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Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

I don't believe you could come up with a better definition of "victimless crime" than "discharging firearms within the boundaries of a dense urban area." "Discharging Firearms" is akin to "Driving Car" or "Operating Forklift" or "Owning Swimming Pool" - all of these acts can potentially be dangerous, but, responsibly done, the risks can be mitigated. (Though, statistics seem to indicate it is inordinately more dangerous to own a swimming pool than to discharge a firearm, in terms of accidental deaths of children per year of doing so)

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Listen, I think many of the people responding to you are sympathetic to your argument (as in, pro gun ownership, not being alarmist, etc - I certainly know I am), but you're hurting the cause more than you are helping it by comparing "discharging firearm" with "owning swimming pool". Your Freakonomics example was about gun ownership, not shooting it. I don't see how you can reasonably argue that shooting a gun is equally safe or unsafe than is "owning a swimming pool".

Of course the risks of firing a gun can be mitigated and controlled, but to do so, one needs a lot more rules and procedures (both on the individual and societal level) for guns than for forklifts and swimming pools. If you disagree with that, I'm afraid I (or, I suspect, some or most of the other people responding to you) won't be able to have a real discussion with you since our fundamental assumptions would then appear to be so far apart that we'd have to regress to a much more fundamental level and clarify those assumptions first before it would make sense to come back to the relatively high-level argument at hand.

My bias, I guess, is growing up with the sound of gunfire on a daily basis from family and neighbors. I didn't really think it was a big deal - just became part of the background noise. The concept of "Gunshot detection systems" just seemed ludicrous to me. I didn't actually realize until I googled a bit that it actually _was_ illegal to discharge a firearm within certain city limits - I would have argued (and lost) that the law was "negligent discharge of a firearm"

I guess if it's illegal to do so, then a "Gunshot Detection System" has use. In the same way that Red Light cameras and Speeding Detectors serve a function in managing those laws.

There are lots of places in the Bay Area where you can safely discharge a firearm within city limits. At least I know I need to review the various city/municipal bylaws to see whether it's legal.

What? Even if you are the most responsible and conscientious gun owner whose bullets will never damage any people or property, discharging a firearm in a dense urban area is severe noise pollution and causes distress to people who hear it because they have every reason to believe that they may be in danger. And there is practically no legitimate reason for it outside of self-defense.

I live in the northeast and own several guns. I would never even consider discharging them in an urban area. Even most suburban areas are unsafe. From my point of view, if I'm not at a gun range or on a giant expanse of rural/hunting land, the gun is locked up.

A gun locked up in a gun safe is surely safer than swimming pool. But a gun being shot in the backyard of a suburban home is definitely less safe than a swimming pool.

My neighbors live roughly 60 feet away from my house. If I went outside and shot a racoon that crossed my property, I'm pretty sure I would be in prison.

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