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Comment by alistairSH | Hacker News Reader

Do they ever state the social optimum level of fun ownership? I can take them at their word they it’s non-zero, but I’d guess it’s orders of magnitude less than the current rate.

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I think the optimum level changes based on whether or not citizens are being actively brutalized by an authoritarian government and their police forces en masse. When that happens, the optimum level is a lot and when it's not happening, the optimum level is probably orders of magnitude less. Unfortunately, we can't accurately predict when these things will happen.

I hear this argument repeated a lot, and I think it is legit the reason for the 2nd amendment - but it doesn't make sense with modern technology. That authoritarian government is going to come at you with Bearcats, helicopters, and drones. Firing a gun at them is just going to make you cannon fodder. If you want to actually challenge the authoritarian government, you need MANPADS, RPGs, cruise missiles, and drones of your own - which is probably why MANPADS, RPGs, cruise missiles, and soon drones are heavily regulated, with stiff penalties for just ownership, and guns themselves are free to possess.

what you have said, is exactly why the 2A legitimates bearing arms, not only firearms.

the origin of the US is about being able to resist unreasonable force, and thats the root of the 2A, being able to resist, due to an uninfringed right to bear arms, to the end of checking the force of a militia having strayed out of its rights.

I'd agree with that on a philosophical level, but no court has actually interpreted the 2A as legitimating the right to build a cruise missile, MANPADS, or nuke. Try it and I suspect you're looking at a very long prison term. Usually people look at me like I'm insane when I suggest that "Well logically, the right to bear arms should include the right to bear nukes, so all this stuff about 'born secret' and classified information is unconstitutional."

> That authoritarian government is going to come at you with Bearcats, helicopters, and drones

> Bearcats

Solution: drone

> helicopters

Solution: drone

> and drones

Solution: drone like P1-SUN

In the US, the average gun owner has something like 3-5. An actual enthusiast will have tens or hundreds. It's the people who own exactly one that you need to watch out for the most.

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