The hottest Gun Policy Substack posts right now

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Sporting Clays With Keystone

Points And Figures • 426 implied HN points • 12 Mar 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Gun Policy
  1. The state treasurer’s office should be depoliticized and run by skilled professionals who prioritize investment returns and fiduciary duty instead of political virtue signaling about industries like guns.
  2. A Keystone sporting clays shoot showed that shooting can be fun but challenging in windy conditions, prompted thoughts of switching to a semi-automatic, and reflected a family tradition of hunting and careful gun handling.
  3. We should be cautious about restricting the right to bear arms while also making gun safety, maintenance, and proper storage central to responsible ownership.

What a terrible thing it is

Thinking about... • 791 implied HN points • 15 Dec 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Gun Policy
  1. When leaders answer mass shootings with only thoughts and prayers instead of policy or enforcement changes, it normalizes violence and weakens government’s role in keeping people safe.
  2. Treating the Second Amendment as a broad individual right has effectively privatized violence, expanded the market for deadly weapons, and empowered a powerful gun lobby.
  3. Mass shootings, fear, and industry marketing feed a vicious cycle that increases gun sales and deaths, and breaking it requires concrete steps like stricter gun rules and prioritizing domestic terrorism prevention.

OSD 366: More on the government as a prohibited person

Open Source Defense • 45 implied HN points • 28 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Gun Policy
  1. Militaries will exclude suppliers — and even deeply nested parts of the supply chain — they think could be compromised, because clever attacks can hide in hardware or software layers.
  2. There’s a real tension between legitimate government limits on its own procurement and civilians’ right to choose tools, which becomes acute when those tools are important for civilian defense.
  3. AI is pushing most software from a low-control category into a high-control one, so many civilian technologies may soon face stronger government interest and could either make civilian defense much more powerful or much more restricted.

Brown University Deserved Better

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 751 implied HN points • 19 Dec 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Gun Policy
  1. It took five days for authorities to find the shooter, who killed two Brown students and was later found dead; investigators also believe he was behind the murder of an MIT professor.
  2. The university's response was chaotic and slow, creating days of institutional paralysis that let fear and misinformation spread across campus.
  3. A flood of online accounts tried to do the work of police during the crisis but largely failed, amplifying confusion and falsehoods.

OSD 362: To improve others, improve yourself

Open Source Defense • 59 implied HN points • 30 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Gun Policy
  1. Videos of violent encounters don’t tell the whole story and can dehumanize people, leading to shallow, conflicting analyses instead of careful learning.
  2. If you carry a gun, make conscious, situation-by-situation risk/reward choices, avoid impulsively intervening in volatile encounters, and train for safe, defensible use.
  3. Police and responders must raise professional standards: be clear about objectives, communicate, handle firearms safely, know when to stop shooting, and render aid once a threat ends.
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OSD 360: The tyranny ratchet revisited

Open Source Defense • 73 implied HN points • 15 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Gun Policy
  1. Trying to enforce every law perfectly would require oppressive measures, so governments always make tradeoffs about how strictly to enforce laws and those tradeoffs should be decided by the people.
  2. Political factions rush to expand authority when they’re in power, reward excesses as loyalty tests, and those gains rarely get rolled back — government power functions like a one-way ratchet.
  3. The spirit of self-reliance tied to gun ownership serves as a practical and symbolic check on mass federal enforcement and surveillance, and preserving that spirit helps prevent the normalization of invasive roundups and domestic control.

OSD 356: Time-to-effective-resistance

Open Source Defense • 94 implied HN points • 18 Dec 25
🌍 World Politics Gun Policy
  1. Mass shootings usually end once the attacker meets effective resistance, so the main driver of casualties is how long it takes for someone to stop them.
  2. A gun's rate of fire or technical lethality matters less than victims' helplessness and the delay before intervention, so limits like smaller magazines often don't change outcomes much.
  3. Widespread armed presence in public can make effective resistance arrive within seconds and sharply reduce harm, but unarmed bystander attempts to disarm attackers are very dangerous and highly situational.

OSD 353: Everything is a gun now

Open Source Defense • 84 implied HN points • 27 Nov 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Gun Policy
  1. Overly complex permitting and regulation impose huge compliance costs and delays, often killing startups and slowing deployment of lifesaving technologies like clean energy and carbon removal.
  2. The physical world runs on a permission-first model where hundreds of officials and overlapping rules can quietly veto projects, so most real-world activity is effectively forbidden unless someone grants permission.
  3. People who see obvious regulatory harms are well placed to point out and push back against the less visible regulatory thickets that block innovation and harm public welfare.

OSD 354: You see the infringement in your neighbor’s eye and ignore the GCA in your own

Open Source Defense • 59 implied HN points • 04 Dec 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Gun Policy
  1. A British tourist was arrested back home over a social media photo of him holding a shotgun while on holiday, showing how online posts can lead to serious legal trouble.
  2. U.S. federal law (18 U.S.C. 922(g)) can make most nonimmigrant visa holders — including many students and tourists — felons for possessing or even handling firearms, with only narrow exceptions like certain hunting licenses.
  3. Both countries show worrying limits on liberty: UK policing can feel overreaching and the U.S. has uneven, sometimes harsh gun and policing laws, so protecting civil rights requires constant vigilance.

OSD 358: Our favorite OSD essays from 2025

Open Source Defense • 24 implied HN points • 02 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Gun Policy
  1. Building tech for government can improve legitimate public services, but it often ends up empowering surveillance and coercive powers instead of the right functions.
  2. There’s clear room for civilian-defense innovation, from better home‑defense solutions to alternatives that could replace or improve on guns, and startups should pursue those gaps.
  3. With the NFA tax stamp effectively eliminated, suppressors, short‑barreled rifles, and AOWs will likely become much more common, quickly reshaping markets and how people equip themselves.

OSD 336: How to rescue Sig Sauer

Open Source Defense • 91 implied HN points • 29 Jul 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Gun Policy
  1. The Sig P320 gun has serious safety concerns, including cases where it fired unexpectedly, which has led to the Air Force suspending its use. It's important for manufacturers to address these issues directly.
  2. To rebuild trust after safety incidents, companies need to clearly communicate their plans to fix issues and support affected customers. Apologies should be sincere and free of jargon.
  3. Reputation management is crucial for businesses, especially when they face complaints. A good track record can help them recover, but fixing problems and being transparent is key to moving forward.

OSD 332: Napkin math on the NFA market once tax stamps are free

Open Source Defense • 77 implied HN points • 01 Jul 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Gun Policy
  1. If the tax on suppressors is eliminated, it could cause a big jump in demand for them. More people might buy them since they would be cheaper.
  2. Sales data shows that sales of silencers have been rapidly increasing. Right now, there's a growing market for affordable and innovative silencer designs.
  3. Lowering the cost of silencers may lead to an increase in both the number sold and the variety available. This could help new companies enter the silencer market.

OSD 335: Guns suck

Open Source Defense • 59 implied HN points • 23 Jul 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Gun Policy
  1. Guns are currently outdated technology that requires a lot of training to use effectively. Most people find it hard to learn how to shoot well, which is a problem for self-defense.
  2. There are newer technologies being developed, like electromagnetic guns and suppressors, that could make self-defense easier and safer. These innovations could provide better options than traditional firearms.
  3. In the future, it’s important to focus on creating better self-defense tools. Making these tools easier to use will help more people feel confident and capable in protecting themselves.

Finnish pre-teen has the same profile as US school shooters

School Shooting Data Analysis and Reports • 19 implied HN points • 06 Apr 24
📰 News Gun Policy
  1. A Finnish 12-year-old school shooter showed similarities to US school shooter profiles, highlighting the commonality between different countries.
  2. Handguns are a significant challenge for school security due to their concealability and difficulty to detect, requiring extensive screening measures to prevent incidents.
  3. Prevention of school shootings involves limiting access to both handguns and rifles, as well as spotting warning signs early to intervene effectively and avoid crisis escalation.

OSD 297: You can’t fake gun knowledge

Open Source Defense • 59 implied HN points • 28 Oct 24
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Gun Policy
  1. In today's world, people can't just fake their knowledge about guns; they need to actually show they know what they're talking about.
  2. If someone makes mistakes about guns, social media will quickly point it out, making it hard to mislead others.
  3. This shift helps spread accurate information more easily and challenges old sources of misinformation about firearms.

Amending the Second: Bret Stephens on Gun Control after Parkland

The Octavian Report • 0 implied HN points • 23 Dec 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Gun Policy
  1. Real change requires a constitutional solution: amending or repealing the Second Amendment to make gun rights clearly conditional and reduce the huge number of firearms in private hands.
  2. Small, incremental laws won't solve the root problem; we need strict, responsibility-based rules for who can own guns (testing, licensing, legitimate purposes) and practical measures to keep weapons out of dangerous hands.
  3. Success depends on building a sustained, well-organized movement with a big, ambitious goal and organizational strength like the NRA, pairing outspoken young activists with experienced political operators.

Service and the Second Amendment (2023)

Logos and Liberty • 0 implied HN points • 07 Aug 23
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Gun Policy
  1. Proposal to limit gun ownership to citizens who have served in security services to reduce gun violence and promote fairness in citizenship.
  2. Alternative approach of universal training for gun ownership, inspired by Harry S. Truman's call for universal military training.
  3. Importance of considering gun retailers and manufacturers in comprehensive solutions to gun crime, not just focusing on gun owners.