You're suggesting an inconsistency where there isn't one. A country can ban guns and allow rope, even though both can kill.

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joe_mamba 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> A country can ban guns and allow rope, even though both can kill.

That's actually a good argument. And that's how the UK ending up banning not just guns, but all sorts of swords, machetes and knives, meanwhile the violent crime rates have not dropped.

So maybe dangerous knives are not the problem, but the people using them to kill other people. So then where do we draw the line between lethal weapons and crime correlation. At which cutting/shooting instruments?

Same with software tools, that keep getting more powerful with time lowering the bar to entry for generating nudes of people. Where do we draw the line on which tools are responsible for that instead of the humans using them for it?

	▲	tene80i 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You’re absolutely right that it is a difficult question where to draw the line. Different countries will do it differently according to their devotion to individual freedoms vs communal welfare. The knife (as opposed to sword) example is interesting. In the U.K. you’re not allowed to sell them to children. We recognise that there is individual responsibility at play, and children might not be responsible enough to buy them, given the possible harms. Does this totally solve their use in violent crime? No. But if your alternative is “it’s up to the individuals to be responsible”, well, that clearly doesn’t work, because some people are not responsible. At a certain point, if your job is to reduce harm in the population, you look for where you can have a greater impact than just hoping every individual follows the law, because they clearly don’t. And you try things even if they don’t totally solve the problem. And indeed, the same problem in software. As for the violent crime rates in the U.K., I don’t have those stats to hand. But murder is at a 50 year low. And since our post-Dunblane gun laws, we haven’t had any school shootings. Most Britons are happy with that bargain.
	▲	jen20 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> meanwhile the violent crime rates have not dropped. The rate of school shootings has dropped from one (before the implementation of recommendations from the Cullen report) to zero (subsequently). Zero in 29 years - success by any measure. If you choose to look at _other_ types of violent crime, why would banning handguns have any effect? > Where do we draw the line on which tools are responsible for that instead of the humans using them for it? You can ban tools which enable bad outcomes without sufficient upside, while also holding the people who use them to account.