I want to point out an imbalance in your reasoning. Essentially, you are judging both sides by a different standard.

> how emotional and out of touch the anti-gun crowd gets > someone stands up and says “Oh hey here’s an idea why don’t we just ban all guns lol!!”

Here, you are essentially judging gun-opponents by their worst examples. That is, you are judging them by their members that are loud and unreasonable.

> Gun owners are all about safety and personal responsibility, and many do support sensible gun control laws.

Here, you are judging gun-owners and presumably those who are against all firearms being illegal by something better than their worst examples. When you say "Gun owners are all about safety and personal responsibility" you are essentially judging this group by their ideals, not their practice. Moreover, it seems unlikely that literally all gun owners actually hold these ideals. Those that don't are a fringe crowd, but you judged the 'anti-gun' people by that same fringe.

Now, I am not accusing you, this is rather natural. You yourself are a gun-owner that is responsible and cares about safety, and most if not all gun-owners you know are the same. So, it makes sense to assume that this holds for all gun-owners. At the same time, the less outrageous gun-opponents are much less noticeable to you. Mostly because outrageous things get propagated.

Note that the opposite happens among gun-opponents. They share outrageously irresponsible gun-owners, and presume gun-opponents are reasonable like themselves. To make actual progress on gun laws, we need to start engaging the reasonable part of the opposing side.

This still involves tough choices, because in the end one side wants to restrict gun ownership a lot more than the other side. Gun-owners are afraid to give ground because it might be a slippery slope, and gun-opponents are frustrated that even the most reasonable proposals are rejected.

The pro gun crowd is as irrational, if not more, than the anti gun crowd. Ever since the NRA in the late 1970s shifted its focus away from responsible gun use to guns as a means to fight against internal tyranny, the “Personal responsibility” aspect has fallen by the wayside. Any laws attempting to enforce personal responsibility (insurance, storage) as in other gun using countries (Germany, Switzerland) are promptly lobbied against because that isn’t what that side is about anymore.

You're calling the other side irrational, and yet you're comparing America with a homogeneous nation that is 95% white. Why not use Latin American countries that have very strict gun control laws instead of Germany?

I don't see how race has anything to do with this.

America is supposedly a first world developed country, not a third world undeveloped or developing one, though we are often left wondering.

> First off, the term assault rifle probably isn’t what you think you’re referring to.

It probably doesn't mean what I think, either, yet we're all still perfectly capable of understanding GP's point.

> Second, the reason effective conversations can’t be had on gun control is because of how emotional and out of touch the anti-gun crowd gets. A lot of this is due to activists and the media riling people up.

I don't think it's intellectually honest to blame it all on "anti-gun crowd", especially since we're talking about a highly heterogeneous group. It would be equally dishonest to just blame it all on "pro-gun crowd" being overly emotional and riled up by NRA.

> Gun owners are all about safety and personal responsibility, and many do support sensible gun control laws.

I'm sure all gun owners are all about safety and personal responsibility, just as much as every gun-control activist is for banning all guns.

Here's an interesting question: if so many gun owners really do support sensible gun control laws, how come this country hasn't had sensible gun control laws put in place to deal with this problem? And let's not pretend it's not a problem, either.

> Nothing can be done unless people start taking a rational, sober approach to these issues.

I completely agree. A rational, sober approach to these issues does not go down the path of laying blame exclusively on one side of the debate, no matter which side that is.

> if so many gun owners really do support sensible gun control laws

Would you be willing to outline what you count as sensible gun control laws and what you hope to accomplish with these gun laws?

First off, legalizing CDC research into gun violence seems like a reasonable step

The CDC was never explicitly banned from researching gun violence, though the Dickey Amendment "outlawed spending tax dollars on gun control advocacy", which made it difficult to determine what sorts of research might be allowed. This was recently clarified to explicitly allow gun violence research, though that still isn't funded.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...

I think that would be a great first step. For it to be acceptable it will need to be very careful to ensure the privacy of gun owners.

While I’m all for unbiased, scientific research on gun violence, I have little confidence that it won’t just become the liberal’s version of climate change denial.

Look at Germany’s gun laws. Way saber than the USA.

Not German, can you explain what Germany's laws are and how it makes them safer than the USA?

Storage laws are super strict, police can and do come in your house to check that you have your gun in your safe. You aren’t supposed to lose it, or let anyone else get ahold of it. Psych evaluation required for those under 25 (to cut down on school shootings), more restrictions on fuller background checks and so on.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_legislation_in_Germany

I would be for (and think it could pass) psych evals for those under 25 if we paired it with allowing anyone over 18 who passed to buy guns.

We could do better on background checks but the devil is in the details.

There is no way police checking storage at any time would pass at the federal level and I am doubtful it would have a noticeable effect on gun deaths but I could be convinced otherwise.

We already allow anyone over 18 to buy guns, without the psych evals.

> There is no way police checking storage at any time would pass at the federal level and I am doubtful it would have a noticeable effect on gun deaths but I could be convinced otherwise.

German statistics say otherwise. I love how pro-gun arguments are always "Ya it worked in country X, but it wouldn't work in the USA because we are third world" or something like that.

There is currently a restriction for selling handguns to people under 21.

>German statistics say otherwise.

I completely believe that the totality of German gun laws help reduce gun deaths. What I am specifically unsure of is how police checks of storage influence gun deaths. My initial assumption is that they would cause a <1% reduction in gun deaths but I don't have any data backing up that assumption so I could be persuaded that it would have a larger effect.

One of the common argument of the pro-gun crowd is that gun control doesn't work because criminals who would fail background checks still manage to get guns...e.g. they get them from friends or they still them from houses. Or to say "the criminals will easily get guns, while those law abiding citizens will find it hard time getting guns to protect themselves."

Gun storage laws (and smart gun laws if the NRA would allow them) are designed specifically to address that.

If gun storage laws only lead to a 1% reduction in gun deaths, (mostly via suicide via dad's gun), then they are totally worth it. I'm sure the effectiveness is a bit higher than that.

Police busting in your home to check anything is dead on arrival. They need a warrant and probable cause. Not happening. The other stuff is good.

They don't bust in, you have given them permission already. This is like signing a contract with a bails bondsman, they can enter your house and you can't sue them for trespassing.

This is what sane gun laws look like in developed countries.

> It probably doesn't mean what I think, either, yet we're all still perfectly capable of understanding GP's point

The 1994 assault weapons ban implemented by gun control advocates defines it as a gun with a bayonet mount on it (among other cosmetic definitions that it used).

So going by that definition, I would be curious as to why the OP wants to ban bayonet mounts.

Perhaps that is unfair but that is the literal definition that gun control advocates used!

Lets say the OP is instead talking about semi automatic weapons as at least rate of fire is a quality that a reasonable person could identify as being dangerous.

If they are talking about that, we'll then I'd like to point out that basically all weapons are semi automatic.

So that means that the OP either wants to ban bayonet mounts or wants to ban almost all guns.

Both of these positions I'd regard as ridiculous.

> Gun owners are all about safety and personal responsibility

If that were universally true, we wouldn't have so many gun deaths in the US. I absolutely believe that some (perhaps even many) gun owners handle their guns safely and responsibly, but the laws ensuring such safety and responsibility are few and far between and lack teeth.

> Nothing can be done unless people start taking a rational, sober approach to these issues. Not with tear-fueled rage.

You're attacking a straw man here. The majority of the pro gun control crowd pushes sensible restrictions and limits on firearm ownership: universal background checks, stricter controls on what can disqualify some people from owning a gun, mandatory training and licensing, restrictions on ammo purchases and magazine size (notice how I'm not even mentioning "assault weapons" here). Sure, there are some (unfortunately loud) people who scream "ban all guns", which isn't productive to the discussion, but those people are in the minority. In the end, we can't even get these sensible regulations in place due to rabid groups like the NRA that spread FUD and whip their constituents into a frenzy.

>universal background checks

This would be worth doing.

>stricter controls on what can disqualify some people from owning a gun

Possible but it would depend on what you wanted to disqualify people for.

>mandatory training and licensing

I don't think this is reasonable or politically feasible.

>restrictions on ammo purchases

Not sure what good this would do in reducing gun deaths. You would be hitting target shooter pretty hard for not much gain.

>restrictions on ... magazine size

I don't see how this would be very helpful and always strikes me as something advocated for by people who don't understand guns very much. It's part of why you see such opposition to it.

> > mandatory training and licensing

> I don't think this is reasonable or politically feasible.

I agree that it's not politically feasible, but am curious as to why you don't think it's a reasonable requirement. No one reasonably complains against people have to complete a training course in order to get a driver's license (or to the requirement of a license itself). Both activities require a proper understanding of operation and safety, and operation and safety failures of both can easily result in severe injury and death. Ignoring the political issues around this, I'm entirely baffled how the idea of this requirement could be considered unreasonable.

> > restrictions on ammo purchases

> Not sure what good this would do in reducing gun deaths. You would be hitting target shooter pretty hard for not much gain.

In the recent Las Vegas shooting, the shooter reportedly fired several hundreds of rounds. Presumably if he had been legally limited to owning, say 50 or 100 rounds (more than enough for self defense in the home, and sufficient for most hunting outings), fewer injuries and deaths would have occurred.

I will grant the argument that mass shootings are by far the smallest percentage of gun deaths; you only need a single round to commit suicide or for a child to accidentally shoot him/herself, or a few rounds to kill your family, so this sort of limit wouldn't help there.

Regarding target shooters, I think we can easily make an exception for ammo purchased and used at a licensed gun range, as long as the ammo purchased for target use does not leave the gun range. (Shoot it or lose it, basically.)

But I think at the end of the day the question is "what can reduce unlawful harm without putting an undue burden on lawful use?" ... and I think ammo purchase/ownership limits pass that test.

> > restrictions on ... magazine size

> I don't see how this would be very helpful and always strikes me as something advocated for by people who don't understand guns very much. It's part of why you see such opposition to it.

Perhaps not, and I'll admit I'm certainly no gun expert. But a reload or magazine swap isn't instant, and in the case where a shooter is actively engaged with law enforcement, having to pause to reload after (say) 10 rounds instead of 50 could easily mean fewer deaths. Again, if I apply the test I suggest above, I think it passes.

I'll also admit that I personally do not believe in the need or fundamental "right" of private firearm ownership. I'd be fine with a repeal of the 2nd Amendment with an explicit directive to allow the individual states to make their own gun laws, and would be fine if my state banned private gun ownership entirely... so I'm comfortable with many more restrictions than probably most people are. I have no interest in owning a gun and find the vast majority of the reasons people use to argue for gun ownership to be entirely disingenuous. At the end of the day, aside from minor exceptions, the only real reason is "I think they're cool and fun and I and just want one". Which is totally fair and legitimate, and I wish more people would admit that's the real reason they support private gun ownership.

Since HN only shows vote totals, I want you to know that you aren't alone.

Thank you, it will be some comfort after this post has long been downvoted and dead.

Coming from a country where people don't have guns, I don't really see the problem with no guns. They're an awful public health risk. They have basically no advantages. Even for their use in suicide alone, they would be just as reasonable to ban as any commodity you could name - for instance, heroin, or dynamite, or crystal meth.

I also come from a near gun-less country, and think a similar system in America would work. However, there are some arguments in favor of guns that are not trivially ignored.

- Simply, guns are fun. Marksmanship is a serious sport of discipline and self-control.

- Hunting is also great recreation, is sometimes good for population control, and hunting is another reason for preserving and protecting nature.

- Self-defense. Sometimes, you need to use violence for self defense. Guns are a great way to apply violence.

- Independence. Partly, this ties in with self-defense above. Partly, this is about the government applying 'collective punishment' on all gun owners for the action of a very select few. Finally, some of this is about being able to resist a potential unjust government (i.e. the militia mentioned in the second amendment)

Now, all of these points have counter arguments. I think non of them hold up to the point of "we should keep semi-automatic weapons with 30 round magazines". But the arguments exist, and ignoring them isn't gonna help convince those that want to keep their guns.

I'm not American - so I'm not particularly out to convince anybody. I think gun-ownership is really embedded into the deep and often weird tangle of american identity, and it's basically immune to rational argument at this point.

On a purely technical level, I think the problem with the arguments you've mentioned are they don't generally stand on an even footing with the arguments against gun-ownership, except perhaps the one about self defense. Gun violence is a problem that costs lives, tears apart communities, and destroys families. For gun ownership to make sense, it needs to serve a similarly grave purpose. In that vein, only self-defense would fit the bill.

At which point, we break out the statistics - and it turns out that guns are kind of terrible for self defense. I think Americans would be better off just paying more taxes (with the money they would have spent on guns), and spending the money on police or social programs.

That said, many iconic possessions of western society are pretty horrible from a cost-benefit perspective. So I guess guns are just the most egregious.

Guns are certainly part of the American identity, for many Americans at least. Sadly, there are some pretty horrible biases and misconceptions as well.

There is a theory that democracy flourishes, when the Government is not that much better armed than its citizens. So, the idea that we need to be armed against tyranny.

There are a couple of problems with this, in present-day America. First, as citizens get better armed with greater lethal force, simultaneously, the police have militarized. So while people are better armed, authorities are too.

The other problem, requires some deeper understanding. Tyranny is always a threat, but the tyrannical government of the 21st century won’t bust in to take your guns. They don’t need to. The tyranny is more subtle, often financial, and when they control public opinion they don’t need to take the guns.

Yes, the overarching counter argument is that these aren't good enough reasons given the bad results of legally owned guns.

I also missed the argument "gun-ownership is part of my identity" it is not an argument that comes up, because people don't expect it to convince gun-opponents. But I think it is the main reason opposition to gun-control is so strong. Thank you for pointing that out.

> Finally, some of this is about being able to resist a potential unjust government

Anyone who truly believes private citizen gun owners in the US could ever band together and overthrow the US government is deluded, at best. The US military would shut them down in record time.

It is indeed, a wrong idea. Nevertheless, it is an idea that needs to be addressed, not swept-aside. The same goes with all the other arguments I mentioned. If we just ignore these and say "There is no possible reason for owning guns" we are essentially arguing in bad faith.

Generally, convincing people isn't helped by immediately dismissing their entire position as trivially wrong and deluded.

> Generally, convincing people isn't helped by immediately dismissing their entire position as trivially wrong and deluded.

Who's doing that, though? Seems like a very small minority of people say "there is no possible reason for owning guns" and then refuses to elaborate when presented with possible reasons.

Don't open with "there's no possible reason for owning guns". Perhaps open with 'on balance, I think the arguments for gun ownership are far outweighed by the arguments against it'.

Sure. But in that case I'd ask that people on the other side of the debate not open with blatantly absolutist statements as well.

Let's not hold the two sides to different standards of argumentation.

Keep in mind, the US Military is largely composed of American humans.

Sure. I don't think a potential dictator would stand a chance if he/she didn't have the support of the US military, or at least the support of enough of it to suppress the rest. Either way, private-citizen gun owners are a rounding error in the equation. They just don't matter in this scenario.

Come spend some time with gun owners here in the states, and you won’t see a problem with people owning guns either.

I'm sure there are many nice, reasonable gun owners. If I lived in the states, I'd probably buy a gun myself - I think they're cool.

On the other hand, as a reasonable, intelligent adult who reads and understands statistics, I can say without any doubt they are awful for the USA as a whole. So, just like I'd ban leaded gas, selling alcohol to ten year-olds, and driving drunk, I'd ban guns. There are many, many less harmful things to go full-libertarian on than machines designed to kill people.

They absolutely have the advantage of putting a check on government power. The US is a very heterogeneous country (probably much more so than the country you’re referencing). Not all groups have a great relationship with the government and very sensibly feel that giving the government a monopoly on firearms is not in their best interest.

I personally think this part of the second amendment is outdated.

The check on violent government overreach are the moral compasses of individual soldiers, peaceful protests and a free media. If we get past all of these things, no "well regulated Militia" is going to stop the U.S. Army. The best chance would be state national guards. My point here is that fully automatic fire, tanks, artillery and air support make any resistance useless. Perhaps a guerrilla war could be fought, but to someone seeking complete control fighting guerrillas is an annoyance, not an obstacle.

This is mostly because the FDA tightly restricts ownership of 'destructive devices', which are the weapons needed to fight an effective war.

Just this week I saw footage of police murdering an unarmed man in Baton Rouge. Had that person actually been armed, maybe he could have defended himself.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/03/3...

Had that man been armed, they wouldn’t have even bothered with an investigation after shooting him. Hey, he was armed, waved a gun at a cop, must have been a bad guy.

Likewise, given an active shooter at a school and armed teachers, how do police tell the difference between the perpetrator and the armed teachers defending the kids? Ya, they don’t.

Adding more guns to a situations where police are using guns unjustly is not going to end well.

Do they really curb the power though?

What is one reasonable scenario of a thing the government may want to do, that we could stop because we have a firearm.

I have a gun, and I don't think the government really has a right to tax me for an unjust undeclared war. If I don't pay my taxes, I don't think the United States military or law enforcement cares that I may be armed.

I think the police would be even more aggressive if they knew citizens were unarmed.

I think the police are more aggresssive because they know any citizen can be armed

When there’s a power imbalance, it’s sadly human nature to exploit it and become aggressive. For instance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

There are so many guns, police have to assume everyone is armed in dangerous. So accidental shootings by police of innocent civilians is significant and, unfortunately in our society, seen as mostly unavoidable.

This is completely unrelated to the Stanford experiment.

Whenever I hear that brought up as an argument, I recommend listening to what Jim Jefferies had to say about gun control. Despite Jim Jefferies being a comedian and phrasing his arguments in a comical, comedic way, I've yet to see anyone give a convincing counter-argument, especially to the "you're bringing a gun to a drone fight" part.

Jim Jefferies on Gun Control, part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0

Jim Jefferies on Gun Control, part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9UFyNy-rw4

This argument is absurd. Most of the time, Americans can't organize enough to start a union, or even join one. The idea of Americans organizing an insurgency is ridiculous. The idea of Americans winning an insurgency, against the largest army in the world - an army that has more counter-insurgency experience than anybody except perhaps the IDF, is still more ridiculous. Guns will never check anything because the only thing that checks power is another powerful organization - a protest movement, or a union. Guns are what happen when a protest movement fails, and if you're relying on civilian-grade stuff at this point, your protest movement is screwed anyway.

This argument is absurd. Any "reasonable, intelligent person" who's read basically any history book ever written would know that the United States would not descend into civil war with its military intact.

I guess Iraq and Vietnam didn't get the message on this.

"Defeating" the military isn't the goal, in the same way that the goal of Iraqi and Vietnam insurgents was not the goal.

The goal is to make the conflict so expensive and costly that they decide not to continue it.

For example, imagine if those hundreds of thousands of uninvolved civilians that died in Iraq were instead innocent Americans caught in the crossfire of a war.

This would be an extremely high cost to the ruling government.

Yes, even if the government is "evil", because real life entities are not comic book villains.

They are rational entities with rational motivation. And presumably one of those motivations of any government, even an evil one, is to not rule over a desolate wasteland of ashes.

Or in other words, sure the government could launch hundreds of nukes and kill all of its enemies. But it would do that, because the government is not a literal doomsday cult.

The point of an armed citizenry is to act as a DETERRENCE. It is to increase the costs to the government by saying "yes, you can win this... But only by killing millions, and since you are not a doomsday cult, this is a high cost".

It is a deterrence in order to stop the government from becoming an evil dictatorship in the first place, kinda like have a nuke pointed at your own country.

Guessing you've never been to Idaho

There’s more to the government than the army. Go talk to some people from an ethnic group over represented in prison and ask them if the idea of police being armed while citizens are forcibly unarmed sits well...

"Gun owners are all about safety and personal responsibility"

Not all gun owners.

Whatever in the world are you talking about? Forget about the strawmen in your head and read what people are actually saying here.