Software engineer here. I am also a gunsmith with a wide variety of tooling. Not interested in hunting in the slightest and only use handguns.

I am glad this article was posted. Thank you.

As a frequent HN user living in Canada, our country ranks in the top ten of (legal) gun ownership (34/100 people own a gun). Building/buying/customizing gun is a lively market, with strong crossover into the the geek community of all political stripes.

Plus it's a story about a finical acquisition of a famed American brand so its a trisect of "interesting to hackers" of the HN sort.

Not to mention the very fast growing 3d-printed gun parts and DIY smithing groups within these committees where it gets technical very fast.

>>There is a large overlap between any serious engineering discipline and firearms enthusiasts.

Again, surely you mean in the US? All engineers I have ever worked with or met are almost the exact opposite of this.

IMHO ;-)

Some European countries have more guns than you’d think. Iirc it’s estimated that some countries like Switzerland have more guns per capita than some US states (New Jersey is usually the lowest per capita).

The difference is in gun culture. Very few Europeans identify with guns as much as Americans occasionally do.

> The difference is in gun culture. Very few Europeans identify with guns as much as Americans occasionally do

It’s an issue that’s become culturally politicized. I bet folks in Switzerland don’t say stuff like “people in other cantons cling to their guns and religion.”

I believe gun ownership in Switzerland is very closely tied to compulsory military service. It's very much an outlier as statistics go - issuing every adult male a rifle isn't so much a gun culture as a military strategy.

(Czechia does has a strong civilian ownership, however)

Finland also has a lot of guns, about 1.5mil out of a population of 5.5mil. Compare this to the 57,000 registered guns among New Jersey’s 8.8mil residents. It’s not just military service, even if that explains Switzerland specifically.

Europe is a more diverse place ideologically and socially than most Americans tend to imagine it. The place is bigger and more complex than just Paris or Berlin, just like how America is not just NY or Houston.

Finland also has a very proud firearm history - particularly related to their independence, high quality firearm manufacturing history, and hunting.

I own no firearms, but I’ve gotta admit that Sako does some really good advertising to connect their firearms to everything you just mentioned. I don’t even hunt and it makes me want one.

The reasons and culture vary. Finns go hunting, Americans going to a gun range is a sport. And most of those finnish guns are probably decades old and long out of use.

And going back to Switzerland, I was at a festival a few years back which was almost cancelled due to potent protesting by several neighboring towns since the main sport-shooting range was at the same location as the festival's HQ. Thankfully the organizer was able to talk the mayor out of it. We later heard that a neighboring town was able to accommodate the sudden influx.

I've heard from friends there is a similar passion in many towns in Germany and Austria. I would venture a guess that outside many European cities shooting for sport is much more commonplace.

Schuetzen matches and anschutz are a thing in the US but come to us courtesy the Germans.

How does "schuetzen" and "anschutz" translate to English? Google Translate doesn't appear to be very helpful.

I think schuetzen or schützen is kind of generic for a shooter/marksman. I don’t know about Anschutz - I always associated with the particular rifle maker/style and the associated matches but I know it’s a surname as well.

https://blog.westernpowders.com/2017/11/schuetzen-the-purest...

I am betting that 90% of those are hunting rifles, and the overlap between computer geeks and people who hunt these days is pretty low based on my personal experience.

It's growing though! Growing right alongside the Farm to Table movement is the Catch, Clean, Cook movement.

There's also a significant, separate overlap between computer geeks and people that like to exercise their rights (See: Crypto Wars) which results in non hunting gunowners.

in the US maybe? My comment was in the context of Europe.

In my father's generation there were a ton of hunters (something like 70% of my in laws), but I have met a single person who hunts in my career in IT in Europe.

Guns for personal defence/sport are just not common on this side of the pond, I think.

US Mechanical engineer here from a very left leaning University

Can confirm we love our guns from the engineering aspect among other reasons

Canadian. I think it's interesting. Canada buy some stuff from Colt Canada, apparently, occasionally require designs to be manufacturered by Colt Canada for service rifles, such as the one used by the Rangers in the North.

If CZ ends up picking up Colt Canada too, seems like they'd be in good hands.

They did. The purchase was of Colt Holdings which is the parent of both Colt USA and Colt Canada.

> Finally, the idea of "banning" guns -- which every basically qualified engineer or physicist should be capable to building from readily available materials and tools -- makes them even more interesting. If for no other reason than to illuminate preposterous and insulting nature of the idea.

By this logic, almost nothing should be banned, do you endorse that position?

Trivial counterexample: I can't make an Apple M1 chip in my garage. I can't make (good?) LSD in my garage. I can put a metal pipe on a board with a nail and have a simple, reliable 12ga shotgun. I can 3d print a 22LR pistol, or even a 9mm subgun (just add pipe for barrel, weight for bolt, and some common springs).

I assume your response was probably born out of some political frustration, and I respect that. Happy to discuss specifics of the this position on the practicality and effectiveness of gun bans.

You can 3D print a gun you can use once.

Where are you going to get the bullets from? Or for a shotgun, where is the powder from, the pellets etc.

I live in the UK, I quite like clay pigeon shooting, would it be a shock to you that American mass shootings basically aren't news worthy anymore unless they are more than 2 dozen people now?

That's not correct, if you want a rifled barrel, you do need to electro-machine it, and you might want some airsoft parts, but everything else is bolts and printed parts.

What? Unless things have improved a lot since I last checked all the designs for fully 3D printed guns I could find were one used affairs.

3D printed firearms have drastically improved in the last couple years. Here is a 3D printed glock https://ctrlpew.com/freemans-g26-3d-printable-glock-frame-di..., there are also 3D printed ar/ak lowers.

I don’t think my response was born of political frustration. I think most existing gun control legislation does nothing but annoy legal gun owners. Though I would support things like universal background checks, cool down periods, and price floors to make it harder to get the cheap handguns that are used for most gun crimes. I’m not super informed on gun issues though, and I’d be interested in learning more.

I just think “an expert can make this in their garage” is a really bad reason to legalize something. I don’t think IEDs or street meth should be legal. (Apple M1s and LSD are probably fine though.)

Something to note is that most physical things that are banned are one-time-use (drugs, organs, etc), whereas the shelf life and resale value of the gun are much longer. Also the classification of "gun" is much wider than classifications of most other illegal things

The issue is "banning" something which those versed in the art know is impossible to ban -- thereby only removing it from the law abiding, and not from the abusers of said item. (proof: Research how cartels get weapons produced under such a "ban". TL;DR: Trivially, by contract engineers w/ basic modern milling machinery.)

Frightened, ignorant (of the state of the art) people are led to believe "banning" is helping them "making them safe", when instead it is harming them: nobody law-abiding remains to come to their aid, while abusers and thugs wield powerful weapons, unopposed. Instead, benighted government officials ban common farmer livestock varmint rifles by the hundreds of thousands (see: Canada, just now).

So, no -- if someone wants to ban something, then they should darn well consult with anyone who knows something about that item, to see if A) it makes sense, and B) if it will actually prevent the violent from obtaining/using it.

This is one of those questions people often ask 2A people as if the answer isn't going to be yeschad.jpg

That is an interesting anecdote. Here is another - No engineers I've worked with cared about guns at all.

Are you sure? Most gun enthusiasts at tech companies are in the closet. Had I known just how much my bosses hate guns (all the way up to the CEO), I would have kept my mouth shut about my hobby.

It would be an amazing coincidence if none of your coworkers were interested in guns. Around 30% of Californians have at least one gun in their home. Naively extrapolating: that means if you have 15 coworkers, there is a 99.5% chance that at least one of them owns a gun. Even if only 10% of bay area techies have guns, the odds that at least one of your coworkers has a gun is still over 80%.

When my hobby became publicly known at work, I suddenly discovered I had quite a few coworkers who liked guns. They were quiet about it at work because they were afraid (rightfully) of hurting their careers.

Back in the early 2000s I worked at a company where we did a fun “Bring Your Gun to Work day” on Wednesdays. Instead of going to a restaurant at lunchtime we went to the shooting range instead. Was a really popular activity, probably 1/3 of the office participated. Some people brought several guns to try.

Good times! Could never do this these days in Silicon Valley though :(

Honestly I would rather there wasn't a "bring a lethal weapon" to work day. How very American.

If you want to go down to the range after-work, by all means do so, but the way you Americans trivialise a toy good for nothing but war in many cases is really fascinating.

Trivialize is probably not the right word. Exercising our right to bare arms is built into our constitution.

Firearms are most definitely not toys. A bring your gun to work day is a way for coworkers to bond outside of work as well as a great learning experience for the ones without much knowledge on how to safely and responsibly handle a firearm. It’s also a lot of fun shooting targets.

"but the way you Americans trivialise a toy good for nothing but war in many cases"

Ever heard of hunters? A LOT of people hunt. Also, until relatively recently it was common for american kids to bring guns to schools, and leave them in their car until after school so they could go hunting, etc. Instead of addressing things like mental health issues, it's easier to demonize guns because the politicians don't actually have to do anything other than introduce token legislation.

It's a right written in the constitution, and only referring to guns as "weapons of war" is political rhetoric. And hunting is not the only reason to own a gun- that's also political rhetoric.

Unfortunately, most of your “conservative” coworkers have also learned to keep their non-woke beliefs to themselves, lest they lose their job.

Heh. Purely coincidentally, the only people I've known to have any guns were my engineering schoolmates (brought them to school -- apparently that would be a cause for panic and a SWAT deployment in the US but it's kind of a "meh, whatever" thing around here in .cz.)

Depends which part of the U.S. you're talking about. In 10 states campus carry is allowed. In a number of other states, the campuses can choose to allow it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Campus_carry_map_of_US_st...

There's also some overriding laws, depending on the state. For instance, some states consider dorm rooms or personal vehicles to be an extension of ones private residence, and therefore not subject to firearm restrictions.

Yeah, Czechia is full of surprising moments. I remember my classmate bringing knife that could reliably kill somebody to school and spreading butter on his bread with it. The teachers noticed, made some stupid joke about it, and continued lecturing.

Anecdote: I went to science/tech magnet school, and quite a few of us were interested in guns. Same thing in engineering school (though that was GA Tech, so kind of a gimme).

Potato guns?

Vegetable artillery.

> Finally, the idea of "banning" guns -- which every basically qualified engineer or physicist should be capable to building from readily available materials and tools -- makes them even more interesting. If for no other reason than to illuminate preposterous and insulting nature of the idea.

This makes no sense. Assaulting someone is illegal, but anyone can do it. It's still illegal.

What?

Hurting someone is malum in se whereas owning guns is malum prohibitum when prohibited. This is the relevant distinction.

That's a cop out. Literally all of our laws exist because some portion of the population are shitheads who can't be trusted. Who cares if the thing we're banning is intrinsically bad or not. Phrasing it in Latin doesn't make it any more compelling either.

We also ban nuclear and biological weapons for good reason. Does it really matter that they are harder to obtain? (Tip: They won't be in the long run, there was a time when guns were hard to make too).

> Who cares if the thing we're banning is intrinsically bad or not.

I’m sure you would care if the thing we’re banning is something you like that doesn’t hurt anyone.

> We also ban nuclear and biological weapons for good reason.

Do we? I thought we built them and kept them ready to use.

> Phrasing it in Latin doesn't make it any more compelling either.

Those are legal terms because actual judges, lawyers, law enforcement officers, and others have discussed this extensively and determined that the distinction is relevant.

>the idea of "banning" guns... preposterous...

As a Brit, our gun controls work quite well. It basically means the idiot down the pub is not allowed to have a rifle/pistol. It's not like they cease to exist - we're still the world's #2 arms exporter.