[Thriptic]

I don't think they are really. Guns are tools made to inflict kinetic damage. They can inflict damage on humans, damage on animals, or damage on targets.

That may seem like pedantry, but a huge number of guns aren't design to be used in anger, fired at a living thing, or will ever be purchased for the intent of firing at a living thing. I own a shotgun exclusively for shooting at clay targets for example, and I have no intention of ever pointing it at a living thing. Firearms used for sport are frequently explicitly designed for use in sport rather than being designed for combat, self defense, or hunting.

[heretoo]

> I have no intention of ever pointing it at a living thing

What if you become suicidal? Your current intentions will be subverted by your own emotional state.

[lenkite]

What if you become a paedophile ? Your current intentions (regarding cryptography) will be subverted by your own emotional state. Guns and Crypto are dangerous tools and should not be in the hands of the ordinary citizen since citizens can turn dangerous. Think of the children!

[wizzwizz4]

Even assuming the ridiculous premise, most paedophiles don't abuse children. (And not all child abusers are paedophiles, either, but that's getting into the really dark side of human psychology.) Support structures are important, as with all such things. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41213657

[lenkite]

Scratches head. I see, good to know that you agree that most (nearly all) gun owners don't shoot people. Actually, I suspect as a percentage lesser gun owners shoot people as compared to paedos abusing kids, but sadly I don't think I can get any sort of citation for that.

[wizzwizz4]

What I wrote doesn't imply that. I mean, I also believe that most gun owners don't shoot people, but that's certainly not implied by what I wrote (except in that both are probably-true statements).

Bringing paedophiles into the conversation in the first place was misdirection. And I resent your attempt to use my correction of an implication you introduced in doing so to support your argument.

Becoming suicidal is something that happens to a lot of people. Spontaneously gaining a shitty paraphilia is not. Spontaneously gaining a paraphilia and losing your morals is a completely fictional situation constructed purely to dodge a valid point; that's disingenuous arguing.

I can well believe that people going through a depressive episode, who are contemplating suicide, are more likely to commit suicide if they have easy access to a gun, above and beyond other potential weapons such as knives, blunt objects, water and high places. Guns take minimal planning, and don't involve overriding nearly as many instincts.

If you want to be right, instead of just winning an argument, focus on the weakest parts of your argument and the strongest parts of your opponents' arguments. You dodged from suicides to "shoot[ing] people" via a deft "think of the children", which is not arguing in good faith. You want to think yourself already right; you don't want to become right if you're not already.

[JChase2]

For me, protecting people from themselves should never be a policy priority. I have struggled with depression, probably still do, but I genuinely don't think the ideal solution to gun related deaths is to take away the right to own a gun. Even if it's effective. We're hitting a point where we are becoming capable of protecting people despite their own wishes due to technological advances, and we're going to have to make some decisions wrt how far we want to take it.

Personally, I'd rather err on the side of freedom than safety. There are alternatives available to us that don't infringe on freedoms so much, such as universal health care and increased treatment options for mental illness, which I think would be very much preferable. I think this argument extends to encryption such that encryption can be used for nefarious ends, just as guns can be used for nefarious ends. There are definitely parallels. How much freedom do we want to trade, how far do we want to take this thing?

[nine_k]

You need to also consider knives, rope, large bodies of water, tall structures, etc. They all can be used for suicide.

If you want perfect safety from suicidal tendencies, consider going under a 24/7 watch and having your hands tied. For some extremely severe cases, this may be warranted.

But there's no reason to subject the rest of the population to the same measures.

[komali2]

All the things you mention serve actual purposes other than killing.

A gun is designed to kill. Anything else you do with it is just practice to kill more effectively with it.

[lenkite]

I see. So personal explosives would be fine by you then ? I mean explosives are used for construction, mining, rock-quarrying, excavation, materials research - all deeply vital aspects that keep human civilisation operating.

Every Man Has The Right to Utility Dynamite!

[komali2]

No, not at all, nor is concealed or open carry right by me, because of exactly that reason. If we want to say that the state doesn't get monopoly on violence, I don't see any logical reason to limit that simply to a handgun. IMO every person, in such a world, should be allowed to arm themselves with nuclear weapons. Absurd but I see no difference between that and guns other than scale of destruction (and the scale is still enormous for a gun).

[lenkite]

Sure, if a law-abiding citizen was trained and followed the military nuclear safety procedures, could actually afford said nuclear weapon and implementation of all applicable regulations along with appropriate inspections and all applicable oversight and background checks, I honestly wouldn't care if they had a WMD.

At that point, there is little difference between between a military officer having access or a citizen having access.

[Thriptic]

I happen to have access to a biomedical research lab and medication / chemicals that could kill me with a very high success rate if I decided to go that route, so it's not a relevant concern.

[girvo]

Genuine question: what’s the difference between a gun made for shooting clay targets and one that can kill someone?

[nybble41]

What's the difference between a kitchen knife and one that can be used to kill someone? Nothing, you can kill someone with a kitchen knife—but that isn't what it was designed for. There are guns designed to kill unsuspecting people at a distance (sniper rifles), there are guns designed to be carried for self-defense, and there are guns designed for hunting or target sports. Any of them could be used to commit a murder, but that doesn't mean they are all equally suited for it. In the end a gun is just a tool. It's the intent of the person using the tool that counts.

[K0SM0S]

I think you pretty much nailed the bottom of that argument. I'd like to point out one thing: from a country¹ in which firearms are heavily restricted (non-law enforcers can't carry), there is little stigma if any on recreational shooting², and it's certainly a right to own such firearms at home. You just can't take them to work or to do shopping, only at the shooting range or equivalent, with precautions like partial disassembly, unloaded, in a bag... Normal practice.

So it's really not about weapons in and of themselves that the rest of the world is puzzled about this American debate, not about the supposed cruelty of everyday people (nobody believes that). It's really about the fact that carrying a gun to work is a very slippery slope, even if the gun is in the car. Same idea with not carrying dangerous explosives if you can help it, the risk is too high compared to most perceived benefits.

I think the self defense argument is very much biased by the fact that once others have guns, you may feel threatened not carrying yourself; conversely if no one carries you'd rather it stayed that way... It's a snake eating its own tail from both sides.

The truth is, it's actually not normal people carrying that kills a lot in the US (although child accidents are statistically too high compared to eg Europe or Asia iirc). It's really the problem of gangs etc. Most lethal shootings are statistically related to someone's lifelong "job", not everyday honest people. But removing guns from wide circulation means we don't have e.g. teens shooting others anywhere else in the world, nowhere near the same magnitude, which is a troubling fact. Indeed, it's the person that holds the gun that counts, and young minds shouldn't have access to guns in that regard. Not enough control yet, it's a biological fact.

[1]: France, but it's the same culture in most western EU countries afaik. Not sure about those closest to the Russian federation but I'm inclined to think they generally agree with us on the matter.

[2]: Hunting is certainly midly popular here in rural areas, and those who voice criticism are 99% about the animal cruelty angle, they couldn't care less if the killing was done with knifes or arrows instead. The gun angle is just not a thing in most countries where guns are effectively banned from regular society but obviously totally accessible for sports: it's OK, really.

[nybble41]

> I think the self defense argument is very much biased by the fact that once others have guns, you may feel threatened not carrying yourself; conversely if no one carries you'd rather it stayed that way...

Guns are not a prerequisite for feeling threatened. The self-defense argument is based on the fact that two arbitrary people armed with guns are much more likely to be evenly matched than two disarmed individuals. In particular, habitually violent individuals tend to be much more experienced at, and prepared for, unarmed combat than the general public. Skill with firearms also benefits from practice, of course, but almost any armed individual would at least stand a chance of winning against a determined attacker, whereas someone without extensive martial arts experience would be unlikely to successfully defend themselves in hand-to-hand combat. Guns represent an equalizing force.

[Thriptic]

I'm not entirely sure what you are asking. If you're asking "what's the difference between a shotgun optimized for sport and a shotgun optimized for military / police / self-defense use?" then the answer is configuration mostly. Shotguns are pretty crude instruments so they don't vary much in terms of actual mechanism between use cases. The most obvious difference would be ammunition capacity. Sport shotguns (depending on the sport and exceptions apply) typically carry between 2 and 4 shells because trap / skeet only require you to fire 2 successive shots at any given time. "Combat" shotguns have much higher ammunition capacities so you aren't reloading as frequently.

Additionally sport shotguns typically have long barrels (I believe because pushing the sight farther away from the shooter's eye has been shown to improve accuracy among other things), are heavy because weight is less of a concern, and typically lack accessory mounting points (eg for ammunition holders, flash lights, other shit) because they are unnecessary and throw off the balance of the gun which may reduce accuracy. Competition guns are also frequently configured to fire a different type of ammunition which produces less recoil for the user and puts less strain on the shoulder over long bouts of practice. This ammo may do less damage to what it hits, so it would be less appropriate if you are trying to kill a person or a large game animal.

If you are asking "what's the difference between any gun optimized for sport vs one optimized for killing things?" then what you're effectively asking is "what's the difference between a computer optimized for hitting an overclocking record vs a server optimized for running your mission critical thing in production?" Nuanced rifle differences are out of my wheel house as I don't shoot rifles much, but the biggest difference from a design philosophy perspective is the performance:reliability trade off. If your rifle fails in a competition setting, that sucks but you're not going to die. If your rifle fails in combat while someone is shooting at you, you have real problems. Like servers, rifles designed for military or self defense use are therefore designed to operate correctly under a much wider range of conditions because they can't fail, and they sacrifice accuracy to meet that requirement. The most obvious example would be the AK-47 which is notoriously reliable to the point where it's a meme due to its simple mechanism and loose tolerances, and not nearly as accurate in standard configuration as many other rifles, even other rifles used by armed forces.

The other obvious difference is fire modes in a military setting (this is obviously context dependent). There is no need for burst fire (one trigger pull firing multiple bullets) or full auto fire (holding down the trigger yields continuous fire) in a competition setting because those fire modes are mostly used for scaring your enemy and getting them to stop shooting at you. You're not interested as much in hitting them, just suppressing them. You don't need to suppress a paper target because a paper target isn't shooting back at you.

If I look at your question literally, it's a hard question to answer because anything can be used to kill someone. What's the difference between a tank and a truck that a terrorist uses to run over people?