Hacker News Reader

Comment by presidentender | Hacker News Reader

This has been legal for a very long time, and is the cause of approximately no violence. Much as with the discussion of 3d printed firearms, it's not so much that the behaviors of gun owners and gun builders has changed as it is that the prevailing discourse in the political arena and the news is different.

The author refrains from espousing an opinion in the piece, but only just, and frankly I disagree with him. The rifles created at build parties don't cause crime. Violence in general is falling, and "gun crime" with it. Occasional, prominent tragedies are emotionally shattering, but making policy based on emotion has served us poorly for decades.

Relevant previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3019586

View on HN

It disappoints me when magazines like MotherJones don't take the high road which would lead to more balanced coverage but their readership isn't really looking for that road.

I'm still on the fence as to whether the increased discussion is helping or not. On the one hand it opens peoples eyes to what has always been the case, and sometimes that reduces fear but sometimes it increases it.

the prevailing discourse in the political arena and the news is different.

The prevailing argument of gun advocates, at least in the US, is that "it's not our guns. it's those other, bad people's guns". It would probably help their case if they stopped arguing that owning a potentially deadly piece of gear is some universal human right not subject to regulation like, say, owning a car.

Most car owners cause approximately no deaths. All drivers need a license and insurance.

The compromise is there to be had - own whatever gun you want, but take a few steps to convince the rest of us that you can do so safely.

"All drivers need a license and insurance."

One wonders, why? At least in the case of licenses and insurance, we see folks all the time (anecdotally illegal aliens doing work, though I'm curious how well statistics actually back that supposition up) drive with neither, usually to no ill effect.

Insurance usually doesn't seem to help very much in the case of a totaled car, and mostly just seems to be a captive market for insurance providers. Drivers licenses are more for glorified identification than a seal of approval of your driving prowess--look at the highways near any major city.

And yet, here we are, with millions of firearms owned and honestly not that much death and dismemberment because of it, all without licensing and insurance.

We don't need a compromise--it's a solution in search of a problem.

The point about insurance isn't so that the driver gets a new car if they wreck it -- it's so that if they kill or injure, or damage the property of, someone else then that someone else is covered.

Driving licenses are "a seal of approval of your driving prowess" in many countries other than the United States; American drivers frequently can't drive for shit. (Sorry, but I live in the UK, with approximately half the per-capita adjusted road death/injury rate to the US, and a driving test that's notoriously hard.)

As for "not that much death and dismemberment" because of the easy availability of firearms in the US, it's noteworthy that the level in question is a couple of orders of magnitude higher than in the UK, where firearms ownership is rare and tightly licensed. I wouldn't argue for a total ban -- if nothing else, North America is full of interesting and exciting wildlife, to which many people live in close proximity -- but there's no obvious need for city dwellers to own semi-auto rifles and handguns, and requiring those who do to carry third-party insurance in case an accidental discharge ends up injuring someone is an absolute minimum.

"...and requiring those who do to carry third-party insurance in case an accidental discharge ends up injuring someone is an absolute minimum."

The thing here is that accidental discharges don't happen if you properly maintain your weapons and ammunition, and if you handle them properly.

As an example, I wouldn't store any weapons with a round chambered, wouldn't store weapons loaded, and wouldn't use any rifle or pistol rounds in an apartment for self-defense because of over-penetration concerns. The case where you have an accidental discharge and it hurts someone or something is entirely preventable using common sense, and so I don't believe that we should require insurance against what is honestly improper and unsafe tool usage--that burden should rest on the person who caused the accident.

As over 90% of road traffic accidents are the result of human error, I strongly disagree with your conclusion -- otherwise we wouldn't need third-party insurance for cars, either.

(On the other hand, if you're as sensible as you say, I have three words for you: no claims discount.)

The NRA apparently endorses a personal liability insurance:

http://www.locktonrisk.com/nrains/excess.htm

Quick searching is not instructive as to pricing, but I guess some homeowners policies cover gun accidents, and such insurance is not particularly expensive.

Indeed, and you can tell from the costs what the insurance companies think are the serious risks (hint, not liability).

I'll just mention ratios, that I'm a USAA customer who's father was in the military (eyesight kept me out, but they have a special category for us because we're better risks), that I don't have very many guns, have a monitored alarm, and no longer get the no claims discount (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado).

All that said, I pay 4 times as much for the extra protection needed to cover loss of my guns as I do for the liability insurance that's an enumerated part of my renter's policy, and the single instance liability they're on the hook for is 35 times greater than a total loss of my listed guns and scopes.

Well, we don't see that all the time - we see it sometimes. The only reason some people can drive with neither is because most people don't.

I don't think it's merely a solution in search of a problem because we seem to spend an enourmous amount of political energy on the topic in the way we don't on 'who gets to own a Ferrari'. Ferrari owners pay the exorbitant insurance fees for the privilege. You're a firearms enthusiast who would like to own a .303 British? More power to you. Pay up.

Actually, the higher-energy cartridges like .303 Brit and .30-06 are used even more rarely in crime than other rifle cartridges. Intermediate cartridges, which came into military favor following the second world war, allow the user to carry more ammunition per unit of weight, and to manage the recoil of the rifle more easily. It's also easier to manufacture an autoloading rifle to reliably fire a cartridge like 5.56 or 7.62x39 than one like .303 British.

Ferraris aren't very common as bank robbery getaway vehicles either. My point was that it should be possible to come up with some sort of regulatory regime that reasonably covers the entire range of uses - from personal safety to collection of exotica.

This isn't possible if one side's position is 'I get to have whatever I want, because'. You can't buy a thing that plugs into your wall socket that isn't UL certified, what exactly, is so uniquely special about firearms, of all things.

The great thing about mandatory liability insurance is that the government doesn't need to make any determination at all about how dangerous various kinds of weapons are. You think the threat of Gun Type X is overblown? Great. If that's true, market forces will ensure that the liability insurance for it is cheap.

Some of us believe that we shouldn't need to convince you of anything. There is no such thing as "pre-crime". I have the liberty to do as I please as a human being on this planet so long as it doesn't hurt you. Simply claiming that I might hurt you or someone else might hurt you with a rifle is dubious logic at best.

I have the liberty to do as I please as a human being on this planet so long as it doesn't hurt you.

No, you don't. There is such a thing as exposure to risk. Otherwise anyone would have the liberty to build a toxic waste processing plant by your back yard because, hey, that's not hurting you. Yet.

Strangely, this is not the established way of things in any actually functional society.

The beauty of liberty is I don't care what you think about me exercising it. That's kind of the point I was trying to make. That whole "give me liberty or give me death" thing really means something to some of us and we really don't care what others think. They have a name for us actually - Americans.

No, those are caricature Americans. No thinking Americans, starting with the founders, made it a point of pride of ignoring what other people think. They may have arrived at different conclusions but the notion they did so because liberty is some function of willful ignorance is idiotic.

Ah yes, ad hominem attacks. Thanks! I look forward to more intelligent discussions with you sir.

'Ad hominem' is not some sort of magical incantation you can simply call upon to protect you from 'stupid'. Argue your point.

No thanks.

I'd recommend testing your theory by taking a loaded gun out in public and pointing it at random strangers while telling them, "You're going to die!" As long as you don't actually shoot them, you've done them no harm, right?

Your whole premise is false: keeping and bearing arms is much safer than driving cars. I can go into details as to why I believe that's the case, but to start with, whenever I walk outside the door I put my carry gun into a holster, and then never take it out until I return home. So it's just sitting there on my hip under my shirt or vest, not much of a danger to anyone as long as I keep it away from an MRI machine's strong magnet.

But the raw facts speak for themselves; off the top of my head, the latest available numbers are 33,000 or so vehicle accident fatalities per year, 600 with guns.

Lots more car owners accidently kill than gun owners, and as I've mentioned elsewhere, the proper analogy to a drivers license is a concealed carry licence, and I'd add for hunting a hunting licence, which nowadays requires proof of taking a hunter's safety course (unless you're an old guy like me and are grandfathered).

As far as "convincing" "the rest of us", we simply don't have to do that any more than I have to convince you that I can use a printing press without prior restraint, its an enumerated Constitutional right. Want to change that? The Constitution has a mechanism.

While your stats are true, people typically aren't aiming their car at someone.

People typically aren't aiming their guns at someone, either.

The statistics he listed were also for accidental deaths, in both cases.

I think you might be arguing against something that I didn't actually say.

The operative words in "concealed carry license" and "hunting license" is "license", which was exactly my point.

The number of printing press deaths in the US, and likely worldwide is probably quite small.

A "hunting license" gives you the ability to take an animal, not to own a firearm.

And in most states (outside of the most infringing states -- my home state of NY is a great example), a Conceal Carry license is "how" you can carry a handgun on your person - and not the ability to own one.

A hunting license also gives you the ability to carry a loaded long gun in a variety of places it is otherwise illegal, due mostly to anti-poaching laws.

Now that I was unaware of. Thanks for informing me!

I had my hunting license early, so I really take it for granted.

You seem to have not noticed how printing presses, and newfangled movie projectors and radio transmitters, were instrumental in arranging the deaths of a quarter billion disarmed people by their own governments in the 20th century. You simply can't achieve that level of mass murder if you're limited to getting up on a soap box, word of mouth, etc.

Hang on, you're now arguing the rather vague second amendment is inviolable but the first caused Hitler? Come on.

Let's not be silly. Note how many of the top items on this list predate movies and radio:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_...

The An Lushan Rebellion, for example, is thought to have possibly killed 15% of the human population of the entire planet. Hitler and Stalin couldn't dream of such levels of mass murder.

Quoting the number of gun accidents is misleading. The point of a license is to keep dangerous equipment out of the hands of people who are a danger to others or themselves. Thus you should really count murder/suicide too, and as wikipedia says, "In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicide deaths, and 11,078 firearm-related homicide deaths in the United States". So guns really are at least as dangerous as cars, probably moreso since only 1/3 of households own guns.

Since of course we know that gun ownership/access and suicide are closely correlated, and nearly gun free societies like Japan and China don't have suicide rates nearly twice ours....

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...)

And what about considering the opposite end of the stick, e.g. that firearms are used 2.25 million times per year in self-defense (which I figured some time ago was about twice as many times as they are used in criminal offense).

Above the united states in that rank (and by a LOT) is most of Europe. France, Belgium, Austria, most of Eastern Europe (and the Netherlands if you were to add "self" chosen euthanasia to suicide figures, bringing it up to over 20. Self between brackets since it's often not a choice, as medical treatments are stopped for elderly people in Holland, making euthanasia the only treatment that can offer hope to alleviate pain)

There's also Japan, just in the top10, which was claimed to have a lower suicide rate than the US because of lack of guns, in fact has a suicide rate just short of twice that of the US.

Incidentally, all muslim nations are reporting suicide rates that I just can't believe are accurate, or they're just not present at all. I know multiple stories about suicide from people in Kuwait, and I've never been (just work with consultants that have been there). Presumably they only report suicides amongst Kuwaiti, not the 80% immigrant population, and even then it seems on the low side.

There's reasons for suicide, but merely having an easy means to do it (guns) doesn't factor in at all. Looking at that list, clearly the cold is the main factor, with a close second bad economic conditions, and then we move on to lack of freedom. I wonder if you were to check suicide rates in parts of the US if this pattern would hold. Most in the poor northern states ?

Yep: http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html#death-rates (not sure if it's a good reference)

Alaska comes out on top, with only New Mexico as a southern state in the top-5.

So here's the theory from those statistics. 1) cold (maybe lack of sunlight ?) is a big cause of suicide 2) barring that, bad economic conditions 3) after that, bad government will do it

Being from The Netherlands myself, this is simply not true. Euthanasia is something that both the patient (and if the patient is no longer capable of deciding for himself, his family) and the doctor have to agree on.

Stopping treatment or prescribing drugs that will shorten the patient's life is also being done in the US, so if you want to inflate the suicide numbers, you have to do it for all.

How can a patient -aside from a coma- EVER be incapable of deciding for himself ? Yet most often family decides ... For family, what you neglect to mention is that say "no, don't euthanize" often has a very high (monthly) cost (for the home + treatment), whereas euthanasia is free. And what happens when they say no, but don't pay ? All treatment, including very basic treatment like dialysis is stopped, leading to painful deaths.

Don't they have health insurance ? Well, yes, but the Dutch government unilaterally changed the terms of national health insurance to no longer cover any treatment that isn't likely to "significantly" extend life, on average, and measured in percentage (and not for a particular patient). Of course significantly extending life is measured as a percentage, and if you're 80 ... Basic cheap treatment like dialysis is stopped at ~69 years old. And while it is true that it's unlikely to extend a patient's life by 10% from that point, stopping that treatment will be fatal in ~48 hours in some cases, and it'll be a painful death.

> but merely having an easy means to do it (guns) doesn't factor in at all.

The research on this is very good and very clear. Access to effective means of suicide increases rates of completed suicide. Guns are very effective means of suicide, thus access to guns increases rates of completed suicide.

You're making a mistake to compare rates of suicide among different nations. That's tricky because of the different ways suicide is reported (or not reported), but it's also not relevant.

What we really want to know is what the rate of completed suicide would be in the US with guns available and with guns not available.

Once you have that information you then decide whether it's significant enough to warrant restricting guns.

I'm trying to ignore my own strong anti-gun sentiment. My kneejerk reaction is to say "ban all guns!". My considered response is something like "increase availability of mental health treatment! Provide rapid access to crisis and home treatment options! destigmatize mental illness! Persuade men to get treatment for illness, especially mental illness! Start a discussion in the gun owning community about locking guns up, and about getting treatment for mental illness".

Your comments about treatment of elderly people in the Netherlands feels odd. Please, do you have a cite for that?

Do you need a license or insurance to own a vehicle? Likewise do you need those to operate a vehicle on private property for private i.e. non-commercial purposes?

Although apparantly not legal in California; I haven't looked at this Mother Jones stuff, but I can confirm the first two are illegal in that state (e.g. why the Hello Kitty AR-15 has such a wierd stock, and look up bullet button for #2; http://disqus.com/facebook-1392090219/):

"Do you know how many felonies you just committed? Just because you are a reporter doesn't make you immune to these multiple CA felonies:

1) Owning a semi-automatic w/ a pistol grip

2) At 1:20 you can clearly see that the magazine lock is mounted too far back, allowing the magazine to be detached without the use of a tool.

3) You perform an improper disposal of the gun and leave it for the garbage collector. By CA law, that's an illegal transfer since he didn't go through an FFL.

I hope you get shafted by those strict laws you support, idiot."

Agreed. This is politically charged linkbait.

Oh? Is it?

How would you have preferred to see this reported?

Is it just that Mother Jones published it? Is it something he said? Is it the fact that he destroyed the gun afterwards?

> How would you have preferred to see this reported?

What "this"? That somebody built a rifle from a kit is not exactly newsworthy.

How many people on Hacker News (or hell, in the US in general) do you think have built a rifle from a kit?

How many of them do you think understand what a receiver is, or what the difference is between an automatic and semi-automatic?

If you genuinely think this is information that more people should not know then say so explicitly.

There is a debate about guns going on in the US, whether you like it or not. The question is whether you want people to make informed decisions or not.

> How many people on Hacker News (or hell, in the US in general) do you think have built a rifle from a kit?

Order... hundreds of thousands? Millions, maybe? It depends how you define a kit, I guess. It's quite common to put together uppers and lowers and barrels and triggers et cetera when building a rifle, and I imagine most of those who do so understand the rules that govern it. Frankly building an AK from parts isn't a lot harder than that, you can do it with hand tools.

> How many of them do you think understand what a receiver is, or what the difference is between an automatic and semi-automatic? ... If you genuinely think this is information that more people should not know then say so explicitly.

Has this information been removed from Wikipedia? It's all public, that's the point.

> There is a debate about guns going on in the US, whether you like it or not. The question is whether you want people to make informed decisions or not.

I don't believe this will help anyone to make an informed decision (unless they want to build an AK, maybe). As has been noted elsewhere in these comments, we do not have a problem with rifle violence in the US. We just don't. It's not worth having a national discussion about.

But people on both sides want it to be about rifles, because that's where the political hay gets made. The anti-side loves to hate rifles because they're scary looking, while the pro-side loves to love them because, well, same reason. They're talking perfectly past each other, and can likely continue to do so indefinitely. But while this debate is going on, while this very article was being written to make whatever point it will be used to make, our children continue to kill themselves and each other with cheap, legal, store-bought handguns.

Let's fucking talk about that.

Well, we can quibble about this, but i'm betting you that the vast majority of people in the USA haven't put together a gun from a kit, and most of them probably don't own a gun, or if they do own a gun, probably haven't thought about modifying it.

Irrespective of who's right on that point, there is a cultural issue here. People who have not lived with/around fire arms, and who do not hunt, have essentially no reason to ever encounter a fire arm. It is, save for violent crime, just not relevant to their lives.

Expecting them to be informed about firearms kind of isn't reasonable is it? So even if the information is out there, they've had no cause, nor frame of reference for figuring out how guns work.

So, when an explainer like this pops up on how easy it is to put together a gun, it's worthwhile to point out that turning some sheets of metal into a gun is really freaking easy, and banning all guns (even if it were legal) would be from a practical standpoint really really hard.

> As has been noted elsewhere in these comments, we do not have a problem with rifle violence in the US. [...] Let's fucking talk about that.

Dude, I could not agree with you more. But despite that, having even the most basic explainer on firearms is still a good thing.

So, anyway, how do we stop handgun deaths, deliberate or accidental? :P

I can understand where you're coming from. Unfortunately, I don't think this article is the explainer you're looking for, for a lot of reasons discussed in these comments, but primarily this: he destroyed the gun.

He bought it, he built it, he fired forty rounds through it and then he found it so distasteful that he didn't want it in his life, so he destroyed it. Even after mentioning how much it might have sold for, he didn't sell it. He didn't even give it away to one of the hobbyists he met, which he would have no difficulty finding takers for.

Imagine you help someone buy and put together their first computer. Not a monster machine, but a nice solid, balanced build. Later you learn that they booted it up once, played thirty minutes of World of Warcraft, and didn't like it, so they smashed all the parts with a hammer and left it out with the trash. How does that make you feel?

To a normal person, whatever, that might be a bit of an overreaction. But an enthusiast is shocked, confused, dismayed. Why? Why did you do that? I could have taken it off your hands. I could have paid shipping.

And that's the lethal problem: The author of the article, himself, could not or did not come to an understanding of how and why it is that these hobbyists feel safe and comfortable with what they do. He didn't understand them, from the sound of it he didn't really try to, and he still doesn't.

And if he doesn't understand it himself, what can he possibly hope to teach anyone else?

I think it's interesting how people who will vehemently defend a person's right to own a gun will turn around and criticize him for destroying his own property, harming nobody in the process. Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but it strikes me as an attitude of "freedoms are great as long as the person does things I like".

I'm reminded of the recent incident in the US Southwest somewhere (Arizona?) where a city started a gun buyback program with the intention of destroying the guns, and the NRA sued them to prevent them from destroying guns that they had legally purchased from willing sellers.

The world is mad, I tell you.

Heh. It's a bit ironical, but I don't think it's really hypocritical or anything. To go back to my computer example, I can argue for your right to smash it with a hammer and still not be able to understand why you would choose to. Or take a look at the comments on gadget destruction videos some time. Or I wonder if anyone has ever tried to stop a religious institution from burning books they paid for with their own money?

To be honest, it's exactly the point I think the article missed so closely. It's different when you're an enthusiast. You see a mass-produced object worth what it will cost to haul away; I see a unique work of art, low born perhaps but with a history and a soul, with countless beautiful features and imperfections. (Mind, this isn't guns for me personally.) Yes it's yours, but it shouldn't be destroyed, that's disgraceful!

All that being said, it is unfortunate that so many of the most vocal gun advocates seem to have so little respect for people who don't like guns.

It was posted elsewhere that the gun, while legal to manufacture and possess, is illegal to transfer to another person in any way. Given that, destroying it is perfectly reasonable if he didn't feel like owning a homemade AK-47 forever.

That's a good point, but it's not completely true as stated. It is illegal to manufacture a firearm for sale or transfer without an FFL (a Federal license). However if I'm reading this[0] right it is probably not illegal to manufacture a firearm for personal use, and later sell or transfer it to another individual.

It would need to be a legal sale under CA law, meaning I guess it would need to be serialized and registered by an FFL. Mind you this is all subject to the capricious opinion of the ATF, which has pretty broad discretion over who gets to go to jail-- but even if transfer were utterly illegal, that's something hobbyists have been dealing with for decades.

All he would need to do is remove the receiver -- the folded sheet metal, the only part he "made" -- destroy that, destroying the firearm, and give away the rest as so much unregulated junk. As soon as he cut that receiver in half, he was holding a legal, untraceable nothing in the eyes of the law. Then he says he cut the parts into pieces. He really, really did not have to do that.

And what I reduce this to is-- you're right in that transferring this firearm could be a huge hassle that might lead the average person not to bother with it. So this is a journalist researching a story, and he turned down an opportunity to find out first-hand just how burdensome these regulations are on hobbyists. That's an entire missing half of this article. Why? Because it was hard? I'm not trying to question his motives, but it really seems like he didn't even try to understand.

[0] http://www.ar15.com/mobile/topic.html?b=4&f=51&t=115...

I think your example of book burning is the most interesting bit here.

Book burning used to be seriously reprehensible, because it was a potentially effective way to destroy or deny information. If you were burning Bibles in the 14th century or whatever, you were making it vastly harder for locals to find out what was in a Bible. A successful book-burning program could seriously alter the information available.

Today, though, book-burning is pointless except in some rare cases. It's definitely pointless to burn Bibles or anything else that exists in multiple copies. Yet we still find it to be reprehensible. Why?

I think part of it is just history. We remember that it used to be really awful, and we're slow to catch up.

But part of it is the symbolism. We know that it's not really destroying information or impacting anyone's access to it. But that's still the intent. By burning books, you're declaring that you want to deny people this information, even if you can't. Well, sometimes you are. Other times you're just disposing of paper and ink to no ill effect. It can be hard to tell them apart.

I think the AK-47 here is much like burning a widely available book. There are tons of AK-47s out there, so destroying one won't impact its availability in any meaningful way. It ultimately does nothing to destroy one. On the other hand, it may be symbolic, saying that you want to deny people to these guns, even if you can't. Or maybe it's just pragmatic. Hard to tell exactly which one applies here.

Statistics from 2008-2009:

http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publicat...

Basically, <3K children per year for 2008 and 2009.

...and the estimated total child population:

http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp

Around 74 million at that time.

So, this is whitenoise from population standpoint; .004% of the population of kids.

I'm not going to suggest giving up access to pistols for the nation because of statistical outliers.

I was using "children" rhetorically here, including gang violence and adult suicides basically. Anyway, this isn't the place for the conversation.

Fair enough--my general instinct is just to start bringing up stats when something this emotionally-charged comes up. Carry on. :)

“This” was news to me. Newsworthiness is a matter of individual context.

I had no clue that it was legal to build an AK-47 from a kit. I doubt I'm alone.

He did not build an AK. He built a copy of the defanged, non-fully-autmatic, "for gun enthusiasts" version of the gun. He did not build a fully automatic machine gun. He built something that is in every way equivalent to a hunting rifle you can buy at a sporting goods store: he built a semi-automatic rifle.

Sure, but you don't know about that because you're not interested in guns. Like, how many people know you can legally build and fly an RC drone from a kit? Or that you can legally build and drive a car from a kit? There are enthusiasts, and there's everyone else. The things you don't know may be interesting to you, but that doesn't make them news.

But, sure, you could see a piece in Vanity Fair about my trip across the country in my hand-build automobile, why not. What we have here is this article coming out in the midst of a huge argument about how to reduce traffic fatalities, noting especially how there is absolutely no oversight over hand-assembled vehicles. (Okay, those have to pass inspection, but leave that aside.) Where hand-assembled vehicles account for roughly no traffic fatalities. Surely you can see how that article in that context is rather disingenuous, to put it charitably.

Are you proposing that "news" should only count if it's something that a person who already follows the field closely wouldn't know? Is "news" only current events, and not reporting on old facts that are not well known?

My thoughts on this article are roughly equivalent to my thoughts on my hypothetical Vanity Fair piece, which I think I made clear. Since your questions don't seem to relate to that hypothetical, I don't have much to add.

I guess I passed that over because I couldn't see the point to your hypothetical. No, I don't see how such an article would be at all "disingenuous". What is the hypothetical supposed to illustrate? I imagine a "kit-built cars are perfectly legal to build at home with no oversight" article would be interesting to read too.

But you wouldn't consider it to have any relevance to the broader cultural problem of traffic fatalities and vehicle registration? Or you don't think others would?

Or you think that any misleading effect is regrettable, but not a reason to alter the tone of the article?

Relevance? Of course it would have relevance, as any facts on the subject would. What misleading effect are you referring to?

I think someone who didn't know a lot about the facts could easily read TFA and come away with the idea that there exists some connection between our gun violence problem and some or all of rifles, military rifles, AK-47s, kit-build rifles, bump-fire stocks, build parties, or armslist.com. But we know no such connection exists. Do you really not find that misleading?

The facts of this report should be a part of our conversation, as a great many facts should be that are not. I only worry that this article seems written to imply the opposite of its facts.

I went back to double-check the article to make sure I hadn't missed some important piece, because I didn't recall any such implication that any of this was related to gun violence. I still couldn't find anything that implied such. So no, I don't find it misleading.

I personally find the article to be very narrow and factual. It seems to go out of its way to refrain from implying much of anything, and just tells the story.

It's odd that gun advocates are coming out of the woodwork to criticize it despite that. One gets the impression that gun advocates find straight facts to be problematic.

If you disagree with this:

> I think someone who didn't know a lot about the facts could easily read TFA and come away with the idea that there exists some connection between our gun violence problem and some or all of rifles, military rifles, AK-47s, kit-build rifles, bump-fire stocks, build parties, or armslist.com.

...then we likely don't have much to discuss. I agree that the article doesn't imply much of anything, which as I've said is what I find misleading. Because it should imply that these rifles and kits and parties and people are harmless, because that's true.

My worry is that reporting about these "legal, untraceable" rifles which doesn't include a note to the effect of, "But in practice, it's just a hobby, this really isn't dangerous at all," baldly factual though it may be, will have only the effect of spreading FUD about harmless rifles, which since they also happen to be the very coolest and frankly most Second-Amendment-appropriate guns will only further radicalize gun owners and drive us further from compromise on legislation that will really save lives.

If that makes me a "gun advocate" in your eyes... Well then I'm not sure what that makes you.

Let me make sure I understand this properly. You're coming right out and saying that you object to factual, unbiased reporting because it doesn't go out of its way to make the implications that you personally feel it should, to advance your agenda?

If that's correct, then you're right, we don't have much to discuss. I cannot even remotely fathom that attitude.

Technically, the part of it that's legally considered a weapon, the receiver, is not built from a kit, it's built from scratch.

If the rest of the parts were not legal to purchase, they could be built from scratch too. A skilled craftsman can make an entire AK-47 replica in ~one day. An unskilled one following plans on the internet working from what's procurable from any hardware store and using cheap tools from the same source can make (a much shoddier one) in a few weeks.

Making guns is not hard. They are, in their basics, very simple pieces of gear, and can be built from the same materials with same tools as any other metalworking project.

In conflict zones where gun imports are successfully blocked, the locals invariably build their own. These weapons range from AK-47 replicas to zip guns [1] that make 15 minutes to make. I'd argue that for crime, the zip gun is the more practical one.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Va87gB_4AI

I know that making guns is not hard. It's not all that interesting that people are able to build guns themselves. After all, it's ancient technology, and people build far more complicated machines at home.

What's interesting to me is not that a gun can be built by an individual, but that this particular kind of gun can be built legally by an individual in the US without informing anyone.

People build their own airplanes, for example, but at the end of the day they have to get them inspected and registered before they can legally fly them. That one can build an AK-47 without any such controls, and still be completely within the law, is interesting.

I'm pro-gun control and I dislike Mother Jones for their rampant editorialization in other articles. That rampant editorialization makes me distrust a lot of this piece: not the facts, but the characterizations of the other "build partigoers" as red-state pastiches (the idea that someone genuinely said "Johnny Law" is a tough pill to swallow), as well as the "Target Demographics" section having no relevance to the article whatsoever besides the fact that both concern firearms.

There's also zero context of how the author got to the build party, etc. From a pure interest standpoint (as opposed to a political one), I wish he would have included that.

Completely agree.

Mother Jones is a known Liberal magazine and despite the approach to not insert the authors opinion, you can clearly see the point of the article is we need to have the ability to register guns with the government.

I'm constantly shocked at how uninformed gun control advocates are.

Disgusting.

If these Obama-worshippers would pause for a moment in the adoration of their "Saint", they might see that he and his administration (DoJ) are responsible for the largest power grab and human rights violation in the history of this country.

The Second Amendment is not a "suggestion" or "subject to interpretation" (aside from a constitutional amendment). It is part of the bedrock of this nation that was founded on a profound distrust of arbitrary government power, and a belief that "We The People" must keep our government small, scared, and subject to the will of the governed, not the other way around.

Your point stands, but name-calling and sarcasm is just low. Really low.

And the Second Amendment was founded for two purposes -- so that this nation would be able to defend itself against an outside force that sought to destroy the U.S.'s independence, and so that this nation would be able to defend itself against an inside force that sought to destroy the U.S.'s independence, i.e. the government.

I'm constantly amazed at how few moderates and independents exist. There seems to be an intense dichotomy with regards to politics; you're either blue or red.

The indoctrination towards either party must stop.

The second amendment was not about peoples ability to overthrow government it was about states ability to overthrow the federal government. Now days people don't think much about states as independent actors but back they where giving up on soverenty and wanted some protection.

> ...the largest power grab and human rights violation in the history of this country.

The history of the country is a long time. Pretty sure slavery was a bigger human rights violation.

But even talking within the last hundred years, pretty sure that would be the Patriot Act along with Homeland Security, TSA, and the rest of the perma-war apparatus wielded against citizens at home.

Those freedoms are more useful on a daily basis to many more of us.

I would recommend you to read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment to know what real government power grab is.

Really? My take-away was that home-built guns are a fascinating and mostly unknown loophole in the law that causes no real problems.

Your post is depressing and self-defeating.

Here is Mother Jones publishing an article which gets to the heart of how difficult gun control is as a practical matter, and what is your reply?

Oh they're a "known Liberal magazine" (as if it mattered).

And you're "shocked at how uninformed gun control advocates are".

Here are your avowed Liberal gun control advocates, making the case that gun control is difficult and impractical, and what are you doing? You're chastising them. No attempt to assuage their concerns, no attempt to highlight the points that make gun control challenging. Nothing except a cultural appeal to people who already agree with you.

Way to move the discussion forward.

@at-fates-hands I bet you didn't know 60 people were accidentally killed by firearms yesterday. And the day before that, and the day before that. About 30 people are killed in attacks -- every day.

And another thing, why is it gun patriots never give a fig about the other rights in the Constitution, like freedom of speech, religion, and assembly? I think you guys just like to play with guns.

It takes a cold dead hand...

I don't believe your statement about "gun patriots" is based on reality. In my experience, gun rights, freedom of speech and freedom of religion are all bound up pretty tightly. A well-armed populace is often seen as a safeguard of those other rights.

Talk is cheap. I never see gun nuts do anything promoting civil rights.

EDIT: I did once meet a militia member at a non-gun civil rights event.

I guess you don't realize that we believe the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a civil right? And in our view, no right is under greater attack than it (even after all the IRS abuse that has recently come to light)? And that therefore we're rather busy protecting it from people like you?

And we're most certainly interested in other civil rights, ranging from freedom of speech (Citizens United, McCain hates us with a passion and were were one of the groups he and Feingold aimed to silence), to the abuses of SWAT raids. Read our stuff and you'll find your opinion to be ill founded.

I only hear you talk about ONE civil right, ignoring all the others. I think conflating guns and the right to a regulated militia, in the context of ignoring all other civil rights, indicates some other motivation. A motivation not influenced by rational thought.

Start standing up for porn, flag burning, video games, and pastafarians and I might take you for some one serious about civil rights. Liberty is not about being able to do the things you like, it is much bigger.

If you do stand up for the other civil right, thanks! But I see no evidence in tone or content of this.

60 fatal gun accidents per day? Way way off. It's measured in the low hundreds per year, not around 21,000 annual.

Cars however...30,000ish accidental per year. (USA numbers)

Wrong. Do more more research.

According to the CDC[1], there were 613 deaths caused by unintended firearm injury in 2007. Are they wrong?

[1]: http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcaus10.html

I'll bite

"In 2007, there were 613 fatal firearm accidents in the United States, constituting 0.5% of 123,706 fatal accidents that year" [1][2]

[1] http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp [2] http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcaus10.html

31k gun deaths in 2010

http://webappa.cdc.gov/cgi-bin/broker.exe

On average, 33 gun homicides were committed each day for the years 2005-2010 -- WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports, 1999-2010

On average, 49 gun suicides were committed each day for the years 2005-2010 (WISQARS)

It takes a cold dead hand to earn profit from firearms in America.

Operative word: "accidental".

Deliberate murders involving guns outnumber accidental killings some 36 to 1.

Note however that accidental automotive killings outnumber deliberate willful homicides using firearms. Odd that somehow the former garners little public concern.

In 2011 there were 851 deaths due to accidental firearm discharge, 19766 firearm suicides, and 11101 homicides by firearm. Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_06.pdf

In Milwaukee, 76% of homicide victims had prior arrests/citations, and 90% of suspects had priors. Source: http://city.milwaukee.gov/ImageLibrary/Groups/cityHRC/report...

WTF???

Note the year before, it was 606, which is where it's been for a while. It wasn't as high as 851 in the early 80s, when the population was nearly 1/3 lower as well as the number of guns owned.

Something is wrong with one of these two statistics. Besides the discontinuity, I seriously doubt we in the gun community wouldn't have noticed a 30% increase in the number of accidental gun fatalities.

Note, I'm not saying this preliminary 2011 number is wrong, just that I suspect something other than the real rate of accidents changed. Hmmm, there's not even any external event that would account for a 2010 to 2011 increase (i.e. the major spikes in purchasing were after Obama was first elected and after Newtown, things were back to something like "normal" in 2011 although sales just kept going up and up year to year each month).

ADDED: As those major increases in population and guns owned occurred, we worked really hard to get the accident rate down. Mandatory hunter safety courses, a general emphasis on safety in the now larger self-defense area, etc. etc. etc. The rate is still down due to the population increase, but....

Where did the label "gun patriot" come from? I'm always interested with how people label themselves/others. This one is particularly interesting, to me, because I can't figure out where this comes from or why you're using it.

I'm pro-second amendment and I care very much out our liberties. In fact I believe that the same arguments made for and against the second amendment can also be made for and against the others you've mentioned.

Are those in favor of gun control also in favor of controlling speech, religion and assembly?

I own a few firearms and don't play with any of them.

Do guns absolutely need to be lethal? If so, why? Would you (assuming you own a gun) forego all your lethal guns if someone gave you one with comparable stopping power, but which was much less lethal?

Yes.

I certainly do not want to kill anyone, but my safety comes first. If my safety would not be any more in jeopardy (aka, same stopping power), I'd be fine with it. My only concern is ME living.

I'm sure most pragmatics would feel the same way.

"Set phasers to stun...."

Agreed with travisby, and in fact, we and the police are only legally allowed to use lethal force to stop, not to kill per se (internally, killing is reserved to the judiciary). We just don't have anything even on the horizon that comes close to the stopping power of firearms without also bringing its own dangers to life. In fact, pretty much all of those instruments of force are called "less lethal" to underline that using them might result in death, e.g. pepper spray and allergies or asthma. The very connotations of the word "force" tell you a lot.

The other gun owning members of my family wouldn't, they're all hunters first and foremost, and we don't bow hunt in part because we don't consider that humane. There's also issues with wildlife pretty much every place we live.

What? How is this not a disgrace? This article means that practically anyone anywhere in the US can have an AK-47 with no licensing. How is that supposed to make me feel safe? What if I sneak into my GF's house and her dad tries me right then and there, and decides that the punishment for fucking his daughter is death. Oh, and what do you know? He has an AK-47 for it so all my hopes of running away are dashed. People shouldn't have the power to kill other people so easily - not unless they're the police or army.

What if your girlfriend's dad decided to run you down in his car--again, running away is dashed. Hopefully she can find a mate who has more spine and isn't cowed so easily by the thought of other humans with possession of means of force.

Seriously, you can either live your life afraid of every damn thing, or accept that while there are dangerous devices out there the odds of ending up on the wrong side of one can be mitigated--unless, you know, you go looking for trouble.

Don't be such a scaredy-cat.

I'd like to see your brave Kratos face with an AK-47 in your face.

Every point you make is wrong:

I'd have a decent chance of getting away from a car, I wouldn't from an AK-47. A car has other legitimate uses. Guns outside of the police and hunting, don't imo.

I wouldn't say being afraid of firearms counts me as having no spine and afraid of "anything". I just think you're kinda full of crap and would cry the most if you actually had a gun in your face.

I wouldn't say guns are just a means of force. A good punch, a knife is. A gun is just an automatic KO for me. So yes, I don't think the average person should be able to have a gun - something that serves no means other than give him the ability to kill people at will.

You ever shot at something outside of a video game? Especially with an old semi-auto assault rifle? While it's running away from you? It's hardly a decided matter--try skeet shooting sometime.

Are you afraid of cars? Of lathes or mills? One misstep with those and you're going to lose a digit, more likely than not.

Weapons are tools, and you can't go through life being afraid of tools. You respect them, you treat them carefully, but you shouldn't be afraid of them.

Why is the idea of someone else being able to kill people at will so distressing to you? It shouldn't be an issue, right, if you haven't put yourself in a position to deserve it--after all, that's the position you're wishing on those who would go against the military or police.

I'm not sure what these questions have to do with anything, but no, no, and no.

Again every point adds nothing to the debate:

Guns are tools for killing. I'm pretty afraid of that, and I think so are lots/the majority of other people, so that settles that.

Because there is the police and courts for trials. I don't want to be tried by some dude with shit judgement and there - my life is over.

You really are hopeless case. The whole world laughs at the stupidity of US gun control laws and it's just agonizing debating with someone on the other side. You know, the Boston bomber shouldn't have done that. He should've just assembled one of these and killed a couple hundred in the crowd, and you should be there.

The difference between a military assault rifle and a normal gun is the selective fire which allows automatic fire and semi-automatic. In the military, the type of firing that does almost all the killing is semi-automatic, just like a consumer gun. There's really nothing special about an AK-47.

"People shouldn't have the power to kill other people so easily - not unless they're the police or army."

And why should some some 18yo kid in the army have that right but not a middle aged adult? Because some other army guy yelled at him for a few weeks and gave him a uniform?

You mention a father could go crazy and kill you for sneaking in to screw his daughter, but what if you were a rapist sneaking in to rape his daughter? Might be nice to have way to defend your home in that situation. That being said, I don't believe that assault rifles should be legal though.

What, aside from the obvious reason? Someone in the military follows orders and serves the nation while someone with a gun will probably do whatever he/she feels with it and nothing actually useful. How is that?

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_Shootings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell_v._City_of_Oakland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton#Assassination_by_C...

And for you fans of enterprise solutions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden_firebombing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_hiroshima

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising

Your moral reasoning needs practice, kid.

Heh, so out of the millions of policemen and militants in the world, that protect the billions out there, you found a handful that have gone bad. Sure, let's let anyone kill anyone then! Moral reasoning!

Heh, I'm < 25 yrs old and a coder at a top software company with a six figure salary. And I've only been coding for a couple of years. I give you advice, kid.

"...you found a handful that have gone bad."

You do realize that your point there is exactly the same that most gun-control opponents make? If we are to accept your point, you need to accept theirs.

What do you work on, out of curiosity? Maybe it's something you're actually qualified to give me advice on--I'm always up for learning. :)

Heh, Because having a six-figure salary (at a top software company!) automatically proves your superiority in all subjects.

More generally, at least some of us have taken note of the lessons learned from around a quarter billion disarmed people being killed by their own governments in the 20th century (and rather obviously most of that was done by the Only Ones you enshrine, the police and military with I suppose some paramilitaries in the middle).

Good luck convincing us to willingly give up another inch on this issue.

Not to nitpick, but "assault rifle" is a technical term for a select-fire (fully automatic) weapon that fires an underpowered rifle caliber, and any select-fire weapon is quite illegal for individuals to own in the US.

"Assault weapon" is a made up term used to try to discriminate these civilian rifles on the basis of the cosmetic features that make them seem frightening to non-gun-owners. When we talk about a semi-automatic civilian "AK-47" like this, it's really just called a rifle.

You should know that, unless you have a 24/7 guard watch (and maybe not even then), if someone truly wants to kill you, there's nothing stopping them.

I mean, courts will try them afterwards, but that's no consolation to your corpse.

Yes I am aware that the parents example would probably fall under "crimes of passion". The man would still want him dead for more than long enough to make it reality.

Wow! Why have any protection against getting killed at all?! Let's just let everyone murder everyone else at will and then we'll try them afterwards! After all we can't stop them if we wanted to. Great logic!

You thought I was talking about guns there? Oh no, that was general life advice, for your safety.

The idea that you can go around getting people so angry that they want to kill you more than a few times without ill effect is silly.

The idea that someone can kill me because I got them angry is sillier. There are the police and courts and the like.

I'm not talking about what should and shouldn't be here.

I worded my last post incorrectly it seems. Let me be clearer.

When you get people angry enough, they try to kill you. This is usually the wrong thing for them to do. But people do it anyway. Police and courts have nothing to do with it. People are still very much able to kill you without a gun, and they have a decent chance of succeeding.

If you continually do things that result in people trying to kill you, the chance of you becoming a homicide statistic rapidly approaches one. If you want to dispute this, you can argue with the 506 homicides in Japan in 2009. (Where weapons are virtually nonexistent.)

In other words, please don't get yourself killed under the mistaken notion that men without guns are somehow incapable of it.

Source: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/homicide.ht...

>There are the police and courts and the like.

Constructing an argument that leans on the courts and police to protect you is entirely specious.

Contrary to the mantra that is often plastered on the side of every patrol car, the police have no duty whatsoever to protect you. And likewise, the courts or police cannot nor will not protect you from threat even if that threat is imminent and certain[1]. The only duty of our justice system is to investigate and apprehend criminals, not to protect your person or property[2][3].

1. Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981)

2. DeShaney v. Winnebago Cnty. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189 (1989)

3. Leidy v. Borough of Glenolden, et al., 277 F. Supp. 2d 547, 561 (E.D. Pa. 2003)

There's no helping this one...they seem hell-bent on their own impotence and likelihood of destruction.

This is fear in action, your whole post. Use logic, not fear.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com