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Comment by konstruktor | Hacker News Reader

One of the first things I, as a European, thought after hearing speculation on mental problems of the shooter was the following: If they just focus on the mental health issues on the shooter and start stereotyping, ostracizing and discriminating mentally ill people a bit more, maybe even with some law that limits their freedoms, people in the US will be able to avoid their two big taboo topics: Healthcare (and, by extension, taxes) and gun control. I would absolutely hate to be right on this one.

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HNers are mostly bright people. Right now there is a trending post on randomness and clusters on the front page and we mostly enjoy. Still why do we forget the science we are so proud of everything guns are mentioned?

Why is there no similar outcry for stricter car control? That could really save a lot of innocent kids lives as well as making the lives of all kinds of criminals way harder.

You'd also reduce the emissions of CO2 and the overuse of hydrocarbons.

Since cars are bigger and mostly are used on roads collecting most of them should only take a few years.

But nobody seems to be interested, why?

Cars are useful, to move people around, everywhere in the world.

Guns are useful, to move people around, only in selected locations.

Buses are far more environmental friendly.

And thanks for the downvotes. I expect the explanations to become visible soon and to be well grounded in sitee policies.

And thanks for the downvotes. I expect the explanations to become visible soon and to be well grounded in sitee policies.

I do not know why you wrote that in your reply to my comment. I cannot downvote, nor would I have downvoted you if I could. If you have a grievance, please reply to the appropriate comment (or your own). Is there an "explanation" or "site policy" I need to refer to in relation to my comment? Otherwise, please do not target individual comments, unrelated to your grievance, it is quite rude.

sorry, I fell for correlation vs causuation.

(And by the way I haven't crossed the downvote threshold myself and it doesn't bother me. If anything it seems too easy to get downvote privilege.)

I'm not sure what your point is, because cars are already very heavily regulated?

To drive a car you need to pass a competency test, as well as be insured against accidents. Your right to drive can also be revoked if at any time you demonstrate that you can't operate one safely.

So uh, yeah. I agree with you, lets do guns like cars!

Totally agree. Now we're talking : )

Driving cars on public roads is heavily regulated. Buying and owning cars is almost entirely unregulated, it doesn't require a license or insurance, so long as it is only driven on private property.

That's extending the analogy to false extremes.

Any public use or brandishing of firearms, other than pursuant to self defense/defense of others, is a criminal act (with obvious exceptions like public ranges, public uninhabited land depending on State law, etc.)

[note: visibility does not imply brandishing, in the case of open carry]

If we regulate guns like cars, then:

Anyone who passes a simple safety test (simple enough that the bulk of the population has little problem with it) can purchase a firearm and use it (subject to safety regulations) in public.

With or without a license you can own and use a gun on private property.

There are certain quality regulations on cars/guns which apply to using them outside private property (i.e., if it's likely to burst into flames, you can't take it onto public roads).

There is no federal regulation, except for rules saying that a license in one state is valid in all other states (i.e., a Texas CCW license works in NY).

This sounds like exactly what the NRA regularly lobbies for. The only people who will argue against your proposal are gun control advocates (e.g., Bloomberg).

I think you might be taking my analogy a little far there.

I wasn't suggesting a straight find/replace of car with firearm...

I was just pointing out what regulating guns like cars actually means.

If you actually don't want to regulate guns like cars, but instead want far more draconian regulations, why not just clearly state that?

FWIW, I actually think stricter car control would be a cool idea, provided that we replaced highways with buses, trains, bike lanes, walkways, and the like.

I have high hopes for the California High-Speed Rail[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail

It's my feeling that using the free market, which should be based on property rights, cars and roads would be "regulated" a lot more than they are now.

How many companies could operate with tens of thousands of people dying from using their products every year: cars and roads?

What advances in technology would have been required so peoples property rights were not trampled on with regards to pollutants from vehicles?

Well, lets look at it another way then. Why are people trying to restrict people's right to carry arms. As US citizens, it's their constitutional right to bear arms? Why doesn't everyone have access to a small nuclear arsenal? Why aren't all the gun lobbyists screaming about those rights not being given to them.

The reality is that that thought scares the living shit out of everyone and its become culturally accepted that there is a line in the sand on what types of weapons should be available to people. Perhaps the line for the US needs to be redrawn.

As has been shown in other countries (specifically, Australia where I live) when you reduce the availability of weapons that are designed purely for mass killing (our buyback scheme went pretty smoothly in 1996), the ability of people to do mass killing goes down. We have approximately 1/3 the number of firearm related deaths[1] (both accidental and not) than the US has of just homicides alone per 100k people[2].

Thats not to say guns aren't still available. They are. That's not to say people still don't get killed with guns, because they do. But the numbers just dont lie.

[1] http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/australia [2] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

I don't know--most Americans who have guns are pretty attached to them. I don't think they'd willingly turn them in for cash, and then you'd still have the problem of 300 million guns or so floating around the market even if you nuked the second amendment. It's great that it worked for Australia, and other places, but America is unique in some very bad ways at times.

For example, the only way we ever had unions in the workplace in the first place is thanks to civilian weaponry. Leave guns to the national guard? Ha. In many cases, they were the ones shooting and killing the strikers. Given the current state of affairs, I wouldn't be surprised if such a thing became necessary again at some point. Unfortunately, sometimes the only way people (like the ones in charge of companies) will listen to you is if you have a way to keep them from killing you. It's not as common these days, but who's to say what the future will bring? I can understand why negating the constitutional right to bear arms makes people nervous. In the past, it was a way for many people to make sure their families were fed. For many people in the present, it's a way to make sure their families are safe in case the government fails us (again). In America, corporate interests run politics, not the people, and companies don't usually have your best interest in mind (just the bottom line).

Australia has a murder rate of 1/100,000. According to your source, the homicide rate of the US is 5.5 according to your source, and the non-firearm homicide rate in the US is 1.8 [2]. By contrast, the total homicide rate in Australia is only 1.3.

I.e., with or without guns, the US is a more violent place than Australia. Drawing conclusions about gun control without correcting for this fact is a fallacy.

Incidentally, how do you define a weapon that is "designed purely for mass killing"?

[3] http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html

Mass killing is perhaps a bad choice of words, but you really shouldn't be allowed to own any kind of automatic firearms, silencers, military sniper rifles.

Nor should anyone be allowed to keep home any amount of explosive substances or explosive devices, unless for professional use, or any kind of chemical or biological weaponry.

Also, you could not own any kind of firearm if you have criminal record, poor eyesight, mental retardations and such.

No ownership is possible without having a licence issued by the government.

Those are basically regulations in Croatia for example.

I'll tell you what: when guns become necessary to get to your job in America and become as safe as cars, then we can think about regulating guns like cars.

True. If only the school system detected he was troubled and assigned him a shrink, as well as having the rest of the school system monitor him, then maybe this wouldn't have happened.

Actually he had all that: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732467720457818...

It was also illegal for him to purchase a gun, and the law prevented him from doing so. Additionally, shooting people (unless they tried to shoot or stab you first) is also illegal. Didn't seem to stop him.

Megan Mcardle has an excellent essay on why there is basically nothing we can do about incidents like this besides perhaps collectively rushing the shooter (like we currently do with terrorists on airplanes).

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/17/there-s-lit...

Arming the victims also seems to help once in a while:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shoo...

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