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Comment by minamea | Hacker News Reader

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.

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"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.

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.

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.

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

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