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Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

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Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#861

Post by cwkoss »

mav3rick wrote: post #859
cwkoss wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

correlation != causality If someone has threatened you with a gun or you live in an area with increased gun violence, I would expect that greatly increases the chances that you'd want to acquire your own. This cohort would already be at a much higher risk of gun death before they owned a gun as well. There has never been a placebo controlled double blind study on gun ownership. Probably never will be because of ethic…

How about no one has guns ?

How about we fund mental healthcare nationally, reduce wealth inequality, and end racial disparity in policing first?

Until then, an attempt to ban all guns is not only a politically infeasible waste of energy, but also seems like a racist attack on the self-defense rights of the disempowered.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#862

Post by fapjacks »

daveheq wrote: post #747
program_whiz wrote: post #13

Sure, the kid was swinging at the officer, and I suppose that warrants the officer acting in self-defense. But another question is, what are the protesters supposed to do? The government has all the power, and can simply snuff out any resistence. If you just stand in the streets, they really don't care, they are going to take your freedom. Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator that just decided they were going to…

How many American military personnel would just be OK with being told by the President to take property rights and freedoms like that? Do you think they're mind-controlled idiots? It doesn't just suddenly happen, we don't have a totalitarian mindset, it would have to be very gradual and against people who are demonized as immoral or as a scourge on society, like Mexicans or Jews or liberals or Christians. Even then i…

To add anecdote to the data in a sibling comment, I was in the infantry for many years, deployed many times, saw lots of combat. The US government would have a big problem on its hands if any part of it ordered the US military to take property and/or shoot American citizens: Almost no one I ever met would follow those orders. It is a not-uncommon topic of conversation in the grand tradition of military "what if" games. But this is sort of to be expected: Civil wars are extraordinarily messy and complicated, and history bears out that no state goes into this kind of conflict with its military intact. In fact many times it's the kind of thing which triggers the civil war or coups d'etat: The army gets wind of some "unconscionable actions" by the government's ruling party, and some populist general rounds up a few of his most trustworthy subordinates, and seizes power. This is the story of human state failure.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#863

Post by cwkoss »

jzoch wrote: post #803
pageandrew wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you can. Owning a gun for self defense is an individual decision, so individual responsibility must be considered. You can’t say that the Americans who want guns for self defense are better off without them because statistically, across the population, they increase danger.

Why can't you say that? Every decision you make is an individual decision. Whether or not to vaccinate yourself is an individual decision, owning a gun, driving a car, looking both ways. All can have consequences for others besides yourself.

I don't understand your response. Are you arguing that vaccinations, cars and being a responsible pedestrian should also be banned?

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#864

Post by camgunz »

jboggan wrote: post #773
camgunz wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see TJ talking about 2A there. Edit: Thought I would reply to your Heller stuff too. It's an appeal to authority because it's selective. The precedent when the Court decided Heller was set by Miller [1], which reads at the outset (emphasis mine): > The Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has today any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency o…

I guess you're right. Now, what to do about the 400 million or so weapons in private hands? Should the National Guards of each state get those since they are the rightful militia?

Nah I think the gun debate is nuanced. I fully understand the need to defend yourself against wildlife in rural areas, for example. But that's different than dense urban areas, or maybe some dense urban areas would be fine because they don't have serious gang or mental health issues.

The debate's supercharged, mostly for good reasons (mass shootings are very high stakes). But the rhetoric around subjugating the people by confiscating their weapons is overheated. America has the chance to show that there's an alternative to completely outlawing firearms that adequately accommodates all lifestyles in our country. But we have to be reasonable and not jump down bonkers rabbit holes like "owning a gun is immoral and makes you an ignorant, self-serving hick", or "AOC wants to personally confiscate your gun and slap you".

That's why I think Heller did so much damage. Cities like Chicago and DC were enacting handgun bans to try and cope with escalating gun violence. They weren't mounting an assault on 2A. Leaving policy decisions like this to local and State governments is exactly what the Bill of Rights was meant to do. This way a state like Oregon can say, "there's mountain lions here, you might need a gun", or Indiana can say, "we have deer hunting, so you can have a hunting rifle in season and keep it locked up at some repo off season", or Chicago can say, "you can't have a gun here, violence is out of control". But Heller robbed us of a core policymaking tool. Actually it's pretty ironic that an originalist like Scalia dismantled a policymaking tool that the Founders themselves wrote into the Constitution. But whatever! We can overturn Heller and get it back I guess, in like 40 years or something.

PS. I'm 50/50 on handgun bans. The danger is that it's just another way to lock up young men of color, so I think anyone adopting them needs a mitigation that isn't felony or incarceration.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#865

Post by Clubber »

close04 wrote: post #814
Clubber wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you'd be hard pressed to find one where the dictator gave up even when the insurgents were backed by strong armies like the US. Here's a list of coups. Many were successful. I'm not sure why you are trying to argue that coups don't work. The Arab Spring is a recent example of this very thing, isn't it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_d%27état_and_cou... >Very few (if any) shootings were ever really preve…

I hope you don't mind if I respond to your conservapedia link with a wikipedia link. This is the list of mass shootings in the US in 2019 (9 months): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_... According to it 385 people were killed and 1338 injured so far. 8 of the mass shootings were in schools. Now you're saying that if faced with the choice of having fewer or no mass shootings, and being able…

>Now you're saying that if faced with the choice of having fewer or no mass shootings, and being able to stop a small fraction of them (or worse, stop a large fraction but even the small one still causes thousands of victims) while the rest cause hundreds of deaths and thousands injured you'd pick the second?

First, I don't believe banning guns will stop mass shootings any more than banning drugs stopped mass drug use. There are millions out there and a well kept gun can last a couple hundred of years (and still work).

Second, how will you accomplish the confiscation? You know there are people who will resist. How many police (and bystanders for that matter) will die trying to follow that order? I have no idea, but probably a lot more than zero.

Third, based on how our federal, state and local governments are treating our population, or world for that matter, I don't think removing that sort of deterrent would be advantageous to stopping it. Broken justice system, militarized police, surveillance state, corrupt politicians selling out our livelihoods. Those things aren't naturally going to get better and we can't seem to vote it away very effectively. I don't know what our options are anymore, but these things are likely going to get a lot worse for us.

Fourth, we are living in a surprisingly, unnatural time of peace and prosperity. WWI went from the assassination to full mobilization in a month, followed by depression in Germany, followed by a world depression, resulting in the Nazi's coming to power, resulting in the holocaust and 80+ million dead; all within 30 years. That's peace to holocaust to Cold War between 1989 and now. Drastic change happens fast, and the world is due. Just because a gun ban formula looks attractive now, it very well may not in the near future.

For a starting solution, I think rebuilding our mental health infrastructure would help, but I don't see our generation's politicians doing that. It was before my time, but apparently we had a much better one in the 70s. I can tell you we certainly have a under treated mental health problem today. Do you think Sandy Hook would have happened if Adam Lanza had a facility to live in and be taken care of? There is no way to know, but I think it's unlikely.

https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/trauma-and-violence/guns-vi...

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#866

Post by kube-system »

ethbro wrote: post #768
kube-system wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the military uses too many small caliber semi-auto rifles. Any modern military rifle I can think of was banned for new sale in 1986.

5.56x45mm? Aka .223 Remington? 7.62x51mm? Aka .308 Winchester? Only two of the most common NATO standards.

Those are cartridges, not rifles.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#867

Post by kube-system »

projektfu wrote: post #788
kube-system wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the military uses too many small caliber semi-auto rifles. Any modern military rifle I can think of was banned for new sale in 1986.

A technicality based on the US military's preference for select-fire rifles. Everything else about an AR-15 rifle is based on its original military purpose.

The function of operation is a pretty important technicality.

There are very few guns that aren't based on, derived from, or exactly the same as military weapons. Many of the most popular hunting rifles and shotguns around the world, even those very traditional in style, would qualify as this.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#868

Post by Clubber »

josephdviviano wrote: post #254
Clubber wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

By this logic, do you think all of the other western democracies that do not have a right to bear arms are at risk of producing a Stalin?

Absolutely, whether internally or externally. Many of them got a Hitler in the early 1940s and could have very well gotten the actual Stalin in the late 1940s. Crimea and Georgia got a Putin not long ago, but the rest of Ukraine managed to fight him off for now it seems. Looks like Hong Kong is about to get a Xi. It happens all the time, all over the world and has for all of civilization.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#869

Post by Clubber »

dang wrote: post #855
Clubber wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Breaking the site guidelines like this will get you banned on HN regardless of how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here? We've had to ask you this more than once before. It can be helpful to remember that when you go way out of bounds like this, you discredit the position you're arguing for. A…

Ya sorry, I get excited.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#870

Post by jki275 »

camgunz wrote: post #702
jki275 wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read Heller. Scalia explained in detail.

I have read Heller and found Scalia's reasoning to be... perforated at best. Here's a great excerpt (sorry, he just writes and writes and writes): > “Security of a Free State.” The phrase “security of a free state” meant “security of a free polity,” not security of each of the several States as the dissent below argued, see 478 F. 3d, at 405, and n. 10. Joseph Story wrote in his treatise on the Constitution that “the…

It's not an appeal to authority. The Supreme Court is literally the last word on the Constitution in the United States, therefore they are the authority on it.

Scalia's opinion is the law of the land, and the reasoning is sound. Unless you're a SCOTUS justice, your opinion on the matter isn't really relevant.

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