Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

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> That's fairly vague. I'm not sure what clear distinction you are trying to draw between the 2nd and 4th Amendments.

The distinction is that the 4th amendment limits government power to intrude on our lives by forcing them to clear a certain burden of proof before seizing our property and information. Without that freedom, they could basically take what they pleased when they pleased.

There is no equivalent situation for the 2nd amendment. Without gun rights, we lose nothing that isn't related to guns. Government's power remains the same with our without the 2nd amendment, other than the ability to regulate guns.

I believe I have carefully evaluated whether my reaction is emotional. Frankly, I'm a bit offended that you just assume I'm probably taking an emotional position here, and don't think that will make for a productive discussion.

I think I'm turning the burden of proof around simply because the reasons against gun rights seem fairly obvious to me. Guns are tools built to kill, with no other use. They have very little in the way of useful legitimate uses. (Sport etc. are not useful, although neither are they bad.) Self defense is the one exception, but it's not clear that guns are particularly useful for self defense, let alone that their utility for self defense outweighs the potential benefits of stricter controls on them.

If you disagree, that's fine. I welcome the discussion. But please refrain from any insinuation that you're the only one thinking rationally here.

"The distinction is that the 4th amendment limits government power to intrude on our lives by forcing them to clear a certain burden of proof before seizing our property and information."

I think you're interpreting the 4th Amendment kind of like the 5th Amendment prohibition of depriving someone of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

The part of the 4th Amendment that's interesting to this discussion is the prohibition on unreasonable searches. You haven't really offered any reason that should exist (information can't be seized, by the way, because the original owner still has it).

"I believe I have carefully evaluated whether my reaction is emotional. Frankly, I'm a bit offended..."

I got you confused with the person to whom I originally replied, who said: "I certainly would be glad to know that none are in my (crime-free) neighborhood." That's clearly an emotional reaction, but I apologize for attributing it to you.

The only rationale I can imagine for restricting gun rights is to preserve some proportion of lives (or maybe an absolute quantity). I would still like to see your argument framed that way. It's unreasonable for me to ask for a specific number, but it seems like you should have some order-of-magnitude percentage in mind -- e.g. A% of the population were violently killed last year; restricting gun rights will reduce that to B% in Y years, thereby saving (A-B)% of the population per year.

The problem that this line of argument faces, of course, is that the percentage of people killed by guns is already quite low. And more than half of those are suicides, which probably wouldn't be prevented by gun restrictions. Some other fraction would still be killed by other means. And, unless Y is a very large number, then you still may have many gun deaths simply because there are still so many guns around.

When you actually work out the numbers will all of these things accounted for in a realistic way, I suspect that (A-B)% will be a small number (or negative), and Y will be a large number. In other words, a small (or negative) benefit after a lot of waiting (and possibly bad consequences during that transition).

But it would still be perfectly rational for you to say that you believe it will save a single life, and that's enough of a benefit for you. You'd probably want to take some risk into account though, in case you're wrong and the life isn't actually saved.

"I think I'm turning the burden of proof around simply because the reasons against gun rights seem fairly obvious to me. Guns are tools built to kill, with no other use. They have very little in the way of useful legitimate uses."

You assume that the guns must be used to be useful, which is false. In fact, the presence of guns may reduce the frequency with which they are used[1]. Even police in a lot of areas have probably never fired their weapons at another human.

[1] I have no numbers to back this up, but again, my argument does not depend on numbers.

I'm curious as to why you think that suicides would not be affected by gun restrictions. Most suicides are not people who are bound and determined to kill themselves by any means possible. Rather, most suicidal people are extremely troubled in general and may change their mind quickly. Making it more difficult for them to get ahold of the tools with which to end their lives could make a substantial difference.

As for the rest, you're absolutely right that it comes down to a potential net gain in lives saved versus lives lost. I think that it would be a net gain, simply because guns in private hands aren't saving a whole lot of lives. The potential downside is relatively low. The impact may not be large, but it does seem to me to be almost certain to be positive, so why not?

I think there is merit to the idea that a heavily armed society would deter crime. But you'd need gun ownership to be far more pervasive than it is now for it to work, I think. The chances of a criminal running into a private citizen with a loaded gun are pretty low. If nearly everyone had one, that would be different, but I don't think we're anywhere close. From where we are right now, reducing gun ownership seems to be a more productive and realistic direction.

"I'm curious as to why you think that suicides would not be affected by gun restrictions."

Conjecture. I have no numbers to back it up.

"The impact may not be large, but it does seem to me to be almost certain to be positive, so why not?"

Your stance seems perfectly rational, and based on two things:

(1) The belief that stricter gun laws will save lives; and (2) The right to own firearms has a negligible value.

I am ambivalent about the first one -- I simply don't have detailed numbers to back it up either way. I am skeptical that any savings would be worth the risk that it gets worse (being fairly low already, the potential downside is greater than the potential upside).

The second one I simply disagree with. It's a personal value and there is no real way for one of us to convince the other. I would be interested to know what fraction of Americans share your opinion here.

"But you'd need gun ownership to be far more pervasive than it is now for it to work"

An interesting point. It would be hard to imagine gun ownership being much more pervasive than it is now, but I agree that so few people carry guns that criminals have little to fear from public places.

I don't personally know anyone who owns a gun. Gun ownership could be far more pervasive than it is right now. According to random Wikipedia statistics, only about 40% of US households have a gun, and I imagine they're really unevenly distributed. In any case, as you imply, it's really the pervasiveness of carrying that matters, not simple ownership.

You are missing the point of the second amendment. The second amendment isn't about making sure we get to keep firearms for the sake of having them.

The purpose of the second amendment is to protect the right of a free people to protect themselves. This includes self-defense, but is not limited to it. Understand the context in which the Bill of Rights was written. We had just fought a long war to overthrow British rule. This meant ordinary people, farmers and craftsmen, took up and used their personal firearms.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

In the language of the day, a well regulated Militia means a well prepared body of men 18-55.

What the founders were saying was that for this country to remain free, all able-bodied persons must have access to a means for the personal defense of their freedoms: firearms.

The second amendment is critical to freedom because it enables free people to defend individual or collective freedom from tyranny. It enshrines a method of last resort when all else fails (as it did in the American colonies on April 19, 1775).

I believe I understand fairly well the original point and intent of the second amendment. I just don't think that original point and intent are useful anymore. In the 18th century, organized private citizens could defeat world powers in open battle, properly organized (and with the world power properly distracted elsewhere). That's no longer the case today, by a wide margin. There will be no repeat of the American Revolution. The success of any attempt to resist the US government by force will basically come down to whether they can get enough of the US military on their side, or at least prevent the military from acting. A population carrying handguns and hunting rifles won't, as far as I can see, make any difference one way or another to this.

If an armed revolt does break out, it's going to need a lot of illegal weapons and support from a lot of military units who have switched sides, regardless of whether the second amendment is in place or not.

Take a look at the war in Iraq and the Russian war in Afghanistan. I think people nowadays really underestimate the power of a group of armed people that don't want somebody present. The US population is much more heavily armed than any other country in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_co...

Over 250% more guns per capita than Iraq, and it took us over 8 years of fighting in that country to get anywhere.

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