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

#221

Post by tome » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 5:04 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #211

tome wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And is the average response time of a police officer to your home, less than a minute, everywhere in the UK, any time of day or night, regardless of any other circumstance? If not, maybe you lot should reconsider your irrational fear of guns. FWIW, the USA is much larger than England, and some of our rural areas are very rural, so it's hardly an apples to apples comparison... but just to illustrate a bit: I was a 911…

I think you're responding to a point of view I didn't express (and don't hold) but thank you for sharing your experience.

In any case, what "police exist" to do depends very much on the jurisdiction they serve in. The situation outside the US is very different from the one inside the US. Please bear that in mind before asserting that your interlocutor has an "irrational fear of guns".

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

#222

Post by reader5000 » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 5:05 PM UTC

damoncali wrote: post #122

flexie wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In essence, this is an orchestrated attempt to use the Newtown shootings and the subsequent heightened public sensitivity..." Oh please. Who orchestrated that? The media got together? The government? There is nothing odd in requiring safety from other people's activities, whether that's their their reckless driving or their gun fetish.

It's not like it's a hidden conspiracy. Gun control activists have explicitly stated that they need to take advantage of the emotion following the shootings to push their agenda. And yes, the goal of many of them (including the author of the assault weapons ban currently proposed) is confiscation. She said it herself.

Yeah it's totally irrational to seek the most obvious way to prevent recurrence of the shooting massacre of 20 children, which happens with a marked regularity. Only a New World Order could explain why people want to ban guns.

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

#223

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 5:06 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #195

jbooth wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

I think this is the thing that really makes me hate the media coverage of all this. When I talk to individual gun owners, they're talking about statistics and how the "assault weapons ban" is just a prohibition on cosmetically scary looking guns, etc. But you watch The Daily Show or any given broadcast from anyone with a nominally anti-gun slant and you would think they're all militia members who patrol the border looking for "illegal Mexicans" and need their personal stockpile of three hundred and seven firearms in case Obama "suspends the Patriot Act" to declare martial law.

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

#224

Post by drone » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 5:06 PM UTC

tome wrote: post #161

bmelton wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To everyone who assumes that "tyrannical government" is always read to mean "our" government, here's a primer. 1) Everybody should (and probably already does) know that the United States was essentially formed out of that exact type of rebellion. The arms that won us the war of Independence were all provided by private citizens, just as the cannons were, the ships that formed our navy, etc. If we hadn't had private w…

Everybody should (and probably already does) know that the United States was essentially formed out of that exact type of rebellion. The arms that won us the war of Independence were all provided by private citizens, just as the cannons were, the ships that formed our navy, etc. If we hadn't had private weapons, we wouldn't have had anywhere remotely enough arms to have won the war. Do US Americans really think it wo…

Do US Americans really think it would have been terrible if the British Empire had remained in control and their country turned out like Canada, Australia or New Zealand?

Absolutely. We didn't then want to bow before your King then, and we do not wish to bow before your Queen today. We did not wish to put down as poor and malnourished servants as you did with Ireland, nor did we wish to be slaughtered en masse, or divvied up and split like you did with India.

We choose to lead ourselves, to make our own decisions, come good or bad. And, last I checked, we've faired better historically from an economic standpoint than all of the other former colonies of Britain, and even Great Britain its self - all of which took great instruction from the lessons we taught on self-governance.

I find it shockingly surprising that someone would come and defend any of the European colonies as being good for the rest of the world.

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

#225

Post by rimantas » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 5:06 PM UTC

BryanB55 wrote: post #192

tome wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So, what percentage of people shot in US last year were the criminals shot by the owners defending their property?

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

#226

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 5:08 PM UTC

jivatmanx wrote: post #202

tome wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If massacres of children in school and young students in college aren't examples of few oppressing many then I don't know what is.

But hundreds of thousands of innocents killed in the "Shock and Awe" of Iraqi cities somehow doesn't count? More tyrannical U.S Government = More "Shock and Awe" abroad.

[deleted]

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

#227

Post by tome » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 5:08 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #218

tome wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'll answer in the most crude general terms without aiming for nuance just to give you an idea of the culture here. Of course the reality is much more detailed than I can describe in a few paragraphs and what I say is only true to the coarsest approximation.) UK residents are simply not afraid of being shot, because there are so few firearms. Armed robberies (with guns and with other weapons) do happen and as I unde…

Even when such crimes cause outrage, civilian gun ownership is never suggested as a means of reducing the crime rate. I wouldn't say "never". http://www.armbritain.com/forum/index.php

A pithy response, but could you flesh it out more?

In particular, are you suggesting that this organisation has any sort of substantial following? If you make your claim explicit I can disabuse you of any misconceptions you maybe carrying.

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

#228

Post by socalnate1 » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 5:08 PM UTC

I'm sure he is just a law abiding citizen, going about his patriotic business. After all, the vast majority of gun owners are law abiding, so I'm sure we have nothing to worry about.

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

#229

Post by lutusp » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 5:08 PM UTC

rimantas wrote: post #220

rickdale wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am with you on every point you make except that guns are not comparable to a screwdriver, car or a knife when it comes to life and death. Of course there are similarities between the 'tools', but a gun is a much easier and definitive way to take a life. The differences are what stand out to me. Again, I agree its a cultural problem more than a gun problem, but I do think it all intersects.

Hurting others is the only purpose of the gun. Using screwdriver, knife (in most cases) or car to hurt other is a misuse.

> Hurting others is the only purpose of the gun.

If by "others" you mean other people, then you managed to overlook hunting, target shooting (an Olympic event), and historical weapons collection, among others.

Private ownership of guns is a complex, serious problem and social issue, but mischaracterizing it doesn't help.

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

#230

Post by nitrogen » Sat, Feb 23, 2013, 5:08 PM UTC

citricsquid wrote: post #193

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 t…

Societies must make the decision whether the opportunities lost by the vast majority of law-abiding people are worth denying opportunities to the very few criminals. Is the cure more damaging than the poison? Is a gun-free society forcing its will on those who want to own guns better or worse than a society in which criminals have slightly easier access to guns by stealing them from law-abiding owners?