NY Congressman Introducing Ban On 3D-Printed High Capacity Gun Magazines • Hacker News Board

Re: NY Congressman Introducing Ban On 3D-Printed High Capacity Gun Magazines

#71

Post by hga » Fri, Jan 18, 2013, 6:00 PM UTC

Dove wrote: post #70

wwweston wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't know exactly what the poster you were responding to meant, it's possible that rather than meaning: "I think it's possible someone carrying may choose to intentionally shoot a child at any moment." he meant: "I think that (a) accidents happen in general and (b) should a specific crisis situation emerge and someone carrying uses their gun to respond, they are likely enough to shoot an innocent bystander a…

Yeah, that's what I thought he probably meant, too -- that someone trying to shoot at a threat would miss and hit a child. That's what triggered me saying, "you must not know much about guns." You're welcome to your own judgement call on that, of course, but to me that's really unrealistic. One of the places I went shooting was a weekly practical skills tournament. Everything we shot at moved or popped up or had some…

Anecdotally, I'm personally amazed as how well un- or barely trained US civilians responsibly use their guns in self-defense. There's about 2.25 million Defensive Gun Uses (DGU) per year, although of course only a very small fraction involve a shot being fired. Still, with numbers that large, if there were a lot of "pain-in-the-ass innocent bystanders" getting shot or killed we know the US media would be hyping those cases.

They do happen, last I can remember was a worst case where an armed citizen tried to slip out of a pizza joint during a robbery only to find the robbers had locked the door behind them. They noticed and started shooting at him, and one or more of the staff were behind them in line with the citizen. Bad situation, but then again, for all we know he saved the lives of everyone in the joint, based on the criminals' actions.

Re: NY Congressman Introducing Ban On 3D-Printed High Capacity Gun Magazines

#72

Post by hga » Fri, Jan 18, 2013, 6:03 PM UTC

wwweston wrote: post #61

InclinedPlane wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just plain silliness. There are millions, literally hundreds of millions, of full capacity magazines out there in the world right now. If a criminal can manage to get their hands on an illegal gun they can certainly manage to get their hands on a full capacity magazine just as easily and for far less money. They are too easy to make, too easy to store, too easy to transport for it to be otherwise. That was tr…

> Also, when you call a magazine a "clip" you immediately make yourself look like someone who knows very little about firearms. Assuming this is neither pedantry nor an ad hominem attack, I appreciate knowing what terminology communicates to people. > There are millions, literally hundreds of millions, of full capacity magazines out there in the world right now. And billions of people. The argument isn't that we can…

"Assuming this is neither pedantry nor an ad hominem attack..."

The Associated Press (AP) finally updated their style book to make this important distinction, and I've noticed their writers are actually following it, so it's not pedantry.

Re: NY Congressman Introducing Ban On 3D-Printed High Capacity Gun Magazines

#73

Post by nitrogen » Fri, Jan 18, 2013, 8:34 PM UTC

noahc wrote: post #66

nitrogen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but this should not be the #1 comment on HN. HN comments are sorted by age as well as number of votes (and supposedly the reputation of the poster, in some cases), so being in the top spot may not mean that it's the highest voted comment, and may be temporary. But the next time you call lobbying bad, just remember that lobbying is an important part of having informed legislatures. Surely there's a b…

You're right on the first point. However, as a first approximation the top comment is likely the highest upvoted comment, particularly when the name isn't one of the top 10 posters on HN. The CRS and CBO do provide a useful service. But, it would be impossible for each congress person to research the effects of a tariff, increasing pre-k funding to the states, chimpanzee sanctuary funding needs at the NIH as well as…

The obvious problem with relying on lobbyists is that they represent the interests of their employers, which often conflict with the interests of the people.

If legislators have too many domains to deal with to understand any of them, maybe we could go further than the committee system and have separate legislatures for separate domains.