Comment by reader5000 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by reader5000 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Actually society would be much better off if the government tracked such devices. A lot of people interested in gun culture have severe inefficiencies in their cognitive abilities. Almost all mass killings are perpetrated by individuals with severe cognitive disabilities or are on some sort of prescription psychoactive. As a prominent role of government is to protect its citizens from danger, the active tracking of mass-killing devices in the hands of these individuals should be a regular role of government.

The situation is completely analogous with automobiles. The government ensures people granted driver's licenses are cognitively capable of safe operation of their vehicle. More importantly, the government tracks vehicles to ensure just compensation for parties injured by the operation of a motor vehicle.

The only reason a similar institution has not been built for firearms is a) gun culture represents a small and decreasing minority of Americans and b) legislative capture by the munitions industry.

Wow, where to begin with biased posts like these?

>A lot of people interested in gun culture have severe inefficiencies in their cognitive abilities.

First off you start off insulting a large group of people, painting broad strokes of assumption. You've already lost the majority of all your credibility (what little you had that is) at this point.

>gun culture represents a small and decreasing minority of Americans

There are more guns in circulation and owned and in the hands of americans than there has ever been in history prior to this date. Practically all your opinions on gun control and gun ownership are false.

I'd tell you to go out and do some ACTUAL research on the subject, but judging by the fact you open your opinion insulting a vast majority of americans for no good reason at all, its falling on deaf ears.

I guess I can finish saying that for ignorant people like you, it would be best if you said nothing at all, you are embarrassing yourself.

The absolute number of guns may well be higher, but the percentage of Americans who own one is presumably far below what it was during colonial times, for instance. It is quite possible that the number of guns is rising but either a) new gun owners are not increasing as fast as the number of people or b) the number of gun owners is not increasing at all but existing owners are collecting more per capita than they used to. I don't know if that's the answer, but your argument that there are more guns than ever is a poor rebuttal to the grandparents argument that the percentage of Americans owning guns is going down.

Errr, we're wealthier, manufactured items are a lot cheaper, and it's a lot easier to keep a gun in working condition now that we're using smokeless powder and non-corrosive primers. Crime's a lot higher, I gather, so city folk have a greater need to be armed.

I don't have figures, and most of academia was delighted to celebrate a fraud who claimed very very few owned guns in colonial times (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America) so data is probably hard to come by, but I wouldn't presume that at all.

hysterix has already covered the bias well, there there's inconvenient facts such as:

Driving or owning an automobile is not an enumerated Constitutional right.

Owning an automobile is not a highly regulated activity. An analogous comparison would be legal concealed carry .... which is highly regulated outside of Vermont, Alaska, Wyoming, and Arizona.

"The only reason...." In addition to the above is that there are a very large number of gun owners in this country, possibly a majority of the nation's households, and we vote. Politicians aren't in thrall to the manufacturers organization, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), they're scared of the gunowners organization, the National Rifle Association, which even at 5 million members is only a fraction of gun owners and serious voting gun owners.

Every year Obama has been in office Americans have bought 10 million new guns (we have good numbers on that due to taxes and regulation). Think about that....

Maybe we should use phrenology to measure their heads and see if they can handle the weapon first? I mean, since we're going to the realm of pseudo-science, might as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com