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Comment by pekk | Hacker News Reader

What kind of non-military applications are there for sniper missions in the US (say, California)?

He's not arguing for it to be legal, he's making a jab at California gun legislation, which many people believe wastes time banning things that seem frightening but in actuality are not much of a threat.

I think the subject he had in mind may have been the ban of .50 BMG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.50_Caliber_BMG_Regulation_Act_...

Such rifles are, as one result on Google put it, "the Rolls-Royce of rifles", and as my wiki link puts it:

not only has the .50 BMG never been used to harm or kill anyone in California, there is no record of a .50 BMG rifle ever being used in the United States to commit a crime.

One particularly choice comment from the time the subject was being discussed:

we certainly don't want to wait until a terrorist buys one before we ban it

Just think of all the things we could ban with that kind of logic.

You raise an interesting point, and honestly, one I just realized a few nights ago.

The legislation around gun bans seems to based on what could possibly happen, and not what's been demonstrated to happen. There seems to a be a "scary" factor, or maybe a public appeal, or maybe even just a future politicking angle when it comes to weapon bans. (i.e. what if the terrorists get 'em!?)

I had a "let's get caught up on current events" night last week, and decided to dig into the proposed rifle ban (of which I hear about constantly from my family). So I read through Obama's Now is the Time plan, and the only thing that stuck out like a sore thumb was the ban on Assault Rifles (Barring that, and two of the other items, I actually think it's a pretty good approach).

I remember when Clinton's ban was set to expire, and the media exclaimed that it would be like the "Wild West," and then it happened, the bill expired, and rifles went on sale.. and.. everything was exactly the same. It was actually reminiscent of Bill Hicks' bit:

>"War, famine, death, AIDS, homeless, recession, depression, war, famine death, AIDS…"

>Then you look out your window it's just: (Birds chirping)

>Where is all this shit happening, man? Ted Turner is making this shit up!

This fear of these weapons seems based on, well, a characterization that doesn't line up with reality. Yes, they have great lethality, but when you look at the stats, the data that you would need to see to justify a ban just isn't there.

When checking all this stuff out, I pulled the [FBI's Uniform Crime Reports](http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/c...) so I could investigate everything for myself. Here are some fun stats:

* Of the total gun related felonies, only 3.8% of them involved rifles. One unfortunate bit about the available info, is that all rifle types are lumped together. So there's no way to tell if the weapon used was of the "assault" class, or a simple hunting rifle. However, I'd wager, that "assault" rifles make up only a small proportion of the rifle category -- but that's pure assumption; back to the data!

* You're actually slightly more likely to be murdered with someone wielding a shotgun, than one wielding a rifle (though only marginally so at 4.1%)

* You're 2.3 times as likely to be punched or kicked to death than to meet the same fate by riles.

* You're Five times as likely to be stabbed to death than to meet the same fate by rifles.

So, as I looked through all the stats, I was left with this feeling of "What the F* is the point?" Banning rifles just seems based on terrible, fear based, reactionary logic.

I'm happy to see someone independently digging into frequencies and that sort of data. In that vein, you might also be interested in this report:

http://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/pdfs/publications/Firearms...

It's the only way to go about this sort of thing. ;)

It only took about 5 minutes of googling the gun debate before I gave up and started googling for actual statistics. Some of the blogs that google returned were just biased in either direction to an amount that was almost parody.

Give me the numbers. I'll sort it out myself, ya biased lot!

Without trying to come off as a paranoiac, my genuine suspicion is that banning these 'scary rifles' that, by your own admission, you didn't know much about until you performed a LOT more research than the average person is likely to ever do, that it's the first step in eventually banning more and more categories of guns until eventually, they're all banned.

The other points I'd like to make that I feel are somewhat relevant is that you should very much read up on DC v Heller, which is the most recent Supreme Court decision on the matter (except for Heller II) that specifies weapons "in common use" as a protected class of weapon from government bans.

I would go further to suggest that I honestly believe (though I cannot substantiate) that the AR15 is able to be categorized as 'evil' because of its use in some of these high profile, but otherwise unlikely mass shootings, but what I really think is that they're most likely being used because they are just so popular. The AR15 is the most popular rifle being sold in the United States, and has been since 1994.

Just a quick note on your last paragraph, because that reminded me of the other data I looked at. I don't have the exact data handy (I'm doing some before bed hacker news browsing on my tablet), but I think it was assembled by, I want to say, a site called Mother Jones..? It was a google spread sheet of some kind. Anyway, it was a table with every mass shooting in the history of the US, the number of fatalities, and the weapon types used.

After I finished playing with the FBI's data, I started to wonder if the ban was not to stop the kind of day-to-day gun crime, but to prevent the mass shooting, High profile, high fatality events like the recent school shooting, or the Aurora movie theater shooting, or any similar event.

So, I pulled the data from that collection, and could find absolutely no correlation between rifle involvement in a mass shooting and the number of fatalities. Our worst shooting, with (going from memory here) 33 fatalities was the Virginia tech masacre. It involved absolutely no rifles, or shotguns, just the lowly handgun. I'll have to double check all the numbers tomorrow, but if I believe that in the 10 most dealy mass shootings in our history, of the 22 or so weapons used, only 4 or 5 of the were rifles. To my number crunching, rifle usage was pretty inconsequential in the number of fatalities -- which I'll admit was pretty damn unintuitive. But that's what the data shows, so given all that information, it's tough for me to figure out a reason for the administration pushing for the ban.

Is this the Mother Jones dataset you were talking about? http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-m...

I made a detailed visualization of it @ http://www.caerusgeo.com/surveys/299/public

I have a hard time swallowing the Mother Jones data whole, because I know on issues that I am very informed on, their data has shown to be misleading in the past.

Here's a fun statistic though, since you're in the process of number crunching -- every mass shooting in the US since 1950 (except for perhaps that Gabby Gifford shooting in Arizona) has occurred in a 'gun free zone', where the shooters had the highest probability of completing their shooting sprees with the least fear of being stopped.

Of those, most telling (to me at least) is the Aurora, CO shooting, because while Colorado is generally a fairly well armed state, the shooter bypassed six other theaters that were closer to his home, including the largest theater, where he could have done the most damage, in lieu of taking his gun into the one nearby theater that specifically disallowed guns from being carried inside.

That's a myth. Consider the Clackamas Town Center shooting: Nick Meli had a concealed carry permit and was carrying a weapon, although he correctly didn't take a shot. We could argue about whether or not the shooter saw Meli and committed suicide as a result, but that's irrelevant: the shooter didn't choose a gun free zone.

It depends on how you characterize "gun free." In many states signs prohibiting firearms don't carry the weight of the law. That is, if you are found to be carrying you can be asked to leave (and charged with trespassing if you refuse), but that's it.

From my understanding the mall in Clackamas is a posted "gun free zone," but the posted signs don't actually carry any legal weight.

Ah, didn't know that!

But aren't we walking a fairly narrow line here? In order for this to be a meaningful distinction, we have to assume that mass shooters a) plan their attacks, b) are smart enough to choose gun free zones, and c) are dumb enough not to know that a gun free zone isn't necessarily free from guns?

I think that in many cases, we would find that yes, mass shooters do plan their attacks (Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora) and actually have long fantasies about them.

Calling mass shooters stupid is, I think, a naive assertion. They're obviously flawed, but not necessarily in a way that makes them less effective at planning or committing violence.

And while 'c' is potentially valid, I think that what you'd find is that, as most citizens tend to fall into the 'law abiding' category, where there are signs posted disallowing guns, you'd find that most citizens won't carry them. So even if the 'gun free zone' is not found to be 100% devoid of guns, you are almost certain to find it less armed than if signs weren't posted.

We've slipped from "every mass shooting" to "in many cases." I thought your comment was worth researching, and I should note that I found more mass shootings taking place in gun-free zones than I'd expected -- I'm glad you made the point. But I would also suggest that you may be accepting the research done by gun rights partisans with less skepticism than it deserves.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?398679-62-Mass-S... is I think my final point here; it's a sympathetic gun rights advocate who went to the trouble of tracking and linking local ordinances where possible. He's only proven the case in about half the incidents. I know John Lott claims he researched all of them. If you happen to know where his supporting documentation is I'd be sincerely interested.

You may be right. I'm looking at an MAIG report, and while I trust their analysis even less, it clearly points to newer incidents that I was previously unaware of. This may be an overlap on the data, as I'm quoting a fairly old study, or it may be that the study was incomplete.

I might be looking at a full on amendment here, or there may have been more statistical jiggery pokery that somehow excludes findings incongruent with the expected results. Either way, I'll do more research and get back. Thanks for the correction -- while the link you posted isn't necessarily conclusive, it did spur me to freshen my data sets at the very least.

In regards to your last point, it would be like saying, "The Honda Civic is the most used getaway car". What is the takeaway? The Honda Civic is the most useful car to criminals and the best getaway car, or just one of those cars that is everywhere?

That, due to its popularity, it is likely to be used in a greater-than-average commission of crimes.

If we looked at drunk driving incidents, and from those, were somehow able to determine that the Honda Civic was used in a higher percentage of them than other cars, it would be a mistake to conclude that Honda Civics were in some way more appealing to drunk drivers, or that they more easily facilitated drunk driving, while excluding overall ownership on the whole.

Further, much of the legislation being considered (at least in Feinstein's bill) is akin to saying "Okay, the Honda Civic is used by drunk drivers. The Honda Civic has 17" tires and cup holders. Let's ban cup holders and 17" tires. No, let's ban all cars that have some combination of 17" tires and cup holders."

Honestly, I don't think I was making a jab at anything in particular, just observing that it likely would be banned soon given California's gun politics. That said, I am politically biased in favor of the Bill of Rights, so I probably couldn't swear that my bias wasn't showing -- but at least consciously I didn't intend anything more than what was said.

Regardless, you bring up some interesting points -- specifically that the 50 cal has never been used in a crime, but at least in today's political climate, the least criminally used guns are the most targeted by gun control legislation. I guess that logically, if the 50 BMG has never been used in a crime, then it should be obvious that it's already banned.

I know that you can reload "California Fifties", which are just slightly shorter, which I think does point out the ridiculousness of the ban, but that's probably digressing.

Aww man, and I thought I was so clever :(

You might just be the "Obama Translator" of my own personal subconscious. I had to be careful about the way I refuted what you wrote because I might very well have been thinking exactly that, and it looks exactly like the sort of thing I might have said.

Problem is, you really don't want to wait until terrorists or other baddies actually use some capability to kill people until you do something about it. Even so, banning should not be a reflex like it seems to be here in CA. It's a hard problem.

More accurate hunting results in a cleaner kill for the animal being hunted, as well as keeps missed shots from potentially ricocheting to unexpected places. Further, missed shots potentially contaminate water supplies (lead bullets).

Otherwise, defense of one's home / ranch? I know that there are routinely horrible instances of drug cartels trespassing during the commission of drug or people smuggling across private property and literally killing anyone that gets in their way. Also, a more accurate rifle provides better defense against coyotes, bears, predatory animals.

I know that there are routinely horrible instances of drug cartels trespassing during the commission of drug or people smuggling across private property and literally killing anyone that gets in their way.

You know of this routinely happening? In the US? I'd like to see some sources for that.

Also, a more accurate rifle provides better defense against coyotes, bears, predatory animals.

You need to tag the animal, then keep the sight on the reticule for up to a few seconds before the weapon will even fire. I'm pretty sure if your 1000 yards away from a coyote or bear you're already safe. And if not, this thing is going to be far less useful then a regular firearm.

edit: removed snarky question about whether the parent read the article. my b.

I did read the article, thank you very much. If you look elsewhere in this thread you'll see that I remarked that after a few more iterations of the technology, they'll likely be able to sort out the delay from being necessary. Regardless, I think you're overlooking that the animal doesn't need to be 1,000 away for the technology to be effective. It also doesn't seem to indicate whether or not weapon need engage the targeting computer for each trigger pull either, but I think that, at least in future iterations if not right now, I would likely be able to manually fire via the trigger where it wasn't necessary.

As for citations:

- http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/director_staff/media_and_commun...

- http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_11770847

- http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/director_staff/media_and_commun... (linked to from the first reference I believe)

- http://www.protectyourtexasborder.com/portals/border/Narco-T...

Also worth noting that there is an unknowable amount of cartel-related crime that goes unreported for fear of getting on a hit list.

Do the police count as military? Because SWAT would almost certainly love to have better snipers.

Also, javelina hunting.

SWAT, though they tend to be much shorter range than this.

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