ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation | Hacker News Reader

ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation

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183 pointsJackFr183 comments

I don't own a gun, but let's assume I become a gun enthusiast and decide to go buy "something cool"

I go to my local gun store, which is actually a front for the ATF. In my mind, looks like a bunch of seedy characters, but i assume they're trustworthy because, natch, they have a license from the ATF.

I strike up a conversation with the bearded, scraggly guy behind the counter. What would I like? I don't know. How about a shotgun? As we talk, he talks more and more about "cool" guns. Perhaps sawed-off barrels, or big loads. At some point, we cross the line between talking about legal guns and illegal guns.

Now here's the thing: beats the shit out of me where we crossed that line. I'm trusting the guy behind the counter to be a reliable guide to what can be bought or sold. From the ATF standpoint, however, I am fully aware of the intricacies of firearm law and am now soliciting them to commit a crime.

A few months go by. Then the ATF comes knocking at my door with a warrant, a hi-res video, and I go to jail. Perhaps for many years.

Now we can argue whether they would actually prosecute or not, or what any sane prosecutor would ask for solicitation, but the fact of the matter is, in the ATF's view, I'm a hardened gun criminal. It'll go on my record, and this will become part of the intelligence files at ATF.

If you can't see what's wrong with this picture, you've lost your moral compass.

You don't even have to bring morality into the equation. There's functional problems with this sort of operation, for precisely the reason you outlined. The legal system assumes that people can figure out, based on social context, what the law is, or at least know when they need to consult a lawyer. Actively misleading people, in the guise of licensed dealers, upends this assumption. Whether it's moral or immoral, it's inconsistent with the most basic assumptions on which our legal system relies.

Morality is important to bring into the equation. Although s/he didn't have to, as you say, I'm glad s/he did. One should always keep ethics as a fundamental layer in discussing law, especially about actions that result in forms of torture (e.g. prison).

The problem with morality is that it's a lot more subject to disputes and individualized viewpoints than law. For example, I think it's ridiculous to say that prison is a form of torture. If you come at me with that as the basis for your argument, we'd just argue past each other and never reach a satisfactory resolution. We'd waste all day with philosophical disagreement. But if we follow a policy of resolving issues by reference first to the law, well then we may well find ourselves satisfactorily resolving the issue without ever bringing up our divergent personal views of morality.

Of course morality always remains in the background. But it's a backstop, an argument for changing the law.

An individual is not a hive. Law will always have less basis than personal morality. How anyone could think to the contrary is troubling, especially in light of a history replete with oppression and tyranny backed through "law."

The US prison system is a form of torture. This is especially so when used against the hundreds of thousands of benign, nonviolent people. Solve problems, it does not. The physical hurt, torment, and destruction to a person's life and opportunities is far more real than words on paper. Many of the forms of imprisonment that linger on are nothing but a relic of barbarous eras and the sociopathy of it continues in full for those who build careers around it. In no rational, compassionate world would being locked into a cage not be considered a form of torture except possibly in the world of those who are shockingly faithful to following whatever [insert authority] tells them to, through law, and shockingly faithful in assuming the system won't err against oneself.

If a person were to kidnap you off the street and lock you in a cage, placing you into a horrible environment with cutthroat gangs eager for blood where you'll possibly be assaulted at any time and dramatically ruin your prospects if you ever walk free again, you probably wouldn't like it. You'd probably find it quite torturous. Like many, you'd find it a living hell. You'd probably understand that being placed into a cage is a form of torture. That's what prison is to people who disobey immoral laws. I wouldn't wish it for my enemies. This is why always evaluating the ethical basis is more important. Neither "law" nor "just following orders" suffice.

> But if we follow a policy of resolving issues by reference first to the law...

No, I don't enjoy circular reasoning. I only like open discourse. That means anything can be referenced. The philosophical disagreement is far more important to talk about either way. That's unless, of course, one finds oneself trapped in a courtroom of an [arbitrary jurisdiction/nation] where morality is mostly left to rot -- nay those very rare moments where nullification occurs and independent thought triumphs.

"Now here's the thing: beats the shit out of me where we crossed that line."

And that's one of the most frightening aspects of modern-day law enforcement tactics, especially when considered in light of the surveillance techniques now at their disposal.

The standard presumption that everyone is fully aware of the legal boundaries of daily activities falls to pieces when someone is in virgin territory. In your hypothetical case, you've never bought a gun before, and you're probably a little nervous and out of your element. You're easy prey for a sting of this nature, and your nervousness would "read," in the context of the surveillance video, as criminal intent.

Ironically enough, it's the law-abiding citizens who are least likely to be aware of the intricacies of criminal law. The real criminals would cover their bases. So by its very nature, a sting like this one produces perverse outcomes. It over-selects for innocent bystanders and petty criminals, and filters out the savvier criminals who are actually the locus of the problem ostensibly being combated.

> The real criminals would cover their bases. So by its very nature, a sting like this one produces perverse outcomes. It over-selects for innocent bystanders and petty criminals, and filters out the savvier criminals who are actually the locus of the problem ostensibly being combated.

In the Milwaukee operation that inspired this bit of investigative journalism, it turned out even worse than that. The career criminals quickly recognized the undercover agents for what they were and proceeded to con the !$@%$@ pants off of them. The whole operation eventually fell apart when the agents got looted, including having the weapons stolen from one of their cars while it was parked at a completely different location.

There was absolutely no benefit to the community from this. The agents baited a bunch of sometimes clueless folks who mostly weren't anything worse than your garden variety juvenile delinquents into committing crimes serious enough to send them to jail. So they created an acute increase in the crime rate, which then permanently decreases the ability of members of the community to secure gainful employment, thereby also creating a chronic increase in the crime rate, expanding social burdens on the community, and reducing the community's economic productivity overall. This in a city that's already completely falling apart both socially and economically thanks to >50% of its African-American males having prior convictions. In return for the pleasure of getting to do this, they supplied the local street gangs with free weapons and, briefly, a convenient source of income.

I don't disagree that what the ATF doing is wrong, but as a gun owner who appreciates both the value of my gun rights and the seriousness of my responsibility to use them safely and wisely, I'd like to suggest an alternate view on where the picture is wrong: you trusted the gun store to be a reliable guide on what can be bought and sold.

Now, I like to get advice from my local gun store as well, but it's purely informational. As someone who possesses lethal weapons, I verify EVERYTHING about what my legal obligations are, what is safe, and what is effective for home defense. I strongly recommend that anybody else do the same. A lot of people believe strongly in the 2nd Amendment, but such a freedom comes with this responsibility.

Moral of the story? Police and federal agents must be more transparent and accountable for their actions and expenditures.

The whole concept of "spend money so that our budget doesn't shrink next year" has go to be fixed also. I don't know a solution other than having more auditors and efficiency experts (GAO, gao.gov).

Would people flip out if there was a bill proposed to require all guns in the US to have a GPS tracker? Just an idea, I know it wouldn't fix all gun problems, but it might be prevent some gun thefts and murders. Of course, this data shouldn't be able to be accessed without a warrant.

Stings are slightly unfair and can sometimes catch dumb people who wouldn't otherwise commit the crime. On the other hand, if you purchase a gun without a license or attempt to hire a contract killer and it turns out to be a police officer you are in contact with, then that sting just save a life, which is good.

Preventing abuses of power is key. There should be adequate training at organizations on how and where to report abuses of power or potentially unethical behavior. Most of this is already in place, obviously more resources and oversight is needed constantly to ensure that the police are protecting citizens and not entrapping them or abusing their power for career advancement.

> Would people flip out if there was a bill proposed to require all guns in the US to have a GPS tracker?

As a gun control advocate who also owns guns, yes, I would flip the f* out. While I have no problem if the government knows I own a gun (they know I own a car), Putting a GPS tracker on it would result in two things:

1. The government would know where I am at all times (I carry my Kahr CM-9 everywhere that allows it). 2. Criminals would just remove the tracker.

You already carry a cellphone, I presume.

Also, I am against most forms of gun control, being otherwise very liberal in my worldview.

However, I cannot possibly understand why a developer would need to carry a gun at all times. You are inviting trouble with that, and more likely to die to your own gun than you are to protect yourself from some bad guys.

If you want to carry a gun with you, I support your right to do so. But it's the objectively wrong play.

"Objectively wrong play" is a bit too much.

Carrying a gun does have benefits, and it does have drawbacks. Lots of room for this to be subjective, and lots of room for someone to subjectively find this to be a good thing to do.

Yep, it's a personal decision to make. It would be simple for me to get a non-resident CCW permit in number of shall-issue states I visit, but I've chosen not to. That's, however, my choice based on my own circumstances. I don't think I can "objectively" decide this for others.

A question (maybe a nitpick) about the word "liberal"--wouldn't it be more "liberal" to be against gun control since less control means more liberty?

It probably depends on whether you believe guns are more likely to create liberty or destroy it.

There are some very reasonable arguments that guns destroy more liberty than they create, and thus it is liberal to be against tools that make violence so easily accessible.

Nearly all political terminology is heavily overloaded. The best you can do is take the words as they are used; trying to infer meaning from them etymologically won't work.

For example, if we were to take the term "conservative" literally we would expect Republicans to be rabid environmentalists.

Yes. The more classical term "liberal," unfortunately, has been steadily eroding into a term used by people who espouse much the opposite of any form of liberation or freer society. Both major political wings amount to funnels for increasing government power and reach. Thus, the nation has learned to largely solve its social issues through docile hope (e.g. deferring to the spending decisions of oligarchical interests and trickle-down economics) and through the torture of imprisonment to settle nonviolent disobedience.

There are people who think that giving a central group the authority to prohibit an entire general population's ability to use guns is justified. They feel it would personally give themselves an increased sense of liberation. I empathize with the wish to see a more peaceful world (a highly subjective idealism). However, from my vantage, putting faith into a heavily centralized form of constraint is not "liberal" in any way that actually respects that word at a human level.

"A question (maybe a nitpick) about the word "liberal"--wouldn't it be more "liberal" to be against gun control since less control means more liberty?"

Yes.

Conversely, the political party aligned with corporate and business interests (whichever that may be at the time) is NOT the political party that will champion broad access to means of force.

Whatever (temporary) accident of history it is that the party of corporate power is also the party of "gun rights" is an anomaly and will self-correct quickly.

> more likely to die to your own gun than you are to protect yourself from some bad guys.

You need to be careful when applying statistical trends to specific individuals.

For example, if we suppose hypothetically that impoverished people are more likely to commit robberies, it would be inappropriate to tell a particular impoverished person that they are more likely to commit robberies. Who knows, it could be that they are impoverished because they are a monk who has taken a vow of poverty (and therefore has essentials, such as food and housing, provided to them).

In this particular case, while it may be true that gun owners are statistically more likely to be killed by their own gun than by a criminal with a gun, it does not follow that this particular gun owner is more likely to be killed by their own gun. It is possible that most gun owners are dangerously unfamiliar with their guns and basic safety procedures while this particular gun owner is not.

Why is this the case: "it does not follow that this particular gun owner is more likely"?

Doesn't this follow from assignment to the set?

Your claim about more likely to die to your own gun is often a misleading statement. The leading type of death caused by firearms in the US is suicide, by a large factor. The leading method of suicide in the US is by firearms. Therefore, if you remove suicide from those numbers the chances of you dieing by your own gun is reduced significantly. Sorry, but this is one of my pet peeves whenever I see a statement like that tossed out without context. Without context, it sounds like you will be killed by your own gun by factors beyond your control, which would be rare indeed. Using it as a way to discourage gun ownership is misleading, unless they have suicidal tendencies.

Also, you don't need your cellphone to defend yourself; you can toss it whenever you choose.

Have you considered that gun ownership may contribute to suicide, by lowering the threshold of planning needed, and thus making it possible for gun owners who wouldn't commit suicide by other means?

It's not as simple of a relationship as you make it out to be.

My below argument still applies.

If we take a "gun ownership"->"suicide" relationship for granted, we cannot assume that this particular gun owner is at risk for suicide. If there is a trend, then we can talk about the trend and populations. However talking about individuals requires more care.

I think the argument only applies depending on your definition of "risk for suicide" and whether you believe there are people who never under any circumstances in their lives feel suicidal even for a second before snapping out of it.

Killing yourself requires two things: the will to do it and a means. If you have a loaded gun, the means is a constant: at any point in time you have it you could use it to kill yourself. Will, on the other hand, is a function dependent on a bunch of things: bad news, time, emotional state, social interactions, etc.

I would define "risk for suicide" in terms of the combination of both will and means. As such, unless the individual's will to commit suicide is absolutely and always zero, adding a reliable means would always increase risk of suicide. I guess it's up for debate whether there's anyone on the planet who has never felt suicidal for even a second in their lives.

Well, I feel that it is that simple.

Owning a gun does not contribute to suicide. I suppose there might be cases of someone killing themselves with their gun because they feel bad about owning a gun. What you are suggesting makes it easier, but does not contribute.

Owning a gun may make it simpler for some people to commit the act, but the sad fact of the matter is it not that difficult to do. There are numerous ways for someone to commit suicide easily without a firearm. There are ways that are quicker, painless, and more apt to succeed.

If the most common method to commit suicide happen to be jumping off the roof of their house, should the government start restricting the access to your own roof regardless of your feelings towards suicide? If the most common method were to jump off bridges, should the government restrict all foot traffic on bridges?

My take on people using this type of statistic, granted I don't feel they all do this, is that it is used as a sad fact to cause emotion in an effort to garner support for their position. I mean, what kind of person are you to want to not help prevent suicides? Don't you want to be reasonable to help people in pain? That's called emotional manipulation and the worst people do it all the time.

When it comes to suicide, people who focus on the how, but not the why, most likely have an agenda about the how and probably could care less about the why. These are the kinds of people who should not be included in the discussion of something so highly emotional and tragic as suicide.

As I stated elsewhere, the government using its powers to restrict ownership of an inanimate object based on what another individual may or may not do with their own inanimate object is a disgusting abuse of power.

> As I stated elsewhere, the government using its powers to restrict ownership of an inanimate object based on what another individual may or may not do with their own inanimate object is a disgusting abuse of power.

Do you believe the government should restrict personal ownership of nuclear weapons, or is that a disgusting abuse of power?

Ah yes, the old personal ownership of nuclear weapons argument, as if that were the same thing and relevant to this discussion.

Note, in my comment above when I state "an inanimate object", I am referring to a gun. For you to take that statement and expand it to an extreme such as nuclear weapons is rather childish on your part.

Since we've started into childish manner of discussion, are you suggesting then that someone has used a nuclear weapon to commit suicide and therefore we should help prevent suicides by banning all nuclear weapons? Or are you suggesting that the banning of personal ownership of nuclear weapons is justified because too many people can easily commit suicide with them? I'm just trying to understand your stance as it pertains to this discussion.

Now, as for your question. No, I do not see the government restricting access to nuclear weapons as a disgusting abuse of power. To make your argument on a far more sane and realistic point, I do not disagree with the government restricting access to fully automatic weaponry either.

How do I justify what you probably see as a clear hypocrisy? Easy, because it's not. The government is fully within its rights to restrict access to things it deems too dangerous to the nation's people as a whole. If someone can convince me that personal ownership of handguns is a danger to the nation's people as a whole, I would likely change my stance. I just don't see that happening anytime soon.

So, do you actually have a comment about my position that it is a disgusting use of power for the government to restrict a person's access to an inanimate object, in this case a gun since you are having troubles following along, because of how another individual may or may not use the same inanimate object on themselves without harm to another person? Or shall we continue with comparing childish extremes?

Because if that's your stance, we really need to take a hard look at the inanimate objects we interact with on a daily basis.

By the way, we today have access to all kinds of things that a hundred years ago people would be shocked we have such easy access to. There is a good chance that personal ownership of nuclear weapons, depending on your definition I suppose, will be a strong possibility sometime in the future. Most likely well beyond our lifespans, which is probably a good thing.

I apologize for my harsh tone here, but this is yet another pet peeve of mine that often comes up needlessly in discussions such as this.

This is Hacker News -- you are expected not to be sloppy with your argumentation here. If you say "inanimate object" rather than gun, then we're going to assume you are making a more general statement and react accordingly. I cannot read your mind, so please do not assume I (or anyone else) knows your precise opinion on gun control without being precise with your words.

Well, I guess I'm at fault for assuming that people would follow that I was referring to the object that was the center of the discussion at hand. I should have guessed that someone would take such a simple concept and expand it to every single object in the known universe.

My apologies.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

You used a rhetorical flourish that made your argument sound more extreme than you intended, and it backfired when someone called you out on it. Rather than write a reply dripping with sarcasm and contempt, perhaps you should meditate on this incident as your personal failure to be a clear and effective writer.

Well, since we're discussing opinions here, it is of my opinion that it is your reading comprehension that's lacking. But you shouldn't take it as a personal failure, it happens to everyone from time to time.

When there is an ongoing discussion about an object then one is fully capable of referring to that object without literally naming that object each and every time it is mentioned.

My way: I am holding a stapler. The object in my hand is red. I use it to excess, wasting staples. The boss wants to restrict everyone's usage of staplers because of my waste. I don't think the boss should restrict your usage of an object because of my inefficient usage of the same object.

Your way: I am holding a stapler. The stapler in my hand is red. I use the stapler to excess, wasting staples. The boss wants to restrict everyone's usage of staplers because of my waste. I don't think the boss should restrict your usage of a stapler because of my inefficient usage of a stapler.

That's a stupid way to construct a discussion. But if it makes you happy.

If you take my statement and remove it from the context of the discussion then sure, you are quite correct. But it is not correct to quote that statement as to somehow proving your point by removing it from the context of the discussion.

I did not fail in using a rhetorical flourish to make an argument. I used a simple statement to prove my point that you apparently either failed to follow or attempted to use as a "gotcha!" moment. I'm leaning towards you thinking you had an excellent gotcha moment but alas, I think you protest too much.

By the way, your expanding my statement to include nuclear weapons to totally blow the discussion out of proportion and out of reality was the joke of my office yesterday. Many people thank you for the chuckles you provided.

The difference between the office example and the gun example is that the generalized version would actually make sense in the office example (for example, here is Derek Sivers bringing a similar argument up: https://sivers.org/punish ). If you were my coworker saying the generalized version to me in an office, I would have interpreted you as having the generalized opinion. Of course, since I agree, I wouldn't have raised a counterexample, and you would have walked away thinking I agreed with what you meant instead of what you said. Language is tricky like that.

Both examples are the same thing within the discussion that each was a part of. During any of the discussion of this thread, I don't see generalized opinions, the discussion was very direct in discussing one topic: firearms used for suicide. You were the one to attempt to generalize my statement by taking it outside the context of the discussion.

If I had walked up to you and made my statement without any context whatsoever then you would be absolutely correct, which I said before.

Thanks for the link, it supports my argument quite well that punishing all for the actions of an individual is not always the correct course of action. It actually goes beyond what I was saying since I was only speaking of restricting someone based on what another person does to themselves.

You are dealing in really generic platitudes that do not have any basis in fact.

> In 2005, 75% of the 10,100 homicides committed using firearms in the United States were committed using handguns, compared to 4% with rifles, 5% with shotguns, and the rest with unspecified firearms.[48] The likelihood that a death will result is significantly increased when either the victim or the attacker has a firearm.[49] For example, the mortality rate for gunshot wounds to the heart is 84%, compared to 30% for people who sustain stab wounds to the heart.[50]

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

The statistics on this issue are stacked pretty highly in favor of gun control. If part of the social contract for living in the United States means that we have to contend with the threat of gun violence, then so be it. However, we should not pretend that the number of guns currently in our society somehow makes us safer or more advanced or anything like that.

Switching from suicides to homicides doesn't really help the case for gun control.

That page's neutrality on the subject is also under dispute. You should read the comments about that, they are interesting.

If we're talking homicides, does that include legal homicides as well as the illegal kind? If it does then the number is misleading. Since homicide is defined as a person killing another person then many shootings are listed as homicides but are not considered crimes. A police officer shooting someone attempting to kill a person is considered a homicide. A woman shooting her rapist to defend herself is considered a homicide. It depends on how the data was collected and labeled.

If you dig a bit deeper into the statistics you will find many places with tough gun control laws that have high rates of gun murders. You can also find examples of low gun ownership with low gun murders. The thing is you cannot look at the US as a whole with stats like that, the stats can vary wildly from state to state if you break it down that way. It is not as simple as saying guns bad, gun control good.

If one is willing to do so, break down homicides by race in each state and you often see interesting numbers. But I'm sure that's racist to suggest such things...

If you dig deeper into state statistics you may find that the majority of some of the states with the highest gun murders also happen to have high levels of gang activity. Look at Chicago in recent years. I wouldn't consider the entire state of Illinois as a crime-ridden state with murders in the street every day just because of Chicago's problems. You can find such findings on the Wikipedia page you linked. If one were to remove gun crimes committed in low-income urban areas, the number gets cut roughly in half. Heck, it wasn't that long ago that Washington D.C., where Congress can run things almost as strict as they want, was the murder capitol of the country.

How come that most gun control advocates use AR style rifles as their go-to evil gun example when the stats show almost no gun murders happen with that type of weapon? Because of mass shootings that get immediate national news coverage, it has become a tool to prey upon the emotions of people to further their agenda. If they were serious about helping people through gun control they would try to do something in Chicago where tough gun control has failed people for years. But they don't because mass shootings is where the news is and that's where the people who need to grandstand go to push their agenda. They often push an agenda that wouldn't have prevented the tragedy that they are taking advantage of in the first place.

You also can't compare homicide statistics internationally because often times it's an apples-to-oranges comparison. It's my understanding that in some countries a homicide may not listed as a murder, or whatever crime, until someone has been convicted. If that's the case then numbers can't be compared with the US where normally a non-accidental death caused by another human being is considered a homicide, regardless of court findings. Even then, it could vary from state to state.

Plus, this type of attitude is just attempting to treat a symptom instead of facing the social issues that cause such symptoms. If only the guns would go away then everything would somehow be okay.

That's an interesting stat on the shot/stabbing to the heart, but also rather expected. But it's just a rather specific statistic that almost sort of supports one-side of an argument. For instance, right before that statement it is speaking in terms of victim and assailant, such as your attacker deciding to shoot you specifically in the heart while being mugged. It's an attempt at an emotional response without discussing the problem as a whole.

Finally, the last I heard is that our crime statistics show a downward trend in violent crimes despite any real national level gun control legislation. By the way people talk you would think every American is constantly on edge waiting for someone to shoot them, which for the vast majority of America is simply not true. As discussed elsewhere in this thread, you are more likely to shoot yourself than be shot by someone else.

Do you have any scientific studies to back up any of the claims you have made here? For someone lamenting the appeals to emotion of strict gun control advocates, there is a striking lack of evidence supporting your position.

Much of the information I described is listed on the very page on Wikipedia linked above. If you dig a bit further on Wikipedia you can find the stats on a state-by-state basis. I believe at one point there was a breakdown by race on Wikipedia at one time but I'm unable to find it now.

The FBI's own crime statistics can be rather enlightening if one were to drill down into the numbers instead of looking at the nation as a whole.

The problems with gun control studies are the same as with climate change studies, there are always accusations of bias on both sides. I suggest everyone read studies that purport to show the truth as presented by both sides and decide for yourselves.

A friend of mine eventually succeeded to kill himself. He did so jumping in front of a big lorry on a (British) motorway. There had been many attempts leading to that one. Bodies of water, tall buildings, other road traffic incidents, alcohol and pills were all tried, with quite some determination.

None of us could persuade him that his life was well worth living, we all tried. He was the brightest at our school so it wasn't as if intellect was a problem. To him getting himself killed was simply a difficult task he had to get done. But it was far from easy for him.

We don't have guns in the UK, however I am sure that my friend, had he had access to a gun, would have driven out to somewhere sensible and done the deed that way. As it was he drove out to a motorway service station, walked onto the motorway and ran in front of a lorry. Much harder to do.

I know the above is anecdote but statistics don't tell the story. Guns are a mighty fine way to commit suicide given the available alternatives. As a society of mostly non-suicidal people we do not want people to kill themselves, not having guns around helps us with that.

Regarding bridges and the jumping off of, tall buildings and the jumping off of, have you looked over the side of the Golden Gate or the Empire State building? There are nets to catch those that try to suicide themselves.

First, I'm feel for you that you lost a loved one in that manner. I share a similar pain because I have lost two family members to suicide, one with a gun and one without. Both succeeded on the first attempt. I suppose I should advocate the banning of personal ownership of shower curtains and shower rods.

From my perspective, the how was not a factor for me. I was more concerned over the why. To this day I have my thoughts on the why but I'll never know for sure, because they didn't talk to me beforehand. They were sudden and unexpected.

But I'm not about to advocate for the restrictions of people's rights because of what my two family members did to themselves. I appreciate the thinking behind that attitude, I simply just disagree with it.

Sometimes, people make their decisions and there's nothing to be done to change it. Despite access to a gun and your efforts, your friend still killed himself. The only thing that's different is that his pain, perceived and/or real, continued longer than he wished it to. I can't speak of how that fits into the scheme of things because I don't want to claim to know what he was thinking and/or feeling.

As you state, you are in the UK. One thing that is most often missing in these discussions are differences in attitudes from culture to culture. You may not live in a gun culture, I do. But our gun culture has deep roots in mistrust in government, sometimes well-founded and sometimes not. It's not going away anytime soon and ignoring the why's of suicide in an effort to restrict people's rights based on the how's of suicide is just wrong to me.

Yes, I know about the nets in those locations. I also know of similar locations that do not. Those nets are there just as much for the people not planning to jump as it is for people who do.

True, a lot of time was spent prolonging an unhappy life or at least trying to postpone the inevitable. However he was pleased to receive the company of friends. To say 'here you go, gun/pills in top drawer, help yourself!' is a betrayal of life, one would be breaking ranks with every sentient being that has life force and believes living is an ideologically sound thing to do. Yet, you are right, with hindsight, it would have been better for my friend if I had just helped him do the deed. As well as 'failures' there are 'success' stories. At university I had the fortune of sharing a house with a deeply suicidal man, to discover there really weren't the resources at the university to handle that. As well as practical help (hospital, cleaning up blood-stained things) we found another path for him, to sort it out with his folks, funding bodies and his department. He quit university rather than top himself, recovered from his depression and the following year he gave university another go. I did wonder how far a 'cry for help' could go, he broke his leg jumping off the side of the bridge, not the middle, the cutting went a long way too, but not all the way.

Regarding gun culture in the USA, I can see the appeal, and, what would the West be without guns?

However, I also lived in an inner city area in the UK where there were guns and I thought the crime aspect of the area was 'cool' and that it was great to live 'on the edge'. Then I got beaten to a pulp - no gun, just knife - and, after that my perspective changed totally. I was no longer aloof from the shootings, wife beatings and drug related crime that went on.

Sometimes you need direct experience to have illusions challenged. To me US gun culture is a bit like that, it is easy to have illusions about how guns are this or that, we rarely hear the opinions of those that have been shot.

Now if you Americans could just get on with forming militia and driving up to Washington to dispatch that government of yours... Really, if that is what the guns are for, how much more provocation is needed?

Please understand, I wasn't suggesting that you should have helped your friend with his act. If I did seem to suggest that then I apologize, that was not my intent.

Personally, I feel that every human life lost is a tragedy in some way. Some are obvious, some not so much, and some we choose not to see it that way. But to someone, it's likely a tragedy to them.

There are cases where I can understand suicide, people with serious medical conditions that give them a life of pain without hope of relief for example. It's a fine line though and one of serious discussion these days. Especially in the US where we have so many of veterans committing suicide, it's truly heart-breaking.

I often wonder what our West would have been like without the gun, but you might as well ask what Europe would have been like without sword and shield. Sadly, we'll never know.

Keep in mind, I personally see a difference between "gun culture" and "thug culture" as it's usually called. One is not necessarily the same as the other.

I find it doubtful that we as Americans would ever move on DC, if we did there are likely really big problems in the world in general. So far our system of changing the hands of power has worked okay. Bumps in the road here and there, a few mistakes for sure, but as long as the current guy is willing to step down for the next guy (regardless of which political office we're talking about) then I can't really such a thing happening.

> Owning a gun does not contribute to suicide.

The statistics suggest that you are incorrect. Harvard, the National Institutes of Health, and the Israeli Defense Forces all have studies that point to gun ownership actually increasing suicide risk.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/03/suicides-vs-handgun-...

EDIT: Furthermore, the argument that guns don't kill people is intellectually lazy. Guns are designed to kill things. That is their only purpose. Period.

No, it does not.

The statistics show that firearms are the most popular choice. If it is a contributor then people shoot themselves BECAUSE they own the gun. I fail to follow that sort of logic.

The only connection I can agree with is that firearms allow for snap decisions and fatal first-attempts. Owning a gun does not lead you to a suicide risk, but it doesn't help if you have suicidal tendencies.

That's not enough of a reason to restrict people's rights.

The argument that all guns have only one purpose, which is to kill things, is naive and ignorant. Anyone who states that is being lazy with their arguments, or simply doesn't know anything about guns, because it is easily disproved. There are many guns that are designed for a very specific target and would be incredibly bad to use to kill any living thing.

> If it is a contributor then people shoot themselves BECAUSE they own the gun.

That is a pretty strict interpretation of the cause of suicide. Of course, nobody kills themselves by sheer virtue of the fact that they own a weapon.

> Owning a gun does not lead you to a suicide risk

That is precisely what those studies suggest. Having a firearm nearby does in fact increase your risk of suicide. Whether or not that is enough to restrict people's rights is a totally separate issue. You argued that guns do not increase suicide risk, which is incorrect.

> There are many guns that are designed for a very specific target and would be incredibly bad to use to kill any living thing.

Fantastic! We should allow those firearms for people to have their fun, and regulate the other types (the ones for killing people) as much as possible.

I don't see a strict interpretation of the cause of suicide in what I said, I see a disagreement in whether guns are contributors.

Having a gun increases the likelihood of you attempting to use it, much like using any other means to do so. If knives were the most common choice, should we consider them risks for everyone because they might commit suicide with them? The fact that so many succeed with guns while failing with others makes it look like a contributor. The studies tell me that people are just more successful with guns. Anything that states that guns are a contributor I would have to disagree with as to how I understand what contributing means.

But I'm glad to see that you agree with me that not all guns are designed to kill living things. Hopefully you agree that such arguments are silly on their face and are designed to cause an emotional reaction. I believe I've shown elsewhere that I have no problems with having reasonable regulations on weapons designed to kill human beings on the battlefield, such as fully automatic weapons.

> If knives were the most common choice, should we consider them risks for everyone because they might commit suicide with them?

Yes.

Your argument is unclear to me. All else equal, it makes perfect sense that having a gun accessible nearby increases your suicide risk. Just as if you had a big bottle of pills nearby, or a big tower that you could just jump off of. Now, the question turns to whether or not those things should or could be regulated in some way to reduce that risk. The answer is no. Death is a side effect of those modalities. Neither pills nor a tower's main purpose is to end human life. However, for the vast majority of guns, the main purpose is to end life.

> But I'm glad to see that you agree with me that not all guns are designed to kill living things.

Could you please provide some examples of guns like this? The only thing I can think of would be some sort of really heavily modified .22LR for target shooting.

Again, having a gun increases the likelihood of succeeding in the attempt. It allows for snap decisions is also true. But I do not agree that it contributes to the act in of itself.

A perfect example of this someone pointed out elsewhere; Japan has an incredibly high suicide rate. It is apparently the leading cause of death of men and women in the younger age brackets. Japan has little to no gun culture. From what I've read, people there are attempting to address the why's of the situation instead of tackling the how's as it would change nothing.

People who talk of restricting people's access to guns because of other people's choices of using those gun on themselves is attempting to tackle the how's of the problem and not discussing the why's. It restricts people's rights without actually solving anything.

I have no problems with restricting access to someone with suicidal thoughts, although that's tough to determine how to go about that fairly. But it's a completely different thing to restrict a person's rights because his neighbor is suicidal.

As for guns designed for things other than killing. The easiest examples are shotguns. There are a number of shotguns specifically designed for clay sports. There's even a difference in designs between a shotgun intended for trap and skeet. In trap the clay flies away from you so the shotgun is designed to sling lead as far and as accurately as possible. In skeet the lead doesn't have to travel far but you often have to be able to swing the gun from left-to-right rather quickly, so it is designed with that in mind. Then there are shotguns designed for you to carry in the field and shoot birds. There is often overlap in these designs and the guns designed for clay sports can of course be used to kill living things. But that's not what they are designed for.

There are many other examples, such as the very one you describe.

If you want to discuss the aspect of something being designed to kill, a better and more accurate discussion is about ammunition. A gun is something designed to sling a projectile at high speeds. You can take any gun and insert blanks to make it useless for just about anything.

Gun ownership contributes to suicide, not because gun owners are more likely to attempt suicide, but because they are more likely to succeed. Men are more likely to commit suicide than women in the US, largely because most men who attempt use guns, while women are more likely to try to overdose.

The problem with saying that "owning a gun doesn't contribute to suicide" is that there is a clear and strong statistical correlation between gun availability and suicide. If gun ownership doesn't contribute to suicide, by lowering the planning threshold (or some other mechanism), then you have to find some other hidden factor that would both cause an increase in gun ownership and an increase in suicide.

Now, that doesn't mean that I necessarily favor gun confiscation. But there's a huge difference between saying, "Yes, there is a correlation between gun ownership and suicide, but that's outweighed by the fact that gun ownership is guaranteed by the Constitution," and saying, "No, there is no correlation between gun ownership and suicide." The first is an arguable and defensible point. The second is objectively false.

I suspect banning guns wouldn't really help. Japan doesn't have many, but they have lots of suicides.

Excellent point, a quick look says that it is the leading cause of death of men aged 20-44 and of women 15-34. Without a gun culture to speak of.

I wish you posted this earlier in the day. I could have used this information. Sad thing is, I knew this to some level but did not think of it.

The argument does not work in reverse. If they had more guns, there would probably be more suicides. End of story.

I am not suggesting that no guns == no suicides, because that would be ridiculous. I am refuting the suggestion that having a gun does not increase your risk of dying by suicide. I submit that having a gun nearby does increase your risk of dying by suicide with ample supporting evidence listed above. I am happy to read studies to the contrary, but it seems pretty clear to me at this point.

I don't think anyone is disputing that having a gun increases the likelihood of succeeding. I just disagree with the idea that the gun contributed to the attempt.

Most of what you just stated I have no disagreements with, but it is worded differently than what has been stated by others before.

> If you want to carry a gun with you, I support your right to do so. But it's the objectively wrong play.

Have you lived in SoMa or Oakland?

private gun ownership deters an order of magnitude more crime than is committed with guns. This is not hyperbole, it is the DoJ statistics.

"Why would a developer need to carry a gun at all times?"

As a brief example, take a look at the recent trend of 'protesters' storming the Google Bus, breaking windows, and generally causing a disturbance. What protection would the Googlers have if some of those protesters decided to stop breaking windows and start breaking kneecaps? What if the 'protesters' wanted a little more from the female programmer crowd that day?

I realize that San Fran (and most of California) has a fatwa on concealed-weapons and private gun ownership in general, but to not put too fine a point on it: THAT is why. Regardless of your profession, you should have a right to defend yourself against violence. Legal conceal-carry is the best way a 90-lb programmer can defend herself against a 200-lb assailant. Victims should not have to rely on the largesse of their assailants to ensure their personal safety.

1. The government doesn't care where you are at any time. Individuals might, but that's why there would be a warrant required to access the system that monitors GPS trackers on guns. There is GPS in your phone and in your car, what's the difference?

2. Of course many would. If you make it slightly more difficult to remove then many would not (and would get caught easier) or would opt to not steal the weapon.

I've known many guns to be stolen in a random burglary and even someone who lost their gun. Criminals might be able to remove the GPS tracker, but they would need to take the weapons somewhere first then remove them, and that would be tracked. It wouldn't be too difficult to require a grinder of some sort to remove the GPS tracker, depending on how it was made and attached.

My main point is that there would be more benefits than drawbacks, but people would fight a bill like that to the bitter end, just because they "don't want the government track them", which is already easy for the government to do if they want to. I support the right to carry a weapon, you can't trust that everyone you meet will not try to harm you, that's just a fact of present day society.

Bikes are stolen using battery powered angle grinders.

And those locks don't need to be as compact as something securing some fragile electronics to a gun. And guns can actually be worth something.

The problem with gun registration versus car registration is that there is no real use to having a list of car owners, other than legitimate ones. But, a list of people with weapons would be the first thing any would-be dictator would love to have.

I realize I am inviting the wrath of Godwin's Law here, but, as a real-world historical example of the threat of gun registration, the Nazis:

"In 1931, Weimar authorities discovered plans for a Nazi takeover in which Jews would be denied food and persons refusing to surrender their guns within 24 hours would be executed. They were written by Werner Best, a future Gestapo official. In reaction to such threats, the government authorized the registration of all firearms and the confiscation thereof, if required for “public safety.” The interior minister warned that the records must not fall into the hands of any extremist group."

"In 1933, the ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power and used the records to identify, disarm, and attack political opponents and Jews. Constitutional rights were suspended, and mass searches for and seizures of guns and dissident publications ensued. Police revoked gun licenses of Social Democrats and others who were not “politically reliable.”"

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/365103/how-nazis-used-...

Oh, people down voting because of Godwin's law? Fine...

Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, Anti-Communists/Stalinists in Soviet Union, Anti-Communists in China, Mayan Indians in Guatemala, Christians in Uganda, General Population in Cambodia

There are lots of examples of gun confiscations preceding mass murders. Not that every gun confiscations lead to mass murder since there are examples of that not happening. But to ignore the possibilities in some areas of the world is just being naive.

Even if the situation does not progress to dictatorship or mass murder, gun registration often (inexorably?) leads to confiscation. See Canada and New York State.

Confiscation in Canada? I'm not well informed on gun laws but I know we have plenty of gun carriers (registered and illegal), most of them live in rural areas.

Check out the controversy over the recent High River, Alberta gun seizures. During a recent flood, numerous evacuated homes that were entered by the RCMP had their houseowners' firearms seized, regardless of whether they were stored securely and legally. A total of 542 firearms were seized. There are ongoing debates as to whether any homes were entered for the sole purpose of seizure.[1]

"Plenty" of gun carriers is a stretch too, since Authorizations to Carry are very uncommon for private citizens, and typically are only issued to Brinks-truck operators and trappers in areas with high wildlife risk. Only ~9000 are issued per year.[2]

[1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-felt-political-pressure...

[2] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/who-may-carry-handguns-in-cana...

The same thing happened in New Orleans after Katrina.

Personally, I would have no problem with this as long as they logged the seized property correctly and provided means for the owners to retrieve their property at a later date.

I'd trust such a "Means to retrieve" about as far as I can throw it. FOIA requests are often denied or returned completely redacted, and I'd expect any similar "give me back my gun" requests to be either rubber stamped, or mired in enough red tape that it would be more cost effective to buy a new one.

It's one thing if the RCMP announces their intent, and works with property owners to properly secure the guns.

It's entirely another for it to be "discovered" by other parties, and then be explained post-facto. Suspicious, to say the least.

The problem is that there are lots of examples of gun confiscations that did not lead to mass murder as well. If we look at Britain, or Australia, or Japan, all those regions once allowed gun ownership on much more liberal terms than they allow today. In the transition from having a liberal gun ownership policy to having a strict gun ownership policy, guns were confiscated. But I don't see anyone saying that Britain has turned into a totalitarian dictatorship.

I said much the same thing. I fail to see how it's a problem in any discussion about gun control and/or confiscations.

Some people would claim is on its way to totalitarianism considering the rise in government intrusion and control in people's lives. But that's a different debate.

Godwin's Law exists for a reason, man.

(signed, a pro-gun liberal who loathes your bad line of reasoning)

Not really. Godwin's law itself is just an observation on the nature of online conversations. (And arguably commentary on the popularity of fallacious reductio ad hitlerum style arguments)

Godwin's Law has become some sort of notion of mentioning Hitler being a "forfeit" of sorts. The reason this has become popular is because low barrier-to-entry comment sniping is great fun and this version of Godwin's Law makes it child's play. However it is nothing to be respected.

There is a line of reasoning that states that comparisons to Hitler are damaging to society because they necessarily "cheapen" the memory of what the Nazis were and did. I might concede that this is true in extreme cases ("You won't let me go to the dance with Jimmy? You are literally Hitler!" may qualify. Certainly that is at least obnoxious and fallacious) but I do not accept that line of argument across the board. Nobody is going to walk away from the above comment thinking that the Holocaust was not as bad as they originally thought.

Another, weaker, argument given in support of Godwin's Law is that comparisons to Hitler are inappropriate wherever and whenever the subject is less extreme or serious than the Holocaust. I submit that refusing to compare things to Hitler unless they are demonstrably already as bad as Hitler cripples our ability to learn useful lessons from that dark period in history. If we wait until a situation is as bad as the situation in 1930s Germany, then we have waited to the point that rhetoric alone is no longer of use. Comparisons to that era in German history are therefore only useful in situations that are not as dire.

Godwin's Law is important because it shows the cost of attaching baggage to your arguments. I think that if you can argue that something is bad by invoking Hitler, you can argue that something is bad without invoking Hitler. It's not just that going Godwin is tacky. It is, or should be, a sign of rhetorical weakness.

I don't think the problem described by Godwin's Law is that bad arguments cheapen Hitler. I think the problem is that Hitler cheapens one's arguments, unless one is arguing about genocide. Sure, you can draw lesser lessons from Hitler's lesser crimes (ie gun control), but the implication, intentional or not, is that the lesser crime you're arguing about is on par with the Holocaust.

While bad arguments can be made with Hitler, good arguments can be made with Hitler as well. These arguments do not necessarily need to use Hitler, but they can. They frequently do because comparisons to Hitler are accessible. Nobody needs to explain who Hitler was; nobody needs to tap out of the conversation for a few minutes to go read the Hitler wikipedia page.

Why not use an example other than Hitler here on HN then? I'd assume people here are reasonably well educated and don't need intellectual spoonfeeding.

To put it another way... if you can't win your argument without going Godwin, maybe your position isn't very strong. Leading with Godwin is the sign of a very weak argument, or a very weak arguer.

I think the Godwin rule is good for stuff that is extreme hyperbole, and typically just examples of attacks on character. The 'Soup Nazi' from Seinfeld being a good example: it was one of my favorite episodes, but really, the soup restaurant guy is Hitler?

But I am literally making a point about something that I think is truly key to preserving democratic society in America, or whatever is left of it, and I would view the removal of private gun ownership in the United States as actually being a prelude to something as bad as Nazi Germany. I think the Second Amendment is the keystone to all of the rest of the Bill of Rights.

Basically, calling your boss Hitler because he made you work on the weekend is absurd, but making comparisons between Hitler and somebody like Pol-Pot is quite legitimate.

If you actually look at modern warfare vs WWII guns in the hands of private citizens are basically useless for fighting the US military. Bombs can be effective but modern body armor, surveillance, medicine, and tactics mean even a well trained and equipped army is going to lose significantly more people let alone people with effing hand guns. See: Iraq and Afghanistan for examples.

Realistically, freedom of the press and due process are far more important and in far more danger than guns which are basically just a talking point / distraction at this point. Or put another way, if everyone in George Orwell's 1984 had a gun nothing would change.

Point 1: You didn't go Godwin on "removal of private gun ownership", you did it on mere registration. Changing parameters to defend your point is bad arguing too.

Point 2: I'm a pro-gun liberal. I'm also opposed to gun registration. I kicked you around on it not to support gun registration, but rather because you're making my side of the argument look bad. I don't want the people I agree with making crappy omg hitler!11!! arguments because it makes my job that much harder.

Point 3: If you can't show how gun registration is bad (or ineffective, which is my usual tack) without saying omg hitler, you're not going to convince anyone that you're right.

I think there is a sizable minority that wants anybody who isn't in jail to be well armed, whether or not they agree with me politically, and I'm in that minority. I think it benefits society. I sort of vacillate between conservative and libertarian depending on the issue and the day of the week myself, but I think pro-gun liberals are a great addition.

I think there is a sizable minority that wants nobody to have guns, for various reasons, but typically because they actually think it'll stop violence. I think that won't work at all, and has lots of negative effects. It isn't a coincidence that all of the mass shootings happen in "gun free zones".

I think there is a vanishingly small number of people who actually want to disarm society in order to try and push a Nazi-like situation. But, imagine an America where the NSA that Snowden has told us about are the only people with firearms. Do you want to live there?

Small logical problem there, common in pro-gun circles. The reason mass shooting happen in "gun free zones" is because those are the places where people are concentrated. The idea that mass murderers are afraid of armed self-defense is utter nonsense - after all, they know they will be engaged with the police quickly enough.

It's a myth that Hitler Nazi movement employed gun control to any amount to gain power, it merely employed it as an additional mean once it was there, owning a gun wasn't really of much help at that point.

Also it just brushes over that facts that just 12 years before that guns were outlawed completely after WWI in Germany (analog to 2001 as of today), that the Weimar Republic witnessed some rampaging street violence between the different anti-democratic forces and that the main part of the executive wing didn't like democracy ever and had sympathy for nationalistic forces. The Nazi Party was backed by the majority of the German population in a general election in 1933 which makes pretty made pretty much most of the German population an "ultimate extremist group".

In my view Halbrook is more of a pro-gun rights lawyer who wants to sell books than a historian.

Heck it weren't even the Nazis who came up with this in Germany. It were the ruling monarchist in 1878 with their "Sozialistengesetze" who denied Social Democrats, Socialists and Communists the right to acquire or own guns. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Socialist_Laws

The Nazis never won over a third of the vote in an open multi party election in Germany. The insider establishment parties chose to hand power over to the Nazis rather than allow reformers or Communists to threaten entrenched wealth and monopoly power.

For an alternative view, you should watch John Oliver's 3 part Daily Show special on gun control.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pOiOhxujsE&feature=sharecont...

The government doesn't care about your rifles. Not even your semi-automatic ones with sights and stocks and lasers and so on. They barely even care about a well-trained militia full of people who are angry with them: The US Armed Forces destroyed something a lot scarier than anything the NRA could muster when it steamrollered Iraq in 2003.

So get off your horse about needing guns to protect yourself from the government. The government could destroy you and your guns in a second if it wanted to.

If you want to be persuasive, stick to defending yourself against home invasion. That's a band-aid on a serious problem, but at least it's a historically and logically honest argument.

if you carry a cellphone, the government does know where you are at all times. this is now established fact.

why do you care so much more when the discussion is around guns?

We don't have a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to own cell-phones, for one.

I don't know.

> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Legislating away cell phones seems like it infringes my right to regulate my militia.

I'll take "'What is a non-sequitur?' for $200, Alex".

    Would people flip out if there was a bill proposed to require all guns in the US to have a GPS tracker?

Ohh god yes, they would. I live in Colorado, and 2 of our state reps got recalled when the democrats limited clip size to 15, and required more background checks on purchase.

That restriction got people so angry that they did mid-term recalls. Not even just waiting till next election.

FYI, using the term "clip" in this way is common but incorrect. Colorado limited the size of magazines to 15 rounds.

Magazines hold ammunition in a way that a gun can pull a round from it when the action cycles. Clips are a specific kind of device for loading some types of magazines.

If we are being pedantic, then the issue becomes fairly fuzzed when you consider guns that have you insert the clip, not just the ammunition, into a fixed magazine. The M1 Garand for example.

I don't know of any examples of guns with this sort of setup that would get anywhere near 15 rounds, but I suspect that the M1 specifically has something to do with the common misuse of terminology. It may also be related to some of the loonier misconceptions about guns, such as the idea that "clips" (actually magazines) are disposable (and therefore somehow also not reusable) (example of this misconception: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_DeGette#Gun_control).

You can fix an SKS with a 30 round magazine, which is reloaded via 10 round stripper clips (don't do it though, they're unreliable).

In the case of the M1 and the SKS, the magazine, eg the device that holds the ammunition inside the gun, is the restricted item. The only difference is the magazine is not removed in the field, like with most other guns where that's how you reload.

Thanks, I'm obviously not very knowledgable about guns. But the word choice sure doesn't change the political reality in the US about any sort of gun control being totally untenable.

Why would anyone be against that? Both of those things seem perfectly reasonable.

I'm sure there would be a provision for a type of license that would allow a larger magazine if you had a valid reason and very clean record. If you live on a large farm and like to shoot for fun, then maybe a larger magazine would be acceptable. If you live in an apartment in a city, then you don't reasonably need extremely large magazines for your weapons. The law would probably only prohibit the sale of large magazines but grandfather in existing owners, so who really has an issue with this?

And more background checks shouldn't be an issue, as long as there was some sort of process or committee for appeals and exceptions. Someone with a history of mental illness or a felony should probably not be allowed to own a gun. Someone who was wrongfully convicted or had a minor offense that was charged as a felony decades ago might be a candidate for an exception.

Because, in most cases, its a stupid argument and a requirement that only restricts law abiding citizens. Criminals don't care about laws in the first place. It's a way for certain politicians to appeal to a certain base that, in the end, helps no one in any way that was proposed.

Get into a boxing match and stipulate that both boxers must have their right hand secured behind their back. You step into the ring to find your opponent has chosen to ignore that rule. The ref tells you that while you must keep your hand tied or be disqualified, he cannot deal with your opponent's lack of respect of the rules until after the match is finished. How exactly did that rule help you?

Some people disagree with the law, some people think it's the beginning of slippery slope that leads to confiscation, some people don't like their rights being used as a cheap election gimmick. Take your pick.

Soon fifteen is going to be an insufficiently low limit. Yes, slippery slope is generally a fallacy, but...it actually is happening. In Colorado, your "reasonable" magazine size limit is fifteen. In New York, it's ten in a pistol and five in a rifle, and you can only load seven rounds in the ten round magazine. California was a governor's veto away from banning all semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines.

I also have yet to see a reason why these shouldn't apply equally to the police. If large capacity magazines only exist to kill people as quickly as possible, then why should the police have that? How many times are they going to encounter enough armed belligerents for the capacity to matter?

The magazine size restriction only looks reasonable if you're unfamiliar with guns and how they're used in crime. The most common criminal use of a gun consists of a few rounds, rarely exceeding the capacity of these restricted size magazines. If we move to the much more rare mass shooting, we see that magazine size doesn't really reduce the body count. In the Virginia Tech shooting, for example, the shooter killed 32 people and injured 17 more with only 10 and 15 round magazines. In exchange for this limited or non-existent benefit, you seriously inconvenience gun owners who will likely never misuse their guns.

The opposition to background checks isn't necessarily unreasonable, either. Pretty much all of the mass shootings in the US in the past 15 years have been carried out by people who would have been able to pass background checks. In the more common cases of illegal gun use, the user tends to be a felon who already got the gun through black market channels. Perhaps the benefit here is greater than the magazine capacity restrictions, but I don't know. I do know that background checks have been used to create a special tax on firearm transactions that greatly exceeds the cost of doing the checks. I also do know that these background checks have been used to create databases that were later used to confiscate firearms. Pretty much all the practical objections to background checks could be worked around if legislators wanted to. The problem seems to be that legislators who promote such bills don't seem interested in doing so.

The problem is that high-capacity magazines can be extremely dangerous if actually used in a crime.

A prime example of this is the North Hollywood shootout where the gunmen had several 75 and 100 round drum magazines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout

These high-capacity magazines are devastating when used to commit a crime and there is zero legitimate use of them for a civilian.

Do hunters or those who enjoy shooting weapons legally NEED high-capacity magazines? The answer is no. Under no circumstances does a civilian actually need or would even benefit from a high-capacity magazine unless they were killing people, cops, or zombies.

> The problem is that high-capacity magazines can be extremely dangerous if actually used in a crime. A prime example of this is the North Hollywood shootout where the gunmen had several 75 and 100 round drum magazines.

No. Drum magazines are prone to jamming, which is exactly what happened in your linked scenario (the gunman then decided to drop the rifle rather than clear the misfeed). The same thing happened to the Aurora, Colorado shooter and his drum magazine. An efficient killer would be better off with a MOLLE vest with the pouches filled with smaller-capacity magazines.

> Do hunters or those who enjoy shooting weapons legally NEED high-capacity magazines? The answer is no. Under no circumstances does a civilian actually need or would even benefit from a high-capacity magazine unless they were killing people, cops, or zombies.

The 2nd amendment was not written for hunters or people who enjoy recreational shooting. It is an emergency brake against tyranny and a prodding towards militia defense of the country rather than standing army (read what James Madison wrote about the subject), so yes it actually is about killing people. In a time when all branches of federal government seem to be ignoring the Constitution, I for one am glad that we still have it.

Right, but consider this - the bad guy knows when and where he is going to strike, the good guy doesn't. Say we were able to wave a magic wand and all the magazines over X rounds were to magically disappear and turn into (X-1)-round magazines. The bad guy, because he can choose where and when he is going to act, can adequately prepare and just bring many magazines regardless of artificially-restricted mag limits. The 'good guys' generally prefer to carry one or two magazines for convenience, regardless of capacity, because they have other things to do with their day besides committing crimes. Laws that restrict magazine capacity reasoning that criminals will be 'less dangerous' with lower-cap magazines are misguided - those laws (like all gun laws) only apply to law-abiding gun owners, and only serve to weaken them.

Indeed, when you are defending yourself you have no control over timing of the attackers. You are forced to respond whenever your attackers make a move. The more you need to reload the more chances that you won't be able to respond in time. On the other hand, on the attacking side, you can choose your timing freely and the capacity of the magazine is not as important (it's only important when your target turns against you and you become a defender yourself).

Magazine caps are so popular because the goal of "gun control" is to limit the people's ability to defend so much that they will have to rely on the government for protection. It has exactly zero effect on crime as the crime is already illegal and if criminals cared about these laws they would not be criminals in the first place.

In Brazil, it used to be very difficult to obtain the permit to legally carry a gun. A couple years ago, there was a national referendum and now it is effectively impossible to legally carry a gun unless you are linked to a LEA, private security company or the judicial system.

Result? A 260% increase in murders after robbery[1] (link in Portuguese, sorry). I guess every idiot that voted for these stupid laws deserves to get shot.

The government excuse? Blame the victim. Like people are more likely to fight back unarmed.

[1] http://g1.globo.com/sao-paulo/noticia/2013/04/abc-tem-aument...

The conclusions you're taking from the North Hollywood shootout aren't what most of the police world took from it. The police had .38 special revolvers and shotguns and were confronted with people with rifles. Someone with a rifle is going to be able to effectively engage someone long before someone with a revolver or a shotgun gets into effective range. Also, .38 special isn't very effective against ballistic vests, which the robbers had. And suppressive fire (from the illegally modified AK variant rifle) limits an adversary's tactical options. The conclusion that police generally came to afterwards was that officers should have rifles available to use in such situations.

Have you ever shot a rifle with a detachable magazine? And practiced magazine changes? Because it seems to be universally accepted among those who do such things that magazine changes are more of an annoyance than a hindrance.

Seriously inconvenience? I'm a hunter and I also target shoot for recreation, and I can't say a 10 or 15 round limit is an inconvenience at all, let alone a serious one. If you're hunting and you need to fire 10 or 15 shots without taking the time to reload, you're dangerously ill-equipped to be using a gun. You're placing everyone else at risk as you're wildly slinging bullets through the forest. If you're target shooting, you need to take time to adjust your aim between shots anyway, and the target isn't going anywhere. If you're using a gun in self defense and you need more than 10 or 15 rounds, again, you're woefully under-equipped to be using a gun. Chances are if you can't hit your target in 10 or 15 rounds, you're going to hit someone else or your target has already killed you or isn't a real threat. Even the police are known to fire wildly at a suspect and end up hitting innocent bystanders.

I do subscribe to the argument that gun control laws are a slippery slope for lawmakers, but the real need for high capacity civilian firearms just isn't there in lawful use. Does banning high capacity magazines change anything? Not really, it's a useless law. But as a rallying point, I think there are more substantial arguments to be made.

> If you're using a gun in self defense and you need more than 10 or 15 rounds, again, you're woefully under-equipped to be using a gun.

Unlike game and paper targets, people you are defending yourself from, can shoot back at you.

In what reality would a long drawn-out firefight between me and a bad guy happen often enough for me to be "seriously inconvenienced" by the fact that I only have a 10 round clip? Does that ever actually happen?

The only way I can see that happening is if I'm wildly firing rounds towards a target hoping something hits. Not very realistic.

If you were talking about just yourself - I cannot really comment since I don't know you and have no idea what happens to you.

For all I know there are millions of people who don't own a gun at all and don't feel inconvenienced by that at all. If you don't need more than 10 round magazines - just don't buy them. If you decided that 6 rounds or 3 is all you need - just go with that. You know yourself better than anybody on the internet could hope to.

But, please, don't use general "you" when referring to yourself, it's really confusing.

I had a line in my comment hoping to stave off stupid things like this. I suggest you go back and re-read the last paragraph, it's only a couple sentences long.

> Why would anyone be against that? Both of those things seem perfectly reasonable.

Because there's nothing wrong with having a magazine which holds more than 15 rounds. That's the standard size for many black rifles.

The universal background check law means that it's illegal for me to give or lend my firearm to my brother, my cousin or my good friend. The existing law was fine: it should be illegal to knowingly transfer a firearm to someone ineligible to own one.

> The universal background check law means that it's illegal for me to give or lend my firearm to my brother, my cousin or my good friend. The existing law was fine: it should be illegal to knowingly transfer a firearm to someone ineligible to own one.

To improve the efficacy of the existing law, I think it would be useful to provide a free and anonymous service to the public that allows private gun owners to query the ATF, asking if a particular person is ineligible to own one. Use of the service would not be required by law (and possibly would be done with the permission of the person in question? I'm not sure there; there might be privacy concerns) but would allow law abiding citizens, who almost certainly have no interest in selling guns to criminals, to make an informed decision when selling a gun privately.

You'd need their SSN.

Yes, at least. I'd be mildly concerned about people like landlords misusing the system, but I suspect that you can already determine if somebody is a felon with their SSN?

It's for this reason that I'm strongly in favor of body-mounted surveillance cameras for all public servants. The key is making sure that everyone has access to the data, not just some surveillance team in a back room. For stings and such like this, the footage would be held until the end of the operation, but would be required to be released immediately at the end of the operation. "Missing time" would be rigorously scrutinized.

If we really believe that our law enforcement and other public servants are serving the public, there should be zero opposition to allowing anyone to review video archives of officer-mounted cameras at any time via an anonymous, no login needed, web interface. Sunshine is the solution.

I think you are slightly to extreme in your publication of the video. I agree that law enforcement officers (and probably most public servants) do not have an expectation of privacy while on duty, however other people who get recorded do. If the police have a video of me talking with the police than I would not necessarily want that video publicly accessible. However, if I am charged with a crime, those videos should be made available to me along with all the other evidence. Furthermore, If I am the subject of a video, I should have a right to it, and to publish it myself (possibly with the consent of other third parties in the video). Also, if the video was from a clearly public place/event than there is no expectation of privacy in the first place, so it should be publicly available (possibly also by request for practical reasons).

You're right. I was spitballing; there'd need to be safety mechanisms (The devil/corruption potential is in the details) to ensure situations like the one you hypothesized wouldn't result in the privacy of people who aren't public servants being compromised with cameras involved.

"...if you purchase a gun without a license..."

Isn't that by state? Can't private parties sell guns to each other and not even have to report it to anyone in some states?

Other than someone reporting a crime (theft of the gun or violence etc) the tracking would only serve to tell you where someone keeps their gun. You'll have to forgive my skepticism that needing a warrant would be a huge barrier.

That said I haven't read the article yet so maybe there is something that changes how I see this comment.

That's true, the rules of private sales can vary from state to state.

But it is absolutely in your best interest to record the details of a private gun sale for your own protection. If you purchased the gun at a licensed shop then your name is on record with the Federal government (US) for purchasing that weapon. If the gun turns up at a crime scene then you will most likely be getting a knock on your door at some point. Hopefully it's a friendly knock but you never know with the police these days wanting to show off their breaching skills.

In fact, I would never do a private sale of a gun, I would do so through a licensed dealer so that the same checks done to me would be done to the new owner.

> On the other hand, if you purchase a gun without a license or attempt to hire a contract killer and it turns out to be a police officer you are in contact with, then that sting just save a life, which is good.

How do you know that? How do you know the whole thing wasn't completely created by the police, enticing unstable individuals to do things they would never have done without their help?

Stings are not just "slightly unfair", they are fake and immoral and the people who carry them out are despicable (as this story shows).

(Replacing guns and drugs with cars, so that it isn't a topic we feel strongly about (I am pro-legalization for either, in any event))

If a unstable person walking down the street is enticed by a bait car and attempts to steal it, I think we can caulk that up as a win for society. Maybe they would not have tried to steal a car that day, but they are evidently the sort of person that is willing to steal cars. It is better to get them into the justice system now, rather than wait for them to steal a non-bate car and possibly get away with it.

The bate car scenario eliminates the possibility that the officers involved talked the person into it. Entrapment certainly is problematic, but I do not think that sting operations in general are.

> The bate car scenario eliminates the possibility that the officers involved talked the person into it

It also doesn't make much sense; what's the difference between a "bate car" and a regular car? Do we need bate cars and people watching those, or regular police officers patrolling the streets and protecting ordinary cars from getting stolen?

The whole sting concept lies on the idea that there are inherently bad people and that society just needs to somehow flush them out with clever traps.

But that concept is at odds with the fundamental humanist idea of "punishment" and human perfectibility; the purpose of punishment is to help people improve and amend their behavior. If some people are just "bad" then punishment won't help them.

Bate cars are placed in high-crime areas, have unambiguous ownership (read: anybody trying to drive away with it is trying to steal it) and are easier to stake out than an entire neighborhood of cars. They require less manpower per arrest. Furthermore, bate cars can be rigged to trap the suspect in the car, eliminating the possibility of dangerous car chases.

I am not bullish on punishment. I am instead interested in protecting the public. Imprisonment is useful not because it punishes criminals but because it prevents the criminals from victimizing the general public. Punishment itself serves little purpose (I don't believe that punishment as a deterrent is particularly effective). Rehabilitation is useful, though imprisonment during rehabilitation is often necessary (rehabilitation is not an out-patient procedure). America needs to work on it's rehabilitation, but in the meantime arresting criminals remains necessary.

"bait" car - sorry for the pedantry but sometimes it's all I have :O

It's also an effective deterrent. Car burglars in that area are likely thinking twice about thefts if they've heard about someone stealing a bait car and getting caught.

Your proposed bill has some flaws.

- It could be considered an unreasonable search. - The data would be accessed and used by police without warrants, despite your admonishment that they shouldn't. - The system would be used by criminals to track gun-carrying police and identify gun-owning households. - Criminals would remove, disable, or spoof the trackers, or simply make guns that didn't have them. - Gun rights devotees would flip out and kill the bill deader than a mayfly on the Moon. There are perhaps 10 districts in all of America where supporting such a bill would not seriously endanger any supporter's chances at re-election.

Additionally, you are a horrible person for even suggesting it. If you have guns, agents of the state will be arriving shortly to transfer them to more worthy owners with less unfortunate bone structure. As compensation, you will be given a cake--not that you need to eat another one today.

Many home burglaries are in effort to steal guns. Let's assume that most of those criminals are not the brightest people in the world, let's say half don't bother removing the GPS, those low-hanging fruit are quickly arrested and deserving go to prison. A good percentage of thieves would simply not risk stealing the weapon, especially if the GPS was difficult to remove (like a sticker GPS that was either internal or very difficult to remove).

Some would steal an entire safe or lock box and as soon as it's open the GPS would track where that lock box is located, those people would be caught.

The point is not to stop all gun crimes, just to lower the amount of burglaries looking for firearms and to try to minimize the amount of firearms in the hands of criminals.

No, my proposed bill isn't perfect, but it would undoubtedly save lives. It's not even a serious suggestion, more of a thought experiment, people who NEVER allow such a law to be in place.

Most gun safes are Faraday cages when closed and locked. This means that not all guns are locatable at any given time, and the majority of non-locatable guns would be entirely legitimate.

And as counterexample to your claims, I propose the smartphone. Every smartphone, intrinsic to its normal operation, is locatable with a high degree of precision to a single building, yet most smartphone thefts are not ever prosecuted, nor any attempt at recovery ever made. The carriers themselves have even resisted efforts to remotely deactivate those stolen phones, even though it would be trivial from a technical standpoint.

Clearly, GPS beacons do not prevent, deter, or reverse thefts. I have no reason to believe that cops would be any better at catching tracked-gun thieves than they are at catching smartphone thieves.

Cue the libertarian versus non-libertarian mudwrestling.

It has become increasingly clear to me that the ills of the U.S. pogroms against some recreational drugs are due in no small part to the conversion of the criminal justice system to a for-profit industry. As long as the jobs and budgets are tied to the number of criminals processed rather than the peace and order produced, cop cadres will titrate the frequency and severity of their enforcement actions with the aim to ensure for themselves steady jobs and pensions.

There is a positive feedback loop in there somewhere that must be broken before it destroys the concept of justice completely.

That's interesting. Is your issue with the for-profit criminal justice system that it's for-profit, or is it with the laws it upholds to bring the profits? In other words, would this still be a problem if all laws upheld were, to your mind, reasonable?

Not the OP, but I'll take a crack at it. The problem is that creating order (or, more generally speaking, rehabilitating unorderly parts of society) and making money can sometimes be adversarial processes, thus creating a conflict of interest.

Since it has become profitable (for private jails/prisons) to put people in jail and keep them in jail, there is a clear incentive to punish lesser crimes more severely and to not rehabilitate jailed people fully with hopes of them becoming a repeat offender.

Therefore, the problem is that privatization of the criminal justice system is at odds with what a criminal justice system should hope achieve: order, appropriate punishment, and rehabilitation of those who break the law. In fact, I would argue that it incentivizes almost the exact opposite.

Yes.

A profit motive corrupts in favour of profit. I dont want that in a justice system which is supposed to be not corrupt.

I don't think the laws can be meaningfully separated from the system. Reasonable laws would simply be enforced unreasonably. It certainly doesn't help that unreasonable laws exist, but fixing that would not entirely solve the problem.

watch http://www.thehouseilivein.org/ it is really worth your while. the best film on the war on drugs and the "prison-industrial complex" :-) i have seen so far. big thumbs up.

available on itunes and amazon instant, "free" streaming versions can be found with a simple google search.

I've thought about a way to have a for-profit prison system that would work better. First, give the convict the right to choose which prison to go to (possibly with a particular security category). Then they (the prisons) would have to compete based on how the prisoners are treated. Now, after the prisoner is released, if he reoffends, then the prison that he "attended" would have to foot the bill for the additional incarceration (potentially at a competing prison, if the convict so chooses).

This should cause the prisons to achieve (via market forces) an optimal balance between humane treatment, and proper rehabilitation.

Interesting idea. Many crimes are committed due to a lack of options caused by poverty (theft most directly, but many other crimes are correlated strongly with poverty levels), so if a prison has to pay if a released prisoner re-offends, perhaps it's in the best interest of the prison to pay directly to the ex-prisoner, to get them on their feet. Give them a place to live, food budget, whatever. Probably still cheaper than incarceration.

Yeah, some kind of outcomes-based incentives for the prisons seems like a good idea -- it would have to be fairly small, though, to avoid gaming. See that case this past year where a judge (in PA, I think?) had a corrupt relationship with a private prison and sent thousands of people there for minor offenses.

I'd love to see "Private Prison" phased out in favor of "Rehabilitation Contractor." But it would require legislation be crafted in favor of extremely careful balancing of incentives, in the teeth of pressure from the powerful private prison lobby to turn the whole thing into either a NOOP or a private prison subsidy.

Not just "people," that corrupt POS judge sent 4000 juevniles as young as eleven to be abused at a "for profit" detention center while he accepted cash for every child he sent there.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2011/0811/Kids-for-cash...

It's quite a bit more complicated than that.

The two most important graphs for understanding U.S. law enforcement:

Total state and federal prisoners: http://www.sentencingproject.org/images/photo/State%20and%20....

Total violent crime: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zJiRb6FKYgM/Tqil-T4fLpI/AAAAAAAAAF....

Violent crime increases almost 5x from the mid 1960's to the early 1990's. The number of state and federal prisoners consequently increases 5x during that period. That's not the result of "for-profit justice." That's the result of people supporting aggressive enforcement and incarceration in response to skyrocketing violent crime.

The real problem is: what happens after 1995? Violent crime drops by over a third. Yet, prison population continues to grow until it plateaus in the mid-2000's. That's where jobs and budgets come in. They make it difficult to dismantle the whole apparatus, and indeed, to really convey to the public that crime has in fact dramatically decreased.

That said, I think the solution to this is time. U.S. prison population has been trending down for the last several years. The baby boomer generation's attitudes towards crime were forged during the 1970's and 1980's as crime skyrocketed, but that attitude will start to die out as the boomers do.

The strongest-correlated single factor to violent crime is, in fact, lead pollution. When lead antiknock compounds were abolished in gasoline, and lead pigments abolished in paint, lead pollution peaked and began a long, steady decline. Violent crime followed. The prisoner incarceration rate has stayed high, despite the decline in violence, because of the money interests.

For-profit prisons are the ratchets that prevent the wheels of justice from turning backward. Sweden consolidates prisons and mothballs the emptied ones. America tricks the ignorant into fencing stolen bicycles and selling weed to informants.

Remove the profit, and you also remove the paradoxical idiotic behavior that generates it.

My outsider's perspective would first segregate all revenues from fines and forfeitures from justice budgets, perhaps exclusively dedicating them to public education and pollution abatement and cleanup. Then I'd abolish incarceration in any facility that was not entirely publicly owned and state-operated. I'd also abolish plea bargaining, as it seems a perversion of due process. After that, I'm not sure what else might help; keep following the money and pushing the Nash equilibrium toward "everyone respect the law and each other".

The connection between lead and crime is tenuous. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6092990.

This article is just copy/pasted snippets from http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/atf-uses-ro...

Note to those from the future: The submission has now been changed to link to this. It used to link to http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/feds-pai... under the title "Feds Paid a Teen to Get a Neck Tattoo of a Giant Squid Smoking a Joint"

So what they're doing in general goes in the direction completely opposite to what the broken windows theory would suggest... It seems really weird to me - it's one thing to try to be friendly with someone who's already planning a crime and something completely different when you're providing both incentive and funding for new crime (pawn shops).

I'm surprised nobody's gone after them for entrapment. IANAL, but my understanding is that the definition of entrapment is inducing someone to commit a crime that he wouldn't have been likely to commit otherwise. In the case of convincing a mentally disabled teenager to run drugs and guns, the shoe seems to fit.

We have privatized prisons with quotas for the number of prisoners.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/private-prison-quot...

What is a cry of "entrapment" next to incentive?

IANAL, but entrapent is an affirmative defense; in most cases it moves the burden of proof onto the defendant. That makes it hard to use.

Furthermore, the inducement usually has to be pretty strong. Merely suggesting someone commit a crime is not entrapment. Even paying them to commit a crime isn't in many cases.

Sounds like broken windows to me. They break the windows they arrest people who show up to do more damage. And some people they suggested do damage. And they guy they had break the window. And someone walking by.

This seems to be a paradigm case of entrapment. This should thus be easily sorted out in the courts. Am I wrong?

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

Well yes. But only 4% of the cases end in court - the others are plea deals. So you need competent and capable defense, defendant that is willing to take the risk against the huge prosecutor mallet the DA is swinging and probably some luck.

The targets in the article are from parts of the society that are already outcasts for various reasons.

(Not a lawyer, from observations)

yeah, i forgot about the US system for a moment. i knew the 90+% plea bargain number, but it is so utterly inconceivable that i always and again forget it. simply does not compute.

Many people don't have the funds to defend themselves against the very group that entrapped them. They have nearly unlimited funds to prove they didn't entrap you, while likely you will not. That's why there are supposed to be laws and procedures to prevent this from ever starting, but there are budgets and arrest records to pad.

I remember watching Two Guns and thinking that it was an entertaining fiction flick. When I read this story, I couldn't help but think that maybe it was a bit more realistic than I gave it credit for.

On another note, how can these tactics not be construed as entrapment?

A mentally disabled teen at that.

My Dad has had a federal firearms license for a couple of decades but this year he's not renewing. He is so sick and tired of the ATF and their shenanigans. It is definitely a bureaucracy in need of some leadership.

How is this not entrapment?

So, this article is not biased at all ... It's pretty shoddy reporting/editorializing. These zany anecdotes are pretty outlandish but why is there only one or two sentences per anecdote? Surely, in this anti-Obama rant, we could hav some details?

The linked article has been changed to an article with much more information. Which details were you interested in?

This is what you get when people keep on voting in big government types all in the name of safety, security and social justice.

Don't conflate things that are different.

The libertarian two axis view of politics is still far too simple, but it's a start: plenty of people who rail against "big government" support the drug war, while plenty of people who like redistribution are adamantly against it.*

As long as you don't get that point, you're working with a seriously limited view of politics.

* If you really want to blow your mind, there are people who like redistribution, hate the drug war, and also think the government should significantly decrease its economic regulation.

Edit: slightly nicer phrasing.

> plenty of people who rail against "big government" support the drug war, while plenty of people who like redistribution are adamantly against it.*

Because no one actually cares about "big" or "small" government, they care about using the government to impose their beliefs on other people, whether those beliefs are conservative or liberal in nature. Both liberals and conservatives are actually for "big government", it's just that conservatives also lie about being for "small government". Liberals want the government to take money from the rich and give it to the poor, while conservatives want the government to wage war on drugs (read: ethnic minorities), other countries, women's rights, etc.

But in the end, it's those with connections that are able to skim money off the top of all these transactions and laugh all the way to the bank. Obama allocated $607 billion for defense-related spending last Thursday - $30 billion more than was in the recent budget deal passed by Congress. So actually, the "liberals" are also supporting the military-industrial complex too.

You can say that, but then you have to own up to the fact that the two dimensions of "bigness" are unrelated. The drug war and medicare/social security (to take two other big programs) are good or bad for entirely separate reasons.

The fact is, when you say you want the government to be small, you are conflating things that there are different. There are different ways to be big or small, and they have different advantages and disadvantages.

> you have to own up to the fact that the two dimensions of "bigness" are unrelated

You're mistaken - they have much in common. In order to be a successful political party, what you have to do is find issues that (a) a lot of people deeply believe in on an emotional level and (b) can be addressed in such a way that you can redirect large sums of money into the pockets of 3rd parties in the process, who will then support the election campaigns of your politicians.

Whether this happens through providing obscenely overpriced healthcare to Americans or through buying/using drones to extrajudicially murder and terrorize Yemeni wedding-goers is just a detail. We could debate until the end of time how much value either of these initiatives actually provides to the American citizenry, but that's a completely separate issue (and not one that the vast majority of politicians give a rat's ass about).

Size is irrelevant. When you declare your mission is a 'war on drugs' you're going to end up losing, plain and simple. Meanwhile, very, very large government programs like the NHS do well and provide healthcare to millions in an affordable way with great outcomes.

There's something very lazy about arguing about government size. Its just dumb simpleminded platitudes that libertarians pat each other on the back for, but don't really say anything.

> Size is irrelevant. When you declare your mission is a 'war on drugs' you're going to end up losing, plain and simple.

While size may not itself be damaging, size does correlate with collateral damage when a losing strategy (such as 'war on drugs') is chosen. The larger the DEA/ATF are, the more people that they can hurt.

> Meanwhile, very, very large government programs like the NHS do well and provide healthcare to millions in an affordable way with great outcomes.

Isn't NHS facing bankruptcy?

There's facing bankruptcy and there's facing bankruptcy. The government devolves responsibility for these things to local groups (to cut management overhead and let them respond to local needs | to transfer blame for under-funding away from elected MPs who set funding levels) and there are usually some local groups who report not having enough money (because the unaccountable bureaucrats are wasteful with other people's money | because threatening bankruptcy gets you more money and community support | because the government sets the funding levels to force them to find efficiency savings and not every local group can | because the government wants public sector failures they can point to in support of privatisation).

In practice the hospitals stay open, and patients get their drugs and operations. Reports of impending doom are just politics as usual.

I disagree. Facing bankruptcy is facing bankruptcy. Politicians can make it sound as complicated as they like, but at the end of the day, if you owe a man $20, you're going to have to pay him. It doesn't really matter who is at fault.

I don't know enough about the NHS to say with any certainty, but I imagine the way the hospitals stay open and patients get their drugs is by the NHS going into more debt (please correct me if I'm wrong).

There's a difference between impending doom not existing and kicking the can down the road. Ultimately, the taxpayers will end up paying the debt. The question is when.

The NHS is not set up to make money, it is set up to spend it. You appear to think it is some kind of profit making enterprise - it is a way of spending taxpayers money to safeguard their health, and does so in a demonstrably more efficient manner than private healthcare systems based on insurance, despite any flaws it may have. Compare costs with the US for example.

Clearly it will never turn a profit in pounds and pence, only in lives saved. Talking of bankruptcy in that context is a nonsense introduced by politicians intent on doing away with it for ideological reasons.

Whether or not private companies can provide better health care than public institutions is an entirely different argument, and was not one I was trying to make.

Bankruptcy has nothing to do with whether an organization is for-profit or not. It has to do with whether it can pay its debts or not.

Trying to figure out how to pay for things you can't afford isn't nonsense. Believing government institutions are exempt from debt is.

No matter how valuable a service is, someone must pay for it. Saving lives is a wonderful thing, but doctors still want to be paid.

It has to do with whether it can pay its debts or not.

The NHS does not have debt in any meaningful sense, the government takes on debt, and chooses to spend some of that on new missile systems, some on wars in foreign countries, some on education, and some on the NHS.

A part of government cannot be bankrupt without the entire government itself being bankrupt, because it is funded as part of government obligations, and the amount given to it is decided almost entirely on the whim of politicians - it varies considerably and depends on all the other expenditures. You might argue that the UK as a whole is borrowing against its future rather than paying down debts (and it is currently as many countries do), but to argue that the NHS is somehow in debt or in danger of bankruptcy simply doesn't make sense when it is part of a variable budget paid for with taxes and borrowing.

You might claim the UK can't afford the NHS, but I'd point to the other parts of the budget which consume considerably more money, and compare it to the spending of other countries - that's a very different discussion, and a valid one to have, but it's not one you can have on the basis of the NHS somehow being bankrupt as compared to an arbitrary budget set by politicians with an agenda.

Talking of bankruptcy in that context is a nonsense introduced by politicians intent on doing away with it for ideological reasons.

And that comment is a perfect example why we still have people on HN saying things like "free" healthcare. But at the end of the day it all costs money. It's just this make-believe world that some people want to live in...amazing.

Are you saying any part of my comment was make-believe? If so please let me know which part, instead of struggling with a straw man of your own invention.

Of course it costs money, and that money comes from taxes and borrowing as does the money for the MOD, MOE, and all other state funded services.

He quoted part of your post directly and responded to it. It was this part: "Talking of bankruptcy in that context is a nonsense introduced by politicians intent on doing away with it for ideological reasons."

I'm just explaining to you that he quoted you since you were unsure.

He quoted me, then proceeded on a tangent completely unrelated to it, about free health care which doesn't cost money, and a make-believe world which apparently I want to live in.

I have trouble relating the quote with his arguments, because I said nothing about 'free' healthcare, things which don't cost money, or something make believe. If anything a bankruptcy in a centrally funded department involves make-believe, because it implies that there is no more money; it's a question of priorities and what you want to spend the budget on, and much money has been found for other projects by HMG during this recession alone, for example bank bailouts, wars abroad or tax cuts.

No, it is not. How does a government funded org ever face bankruptcy, unless the government wants it to for political reasons? The NHS provides healthcare to the entire nation for about 7% of GDP. If there's any question of bankruptcy there are plenty of other areas to look at first.

> How does a government funded org ever face bankruptcy

When there is no money to pay its debt. Simple as that.

> How does a government funded org ever face bankruptcy, unless the government wants it to for political reasons?

It depends on the bankruptcy laws, and its possible that a "government funded" org still would be covered by them.

OTOH, in this particular case, its probably the common confusion of "bankruptcy" with "insolvency" playing a major role. Insolvency is usually the reason an entity enters (voluntarily or not) bankruptcy, but the two states are not equivalent.

You're right. Insolvency is a more accurate term to use in this case.

The NHS has been "facing bankruptcy" for as long as I've been able to read the news. Somehow I never see it actually happen.

No matter where you come down on the political spectrum, examining the correct role of government in our lives is a worthwhile pursuit. Painting these debates as "lazy" and "simpleminded" makes no sense.

There is nothing wrong with a large government as long as you can ensure that it is transparent and truly working for it's citizens.

As soon as governments start abusing their power to help big business and for public officials personal agendas, then you have corruption and it is detrimental to that country and society.

How could you have safety, security, and social justice WITHOUT a large government? There are 300 million people in this country, a good percentage are poor, a large percentage don't have great morals, and a transparent and strong government seems like the only way to combat that.

Yes, a small government MIGHT work in a country that is unified and that has near 100% national loyalty, but the US does not. The US is very diversified, has a huge population, has tons of people who were raised to be greedy, and social conflicts are almost normal. A small government (near anarchy) is not the answer, in my humble opinion.

As a liberal what pisses me off about the libertarian "big government" line is how it conflates the out of control militarized police state with, for example, school lunches for poor kids. Can't you tell the difference? Can't we have one without the other?

This is intellectually gratifying. /s

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