[roel_v]

Listen, I think many of the people responding to you are sympathetic to your argument (as in, pro gun ownership, not being alarmist, etc - I certainly know I am), but you're hurting the cause more than you are helping it by comparing "discharging firearm" with "owning swimming pool". Your Freakonomics example was about gun ownership, not shooting it. I don't see how you can reasonably argue that shooting a gun is equally safe or unsafe than is "owning a swimming pool".

Of course the risks of firing a gun can be mitigated and controlled, but to do so, one needs a lot more rules and procedures (both on the individual and societal level) for guns than for forklifts and swimming pools. If you disagree with that, I'm afraid I (or, I suspect, some or most of the other people responding to you) won't be able to have a real discussion with you since our fundamental assumptions would then appear to be so far apart that we'd have to regress to a much more fundamental level and clarify those assumptions first before it would make sense to come back to the relatively high-level argument at hand.

[ghshephard]

My bias, I guess, is growing up with the sound of gunfire on a daily basis from family and neighbors. I didn't really think it was a big deal - just became part of the background noise. The concept of "Gunshot detection systems" just seemed ludicrous to me. I didn't actually realize until I googled a bit that it actually _was_ illegal to discharge a firearm within certain city limits - I would have argued (and lost) that the law was "negligent discharge of a firearm"

I guess if it's illegal to do so, then a "Gunshot Detection System" has use. In the same way that Red Light cameras and Speeding Detectors serve a function in managing those laws.

There are lots of places in the Bay Area where you can safely discharge a firearm within city limits. At least I know I need to review the various city/municipal bylaws to see whether it's legal.