Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by _delirium 4948 days ago
I see it as more of a matter of where to draw the line than a big philosophical disagreement. In practice, as far as I can tell, most people (meaning something like >90% of the public) believes in restricting possession/manufacture of some items when they cross a threshold that is deemed too dangerous to allow unrestricted individual ownership. The main disagreement is over where the threshold is.

For example, a majority of Americans think that owning a handgun should be on the "legal" side of the line, while owning a cruise missile should be on the "illegal" side of the line, and owning a nuclear bomb or stockpiles of chemical weapons should be even more on the "illegal" side. People in other countries may draw the line somewhere else, for a variety of fairly complex reasons, but afaict it's still the same basic framework everyone's operating under.