf | Hacker News Reader

We shouldn’t be doing anything to increase the number of guns in circulation. It reduces safety for everyone, especially the gun owners.

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Ho man, that’s like saying we’ll stop war by banning nuclear weapons.

1) the really problematic people won’t care

2) the ‘normal’ people will just be left defenseless and be preyed upon with fewer worries by the #1 cases.

3) which incentivizes the crazies to arm up more so they’ll have leverage.

Notably, this is exactly what happened with nuclear proliferation bans, if we’re being honest.

Assuming it’s not actually possible to control the area physically anyway. Singapore or NZ? Hey maybe. 99% of the rest of the planet? Good luck!

I don't know why you're jumping to nuclear weapons as your analogy when gun control laws in other countries make a far better comparison point. Australia is probably a good example here: they have urban and suburban centres in the cities, but they also have vast rural areas. Guns are not banned but limited and regulated. They do not seem to have had this issue where people have been left defenceless by crazy people with guns.

In fact, are there any countries that have implemented gun controls that have had this problem?

Australia didn’t have that problem before they banned them either.

For countries with major issues who do have strict gun control? Off the top of my head, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa. Plenty more if I looked, I’m sure.

>They do not seem to have had this issue where people have been left defenceless by crazy people with guns.

You have had your head in the sand for the last few years.

unarmed teenagers being hit with pepper spray for violating a prude curfew by gun-wielding tyrants is an issue to a more civilized, reasonable person.

Are you talking about the police?

If I could snap my fingers and make all the guns disappear tomorrow, I would. Until then, I've looked down the barrel of another man's gun and been attacked by neo-nazis and the police have disappointed me every time, so I'm gonna carry my own.

Im interested in your neo-nazi attack story

I've never met or seen a Neo Nazi in my entire life, wondering how one ends up getting attacked by one.

They were a group of local teenagers and young adults with a shitty little clubhouse along a trail in the woods with some swastikas painted on it. They tried to corner me and my friends with what ended up being air guns with painted tips (since I wasn't into firearms at the time I completely thought they were real) because they thought we got too close to it. They probably weren't part of any organized nazi gang, but when they identify their property with swastikas, I'm gonna call them what they pretend to be. The police took and melted the air guns, but it didn't go any further than that. They've still got their hunting licenses, judging by their Facebook pages.

The other incident with a real gun I was referring to was a man pointing his revolver at me while I was picking up his daughter for a date, talking about how a man has to protect his daughter. At that point, I wasn't even scared so much as I was concerned what I was getting into. But since he didn't directly threaten me I was told that it was "negligent use of firearms" at worst, and didn't want to push it.

You think pointing a gun back would have made you safer in those situations? Because it seems like you survived quite fine without one…

We should just stop having the police cus I survived just fine without them.

At least having the option to defend myself would make me more comfortable standing in front of my friends trying to take a bullet for them. Made it easier to recover getting sexually assaulted knowing I could forcefully stop him if it truly escalated to a point where I had to.

The police pretty much never prevent crime, they investigate it after it happens. Robberies aren’t stopped by heroic police officers with their guns, despite what TV says.

And I’m not asking what would make you feel better, I’m asking if you truly believe that producing a gun in the situations you described would have made you safer?

Whatever your ideology it seems a little craven to not want guns that happen to be out in circulation to be as safe as possible from incidents like misfires from accidental dropping.

Sig has yet to undo the reputational damage caused by their p320 failing the drop test, despite being fixed back in 2018 or 2019.

I agree that drop tests and other ND tests are appropriate. Although I would prefer a market based solution here instead of regulation.

The market failed to innovate on safety for years. And the issue with a market based solution is it can be much cheaper to just not include any of those safety features.

Some things can be below your personal risk tolerance, but be well above the acceptable risk tolerance at a social level.

The market based approach states that if the demand is there, supply will come online if profitable. In this case it doesn't seem like the cost is more than $100-200 incremental, which isn't outlandish.

If enough people buy unsafe firearms and then are subsequently jailed for negligence, or the companies are sued out of existence, I would imagine the safe version would organically emerge.

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