Oh, strange - I wonder why? (mods feel free to message me so I can improve future posts if required), I don’t generally have a bad rep on HN and it was an uneditoritialised title etc... anyway - what matters is that people are aware of the news, not who posts a link to it.
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Context as to why I posted earlier today: I was born, grew up and lived in Christchurch until 2012 when I moved to Melbourne.
I was there and working in the main hospitals (sysadmin / ops engineer running the primary patient management and some lab systems) and in that role during both of the two major earthquakes that levelled the city.
The emotional, mental and social stress of those two major ‘natural’ disasters were so incredibly deviststing and this this shooting has surely got to pile on for people still living there.
FYI a lot of HN users flag non-tech/politics submissions wholesale. Either because they don't feel they fit the HN topic, or because these topics often devolve to flamewars.
The rest of the world sees that the US constantly ties itself in knots over the gun issue, and the horrific loss of lives. Hopefully NZ's swift response shows that things CAN change.
In the US, this is the question used to neuter the second amendment. It isn't there to protect us from deer. The 2nd is meant to be used against people. The right that exists is the ability to protect your rights, life, and property, through force if necessary.
Look at it this way: if you're going to lead an illegal insurrection to overthrow what you think is a tyranical government, why do you care what the gun laws are?
>Exactly, one can always rely on the general population to illegally stockpile guns and ammunition, just in case.
I probably shouldn't reply to an obvious troll account but... yes.
That is exactly how revolutions happen throughout the world - with weapons procured through the black market or otherwise illegal means. It's only the US which insists that a right to revolution be legally defined and protected by the very government its people theoretically intends to revolt against... and yet even with the Second Amendment, domestic terrorism and revolt against the government is still illegal in the US.
I mean, snark all you want modest_sarcasm, but facts are facts. The right of revolution doesn't depend on legal access to firearms, and the evidence of that is... literally every revolution since the advent of firearms.
And Americans have started enough such revolutions around the world that they should have figured this out by now.
You need to have guns to begin with to start the insurrection. In 1971, Pakistan started to massacre Bangladeshis as a result of an election in what was then east Pakistan. Civilians started an insurrection, using among other things stolen guns. This is where an already-armed populace would have come in handy.
A necessary precondition for a tyrannical government is a power imbalance between the people and the government. Allowing citizens to own arms that are in the same league as what the government uses prevents this.
So, civilians owning tanks? Predator drones? Attack helicopters? Cruise missiles? Fighter jets? Biological or chemical weapons?
We don't live in a world where the people and the government can reasonably expect to have symmetrical physical warfare capabilities. This argument is irrelevant today.
The only area where the exists any form of symmetry would be cyber weapons, not physical.
Defending against other individuals is still a viable argument, and is the only reason I think we need to be careful about how far we go with regards to gun control, but that has some tight limits and I think we can find more effective solutions than guns if we put some effort into it and take it seriously.
> So, civilians owning tanks? Predator drones? Attack helicopters? Cruise missiles? Fighter jets? Biological or chemical weapons?
We don't need any of that stuff to keep the balance. Iraq, Afganistan, and Vietnam are proof of this. Insurgencies are extremely effective against our military. The only real requirement for them to exist is a sufficient quantity of small arms, and maybe some improvised explosives. The argument is still very much relevant. What's happening in Venezuela right now would not be possible without having first disarmed the populace.
There's a reason why the second amendment comes right after freedom of speech. If the government doesn't uphold your rights as citizens, the citizens have the authority to hold their ground. Imagine Venezuela, but the citizens having guns. The government couldn't do what they're doing over there if the citizens had guns.
In that dichotomy I guess the question is: which type of psychopath is a more frequent & significant threat to the people? Frequent/significant is probably a trade-off in this case.
My government has made complex weaponry to instantly kill half of the world's population with one push of a button. For me, that's a huge part of the equation.
Guns placed like fire alarms (Break glass for gun)? While it may sound absurd, it does follow the principle that there are more good people than bad. If one bad apple arises, finding the next gun to neutralize said apple would be pretty easy.
One problem with the argument that "the only thing stopping a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun" is that "good" and "bad" people exist on a different axis than "people who can be trusted with guns in a crisis."
How so? In our case, the police are the good people you describe. The question is, would there be more net good people with access to guns, when placed everywhere, or more bad people? It's a thought experiment.
To me, I think it depends on whether a good person untrained to handle a gun properly in what amounts to a combat situation is still "good" if they decide they want to be a hero.
So whether or not we're safer in this situation is basically a dice roll.
Wait, I thought the argument was that all these guns in Canada are immaterial because they have no constitutional rights, so when the evil dictatorship inevitably rises in Canada they will first confiscate all the guns and those poor fellows in Canada will have no recourse but to obey and descend into tyranny?
Edit: What I'm saying is, you can't use Canada as working example of citizens with guns, and then say the second amendment is what protects Americans from tyranny. Either the government can be trusted to regulate firearms, or it can't. Which way is it?
And cronies in government making insulin cost $750 a year, or the Red Cross stealing half a billion in charitable donations to victims, are even more directly in conflict with life. So where is the outrage? And I barely hear a peep from the media about this. Do you wonder why that is?
As successfully reframed by the NRA in the 1970s. Prior to that your argument was not used. Thus it wasn't the intent of the amendment in the first place "within a well regulated militia".
This isn't objectively true, as evidenced by the decision in US v. Miller. I (and many others) believe that decision to be flawed, but here it is:
> In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.
In other words, they held that the weapon in question was not covered specifically because they did not believe it to be military equipment. It logically follows that "ordinary military equipment" is what is protected by the Second Amendment.
Yet pre-1970 the NRA itself was one of the staunchest advocates of licensing, gun control, and restriction of general ownership, whilst sticking to their original purpose - to improve marksmanship.
The NRA president testified to congress in 1939: “I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”
It was only much later they started lobbying against any and all control.
Most discussion here is about how gun rights in the US aren't primarily viewed as being about hunting. That being said, there are legitimate reasons to use a semi-automatic weapon with a >10 magazine capacity for hunting. For example, feral hogs and coyotes frequently travel in packs. If a dozen hogs are causing havoc on your land, you might need more than a bolt action, especially once they start running.
Is 1971 “modern?” That’s when my home country had to fight for its independence from Pakistan by stealing guns from the other side. Having a Second Amendment would’ve saved a lot of lives. We do not live in a time past the end of history. Killing people has always been the last but necessary recourse in protecting freedom and self determination. A disarmed populace is free only at the whim of the people with arms.
It isn't about pride, it's about self-determination, a concept deeply rooted in American culture. Part of being responsible for one's self is being responsible for one's own defense. Lord knows the police are not fast enough, or brave enough for that matter, to protect us anyway. Americans look at the kind of thing that happened in France, where people waited to be executed in a theater, and they say to themselves "I'll go down fighting, thanks". Whether that's a realistic thing to prepare for or not, that is the mindset. We have a significant aversion to being helpless and relying on the state.
I would argue that this is exactly the case. The governments of other countries are generally based on the concept that they decide what their citizens may do. The US federal government is based on the concept that they decide what citizens may not do, and the Bill of Rights is designed to set limits on even that "negative" power.
The Second Amendment does not apply to citizens. None of the BoR do; they are restrictions on governmental power.
Analogies to the Nazis (which Neimoller's poem is, implying a slippery slope to mass graves or something equally terrible) and dystopian fiction have become so tedious and banal at this point that I group them together with Godwin's Law as examples of arguments with negative intellectual value.
If a commenter is resorting to these, it's evidence they have little of value to add to the conversation beyond concern trolling.
> Who made up that silly rule?
I guess I did. But I can't be the only one sick of seeing these low effort memes pop up around here.
They're playing right into his hands. They skipped the step where you negotiate with the terrorists and went straight to accepting his demands. I guess that doesn't matter when you need to be seen doing something.
Edit: I mean that the shooter wanted NZ gun control as a means to the end he seeks. Not that it is the end he seeks.
His plan can loosely be described as "shoot people in NZ --> NZ gun control --> US gun control --> 1776 Pt2 Electric Boogaloo --> White supremacist victory --> Europe follows suit."
Boogaloo in the US seems iffy because any gun control measures strong enough to touch it off would probably be a non-starter because if there's a civil war brewing (let alone a racially charged one) the people that make up the base of the party that usually pushes gun control would very much want to be armed. Boogaloo resulting in some sort of white supremacist victory is laughable. Europe copying either is just fantasy.
The fact that the NZ politicians are doing exactly what a terrorist asked for is what annoys me most here.
The shooter left a long manifesto. It contained quite a bit about white nationalism, but you’re the first person to suggest that it was secretly about gun control.
Have you read it? He specifically says that he chose firearms in hopes that it would cause gun control to be passed in the US, which he believes would cause enough internal strife to reduce or eliminate the role of the US in international conflict.
I already feel safer, knowing that gun-law-abiding terrorists will now have to reload after a mere seven shots. Furthermore, I am confident that the lack of "military style" will actively hurt both their already fragile egos and their aiming skills.
I believe that writing legislation for assault rifles is trickier than for semi-autos, because the latter is a more properly defined type.
That is, we talk about assault rifles as if they were easily defined but they can be functionally the same as sport rifles but with different grips, and the larger default magazines.
Assault rifle is a defined term, it comes from the German Sturmgewehr, and it has been used since WWII to mean a select fire military issue weapon.
As a side note, they’ve been heavily restricted in the US for civilian ownership since 1986, and manufacture for civilian ownership has been banned since 1986. As a result, the supply is very limited and the cost for a civilian legal M16, for instance, hovers around 20 thousand dollars. I believe one has been used in the commission of a crime in that time period since 1986, and the transfer and sale and even movement of them is also heavily restricted and subject to a BATF background check and a local sheriff approval.
Of course you’re misusing the word to mean anything that looks scary or looks like it might be a civilian legal non select fire rifle, but we’re scientists, we ought to do better. The 1994 “assault weapon ban” didn’t ban any assault weapons. It also catapulted the Republicans to power and destroyed the Democrat party for nearly 20 years as this is America and we don’t like people pretending parts of our Constitution don’t exist.
It is not precise enough, that is my point. You can take an assault rifle and manufacture a sport version that removes military convenience features but is still as deadly. Not so with the auto or semi-auto designation.
They are right to focus on magazine size in legislation. Also ammo type.
"Assault rifle" is a rather precise term that means it is capable of firing more than one round with a single pull of the trigger, has detachable magazines, and is chambered for an intermediate cartridge. If anything, it is more precise than "full auto" which encompasses other types of firearms as well.
The ambiguity comes in from the more recently coined term "assault weapon" that is rather similar to "assault rifle" but means something different. Some would say this similarity was intended to confuse the matter and provide the connotation of military "machine guns" when using the term to the general populace. And to further cloud the issue, there is no universal definition for "assault weapon" when used to refer to certain firearms. Generally it is used to define cosmetic features rather than any real functional differences.
I know the US Army has a precise definition for an assault rifle, but I'm not so sure there is a good legal definition, and that's what I'm talking about. This holds true for New Zealand. If anything the US Army definition is probably too precise and would cast a net probably not broad enough.
Also the "selective fire" of assault rifles means you can select either semi-auto or full auto, which I think should be preferred terms in legislation. That is, you ban weapons that are automatic or semi-automatic (or both.) And again, the particulars of the magazine.
Automatic weapons (and select fire weapons) have been heavily restricted in the US since 1986. It's not a US Army definition, it's been an internationally defined term whose use in this way dates to WWII. It's not a new thing.
Banning magazines is ridiculous. Banning cosmetic features as the "AWB" in 1994 did is even more ridiculous -- it's intellectually dishonest.
I guess I can see both sides of the argument. I own multiple semi automatic rifles and enjoy them very much. At the same time no one "needs" to own one of these. I think anyone attempting to buy any type of firearm should have to: 1) Attend a safety training course; 2) Present some type of proof that they have met with a trained counselor, psychologist, whatever, that says they are not a danger to themselves or society (tricky! I know, very, very tricky); 3) Limited to how many they can purchase in a given time frame; 4) Waiting period of 2 weeks or some definitive cooling off period.
That's all going to be very, very controversial. Personally, I don't want it, any of it, but as a responsible owner of high capacity, semi automatic rifles, I'm willing to at least meet the other side halfway. I love going out to the range and blasting away at old cars and crap, but I don't think an outright ban is the answer. We have to find a middle ground.
These are controversial because firearms are deeply ingrained in American culture, and it is easy to see how such reasonable-seeming measures could be abused or counterproductive. For instance, if I'm suffering from mental health issues I might decide not to see anyone about it for fear they'd take my guns away. Anything that could be used to allow the government to keep track of who owns what can be --and has been-- abused to harass people or preemptively confiscate weapons.
These don't seem like problems to people who don't have firearms as part of their culture, but they're important to those who do. I honestly don't know what a good solution would look like. I believe in the purpose of the second amendment, and I like knowing that I have the right and ability to defend myself, but it has become clear that society is not fit enough to handle the current state of things. I don't really know what a good solution looks like.
You have a point there, firearms and the idea of "you can take my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands" is deeply ingrained in the American psyche. I also think about those instances where we've had frightening scenarios of confiscation, such as Katrina. There's also the distrust of citizens in the government to both protect them, and protect their civil liberties, and freedom.
Recently I heard a quote that might add some to this discussion: The police are there to protect the government and society, not you. So if we put that together and apply it to this issue, without a gun of your own, you're left dependent upon the police who may not protect you, per se, but they will protect civil order and the government. Who decides what that civil order is?
I don't know the answer either but I accept the responsibility as a gun owner to come to the table, and find a solution.
Let's not pretend all Americans, much less all American gun owners, subscribe to the "cold dead hands" mentality, are arming themselves against the government, or even oppose gun control. Despite what many people would say, it is even possible for Democrats, liberals and "leftists" to own guns for their own self-defense and to believe in the 2nd Amendment.
Yes, that ideology describes a lot of (if not the majority) of outspoken gun owners, but "outspoken gun owner" tends to be a self-selected filter for pro-NRA identity politics.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] thread—
Context as to why I posted earlier today: I was born, grew up and lived in Christchurch until 2012 when I moved to Melbourne.
I was there and working in the main hospitals (sysadmin / ops engineer running the primary patient management and some lab systems) and in that role during both of the two major earthquakes that levelled the city.
The emotional, mental and social stress of those two major ‘natural’ disasters were so incredibly deviststing and this this shooting has surely got to pile on for people still living there.
The rest of the world sees that the US constantly ties itself in knots over the gun issue, and the horrific loss of lives. Hopefully NZ's swift response shows that things CAN change.
In the US, this is the question used to neuter the second amendment. It isn't there to protect us from deer. The 2nd is meant to be used against people. The right that exists is the ability to protect your rights, life, and property, through force if necessary.
I probably shouldn't reply to an obvious troll account but... yes.
That is exactly how revolutions happen throughout the world - with weapons procured through the black market or otherwise illegal means. It's only the US which insists that a right to revolution be legally defined and protected by the very government its people theoretically intends to revolt against... and yet even with the Second Amendment, domestic terrorism and revolt against the government is still illegal in the US.
And Americans have started enough such revolutions around the world that they should have figured this out by now.
We don't live in a world where the people and the government can reasonably expect to have symmetrical physical warfare capabilities. This argument is irrelevant today.
The only area where the exists any form of symmetry would be cyber weapons, not physical.
Defending against other individuals is still a viable argument, and is the only reason I think we need to be careful about how far we go with regards to gun control, but that has some tight limits and I think we can find more effective solutions than guns if we put some effort into it and take it seriously.
We don't need any of that stuff to keep the balance. Iraq, Afganistan, and Vietnam are proof of this. Insurgencies are extremely effective against our military. The only real requirement for them to exist is a sufficient quantity of small arms, and maybe some improvised explosives. The argument is still very much relevant. What's happening in Venezuela right now would not be possible without having first disarmed the populace.
So whether or not we're safer in this situation is basically a dice roll.
It's also the only "democratic" country where police officers shoot innocent citizens every day.
Go figure.
Go figure.
Edit: What I'm saying is, you can't use Canada as working example of citizens with guns, and then say the second amendment is what protects Americans from tyranny. Either the government can be trusted to regulate firearms, or it can't. Which way is it?
> In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.
In other words, they held that the weapon in question was not covered specifically because they did not believe it to be military equipment. It logically follows that "ordinary military equipment" is what is protected by the Second Amendment.
The NRA president testified to congress in 1939: “I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”
It was only much later they started lobbying against any and all control.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19451136
The Second Amendment does not apply to citizens. None of the BoR do; they are restrictions on governmental power.
Do you support the right to arms for Uighurs?
'At first I did not speak out because I did not believe they were coming for me.'
If a commenter is resorting to these, it's evidence they have little of value to add to the conversation beyond concern trolling.
> Who made up that silly rule?
I guess I did. But I can't be the only one sick of seeing these low effort memes pop up around here.
It's not a "low effort meme", it's appropriate sometimes.
They're playing right into his hands. They skipped the step where you negotiate with the terrorists and went straight to accepting his demands. I guess that doesn't matter when you need to be seen doing something.
Edit: I mean that the shooter wanted NZ gun control as a means to the end he seeks. Not that it is the end he seeks.
2. Outlaw guns in the US
3. Race War 2020
4. ????
5. Profit
Pretty much the TLDR of this guy's manifesto.
Boogaloo in the US seems iffy because any gun control measures strong enough to touch it off would probably be a non-starter because if there's a civil war brewing (let alone a racially charged one) the people that make up the base of the party that usually pushes gun control would very much want to be armed. Boogaloo resulting in some sort of white supremacist victory is laughable. Europe copying either is just fantasy.
The fact that the NZ politicians are doing exactly what a terrorist asked for is what annoys me most here.
Judge: "Your wish shall be denied. Release this man!"
The shooter left a long manifesto. It contained quite a bit about white nationalism, but you’re the first person to suggest that it was secretly about gun control.
That is, we talk about assault rifles as if they were easily defined but they can be functionally the same as sport rifles but with different grips, and the larger default magazines.
As a side note, they’ve been heavily restricted in the US for civilian ownership since 1986, and manufacture for civilian ownership has been banned since 1986. As a result, the supply is very limited and the cost for a civilian legal M16, for instance, hovers around 20 thousand dollars. I believe one has been used in the commission of a crime in that time period since 1986, and the transfer and sale and even movement of them is also heavily restricted and subject to a BATF background check and a local sheriff approval.
Of course you’re misusing the word to mean anything that looks scary or looks like it might be a civilian legal non select fire rifle, but we’re scientists, we ought to do better. The 1994 “assault weapon ban” didn’t ban any assault weapons. It also catapulted the Republicans to power and destroyed the Democrat party for nearly 20 years as this is America and we don’t like people pretending parts of our Constitution don’t exist.
It is not precise enough, that is my point. You can take an assault rifle and manufacture a sport version that removes military convenience features but is still as deadly. Not so with the auto or semi-auto designation.
They are right to focus on magazine size in legislation. Also ammo type.
The problem is not "how deadly" a gun is.
The ambiguity comes in from the more recently coined term "assault weapon" that is rather similar to "assault rifle" but means something different. Some would say this similarity was intended to confuse the matter and provide the connotation of military "machine guns" when using the term to the general populace. And to further cloud the issue, there is no universal definition for "assault weapon" when used to refer to certain firearms. Generally it is used to define cosmetic features rather than any real functional differences.
Also the "selective fire" of assault rifles means you can select either semi-auto or full auto, which I think should be preferred terms in legislation. That is, you ban weapons that are automatic or semi-automatic (or both.) And again, the particulars of the magazine.
Banning magazines is ridiculous. Banning cosmetic features as the "AWB" in 1994 did is even more ridiculous -- it's intellectually dishonest.
That's all going to be very, very controversial. Personally, I don't want it, any of it, but as a responsible owner of high capacity, semi automatic rifles, I'm willing to at least meet the other side halfway. I love going out to the range and blasting away at old cars and crap, but I don't think an outright ban is the answer. We have to find a middle ground.
These don't seem like problems to people who don't have firearms as part of their culture, but they're important to those who do. I honestly don't know what a good solution would look like. I believe in the purpose of the second amendment, and I like knowing that I have the right and ability to defend myself, but it has become clear that society is not fit enough to handle the current state of things. I don't really know what a good solution looks like.
Recently I heard a quote that might add some to this discussion: The police are there to protect the government and society, not you. So if we put that together and apply it to this issue, without a gun of your own, you're left dependent upon the police who may not protect you, per se, but they will protect civil order and the government. Who decides what that civil order is?
I don't know the answer either but I accept the responsibility as a gun owner to come to the table, and find a solution.
Yes, that ideology describes a lot of (if not the majority) of outspoken gun owners, but "outspoken gun owner" tends to be a self-selected filter for pro-NRA identity politics.