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I could feel the outrage in your comment and felt compelled to reply. I don't usually reply because, quite frankly, it's impossible to accurately convey your argument to 40K+ readers and most of the time the thread underneath my comments is just an indication of how poor a job I did with communication. You've constructed quite an elaborate straw man ad hominem around me, so let's clear some things up. I do not watch Fox News or listen to talk radio (although there's nothing wrong with either). I do not have a feed that provides me with shallow-reasoned libertarian tripe. In fact, I scan more than 30 editorials and commentaries daily from sources as diverse as the foreign language press, Mother Jones, and the NYT. I also have many friends in the law enforcement community and think they do a great job. I am somewhat familiar with the system as it exists today. Nowhere near an expert, but not a theorist either. Now that we've straightened out that bit, let's get to your argument. You cannot come to reasonable conclusions about issues like this without seeing what's going on in the real world. This is exactly what I said: that real world tactical considerations are all that matter to some folks. The existing situation is that we have no gunshot detectors. So the question becomes, aside from structural political considerations, "Do such gunshot detection systems provide more societal value than harm?" This might surprise you, but I'm all in favor of gun control laws for the inner cities. As population densities rise, the local government by necessity must take more control over citizen's lives. Note that I said "local government" and "by necessity". So the only problems I would have with these systems is whether they are being selected by the majority of the local people and whether or not they are deemed necessary by those people. Are you really arguing that discharging firearms is a victimless crime? (edit: I'm talking about dense urban areas). No, I'm not, but since you brought it up, let's take a look at the real world data. According to the article, the vast majority of gunfire in a city doesn't cause death or major bodily injury. That looks pretty victimless to me. Personally, for a device that can cause bodily harm or injury to only one other person? I'm comfortable with an safety rate of around 99.9%. Others may have different preferences. The point here is that you can never have a perfectly safe conditions. The only question for folks to ask is how much risk is acceptable. My problem is that we are making sweeping decisions for the entire country without realizing it. When you have a negative law, like "you can't own a gun", it only impacts the area where it is passed. But when you introduce new technology not covered by laws, especially technology meant to fix a social problem, you're setting a precedent for everybody. I'd argue that for 99% of the land area potential future gunshot detection systems will cover they will be neither wanted and controlled by the people nor deemed necessary by them. They'll become like automatic radar systems: another income stream and another intrusion into what used to be a mostly harmless affair. One of the things that we don't talk about is how many laws are broken all of the time and it doesn't matter much to society at large. Things like the majority of these urban firearms discharges, people who lie to federal agents, speeding, or so on. To me, it looks like the purpose of these urban firearm discharge laws are just to have another crime to tack on to a suspect when sending them off to jail. I think the data shows that. But in either case, we have all kinds of laws, like speed limits, that are broken all of the time. Do we want to computerize our system of justice such that they are all followed all of the time? I'd give a vigorous "hell no!" to that idea. The system grew in complexity based on the idea that it was porous. You make it airtight and you'll have massive civil unrest on your hands. My opinion only, for what it's worth. The system of law we have evolved is not a system of morality or a way to lead your life. It's just a bunch of ad-hoc rules that are mostly consistent and worked by mostly great folks. But society couldn't function if you enforced 100% of all the laws all of the time. If you want to automate enforcement, we're going to have to get rid of a lot of legal code. |
I think you're mistaking a clue bat for outrage. You sound like me when I was in high school: high on concern, low on experience. I don't know if you're young or not, but I'm basically saying what I needed to hear back then.
Also, my comment was not intended to offer unqualified support for this program. But if we're going to debate it, let's debate it in terms of the real world and not in a philosophical vacuum. The real world has checks in place like wiretapping laws and evidence rules. Are these perfect? Maybe not, but you do not even acknowledge that they exist.
> According to the article, the vast majority of gunfire in a city doesn't cause death or major bodily injury. That looks pretty victimless to me.
Gunfire in dense urban areas is harmful even if it does not hit anything: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4036259
> To me, it looks like the purpose of these urban firearm discharge laws are just to have another crime to tack on to a suspect when sending them off to jail.
Suppose you lived in a high-crime area. Are you saying that it's totally fine with you if people drive down the street shooting guns as long as they don't hit anything? If you hear gunfire, how do you decide whether you are in danger or not?
> If you want to automate enforcement, we're going to have to get rid of a lot of legal code.
There's nothing in the article AFAICS about automating enforcement, just detection. I'm not sure how you're going to charge someone with discharging a firearm without an officer showing up. How would you even know who to charge?