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Comment by walshemj | Hacker News Reader

If I where a Googler working in SF id have to start seriously thinking about getting a PPW license.

PPW is short hand for the Uk licence to carry a gun for personal protection - and yes there are tech companies that do have staff that do that.

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PPW in the UK ? Really ?

Post Dunblane, all handguns are illegal in mainland UK. The only exceptions are for law enforcement/armed forces. [We'll ignore diplomatic missions using immunity/convention exceptions.]

Northern Ireland does have PPW (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kin... and, handily for this topic, an FOI response on PSNI website http://www.psni.police.uk/firearms_applications_ppw.pdf).

Without getting into all the republican politics, Northern Ireland is distinct in terms of the legal system and status compared to the mainland (of Scotland, England and Wales). You cannot use an example from NI to extend to the rest of the UK.

I'll leave other commentors to discuss how sensible it is to talk about bringing guns into what seems to be a pretty hot debate on the street. One comment I read recently which has stuck with me goes along the lines of "there is no situation which resorting to violence will not make worse".

Good luck. I'd encourage this even if you are not a Google employee. You'll probably want to move out of California if you want the right to defend yourself and family though. Getting a concealed carry license there is next to impossible.

> Good luck. I'd encourage this even if you are not a Google employee.

How come?

Well you asked so I'll answer but I understand that a lot of people on HackerNews may not share my same views on self defense. Also to be clear, I don't think a non-violent blockade necessitates the use of a firearm. However, I think the topic came up because protests can and do lead to a handful of rogue protestors going too far, getting too angry and attacking people.

So to answer your question in a general statement: I'm a firm believer that is my responsibility to protect my life and my family and no one else's. I also think it is naive to believe that I could never be the victim of a crime or brutal attack by someone equipped with a more effective weapon than my hands. I'd much rather have a firearm in my hand then a cell phone waiting for 911 when someone is clearly trying to inflict severe harm or death.

Fair enough; I respect your desire and right to do so. I don't think it's for everyone, though, so I asked why you wanted to encourage everyone to do it. Thanks for answering my question.

I, personally, believe that I'm statistically likely to make a situation worse or possibly hurt myself if I own a handgun. So I choose not to have one. I might choose differently at a later date, depending on where I live.

I have my CCW (Carrying of Concealed Weapon) license. In Kentucky, you must go through an instructional class before getting your weapon -- and you learn that pulling your weapon out should only happen when you're prepared to use it in a lethal manner -- otherwise the aggressor could fight you for your weapon.

You don't get a handgun as a show of force -- you get one to protect yourself from imminent harm...and some asshat blocking a bus isn't putting you in imminent harm: you're in the bus, and hopefully the bus driver has already called 911 to get the person/people who are blocking the road out of your way.

San Francisco almost never issues such licenses. If memory serves, only two people currently have CCW licenses issued by the City and County of San Francisco. Those two people who have them have serious political connections.

Last I heard it was down to a single person.

However, CCWs in California are state-wide licenses and many of the more rural counties are pretty liberal with giving them out. Even Sacramento is close to a "shall-issue" county. I've heard San Diego is pretty decent too.

In other words, if you live in a county where you can get a CCW, you can carry it legally in the entire state.

Do you honestly think that carrying a weapon in the san francisco bay area is a good idea?

I can come up with lots of reasons for why carrying a concealed weapon is more likely to be harmful than beneficial in these circumstances.

But why is it a bad idea to carry a weapon in SF? Are people stopped and frisked? Are there metal detectors everywhere? Are there pickpockets all over the place that will steal your weapon and use it against you?

It is extremely difficult to legally buy and conceal a handgun that conforms to California law. You also can't pickpocket a gun to anyone carrying it appropriately.

Try to take a gun from a cop and see what happens.

Weapon retention is an extremely stressed training point for most law enforcement agencies (even over effective shooting in many places). That's because many LEO shootings involve their service weapons that have been taken (I've seen estimates in the 8-12% range).

This is in a population that is trained in weapon retention. I've rarely met non-LEO folks who spend adequate time on the skill.

If I am getting threatened by random loonies yes - just as if I had worked for one of my previous employers in NI I would have been very careful about who I talked to and which places I went.

one of my mates is married to a DA in the USA and has had to "cheek his guns just in case some one tried to make the threat good.

Don't assume that all us Brits are fluffy little things who will have a fit of palpitations when fire arms are mentioned

Yes. But clearly you have an opposing view on the right to defend yourself with a firearm. No need to make this into a gun debate.

And yet you do exactly that.

As far as I can tell, it's a necessary consequence of any mention of firearms on HN, in any context. There seems little point in blaming any one participant, in any one instance, for the perennial argument over what is perhaps the most immediately, or at least the most reliably, polarizing issue ever raised on HN.

Fireamrs is only one hot-button topic for HN.

Others include Isreal / Palestine; sexism; RMS; etc. it is trivially easy to troll HN. HN does not do well at ignoring trolls or not responding to overly-enthusiastic posters. (There are some exceptions to this where a person will carefully talk through differences in opinion to try to understand or communicate a point of view but these are exceptions).

You will never get it. The only reasonable sheriff to issue a CCW in the vicinity is in San Mateo county.

The only place that a member of the public can get a PPW in the UK is Northern Ireland.

yes and there was a huge fuss when they put the BT logo on the car park passes.

Two who ever voted me down around 20% of my ex coworkers I know in BT from NI had close family members killed by terrorists in the troubles.

"In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is."

The trouble with the eternal firearms argument is that anti-firearms types tend to be theorists (many of whom, in my experience, have never even laid hands on a firearm, to say nothing of firing one), and pro-firearms types to be practitioners.

It's sort of like expecting a random Haskell programmer and a random PHP programmer to see eye-to-eye on anything, or indeed to be able to have a productive conversation with one another. In theory, this can occur. In practice...

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If you are not trained in self defense and how to use a gun to defend your life maybe you shouldn't be carrying one and you also shouldn't be commenting on it like you know what you are talking about.

Why do you assume a gun would be randomly taken out in a tense confrontation?

I can spin this idea as well by saying "What if a few rogue protestors were really pissed off, kicked in your front door and began to beat you with a baseball bat, wouldn't that be a great time to have some leverage to protect your life?"

Or what if you were walking your child to school and just one angry protestor twice your size followed you, became increasingly more agitated and decided to smash your head into the curb.

It's all relative to how you phrase it.

[EDIT] And apparently "hbags" found this comment really insulting for some reason and thinks I'm nuts for demonstrating an alternative way to phrase a situation... and I'm the unstable one...ok.

> Why do you assume a gun would be randomly taken out in a tense confrontation?

Why the hell wouldn't it be? Because everybody's always super calm and patient in such situations?

Don't you imagine it is easier to keep a level head in a confrontation when you are confident of your ability to defend your person, should it become necessary to do so?

> when you are confident of your ability to defend your person

No, because this requires clairvoyance I don't possess in order to know the other guy doesn't also have a gun.

I mean, I'd also be pretty level-headed if I knew I could explode people's heads instantly with my mind, but we don't live in that sort of universe.

That would depend on many things, including whether you were initially inclined to keep a level head and not go to maximum force quickly.

Why is it that you think because someone has a gun they are incapable of acting rationally? If I were in the above situation I would not draw my gun with out feeling that there was a real threat to my life or property. And in that case I would rather have a gun than not have a gun.

Recommending gun ownership in response to non-violent protest seems sub-optimal.

Perhaps a gun is a useful tool in that kind of situation, but surely there's a bunch of other conflict de-escalation stuff that can be learnt first.

Of course, and ericcumbee's point is well made; people who've never put any actual thought into what it's like to go armed are generally very quick to assume that those who do go armed see putting holes in things as a handy means of resolving any situation, from an argument in traffic to a panhandler begging change. (Far be it from me, of course, to speculate on any personal qualities, or lack thereof, which might be inadvertently revealed, by those who make this unwarranted assumption, in the process of doing same.)

That said, if I am effectively trapped in my home by a currently non-violent protest which has as its manifesto the sort of manifest lunacy on display in the linked article, I am going to want to be able to defend family and self with force majeure, should matters proceed beyond noisy and foolish hot-headedness into an outright attack.

you assume that the gun is the first option, when in fact its a last resort.

But I see recommendations for guns all the time. I don't see recommendations for de-escalation techniques.

Perhaps this is something that gun companies could do to promote their responsible gun carry image? They could provide training programmes on conflict managemen and de-escalalation along with safe gun use?

> Why is it that you think because someone has a gun they are incapable of acting rationally?

Because they're a real live human fucking being with anger and emotion and desperation and base needs and selfish wants, not a theoretical hyper-rational philosophical strawperson.

Real live human beings are pretty classically incapable of acting rationally, and if you think otherwise, I would suggest that you have only very recently come out from under a rock.

Are you by chance familiar with the axiom that, given an audience without any other information about the parties or principles involved in a given argument, the side which presents its claims in a calm, level-headed fashion is more likely to be taken seriously than the side that's red-faced and flinging spittle?

I can't imagine what's brought that so strongly to mind just now, but I figured I'd mention it all the same. Make of it what you like.

That's not an axiom, it's just an opinion. Personally, I find passion pretty compelling to read/hear, and I won't present my side with a false posture of academic distance if that's not how I feel. Additionally, I'm not really interested in winning over the people who are more concerned with the tone of an argument than the actual facts presented.

Well, exhorting the choir is very satisfying, of course, and I can see the tactical benefit in so doing to the exclusion of any attempt to increase the size of the congregation. This does, of course, imply an abandonment of any desire to find a modus vivendi, but the impression I have is that such abandonment is more or less implicit.

Thank you for descending from the mountaintop to dispense your advice to such a lowly thinker as I, great wise sage.

(That was sarcasm. Opinions are not facts, and condescension does not signal wisdom.)

FYI, there is a certain branch of thought that believes that passion and anger increase validity of argument.

I'm a former partisan of that sort of thinking, so I'm well aware of it -- from the inside, as it were. The trouble with it is that it only works on people who already substantially agree with you. When you're talking to people who don't, at best it does nothing, and at worst it actively impairs your efforts.

Failure to acknowledge this fact is taken as a sign of commitment, I think, in certain quarters, but I've lately come to hold the opinion that such failure evinces a certain basic lack of empathy which augurs ill for the ability of the person so failing to make an argument capable of convincing someone not already in agreement with him.

> When you're talking to people who don't, at best it does nothing

Citation needed. As I said above, and you apparently did not read, I personally find conviction and fire far more compelling than dispassion. You may differ, but do not mistake the subjective for the objective.

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