Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT • Hacker News Board

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#191

Post by InclinedPlane » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 4:45 PM UTC

mninja wrote: post #174

InclinedPlane wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The police are not always capable of helping you when you need them. The oft-quoted saying is "when seconds count the police are minutes away", and it is very, very true. Guns used in lawful self-defense, which often involves nothing more than drawing the gun causing the attacker to flee the scene, stop an incredible amount of crimes every day. More so, the reason that gun rights are so fundamental in the US is that…

Having an arsenal of guns isn't going to stop a tyrant from bombing you to the stone age, or crushing you with tanks. See Syria.

See my other post in this thread on precisely that point. The Assad regime in Syria is likely to fall, and that's despite having and using tanks, jets, artillery, and chemical weapons. Gun rights are no guarantee of victory against tyranny, but they can provide a powerful leg up.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#192

Post by BryanB55 » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 4:45 PM UTC

tome wrote: post #177

BryanB55 wrote: post #173

I'll start by saying we do not have a gun problem in this country. We have a people problem. Speaking of people problems, I started reading these comments in hope of finding a different attitude than what I have been hearing around the topic of gun control lately. To me, HackerNews has usually been a place with more educated and informed comments but I didn't really find that here. I'm still finding misinformed peopl…

Does anyone here really believe that when your life is imminent danger that you are better off with a cell phone in your hand calling the police and waiting for them to arrive to save your life than you are with a gun in your hand using everything you possibly can to protect yourself and your family? In the UK, yes we really believe this.

I'm interested in hearing your thought on this in more detail. Can you explain how the police in the UK are able to get to your house fast enough in the middle of the night when someone breaks in? It takes hardly even 30 seconds to kick in a door or break a window and enter a home. Are you really capable of calling the police, having them respond, enter and clear your own home before that person does harm to you and your family?

What about someone who enters a business, gas station, whatever, one day and starts executing people on the spot? Is a cell phone really your best tool?

Maybe you are not capable of protecting yourself or not ready to deal with that yet but if I put myself in that situation and was also not capable or ready to protect myself then I would hope that an upstanding citizen next to me or in the same situation as me was prepared to stop the threat.

In a lot of situation where you can be seriously injured or killed in seconds by an evil person I really can't think of any possible way that the police can help me. Keep in mind that most criminals are surprisingly smart enough to not commit a crime with a uniformed police offer standing next to them and unfortunately you will not always have the police standing next to you.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#193

Post by citricsquid » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 4:45 PM UTC

BryanB55 wrote: post #173

I'll start by saying we do not have a gun problem in this country. We have a people problem. Speaking of people problems, I started reading these comments in hope of finding a different attitude than what I have been hearing around the topic of gun control lately. To me, HackerNews has usually been a place with more educated and informed comments but I didn't really find that here. I'm still finding misinformed peopl…

    And does anyone really believe that criminals follow laws?

Criminals do not follow the law, that much is true, however a large amount of crime is due to opportunity and removing opportunity does help reduce crime.

    If guns didn't exist and everything else were the same and these evil people 
    still had intent to do harm do you really believe that they would just give 
    up because they had no other way to harm people?

If this is true, then you're arguing that opportunity has absolutely nothing to do with crime. Adam Lanza for example, if everything had been the same in his life (mental illness, family problems) but he was born in England where he had no access to guns and wasn't brought up around guns would he have been able to do what he did in Sandy Hook somewhere in England?

The problem America has is not one gun control will solve, the problem America has is that guns are a part of American culture and the country is so saturated with guns that making them illegal will not make any difference to availability to anyone. Arguing that gun control is wrong for America seems fair but arguing that gun control is always wrong and that people will kill regardless of gun availability doesn't match reality.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#194

Post by jandrewrogers » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 4:46 PM UTC

fakeer wrote: post #6

Good that the man was not found there(in a sense that no one was harmed). I still would like to understand few things. Of course I shall not be able to understand how it feels to have a gun when you want it(and afterwards take a decision on how to use it. To defend yourself or flash in malls or kill children for fun or out of depression) as I live in a country where having fire-arms is either a luxury for powerful an…

There are a few things that make it confusing for non-Americans and even some Americans unfamiliar with guns.

First, the laws around buying and selling guns are set by each of the 50 States. In some States it is easy to buy a gun and in other States it is very difficult. Movies and television tend to exaggerate the availability and legality of weapons. A lot of television shows are set in places like New York City or California where buying firearms is difficult, restricted, and can take weeks.

Second, while some places (like urban cities) have police close by, the low density sprawl of most American cities means it will commonly take 10+ minutes for police to arrive, at which point they are mostly just filling out a report. While it might be possible in theory to hire enough police to reduce response times, it would not be cost effective since crime rates are quite low in much of the US. Consequently, there is an understanding in many areas that even if you call the police you will be on your own for a while. If most American cities were more densely packed, like European cities, police would be more effective at responding immediately.

Lastly, the US is a big and populous country with many different regions and cultures. In some parts of the US, guns are just a tool and ubiquitous enough that they are treated like any other dangerous tool. In some places like San Francisco, guns are treated as some kind of magical evil amulet because few people have seen or handled one and get most of their pre-conceptions from the media. In many other parts of the country, say Idaho, owning a gun is sort of like owning a chainsaw -- dangerous but with few social or personal implications.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#195

Post by mindcrime » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 4:46 PM UTC

jbooth wrote: post #170

jackalope wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. As a society, we became numb to gun violence to the point where the media stopped reporting it on the news. The Newtown shootings reminded us that the problem is real and pervasive enough that it demands a solution. Stories of gun violence are rightly reassuming a place at the top of the hour because of the horrible, devastating tragedies that they are. This isn't about a liberal agenda in conflict with a conserv…

Yeah, the amazing thing about this gun debate is that, given the drug war, I'm all prepared to punt on prohibition of anything not being worth it... And then I listen to your average pro-gun advocate. Holy shit. Ok, I want everyone except for the average pro-gun advocate to be able to buy a gun.

I expect the people you're referring to are anything but average pro-gun advocates. I (a staunch pro-gun advocate) interact with a lot of gun owners and "pro gun people". And I can say that the vast majority are calm, reasonable, level-headed and logical. Certainly as much so, if not more so, than the rabid anti-gunners. They also tend to be better informed in my experience.

Are there some really kooky people out there on the pro-gun side? Yeah, and a lot of them are very vocal about their weird conspiracy theories, their racist tendencies, etc. But those people are hardly representative of gun owners in general.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#196

Post by damoncali » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 4:46 PM UTC

Confusion wrote: post #176

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns also save lives. And nations without guns are not violence-free at all. Its a spurious connection, made by lazy thinkers.

How many lives do guns save? Do you actually know they save more then they cost? Requiring nations without guns to be 'violence free', dismissing the intermediate 'significantly less violent', is an argument by a lazy or dishonest thinker that can only see black and white.

There are stats that suggest this: http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#crime

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#197

Post by pepr » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 4:47 PM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #113

fakeer wrote: post #6

Good that the man was not found there(in a sense that no one was harmed). I still would like to understand few things. Of course I shall not be able to understand how it feels to have a gun when you want it(and afterwards take a decision on how to use it. To defend yourself or flash in malls or kill children for fun or out of depression) as I live in a country where having fire-arms is either a luxury for powerful an…

The police are not always capable of helping you when you need them. The oft-quoted saying is "when seconds count the police are minutes away", and it is very, very true. Guns used in lawful self-defense, which often involves nothing more than drawing the gun causing the attacker to flee the scene, stop an incredible amount of crimes every day. More so, the reason that gun rights are so fundamental in the US is that…

So basically you think that if the French populace had a lot of guns it would help them fight off Wehrmacht? It might help the resistance a little bit but otherwise it's useless. And even more so against modern armies.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#198

Post by allerratio » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 4:48 PM UTC

Turing_Machine wrote: post #149

sergiotapia wrote: post #43

How many people need to die before people in the US realize that having easily obtained firearms is not a good idea?

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM How many people need to die before people everywhere realize that giving too much power to governments is not a good idea?

It's also interesting in this context that the allied forces disarmed people in Germany with the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler then armed the people in Germany again. You didn't even need a license for shotguns, rifles or ammunition.

Gun control doesn't necessarily have anything to do with dictatorship. Preventing a Coup d'état with a militia is just a pipe dream.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Germany#History...

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#199

Post by rmc » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 4:49 PM UTC

notdrunkatall wrote: post #59

fakeer wrote: post #6

Good that the man was not found there(in a sense that no one was harmed). I still would like to understand few things. Of course I shall not be able to understand how it feels to have a gun when you want it(and afterwards take a decision on how to use it. To defend yourself or flash in malls or kill children for fun or out of depression) as I live in a country where having fire-arms is either a luxury for powerful an…

>But I still don't understand that how can guns be allowed in such a manner when they don't let you handle a gas cylinder at a public place or a take a metallic fork on an air-plane. "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." -Thomas Jefferson You can't fight tyranny in government with metallic forks and ga…

I often hear that argument and it's interesting but then how to do you square it with Us history? Slavery and legal apartheid were legal for a long time, how come guns didn't stop that tyranny? During WW2, thousands of an ethnic minority (Japanese) were moved into camps against their will will the war was on. How come guns didn't stop that tyranny? I question whether a well armed people are capable of stopping a tyrannical government...

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#200

Post by knowtheory » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 4:49 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #178

knowtheory wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you are making a different argument. I don't care if you think the government is or isn't an effective or responsible organization. I want to know why I as another member of your society should trust my safety to you and your firearm. Because if you fuck up, I don't have the right to redress, because I could very well be dead. If you don't like the government doing the checking, propose an alternative. Because un…

I think a lot of fear people have of guns is because they are unfamiliar with what they can and cannot do, how to use one properly, how to tell if someone else is using their gun properly, etc. Concealed carry permits already require classes and background checks. Maybe gun safety should be taught to everybody. As further evidence that the fear of guns may be overblown, consider just how widespread gun ownership is,…

Ah, so here's the point where it gets all "us vs them", eh?

I have fired guns, enjoy shooting, and several (but not all) of my family members own guns.

It's not that I don't believe safe gun ownership is impossible, it's that I don't trust other people, and I would like their failures with potentially lethal tools to have consequences.

If you own firearms, you should know where they are, and you should secure them against theft. If they're stolen, you should have to report them. And if you're losing a lot of guns, that should raise red flags, and someone should have a talk with you about responsible gun ownership.