An actionable petition for Gun Control | Hacker News Reader

An actionable petition for Gun Control

wh.gov

3 pointscyrusradfar6 comments

I put this together after reading four other petitions which are getting shared wildly which lack any structure or goals. I realize we discuss tech/etc, but this is also a place where we've joined together on really big issues that impact us and our children.

Here are some of the headlines on the petitions:

- "Create a national commission to review our gun control laws"

- "Begin a national conversation on sensible gun control"

- "Start the process to enact Federal Gun control laws"

As everyone here knows, you can't get shit done without goals. We need to stop asking lawmakers to converse and start telling them what we will support.

Help!

Be careful that you aren't trying to push a specific solution due to a knee-jerk reaction to today's events.

I've always been on the fence about gun control. There's good and bad parts (as with everything). However, bullet control is something I can totally agree with.

Please don't downvote the following, but let me be the jerk in the audience that adds the basest of answers to your statements:

- "Create a national commission to review our gun control laws"

Look to Canada for the national gun registry, or any American commissions that are setup to investigate Bad Things (tm) that have happened. Most of the time it seems that money is spent and nobody is better off.

- "Begin a national conversation on sensible gun control"

Sensible people don't gun down innocents. Therefore can I logically conclude that sensible gun control won't apply to insensitive people?

- "Start the process to enact Federal Gun control laws"

There are laws against making and using bombs, and yet bombs still go off. That being said, bombs don't go off everyday, and thus each bomb that explode makes the news because it is such a rare occurrence. This is actually a good thing, because if it were happening all the time, we'd be a little more desensitized to it. Bombs aren't the problem, just like guns aren't the problem. Why? Because bombs and guns don't kill people by themselves (bear with me...). You have to look towards helping people that are willing to use those bombs and guns on people, and that may be a better deterrent to mass killings than any gun control legislation can ever be.

Edit: sadly, this just came over the wire and validates my point. Man slashes 22 children with a knife. Should we institute senisible knife control, or should we start looking at why people do these things? http://www.inquisitr.com/438276/man-slashes-22-children-with...

The petition that ended up getting 25K required votes was pretty lame. My hope was just to get a bunch of people to agree on something that's more specific.

BTW, I would never down vote someone for disagreeing with me :) Thanks for joining the discussion.

And you're right, it was a knee jerk reaction; but I would've regretted doing nothing much more than having my petition fail to get a ton of traction.

Sorry, but why is this on HN?

I answered that in my comment. I realize it's not a story about Instagram or Big Data, but it's more important to every American in this community. Many of us have, or will have children and we've had a tremendous loss today.

Communities work together to solve problems. With the support of this one, we can influence a massive change.

Maybe I'm too emotional. I apologize if this link ruined your experience on HN today.

I am 100% with you on this. HN should not be only for Tech conversations. It is the community built by the people and we all have emotions. We are all human beings first.

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