[BobbyJo]

I think a good test is the risk an accident poses to others. An accident with a nuke, tank or fight jet can easily kill 10's, 100's or millions.

With guns, a bullet is a bullet for the most part (if we are talking about human fired calibers), an the risk any given undirected bullet poses is effectively the same. Larger magazines don't increase accident risk, while being automatic or explosive does.

I.E. if you're a responsible gun owner, an assault rifle with with a 100 round magazine carries the same risk to your neighbor as an old revolver (if not less since most old revolvers have no safety). The risk to others only diverges when you assume ill-intent, but then risks get whacky for tons of legal objects (plastic bags, cars, planes, pens, household chemicals).

[doctoroctogon]

One follow up question - does risk-with-ill-intent play into your calculus at all? EG if there was a gun that had same accident risk as a revolver but you could kill 1M people with it before being stopped, should that be legal? If not, where’s the limit of risk-with-Ill-intent.

A related, follow up question is your thoughts on requirements to get said items. Should background checks be required? Training?

[BobbyJo]

> One follow up question - does risk-with-ill-intent play into your calculus at all?

Sure, but a couple other confounding factors enter the picture. If you assume ill-intent, then you have to also assume subversion of the law, and you then have to consider what lines not only make sense from a risk perspective, but what line make sense in feasibility and outcome as well. This is where

> A related, follow up question is your thoughts on requirements to get said items. Should background checks be required? Training?

Comes in. For the situations where ill intent was involved, and the weapons being discuss did then pose a substantially greater risk to other people, would these things make a difference? I Think the answer is yes, but not significantly. Most of these mass shooters would have passed the kinds of background checks proposed, and training would not have lessened the number killed.

Personally I like red-flag laws (provided there is a framework for recourse when someone is falsely accused to prevent them from being abused) for reducing casualties from people with ill intent. It's better from a second amendment point of view since the government isn't the entity creating barriers, and it'd better from an enforcement point of view because requirements can be fuzzier. It's much easier to substantiate "this person represents a risk to others and the community they live in feels they should not have access to guns" than it is to convict someone of a crime that would disqualify them from gun ownership broadly. I think on paper it works out better as well, as with most of these shooters, people were definitely weary of them and had reason to believe they posed a risk, but they hadn't committed any crimes, so what were they supposed to do about it?

[doctoroctogon]

Ty again for the thoughtful answers. What are your thoughts on something like “you need 2 sponsors not immediate family to buy a gun”. Would that let almost everyone buy loners access guns?

[BobbyJo]

I just don't see something like that working. If child pornographers can find each other online I don't see why lonely men who want guns wouldn't be able to do the same. Then they could just sponsor each other no?

That, as well as the fact that in many of these cases, the guns came from friends and family, and weren't even owned by the shooter.

[ibeale1]

I agree that risk is a good measure, but I think the question still stands. Since there aren't any laws saying "you can't have x if it could kill y amount of people", you still have the interpretive aspect of "how many people is okay to kill?" It sounds established that a number greater than 0 is okay, so again, where is the line drawn?

[doctoroctogon]

That’s really interesting - thanks for the thorough and thoughtful response!

[quickthrower2]

The neighbour argument makes it sound like most people live in sparsely populated rural communities, where the danger is from the neighbouring accidently shooting you on the way back from a hunting accident.

In a town, city or school or church the two guns would be completely different.

[BobbyJo]

Not really. They have different penetrative properties, but the risk of a stray bullet hitting more than one person falls off exponentially over pretty short distances. The only real chance of a bullet hitting more than one person is if they are very close to each other in that moment, like a dense crowd.

I can't explain the math in great detail here, but, if we assume something like an urban residential complex, the risk of two people standing along the same line from a misfire at 30 ft is already so small that the extra risk a bullet capable of 60ft, or 120ft of travel poses (I'm using small distances because I'm assuming walls/furniture in the way) is only a fractional increase.

If you look at people being hit by strays, it actually doesn't correlate at all with caliber/magazine/etc., since most incidents are 9mm handguns being fired in urban environments.

If you consider dense crowds instead, then the extra risk can be a multiplier (say 2-5 if you're going from 9mm to .50), but I am totally fine with any gun just not being allowed at events like that assuming police are on site.