I didn’t say anything about actually owning a gun in this post, only purchasing the right to buy a gun later! I think actually owning a gun has more potential downsides then having the right to own a gun.
Sure, but the argument follows to actually procuring guns. There are bans and limits being enacted over time, and almost all of them have exceptions for items purchased before the ban.
A lot of them have exceptions for items produced before the ban, like the Massachusetts “Assault Weapons Ban” that allows only AR-15 lowers produced before the ban to be used without reduced ergonomics. Also, having a license gives you the option to buy a gun before such a ban goes into effect, if they ban items that you think you would want later! If you see a ban happening, and have to wait a year for your license, you do not have an option to get whatever is being banned before the ban goes through.
Also, procuring guns has lots of downsides—storage cost, danger, theft target, etc. Reducing the time from wanting gun → getting gun (legally) from over a year to a day gets you most of the way to the goal (which is having the option of buying a gun) without any of the downside (except the $110). So it may be a better deal.
Strongly agree. I think it was Rob Wiblin (or maybe Katja Grace) who wrote a post once about how they’d investigated the statistically-most-probable ways they could die in the next decade. And the answer (given various demographic facts) turned out to be suicide. Instead of dismissing this, they took seriously the fact that some people who haven’t previously considered suicide later do so (but in a bad moment, such that following through would definitively be a mistake). So they took steps to decrease their suicide risk, the way one might take steps to decrease any health risk.
This post recommends the opposite of that.
Increased suicide risk is almost certainly the main impact of following through with this policy. And even if that isn’t true for everyone, it is for enough people...
I didn’t say anything about actually owning a gun in this post, only purchasing the right to buy a gun later! I think actually owning a gun has more potential downsides then having the right to own a gun.
Sure, but the argument follows to actually procuring guns. There are bans and limits being enacted over time, and almost all of them have exceptions for items purchased before the ban.
A lot of them have exceptions for items produced before the ban, like the Massachusetts “Assault Weapons Ban” that allows only AR-15 lowers produced before the ban to be used without reduced ergonomics. Also, having a license gives you the option to buy a gun before such a ban goes into effect, if they ban items that you think you would want later! If you see a ban happening, and have to wait a year for your license, you do not have an option to get whatever is being banned before the ban goes through.
Also, procuring guns has lots of downsides—storage cost, danger, theft target, etc. Reducing the time from wanting gun → getting gun (legally) from over a year to a day gets you most of the way to the goal (which is having the option of buying a gun) without any of the downside (except the $110). So it may be a better deal.
Optionality, to echo Nassim Taleb?
Yeah, exactly! This whole post is meant to suggest the idea of a gun license as a cheap way of being a specific kind of optionality.
Considering how frequent mental issues are around here, this post seems to buy entirely the wrong kinds of optionality.
EDIT: oh look what’s on the main page a day later
Strongly agree. I think it was Rob Wiblin (or maybe Katja Grace) who wrote a post once about how they’d investigated the statistically-most-probable ways they could die in the next decade. And the answer (given various demographic facts) turned out to be suicide. Instead of dismissing this, they took seriously the fact that some people who haven’t previously considered suicide later do so (but in a bad moment, such that following through would definitively be a mistake). So they took steps to decrease their suicide risk, the way one might take steps to decrease any health risk.
This post recommends the opposite of that.
Increased suicide risk is almost certainly the main impact of following through with this policy. And even if that isn’t true for everyone, it is for enough people...