"We can't get rid of guns, so lets get rid of free speech instead"?

On the contrary, its lazy to assume that gun control won't fix the issue, because it implicitly assumes the massive difference between the US and other nations in violent murders is due to some other, vague, unexplained societal malady that somehow is only a problem in the US and not in other first world countries. Occam's razor would assume that the unique extent to which firearms are readily available in the US probably has a major connection to the unique extent to which mass shootings and gun violence occurs. Even if you were to make the argument that the underlying issues, whatever those may be, would persist, it is absolutely progress to have mass murderers be forced to utilize something like a knife than head on down the street and pick up an automatic/semi-automatic weapon.

I believe you that it's genuine. But no. Look at other countries. Look at the history of gun control laws in Germany or other countries and their effect. Shootings like this are 100% caused by the easy access to guns.

If someone does not have access to guns, it's harder to do something like this. It gives time to think again. Organizing different attacks gives law enforcement a chance to catch someone planning it beforehand.

HN is not the right forum to discuss this in detail, so I won't go further into this. But it's better to think about this than to follow Cloudflares lead.

> There are plenty of ways to accomplish something like this without a gun, so removing the guns from the picture would just change the method.

The numbers don't seem to bear this out. There seems to be a fairly proportional relationship between gun ownership and per capita gun deaths; see point two:

* https://www.vox.com/2015/10/3/9444417/gun-violence-united-st...

> It's lazy to just say that "gun control will fix this" because you're ignoring solving the actual problem of why people are doing this.

While the desire to do certain things may remain, it may be possible to limit the practical ways that desire may be implemented. These extreme cases will probably be the hardest to stop, but there's a lot of low-level carnage that could be reduced:

* https://twitter.com/well_regulated_

And it isn't even necessarily about bans, but simply a few filters and speed bumps to reduce the chances of hot heads and whack jobs packing heat:

* https://www.vox.com/2018/11/13/17658028/massachusetts-gun-co...

I have guns in my home. My wife hates guns and she has a home defense weapon. That's my intro because I don't want to be mistaken for anti-gun. I like guns and I like shooting.

How would you accomplish this without a firearm? Do you think you could accomplish this with a bat or a knife? The attack happened at a Walmart. They sell hard objects. This couldn't have gotten far. I can't imagine a location or situation where you could be so effective in harming so many without a weapon that gives you so much distance from your victim.

Do you have kids? I have one. Every day I look at my toddler and have to think about how to keep her safe (statistics are in my favor but they were in every parents' favor). Then I have to look at my wife and assure her that our baby will be able to live a long life.

I'll relinquish my second amendment rights, if I never again ahave to live through a year where there are more mass shootings than days. For now, we're just moving out of Texas.

If it were a gun access problem then it would have peaked when gun access was easiest, i.e. back when machine guns were sold by mail order.

Now it's happening in a time of rampant depression, polarization, social isolation, 24-hour news, and social media. That can't be a coincidence.

I’d strongly suggest watching John Oliver’s Aussi gun control sequel. It’s hilarious and educating (surely he’s a biased source, but at min you’ll get a good laugh)

Because they just influenced public discourse in a negative way. They shouldn't have taken any action now. In two month would still be time to act on this if it's still deemed the right choice then.

In the modern era in developed countries squatting is now largely just trespassing, which is illegal, but there have been periods where that wasn't the case.

Most notably, following the two World Wars you had a large number of young men (primarily) that died overseas with corresponding effects like their family might move as a result and so on. So you had a large number of vacant properties with no clear idea if the owner was still alive or not. So squatting became a way of "solving" that problem. A squatter could get the rights to a place if they occupied it for some long period of time (typically over 10 years) if no one showed up earlier to claim ownership.

In the computerized records era, and with no mass casualties from war in developed countries, this is now relegated to an historical anachronism.

> that usually requires either consent and active participation of previous user at the same address or proving that you have legal right to use the property.

That's the key. Where I live, it only takes online applications to sign up with power companies and telcos, if infrastructure is already in place (cables laid, power meters installed, etc) and it's not associated with any active contract. After sign-up, services are remotely turned on and kept on as long as bills are being paid.

It's not up to service providers to police property rights. They own or have rights to infrastructure leading up to the final junction box and what happens downstream is not their business.

In the countries I've lived in (IT, GB), utilities are not routinely shut off when somebody leaves the premises, nor does the utility company know (or care about) who is or is not the rightful owner of a given property. As the last occupier, you just tell the company you're leaving on day X and that's it. Squatters come in and just keep using pipes, or even take out new contracts in their names.

That's another false equivocation.

And there goes freedom.

Sure, people are free to want anything. Acting on their wants may be another thing.