[HN Gopher] Gun sales rise in past year, especially among women ...
___________________________________________________________________
Gun sales rise in past year, especially among women and African
Americans
Author : mrfusion
Score : 71 points
Date : 2021-03-14 13:15 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| williesleg wrote:
| Yeah I got mine so let's pass a law so you can't get yours.
| altcognito wrote:
| I can't disagree with the personal decision to carry a weapon,
| but systemically it speaks ill of your country if you feel
| mortally threatened everywhere you walk.
|
| Having a fundamental distrust of your fellow man is a tough way
| to go through life.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I don't totally agree with your assumptions. Being prepared for
| something doesn't mean you live in constant fear of it.
|
| I keep a fire extinguisher in my kitchen but I don't think that
| means I feel "mortally threatened" every time I cook dinner.
| OTOH I _do_ wear a helmet when I ride my bike due to a
| fundamental distrust of my fellow man, so I suppose it 's not
| cut and dry
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| You don't need to feel threatened to carry a gun.
| Daho0n wrote:
| Why do you carry it then? To hammer nails if you see a nail
| in need of hammering? There're only three kinds of civilians
| who carry: those that carry out of fear, those that carry to
| spread fear and those that think it makes them cool.
| [deleted]
| meowster wrote:
| There are more than three kinds, everyone's motivation is
| different, and claiming to know what someone else is
| thinking based on what you perceive, is not accurate.
|
| I can think of at least another kind: someone who likes to
| be prepared, who doesn't think they'll ever need it, and
| hopes to never use it. - me
|
| Do you pay for insurance that you aren't legally-required
| to have? A gun is not the same, but there are parallels.
| africanboy wrote:
| > someone who likes to be prepared, who doesn't think
| they'll ever need it, and hopes to never use it
|
| If 40% of the population think they need to be prepared,
| there is probably something broken in that community.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Well when tensions rise, it's always the weapons dealers that
| benefit from it. No wonder the NRA is hand to hand with GOP.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| My girlfriend wanted me to get one right in the beginning of the
| pandemic. Probably will never need to use it. The only scenario I
| see it being useful is if society completely falls apart and
| people start getting desperate.
| brk wrote:
| One of my neighbors contacted me early on in the pandemic about
| buying a gun as well. I told him, if things get to that level,
| just bring your family to my house because you're not going to
| go from never-owned-a-gun to sufficient-at-self-defense fast
| enough anyway.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Tangential, but I highly recommend the YouTube channel Active
| Self Protection for all kinds of valuable information about
| self defense.
|
| (First lesson: real-world gun violence is never anything like
| in movies)
| TheBigSalad wrote:
| I hear this argument a lot, but cmon. It's really not that
| hard
| akvadrako wrote:
| What makes you say that?
|
| There is a big difference in lethality between a cop who
| practices in the shooting range regularly and the average
| criminal.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Clearly you haven't seen the police qualifying at the
| range!
| Dem_Boys wrote:
| I was stunned while purchasing my most recent firearm (about 6
| months ago). I watched multiple middle aged, nicely dressed
| ladies purchasing guns. One lady even had the new gun taken away
| from her because she was pointing it at others (not on purpose)
| while the store employee processed the transaction.
|
| I can't blame them, this past year we've all witnessed that our
| society can quickly change into something that is unrecognizable.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| To be honest, if there truly is 50% of the population that
| thinks rushing the capital to stop a new elected government
| from existing, it's not the end of the world to think some
| undesirable minorities might not be wanted.
|
| 2 blocks down, there's still a TRUMP 2020 flag with a nazi flag
| right under it so I'm keeping my AR-15 nearby.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| You do realize that not 50% of the population rushed the
| Capitol, right?
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| That is true but there could be a large subset of those who
| voted for Trump who also support the actions of those who
| rushed the Capitol. I do find it terrifying to picture 74
| million people rushing the Capitol
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| _could be_
|
| Yeah, I think you are just making this all up in your
| head.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Sadly, I wish it was true, attacks against Asian
| Americans are already higher than the past 10 years, so
| certain undesirables are already being targeted.
| peytn wrote:
| I'd hesitate to draw a causal link without looking at the
| data and disproving other hypotheses, particularly when
| it comes to media narratives in 2021. For example, do
| elderly Asians tend to carry lots of cash, making them
| attractive targets for criminals? In other parts of the
| world, what does targeted racism against a suddenly
| vilified minority look like? Are random racially
| motivated street assaults a common occurrence, and how
| else would we expect this sort of targeted racism to
| manifest? Does that match what's happening here?
|
| I don't know. I know we can't get by on feelings that are
| stirred by others who wish to do our thinking for us.
| vulcan01 wrote:
| > suddenly vilified minority
|
| Asian Americans have been targets of racial attacks for
| long before the start of coronavirus.
|
| http://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_b23f80fae7a40a9358c39377
| e47...
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| What does that have to do with rushing the Capitol? And
| by what measure are you tying Capitol-rush-supporters to
| people that attack Asian-Americans?
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Do I really have to explain to you how certain Nazi /
| Confederate methodologies consider other races lower than
| them? And are willing to inflict violence on these other
| races?
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Again, what does that have to do with the original
| question?
|
| And are you sure that increased crime rates against
| Asians are coming from that same source?
|
| I don't think you understand this situation very well.
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| Young black men are responsible for the recent wave of
| violence against Asians.
|
| Race is the single greatest predictor of violent crime,
| not gun legalization, everyone knows this but
| unfortunately we are a society addicted to lies.
| Dem_Boys wrote:
| > 50% of the population that thinks rushing the capital
|
| This is bad thinking IMO.
|
| If we expand upon this logic:
|
| - 50% wants to rush the capital
|
| - 50% want to riot in the streets and burn down businesses
|
| Then we essentially live in a war zone and that AR-15 is
| nowhere near enough firepower to protect you.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| This is true, but humans aren't stupid. People's fight or
| flight instinct will kick in... one shot through the neck
| is enough to stop a capital rush.
| SauciestGNU wrote:
| In the space of last summer I was assaulted by police, a
| group of III%ers moved onto my block, and there were talks at
| high levels of the government about designating my politics
| as terrorism. Now I have guns. But I hope I'll never have to
| use them against another person.
|
| Meanwhile, I train regularly and I've found target shooting
| to be a really relaxing and meditative pursuit.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Yeah there are a number of various factions across the US
| that vocally want to drive society in a direction actively
| hostile to me and my friends. Many of these have subgroups
| that engage in military-like training. Best fucking believe
| I've thought about fucking off to somewhere out of the way
| and building a fort recently.
| wavefunction wrote:
| She was of course pointing it at other people on purpose,
| because where the firearm is pointed is a purposeful decision
| by the wielder. This sort of casual and incredibly dangerous
| treatment of firearms is why I support rigorous training and
| licensing requirements for firearms ownership in the US,
| despite being an owner myself and hunting enthusiast. Too many
| irresponsible people have incredibly easy access to firearms in
| the country.
| giardini wrote:
| wavefunction says> _" She was of course pointing it at other
| people on purpose..."_
|
| Written as if she had some malevolent intent, which is
| absurd.
|
| But this is what makes handguns so useful: even a hardened
| criminal begins to look for the exit when he sees even the
| most naieve person pointing a handgun randomly. Guns are
| indeed a great equalizer.
| harshreality wrote:
| In order to have rigorous training and licensing requirements
| for ownership, you have to have more government control and
| intervention, and potentially yet another id/card system.
| That's a non-starter for most people in States that care more
| about individual rights and privacy.
|
| The far better solution is to have a firearms safety and
| target practice course as part of compulsory schooling. Use
| laser-dry-fire equipped, color-coded handguns and you can
| avoid any live fire/ammo anywhere.
|
| Live ammo and live fire aren't necessary to learn safe
| handling. The instructors would still be correcting any
| students who handle their laser guns unsafely. And the lasers
| in those laser guns or snap caps aren't powerful enough to be
| a huge safety risk. The laserlyte snap cap ones appear to be
| 5 mW. Not perfectly safe, but unlikely to do significant
| damage without intentionally staring up the beam.
| giardini wrote:
| I dunno: I'd rather be shot than blinded!
|
| It is of limited use to practice shooting with guns that
| don't shoot real bullets. The student doesn't learn safety
| properly and picks up bad habits b/c he thinks the guns are
| safe. That learning transfers over to real life and how you
| practice is how you will react under stress.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > It is of limited use to practice shooting with guns
| that don't shoot real bullets. The student doesn't learn
| safety properly and picks up bad habits b/c he thinks the
| guns are safe. That learning transfers over to real life
| and how you practice is how you will react under stress.
|
| I agree. A course like that would have to have a module
| where the students would have to fire real guns, but I'd
| say you could still use dummy guns to teach the basics
| (and fail anyone who's blase with those).
| Dem_Boys wrote:
| Your point is valid and I agree. It was obvious this lady
| never handled a gun.
|
| I wonder how many people get killed/injured due to lack of
| training?
|
| I would argue that not having training is just as bad as not
| having a gun at all. If life is in danger, why would I reach
| for this thing (a gun) that I don't know how to use properly?
| meowster wrote:
| As long as the laws were carefully written, and it doesn't
| become a barrier to anyone any more than driver's ed is a
| barrier to driving, I wouldn't mind requiring people to
| take a short basic class on gun ownership and use in order
| to purchase or obtain:
|
| These are the four basic rules of firearm safety, this is
| how you wear PPE, this is how you remove ammo from a gun,
| this is how you load a gun, and this is how you shoot, then
| shoot a few rounds so people can experience the noise and
| kick. Shouldn't be more than a 2 hour class and cost more
| than $50 ammo included.
|
| (I'm an American gun owner and enjoy using the range every
| now and then.)
| alphabettsy wrote:
| Not having training could be worse in many cases and you
| end up injuring yourself or loved ones in a situation thats
| not supposed to be dangerous, ex. Showing it off, cleaning,
| just having it where children are concerned, etc.
| akarma wrote:
| It's disappointing to me that the person being interviewed
| doesn't believe or understand how she's aligned with good
| conservatives and libertarians on this issue, or much of 'the
| right' as she puts it.
|
| Those groups fear the government roughly as much as she does now,
| and that's by-and-large why they own guns.
|
| She doesn't seem to reach a second-order level of thinking and
| realize that common fear -- she just sticks to "my
| marginalization makes me fear the government and own guns"
| without thinking of why they own guns. It's sad because there
| could be much more common ground, which leads to more considerate
| dialogue.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Probably because conservative groups like the NRA have (against
| their own propaganda) been largely silent when African American
| gun owners are killed by police.
|
| The reaction of conservatives to the BLM movement has confirmed
| for many that conservatives don't fear government overreach but
| that they fear any disruption to the social (ie including
| racial) status quo. I think many would object to that
| characterization, but it's hard to argue that there has been
| pretty strong resistance from conservatives to stick their neck
| out to oppose police brutality. (There are exceptions to this,
| by Romney and some more libertarian types, but they're much too
| rare).
|
| So the question is, is an ideology like conservativism what it
| claims to outsiders or to what its adherents actually do and
| say to one another? Professed vs revealed preferences.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| Why is this downvoted?
| edbob wrote:
| Because it's tribal propaganda that adds nothing to the
| discussion. There are a myriad of plausible reasons not to
| want to defund the police, but Robotbeat is parroting the
| party line that there are no possible legitimate reasons
| and that only racists can hold that opinion.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Except that wasn't my argument. I was merely answering
| the question about why this factoid (Black people buying
| more guns) isn't considered vindication of
| _conservatives_. There are tons of ways to support reform
| of police (or otherwise vindication of the fact that
| government /police overreach is a problem) that don't
| involve "defunding" the police, and yet conservatives
| chose to circle the wagons and defend the government
| overreach instead. That denies them the moral high ground
| necessary to claim that vindication. And huge respect, by
| the way, for conservatives like Romney that stood on
| principle instead of fighting the culture war.
| akarma wrote:
| > is an ideology like conservativism what it claims to
| outsiders or to what its adherents actually do and say to one
| another? Professed vs revealed preferences.
|
| We could say the same about "liberalism" when we look at
| deadly riots, fires started at police stations with people
| inside, people executed on the street, ideas like "f** x"
| based largely on x's race or profession.
|
| It's clear that the majority on both sides are relatively
| moderate. They aren't the loud minority you hear the most of.
| Why do both sides use this defense, but neither side believes
| it about the other?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Likewise, I was not talking about the minority of far-right
| extremists who murdered and attempted to murder protestors,
| who set some of those police station fires (see:
| https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/texas-
| boogaloo...), etc. Nor was I even pinning blame for violent
| police misconduct on conservatives. I was simply answering
| the question about why an outlet like NPR doesn't consider
| this a vindication of conservatives with the answer that
| most conservative voices are clearly not committed to
| addressing clear over-reaches of the government (ie police
| brutality) and instead play games like "whataboutism" and
| doing everything possible to blame the victim of the
| government instead (as well as those who protest this
| injustice). This is the majority of conservative voices who
| have condemned even completely and objectively peaceful
| efforts to protest police brutality (like Kaepernick).
|
| It is, I fully admit, vindication of distrust of the
| government. It is not, however, vindication of
| /conservatives/, for all the reasons given here. And that
| is what the question was asking.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Because sharing a single attribute does not make multiple
| groups aligned with each other. There may be multiple factions
| that fear the government, but not for the same reasons, nor do
| they necessarily have the same ideas in mind for when/if it's
| disposed of.
| underseacables wrote:
| A gun is a very visceral projection of constitutional rights. I
| wonder if people buying guns lately are doing so because they
| feel that "their rights" as a whole are under threat. For
| whatever reason that may be, buying a gun is a very affirmative
| way of exercising your rights.
| ykevinator wrote:
| Guns should be freely available with mandatory insurance because
| they are a massive risk pool.
| austincheney wrote:
| Liberalizing gun ownership has been researched to death and
| everybody just ignores the research as convenient for their
| personal opinion. The stats repeatedly say the same several
| things:
|
| * crimes in general go down as more people carry firearms
| legally, but by far less than most firearm advocates claim.
|
| * though, the most dramatic of that decrease is related to
| violent crime as some arguments might claim.
|
| * when firearms become more lawfully common police are slightly
| more likely to be victims of violent crime.
|
| * the numbers related to crime change as a result of change to
| gun laws tend to be tiny even for high population density large
| cities indicating many arguments on the subject are exaggerated
| to fit a narrative.
| newacct583 wrote:
| Those numbers are, almost certainly, all within the US (or spun
| to include things other than gun violence in "crimes",
| perhaps?). Because the data globally points the other
| direction. The overwhelmingly largest factor, across every
| nation we have data for, in determining how many people get
| shot is how many guns there are, period. More guns means more
| shootings.
|
| Again, I don't see how an argument that "crime change as a
| result of change to gun laws tend to be tiny" can be anything
| but laughable given data points like "Japan" or "Belgium".
| austincheney wrote:
| Yes, I was just speaking to reflections of law changes in the
| US. There are a couple of reasons why the data could point
| differently for the US compared to other locations, such as
| the commonality of firearms regardless of legal status and
| culture.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The problem is you are mixing up "being shot" with "being a
| victim". The prevalence of guns changes the nature of crime
| far more than it changes the amount of crime.
| newacct583 wrote:
| The "problem" is that you (as I mention earlier) are
| insisting on treating any "crime" as morally identically to
| any other, which seems insane to me. Would you rather be
| shot or mugged? I know the answer I'd give.
|
| The prevalence of guns changes the nature of crime, on the
| whole, from largely survivable violence to presumptively
| lethal injury. And that's bad, thus the game-playing with
| "crime" statistics instead of shootings to try to obscure
| the clear truth.
| zepto wrote:
| True, but logic like this leads inevitably to large scale
| gun confiscation or prohibition.
|
| That's a fine perspective to have, but it completely
| contradicts the people here who are saying no one is
| demanding prohibition.
| newacct583 wrote:
| Exactly, it's a question of perspective. We had a
| rationalist essay on exactly this effect on the front
| page yesterday, in fact! It's a Trapped Prior.
|
| If your prior is "gun rights are super important and any
| attempt to regulate guns must be resisted", then it leads
| you inevitably to ridiculous arguments like "AKTUALLY
| guns reduce crime (for some variant definition of crime
| that includes non-violent stuff)" or (and you fell right
| into this one) "[gun regulation] leads inevitably to
| large scale gun confiscation or prohibition"[1].
|
| At what point will the gun folks come back to rational
| compromise? You know how you end up with inevitable
| prohibition? When it's the only option left to the
| majority.
|
| [1] Which is just clearly false, look at the diversity of
| gun laws across the globe! CLEARLY it's true that you can
| regulate them better than the US without "inevitably"
| confiscating them. Look at Canada, for goodness sake.
| cmmeur01 wrote:
| Yes look at Canada, they just banned how many guns that
| include the most popular style modern rifles in America.
| jedmeyers wrote:
| > Would you rather be shot or mugged?
|
| Would you prefer to be mugged or a mugger to be shot?
| soupbowl wrote:
| Canada probably has higher gun ownership per capita than the
| US and gun crime is very low.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Switzerland too.
| newacct583 wrote:
| It does not. The US has far more guns. But Canada has
| significantly more guns than other similar western
| democracies. And, in fact, Canada has an intermediate level
| of gun violence between the extremes of the US wild west
| and totalitarian Europe!
|
| It's almost like, as I said above, the clearly obvious
| determining factor in gun violence is the simple number of
| weapons. That this obvious hypothesis is simply disbelieved
| by large numbers of HN posters (many of whom like to call
| themselves "rationalists") continues to astound me.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Most of the gun owners I know here also tend to just have
| hunting rifles or stuff they take to the range.
| hntrader wrote:
| > in determining how many people get shot
|
| The argument is that legal guns increase gun deaths but
| reduce other types of crime, either by substitution (e.g.
| reducing knife crime) or by deterrence (e.g. reducing home
| burglaries).
|
| That claim has its own burden of proof that it needs to meet
| before it can be accepted, but looking at other countries and
| saying "More guns means more shootings" isn't addressing the
| actual argument.
| newacct583 wrote:
| What is the "actual argument" then? Gun deaths are...
| pretty bad. Lumping them in with burglaries on a 1:1 basis
| seems like poor moral calculus, no?
|
| The point is that perspective matters. You want to treat
| "crime" as a single thing because it seems like "the actual
| argument" to you, and when I see that same argument it
| looks like senseless spin because it's trying to dilute the
| US's outrageous homicide rate in an analysis by comparing
| it to burglaries in Amsterdam or whatever.
| hntrader wrote:
| > Lumping them in with burglaries on a 1:1 basis seems
| like poor moral calculus, no
|
| Yes, and I'm not advocating for that.
|
| My only point is that "less gun deaths in countries
| without legal guns" isn't addressing the original claim
| that other crimes have decreased as a consequence of
| legal guns. I'm not taking a position on whether that
| claim is true, or what exactly they mean by that, which
| are both questions I also would like to be answered.
| flyingfences wrote:
| I think one part of the moral calculus that's missing
| here is _who_ the "victim" is in each case. A
| substitution of somebody being shot for somebody being
| burled is obviously not a good outcome; on the other
| hand, a substitution of _a burgler_ being shot for an
| innocent average joe being burgled is... still not great,
| but you must admit it shifts the scales.
| newacct583 wrote:
| Effectively zero gun violence is deployed in defense,
| either of person or property. No "burglers" are being
| shot, statistically. Guns are deployed in anger, or in
| escalation of existing violence.
| austincheney wrote:
| The argument that more common access to firearms more
| frequently results in more gun deaths is misleading when
| considering many of those deaths are self inflicted
| injuries, such as suicide attempts. Obama correctly
| addressed this when he pushed for gun reform near the end
| of his tenure. In other words if disqualifying access to
| firearms on the basis of mental health concerns you
| simultaneously increase lawful access to firearms and
| reduce gun deaths related to those new purchases.
| newacct583 wrote:
| > The argument that more common access to firearms more
| frequently results in more gun deaths is misleading when
| considering many of those deaths are self inflicted
| injuries, such as suicide attempts.
|
| Suicides don't count? For the record: I'm 100% in favor
| of public policy that results in large decreases in the
| suicide rate.
| zepto wrote:
| They count, but they aren't murders.
|
| They also don't count 1 for 1.
|
| It's much easier to substitute something else for a gun
| when committing suicide than when murdering someone.
| newacct583 wrote:
| > It's much easier to substitute something else for a gun
| when committing suicide than when murdering someone.
|
| That idea seems to be belied by the upthread assertion
| that gun deaths disproportionately represent suicides.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Gun suicides outnumber murders 2 to 1. That says nothing
| about what the suicide rate would be if you took guns out
| of the picture. Someone going the gun route isn't a cry
| for help and obviously they don't care if it's a mess.
|
| What else is highly effective and messy? Jumping from
| someplace high. There are lots of high places. I'd much
| prefer they go the gun route because jumpers sometimes
| land on someone as most such places that are readily
| available are in urban areas.
|
| Suicide is a mental health issue, not a gun issue.
| dado3212 wrote:
| This isn't true, suicide isn't zero sum. If you remove
| easy ways of committing suicide, that method drops
| substantially, but overall suicides ALSO drop.
|
| " In the early 1960s, asphyxiation with domestic gas
| accounted for nearly half of suicides in England and
| Wales.3 The conversion of the British gas supply to North
| Sea gas, which was free of carbon monoxide, essentially
| eliminated domestic gas suicides in England and Wales
| and, moreover, was accompanied by a steep decline in the
| overall suicide rate (a 30% decline in England and Wales
| between 1960 and 1971, and a smaller decrease in
| Scotland), driven by the fall in gas suicides."
|
| Additionally, in the case specifically of guns, they're
| more impactful for suicides BECAUSE they're so effective.
| In the US they account for 1% of suicide attempts, but
| 50% of suicide deaths.
|
| https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(16)30572-1/pdf
| zepto wrote:
| Ok - but this is a call for gun prohibition, which a lot
| of people keep saying _nobody_ is calling for.
| lawtalkinghuman wrote:
| There's evidence that the availability of the means of
| going through with suicide affects how many people do it.
|
| > Suicide in the United Kingdom declined after coal
| stoves were phased out, removing a means of suicide by
| carbon monoxide that had been available in many homes.
| Tylenol (or acetaminophen) overdoses in England and Wales
| fell by 43 percent after legislation passed requiring
| that the medication be sold in "blister packs" where you
| have to pop out each individual pill; that simple switch
| from big bottles was enough to save lives. When the
| Israeli Defense Forces stopped letting soldiers bring
| their guns home over the weekend, suicides fell 40
| percent, primarily due to a drop in firearm suicides
| committed on weekends.
|
| https://www.vox.com/future-
| perfect/2018/11/15/18095174/pesti...
|
| And if someone does decide to try to kill themselves,
| guns are more likely to be fatal:
|
| > About 85 percent of suicide attempts with a firearm end
| in death. (Drug overdose, the most widely used method in
| suicide attempts, is fatal in less than 3 percent of
| cases.) Moreover, guns are an irreversible solution to
| what is often a passing crisis. Suicidal individuals who
| take pills or inhale car exhaust or use razors have time
| to reconsider their actions or summon help. With a
| firearm, once the trigger is pulled, there's no turning
| back.
|
| https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/gu
| ns-...
| austincheney wrote:
| It's not that suicides don't count. The argument is
| misleading because suicides absolutely do count, but for
| many people the the subject of gun deaths incorrectly
| implies homicides.
| MikeUt wrote:
| > Because the data globally points the other direction.
|
| Once you include multiple countries, isn't your data skewed
| by "countries at war import a lot of guns"?
|
| > or spun to include things other than gun violence in
| "crimes", perhaps?
|
| That's not spin. You want to minimize total deaths, not "gun
| violence". If banning guns meant instead of getting shot, the
| same number of people got stabbed instead, the ban would be
| pointless.
| brailsafe wrote:
| If someone wants to kill you, and has a gun, not only can
| they do so from a distance, but it was invented for that
| purpose. Stabbing someone is more of an act of opportunity
| I'd wager, and in a lot of circumstances you'd be less
| likely to die, therefore reducing deaths.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| You can almost randomly choose a European country and disprove
| your argument:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
|
| In the list you can easily see that the U.S. has the highest
| firearm related death rate of any OECD country. In fact it is
| almost 100 times higher than Germany for homicides.
| caeril wrote:
| Priorities are important.
|
| Completely preventable medical errors kill TEN TIMES as many
| Americans as firearms do, even including suicide-by-gun as a
| firearm death (which, incidentally, far oustrips firearm-
| related homicide or accidents).
|
| I'm still waiting for Congress to even propose, let alone
| pass, the bill that mandates background checks for nurses to
| know how to properly multiply or divide drug IV dosages by
| ten, or to learn the difference between milli- and micro-.
|
| I'm still waiting for doctors to have to wait ten days for
| multiparty approval on their decision to proceed with a
| procedure predicated on an obvious misread of the patient's
| chart.
|
| Until that day, gun control advocates have the blood of 590
| Americans on their hands, every day, for choosing their Cause
| Celebre to be something that kills far, far fewer people than
| a much, much bigger problem.
|
| Reminder that any policy advocacy position that comes from
| any standpoint other than holistic harm prevention has one
| goal, and one goal only: power and control.
|
| edit: HN hivemind apparently believes I am factually
| incorrect. Approximately 24k Americans die annually via
| firearms[1], whereas approximately 250k Americans die
| annually via preventable medical errors[2].
|
| [1] https://health.ucdavis.edu/what-you-can-do/facts.html
|
| [2] https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139.full
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'm still waiting for Congress to even propose, let alone
| pass, the bill that mandates background checks for nurses
| to know how to properly multiply or divide drug IV dosages
| by ten, or to learn the difference between mill- and micro
|
| Nursing licensing standards already cover that skill (and a
| lot more.) Congress has also worked to promote things that
| deal with actual problems that exist, rather than things
| that are long solved, and which have been demonstrated to
| reduce preventable medical errors like meaningful use of
| EMRs; knowing how to multiply and divide correctly doesn't
| help when poor, unstructured records give you inaccurate or
| incomplete information to start with.
| caeril wrote:
| Drug dosage administration errors are still a not-
| insignificant cause of death, and are by no means a
| completely solved problem. And I already addressed the
| charting defects.
|
| My broader point is that if you are a policy advocate,
| and you have N hours to dedicate to a specific policy
| advocacy, if you choose a cause that addresses the death
| of far fewer people than a more significant problem, your
| choice is a violation of the least-harm principle, and
| you are indirectly responsible for allowing more people
| to die than if you had made a more factually-aligned
| choice. Gun control advocates are, therefore, obviously
| driven by a desire to control others, and not by any
| serious intention to save lives.
|
| A decision to advocate for gun control is a conscious
| decision to NOT advocate ( per limited hours/resources
| tradeoffs ) for cancer treatment research, dietary policy
| improvements, medical error prevention, traffic safety
| research funding, environmental policy, Alzheimer's
| research, or any number of things that will save more
| lives.
|
| It's rational to assume that the motivation is something
| other than actually saving human life. Control and power,
| being common and time-tested motivations of humans, seems
| to be a reasonable first assumption.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| > Completely preventable medical errors kill TEN TIMES as
|
| > many Americans as firearms do, even including suicide-by-
|
| > gun as a firearm death (which, incidentally, far oustrips
|
| > firearm-related homicide or accidents).
|
| This is quite a jump from guns to medical errors and I
| think this is comparing apples and oranges. It seems absurd
| to me only fix "burning" issues because then only
| mediocrity can be reached. It's better to fix root causes.
| That said, I wonder how many of these errors happen because
| both medical personal and patients are under extreme stress
| due to a bad financial situation, a dangerous neighborhood
| etc.
|
| Imagine you live in a neighborhood where people have guns
| and actually use them. Wouldn't you be a bit stressed out
| and thus being more prone to make errors, communicate
| incorrectly, both as patient but also as nurse/doctor?
| hntrader wrote:
| > crimes in general go down as more people carry firearms
| legally
|
| Has this been established through natural experiment?
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yup. There's little overlap between legally owned guns and guns
| used in crime. Gun laws obviously have little effect on guns
| that aren't legally owned in the first place.
| pandem wrote:
| I don't think that is obvious at all. I would assume most
| illegally owned guns have been legally owned in the first
| place so gun laws can have a big effect.
| zepto wrote:
| Can you explain how?
| axaxs wrote:
| I've had guns stolen. So overnight they went from legally
| owned to illegally owned.
| ralusek wrote:
| People legally buy guns and then distribute them
| illegally.
| clircle wrote:
| Can you share your sources?
| yowlingcat wrote:
| This makes a lot of sense intuitively, and I've kinda arrived
| at the same conclusions. What are your favorite sources to
| share with others about this?
| austincheney wrote:
| I like an article I read about on Arstechnica several years
| back.
| loginatnine wrote:
| Funny you mention people ignoring research yet you failed
| to mention a proper source (an arstechnica article is not
| (though the sources of this article might be)) for your
| claims.
| loginatnine wrote:
| Please provide your sources for these claims.
| austincheney wrote:
| One of the better articles on this subject came from
| Arstechnica several years back.
| candiodari wrote:
| They have a whole set of articles, both positive and
| negative ... But that's not research.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tag/gun-control/
| throw0101a wrote:
| Not wrong, but many of _Ars_ ' science-y articles tend to
| have DOIs at the bottom.
| [deleted]
| Daho0n wrote:
| Citation needed.
| hooande wrote:
| There is no rational justification for private gun ownership.
| Owning a gun isn't the same thing as having it available and
| ready to stop a crime, which is why that happens so rarely. If
| the police can't provide adequate protection from violence then
| we need to change the system until they can. Anything else is
| horribly unfair to people who pay taxes but can't reliably use
| guns to protect themselves (ie the elderly or disabled)
|
| There are very few activities which require a firearm to be owned
| as opposed to rented. Hunters can hunt and marksman can shoot, as
| long as the weapons are returned as part of a standard rental.
|
| Guns won't stop the (American) government from asserting its
| will. Many people have tried that, believe me it doesn't work
| out. Merely owning a gun won't stop a determined adversary or
| provide you with a modicum of additional safety unless you've
| been trained in how to quickly acquire and shoot it. An assault
| rifle is of almost 0 value in a non-war urban setting, unless you
| plan to be firing at many targets at a range of 200m+
|
| Statistically, the overwhelming majority of guns end up harming
| their owner or their owner's family. Actual self-defense is near
| the bottom of real uses for fired personal weapons.
|
| Don't buy a gun. Buy a dog. You'll be safer
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| > Owning a gun isn't the same thing as having it available and
| ready to stop a crime, which is why that happens so rarely
|
| Which is why if you're serious about using a gun for self
| defense, you need to carry it on your person or have it at the
| ready.
|
| > Anything else is horribly unfair to people who pay taxes but
| can't reliably use guns to protect themselves (ie the elderly
| or disabled)
|
| A small subset of the population can't do something so no one
| should be able to?
|
| > There are very few activities which require a firearm to be
| owned as opposed to rented. Hunters can hunt and marksman can
| shoot, as long as the weapons are returned as part of a
| standard rental.
|
| Self defense.
|
| > Guns won't stop the (American) government from asserting its
| will.
|
| Tell that to Amon Bundy. Tell it to Mexico. In fact, tell it to
| most of the countries the US has gone to war with over the last
| 50 years.
|
| > Merely owning a gun won't stop a determined adversary or
| provide you with a modicum of additional safety unless you've
| been trained in how to quickly acquire and shoot it.
|
| Which is why you should get training and practice.
|
| > An assault rifle is of almost 0 value in a non-war urban
| setting, unless you plan to be firing at many targets at a
| range of 200m+
|
| This is total nonsense that you just made up.
|
| > Statistically, the overwhelming majority of guns end up
| harming their owner or their owner's family.
|
| That's data from the entire country and largely results from
| suicides. The need to own varies wildly by location, ethnicity,
| socioeconomic status, etc.
| mberning wrote:
| You should sub Active Self Protection on YT. He covers a lot of
| self defense cases which happen more frequently than you might
| expect. He also doesn't sugar coat it when people screw up.
| YPCrumble wrote:
| You say that self defense is near the bottom of real uses for
| fired personal weapons. That's not a useful metric because a
| gun doesn't need to be fired to be a deterrent.
| hooande wrote:
| a deterrent from what? it's true that just flashing a gun can
| stop crime, but that happens no more commonly than stopping a
| crime by firing one. And in the majority of cases where
| someone simply brandishes a weapon it's pointed at someone
| who is undesirable or different and not actually a threat
| YPCrumble wrote:
| This is just made up statistics. Also, a gun doesn't have
| to be shown to someone to act as a deterrent.
|
| I'm not saying that I think guns are effective or not, but
| when I see arguments like this that cherry pick statistics
| or make up stories to appeal to emotion it makes me
| suspicious about the validity of the argument.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I wasn't for this in the past but after watching the racism,
| bias, and impotence of American policing these past years, I'd
| probably buy one too if I had to live there.
| Lammy wrote:
| You can trace modern firearms prohibitions to civil-rights-era
| California with the intent of disarming the Black Panthers, so I
| oppose prohibitions on the grounds that I personally view them as
| inherently racist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act
| ralusek wrote:
| You should probably oppose or support restrictions in
| accordance with whether or not they make sense, irrespective of
| the debatable motives of their inception.
|
| In regards to the motives of their inception, it seems like a
| bit of leap to go from "armed black militias patrolling
| streets" and "an organized band of men armed with loaded
| firearms [...] entered the Capitol on May 2, 1967" to then
| saying that the resulting anti-gun legislation was necessarily
| inherently racist. Every time a white kid shoots up a school
| and it leads to further gun restrictions, do you assume that
| this is because of legislator's anti-whiteness? Almost every
| school shooter/mass shooter is white, and there have been all
| sorts of gun restrictions imposed as a consequence of these
| events. In fact, wasn't there JUST a band of mostly white men
| who entered the Capitol, which has also led to suggestions for
| increased legislation against firearms? Is the resulting
| legislation that comes from that going to be anti-white?
| [deleted]
| addicted wrote:
| Except no one is demanding prohibition.
| zepto wrote:
| Nobody except for the many people _right here in this thread_
| who are demanding prohibition.
|
| E.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26455341
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Political positions are almost always tribalist in nature and not
| based on rational analysis.
|
| Case in point: the people arguing that drug prohibition is
| ineffective are often the same ones arguing for gun prohibition.
| If prohibition doesn't work for drugs, why will it work for guns?
|
| It isn't a left or right thing, just a people thing. The same
| phenomenon exists in the opposite direction; guns good but drugs
| bad.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| Are you sure they're the same people? A good number of leftists
| are advocates for gun ownership with training and also support
| legalization of drugs. Liberals generally don't support drug
| legalization, but guns and drugs really aren't the same thing
| and the reasons aren't the same either.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| If that were the case, then it wouldn't be absolutely
| verboten for Democrats to support gun ownership. Maybe some
| smaller groups of leftists or libertarians are different, but
| they have little actual political relevance.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| Can you show me the evidence that Democrats do not support
| gun ownership?
|
| There's plenty of talk about restricting specific types,
| basically based on appearance, of weapons but haven't seen
| much suggesting they'd like to ban them or make them
| completely unavailable as is often suggested by the right.
|
| Libertarians are not leftists and this might surprise you
| but sometimes political parties do things different from
| what many of their voters might want. Consider that very
| large numbers on the left voted for Bernie Sanders and
| support his policies, but the party had largely avoided
| taking them up wholeheartedly or at all.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Does anyone actually think "just some restrictions" don't
| inevitably snowball into more restrictions? My read is
| that Democrats have an overwhelming hostile position
| towards guns and would ban them entirely if given the
| political will. At best, it's a "don't talk about it"
| position, akin to supporting abortion and being a
| Republican.
|
| > this might surprise you
|
| The snark is not necessary. If you can't comment about
| politics without being dismissive and arrogant, don't
| comment at all.
|
| Bernie Sanders is for restrictions on guns. AOC is for
| restrictions on guns. I don't know what mainstream
| leftist is for widespread gun ownership. Can you suggest
| any?
|
| As I said in my comment, I think it's primarily a
| cultural thing. Left-leaning urbanites don't interact
| with guns, whereas right-leaning rural residents often
| use them for sports and hunting. While some leftist
| groups are for it, this is again a fringe thing that
| doesn't exist in real life all that much.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| It wasn't meant to be dismissive or arrogant. You can't
| handle a bit of jest?
|
| The slippery slope argument has been used many times to
| avoid making any changes at all. Maybe your read is based
| on propaganda? Maybe mine is? I don't believe Democrats
| would ban all guns in the same way that I don't believe
| fuel economy standards were intended to ban trucks as was
| argued by some on the right. Though there is a
| constitutional right to own guns where the right to drive
| an F150 sadly does not yet exist.
|
| Restrictions of guns does not equal banning guns and
| Donald Trump and Marco Rubio and many other prominent
| politicians on the right also favor restrictions on guns.
|
| The entire situation would be better if reasonable
| discussion could be had.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| It just seems clear to me that most Democrats have a
| hostile position to guns. Maybe they'd ban them, maybe
| they wouldn't, but if say, AOC would go shooting at the
| gun range or in any way signal that she _likes_ guns, she
| 'd be immediately criticized harshly and lose a ton of
| support. I don't think I'm basing this on propaganda, but
| I could be wrong.
|
| Personally, I don't think banning guns or having
| restrictions will do anything at all. The sources of gun
| violence are cultural and social. Figure out why mass
| shootings or gang warfare are so common, then address the
| root of the problem.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > It just seems clear to me that most Democrats have a
| hostile position to guns.
|
| Yeah. Not all Democrats are against guns, but if you pick
| an anti-gun politician at random, that person is _highly_
| likely to be a Democrat. The fact that the jurisdictions
| with the most restrictive gun laws a pretty much always
| Democratic strongholds is further proof. IIRC, some had
| already effectively banned private gun ownership until
| some Supreme Court cases a decade or so ago.
|
| https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-met-
| chicago-...:
|
| > Does Chicago have the strictest gun laws in the
| country? It did after Mayor Jane Byrne pushed through the
| ban on firearms not already registered with Chicago
| police in March 1982. The city's ban lasted until 2010,
| when the Supreme Court struck it down by a majority vote
| of 5-4.
| addicted wrote:
| Your case is fundamentally flawed. Just because something
| doesn't work in one instance, doesn't mean that something
| doesn't work at all.
|
| But even before we get there, no one in the US is even talking
| about gun prohibition.
|
| This entire comment thread is filled with straw men arguing
| against prohibition when at most people are demanding more
| regulation, the majority of which is supported by the majority
| of gun owners.
|
| Also, gun regulation works in the majority of countries with
| functional governance. Heck, even drug prohibition "works"
| wherever they really want to prohibit it (such as many Muslim
| countries). The problem with drug prohibition in the US is not
| an issue with whether it works or not, but that the cost of
| enforcement is too high.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| > no one in the US is even talking about gun prohibition
|
| Seems pretty clear that this is just a political concession,
| in the same way that pro-life people are for more regulations
| on abortion. They'd really like to ban it entirely, but that
| is an unrealistic political non-starter, so the talking
| points are more compromising.
|
| > countries with functional governance
|
| Yes, well that is kind of a rare thing historically, hence
| the need for citizens to be able to defend themselves. Even
| many so called functional governments _weren't_ a few decades
| or half a century ago.
| BaseS4 wrote:
| What do guns have to do with HackerNews?
|
| Are these 3D printed guns, the kind that circumvent every single
| knee-jerk regulation?
| astura wrote:
| Living in a house with a gun increases your odds of death
|
| https://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/18000520/gun-risk-death
|
| "Alarming" spike in deadly unintentional shootings by kids as gun
| sales soar during lockdowns
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unintentional-shootings-guns-ki...
| raindropm wrote:
| I'm an outsider, so I never understand how our American friends
| feel about this(the opinions divide, I guess) Because to me, guns
| breeds paranoia and distrust. It create the never ending vicious
| cycle of "That guy have one so I should have one to protect my
| family too, just in case."
|
| But what if, say, having guns increase the risk of being attack
| from bad guy instead, because now they feel that you're a threat
| to them?
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| If the implication is that the innocent escalate an arms race
| by fearing the guilty, I reject it.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Hyperbole! The cycle ends quite quickly, with everyone armed.
|
| And no evidence of that (increased risk). The 'bad guys' avoid
| getting shot at. Folks who are armed are at greater risk from
| themselves than from an intruder.
| corban1 wrote:
| Guns are most needed in African American neighborhoods. Banning
| them will criminalize more African Americans who need guns for
| their protection. If you can't provide quality public safety
| services, at least keep self defense legal.
| AlexanderDhoore wrote:
| Only because all criminals have guns. Because guess what. Guns
| are legal.
| corban1 wrote:
| And you think criminals have guns because they are legal?
| altcognito wrote:
| By in large in countries with well functioning governments,
| guns are kept off the streets.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| Okay. Tell that to Myanmar's unarmed citizens.
|
| The government there has reduced the civilian owned guns
| by over half in the preceding decade. [1]
|
| Is Myanmar and example of well functioning?
|
| [1] https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/myanmar
| altcognito wrote:
| I'm not sure what you think I was saying.
|
| All I said was that it is possible to enforce gun laws if
| the government is well-functioning, which was probably an
| overstatement.
|
| All I'm trying to say is that if the government is
| serious about gun control and has control of it's law
| enforcement (which was a proxy for 'well-functioning',
| outlaws will not have them)
|
| There are a number of countries that have laws on the
| books, but does a terrible job of enforcing those rules.
|
| All of this is irrelevant to the discussion of whether
| the laws should exist or not.
|
| For my needs, Myanmar isn't a country worth discussing in
| terms of gun control because it's not like the citizenry
| has a voice in drafting policy and owning small arms has
| been a way of life there for decades, and does it seem to
| have resolved their issues with "representation"?
| notahacker wrote:
| Your stat shows that (i) Myanmar's citizens were not
| unarmed and (ii) privately owned firearms were more
| widespread in 2007 when the country had been under the
| control of an autocratic military junta for decades than
| in 2017 when it appeared to be transitioning to semi-
| democracy. Myanmar is certainly not well functioning, but
| it is also certainly not an example of effective gun
| controls, or an example of widespread private firearm
| ownership preventing autocratic regimes from doing what
| they like.
| syops wrote:
| In countries where gun ownership is hard to obtain legally
| criminals have much lower rates of gun ownership. Banning
| legal gun ownership does not prevent all criminals from
| accessing guns but it does prevent most of them from
| accessing guns. Importantly it prevents for the most part
| gun involvement in crimes of passion.
| notahacker wrote:
| Even more importantly, it _discourages_ even habitual
| criminals from accessing and using guns. It is certainly
| possible to obtain black market handguns in the UK, but
| criminals know that (i) possessing them risks much more
| severe penalties, and convictions even if evidence of the
| other crimes they were involved with is inconclusive (ii)
| the risk of them being shot if not able to shoot someone
| disturbing their criminal activity first is usually
| negligible and (iii) more police resources are devoted to
| rumours of buying guns than rumours of selling drugs or
| other black market goods. So the average British burglar
| doesn 't own a gun, the black market isn't a huge one and
| even many gangs that pride themselves on violence mostly
| or exclusively use less efficient weapons.
|
| Of course, culture also plays a role: the UK never had
| many handguns or shootings before stricter regulations
| came in, and when they did gun owners generally complied.
| zepto wrote:
| In the UK, kitchen knives are used instead of guns.
|
| Even Hip Hop in the UK glorifies stabbings instead of
| shootings.
| est31 wrote:
| Even if the USA banned gun ownership, which would require
| a constitutional amendment and given views on the issue
| by majorities of the populations of some states, would
| thus be quite impossible, even then there would be the
| practical issue of enforcing that ban.
|
| Immediately after the ban, there would still be
| gazillions of guns floating around the US. It would take
| multiple decades _after_ the ban until the positive
| effects can be felt. During this time, the criminals
| would absolutely still have guns while the law abiding
| citizens would not.
|
| Furthermore, there are huge smuggling activities at the
| US's southern border, making it possible for guns to
| enter on that route. Maybe if a strong border wall is
| built, it can be pulled off somehow.
|
| Also don't forget that there are wild animals in many
| parts of the US, like say in Alaska. Sometimes you _need_
| to have a gun.
| hooande wrote:
| if guns are illegal their cost will go up. the cost of
| the weapon itself, plus the fee for smuggling obvious
| contraband. It will also be much easier to spot and
| arrest people carrying guns, as there will be no legal
| concealed carry permits. There are hundreds of millions
| of guns in the US, people will always be able to get
| them. but illegalization will make it more of a pain in
| the ass
|
| The overwhelming majority of Americans, I'd guess over
| 90%, do not live in places where they need firearms to
| protect them from wild animals. Why should hundreds die
| from gun violence in cities every year because of the off
| chance that someone in Alaska will encounter a bear?
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Not to mention the country would almost certainly split
| if guns were banned. I have zero doubt a large chunk of
| the states would secede so the ban would only effect
| states that don't leave.
| syops wrote:
| This is a different argument than the one I responded to.
| I gather then that you agree with me that the point I
| responded to is invalid.
| est31 wrote:
| My point was that it takes decades until the point you
| responded to becomes invalid. Even if Biden banned all
| guns tomorrow, it's likely that criminals will keep
| having guns during the life span of everybody alive
| today.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Further, if guns were banned tomorrow, there are a
| significant number of people who would instantly _become_
| criminals.
|
| It feels like many who advocate banning guns severely
| underestimate the importance of the issue to the other
| side.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| Yes, it seems like the gun issue in the U.S. is cultural.
| You couldn't make the same arguments for gun ownership in
| the U.K. or Japan, because gun ownership was not as
| strong a part of the culture the whole period since their
| founding. It took two mass shootings in the span of a
| decade for the U.K. to ban almost all gun ownership.
|
| I would prefer if nobody had guns (as an unrealistic
| utopian ideal), and if people were disincentized to
| obtain them illegally. But repealing the Second Amendment
| is both a lost cause and would do more harm than good.
| There is no undoing centuries of cultural propagation and
| convincing tens of millions of people who have already
| accepted the idea to cooperate.
|
| If I wanted to minimize my chances of encountering gun
| violence as much as possible, I'd have to move overseas.
| cpursley wrote:
| Since when have criminals been able to legally purchase
| firearms?
| judge2020 wrote:
| The ones never caught don't have issues with background
| checks.
| iamben wrote:
| It's a lot easier to get something illegally when it's
| legally available and ubiquitous.
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| What happens is you get people without records making straw
| purchases from legal sellers. These people turn around and
| sell them to criminals.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Legal sellers have to do background checks.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Counterpoint: prohibition on marijuana, cocaine, opium, etc.
|
| Yet they're prolific.
| syops wrote:
| It's easy to grow marijuana, for instance. I can do it. I
| can not manufacture a gun easily. In countries where legal
| gun ownership is hard to obtain they have much lower rates
| of crimes involving guns while at the same time having
| ready access to illegal drugs. Your counterpoint is not
| apt.
| rascul wrote:
| > I can not manufacture a gun easily.
|
| Easy enough if you have access to the necessary power
| tools (usually a drill press or a router). There are a
| number of companies creating unfinished lower receivers
| and providing kits for one to finish it themselves. It's
| also legal in the US.
|
| https://www.5dtactical.com/80-lowers-s/101.htm
|
| https://www.atf.gov/firearms/qa/are-%E2%80%9C80%E2%80%9D-
| or-...
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| It's as easy to smuggle guns into the US as it is to
| smuggle in drugs that aren't grown there. It's also
| pretty easy to manufacture them. I suspect the latter is
| just your perception from never having tried.
| syops wrote:
| I don't know much about gun smuggling. Do you have
| sources or experience in this area to know that gun
| smuggling is as easy as drug smuggling? My impression,
| not based on experience, is that gun smuggling can't
| occur at near the level that drug smuggling does. For one
| it's far easier to track the manufacturing of guns as the
| location of factories is well known and public knowledge.
|
| Is it your contention that any old fool like myself can
| produce useful guns (ones that don't explode when I shoot
| it) and ammunition? Does this ability scale the same way
| that growing marijuana does?
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| You might know where the factories are, but what does
| that matter if manufacturing guns isn't illegal in those
| places? At present, guns are smuggled _out_ of the US
| quite effectively [1]
|
| As for whether it's easy to produce a working gun: well,
| generally you can purchase the component parts of a gun
| on some continuum between raw materials and final
| product. The exact point on the continuum that you make
| your purchase depending on your risk level and how
| restrictive gun component laws are where you live. After
| that it's a case of following schematics and a little
| machining skill.
|
| However, it seems unlikely that individual criminals
| would manufacture their own guns, in the same way that
| drug users don't typically manufacture their own drugs.
| It would require investment into machinery and minor
| expertise, but the barrier to entry is low enough that
| suppliers shouldn't have much problem stepping in to meet
| demand. I would assume that the US has the highest
| prevalence of gunsmithing expertise of almost any nation
| at this point. Those skills won't vanish overnight.
|
| If you're really interested in making a home made gun,
| without involving a supplier, there are already ways to
| do that [2]. It seems unlikely a ban on 3D printing or
| other machinery and raw materials would work out.
|
| [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-flow-of-
| guns-from-...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Distributed
| syops wrote:
| I'm aware of 3D printing. At this time it is not
| ubiquitous or cheap enough for mass consumption. When it
| becomes so then the comparison to the drug trade will
| become more apt.
|
| There are lots of examples of countries with effective
| illegal drug operations and effective gun control.
| Therefore the belief that banning guns will necessarily
| be as effective as banning drugs is provably false. As
| such it's a poor argument. There are lots of valid
| reasons to believe that banning guns in the U.S. won't
| work.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"In countries where legal gun ownership is hard to
| obtain they have much lower rates of crimes involving
| guns"
|
| I suggest reading a bit about countries like Mexico where
| the reality is totally opposite to what you claim.
| syops wrote:
| Yes. I ought to have specified that I was referring to
| countries with the same level of socio-economic
| development. I intended to compare like to like so to
| speak.
| theodric wrote:
| Not only can you make a gun easily, 3d printed or not,
| you can even bootstrap (I don't just mean handload) ammo
| now. Criminals will hella have hella guns and the cat is
| too far from the bag to put it back. Even individual
| manufacture isn't a real hindrance as long as your
| network contains someone who can make a gun.
|
| The old Improvised Munitions handbook has instructions
| for how to make a "zip gun" with little more than pipe
| and a nail. Guns are easy. Safe, reliable, long-lasting
| guns require a bit more work.
| syops wrote:
| There are lots of examples of countries whose ban on guns
| work and whose ban on drugs doesn't work. Therefore it is
| a bad argument that guns can't effectively be banned
| since our ban on drugs hasn't worked.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Your first half is somewhat valid (sans DIY culture). A
| portion of drug consumption is domestically produced. But
| you're ignoring the international and inter-state drug
| trades.
|
| I.E. Columbia accounts for 43%[1] of the global coca
| supply. Taking your argument at face value, Colombians
| would consume 43% of the worlds coca supply having no
| impact on your ability to purchase cocaine in, say,
| Miami.
|
| Comparing other countries success on one form of
| prohibition doesn't give much insight. Compare it to
| America's success on current and historical prohibition.
| American's don't honor prohibition.
|
| [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/13/colombia-calls-
| a-draw-i...
| syops wrote:
| Comparing across generations is not valid as times and
| perceptions and social values change. What didn't work in
| the past may work in the future.
|
| I'm not ignoring the nature of the drug trade. I'm
| claiming that the drug trade and drug smuggling are not
| apt comparisons to illegal gun manufacturing and
| smuggling. I don't have any other claims. The argument
| that making guns illegal can't work because it didn't
| work for drugs is a dumb one.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I'm asserting they are apt comparisons.
|
| > Comparing across generations is not valid as times and
| perceptions and social values change.
|
| No need to look across generations. There are plenty of
| prohibitions to choose from today. Like automatic rifles
| and opium.
|
| > I'm claiming that the drug trade and drug smuggling are
| not apt comparisons the illegal gun manufacturing and
| smuggling.
|
| I'm going to hazard a guess that you don't come from a
| gun culture.
|
| Otherwise law abiding citizens smoke weed. Likewise they
| source fully automatic mods for their rifles and hoard
| bump stocks.
|
| And these are just hobbyists.
|
| Add in the game theory incentives of organized crime and
| their already established distribution channels (the same
| distribution channels they're using to move drugs). I
| don't understand how it isn't close to apples-apples.
| syops wrote:
| So let me try another explanation for why I think the
| comparison with the drug trade is not valid. We have many
| examples of European countries where guns are effectively
| illegal to own in the sense of being hard to legally
| obtain. These same countries have well developed illegal
| drug operations. These same countries have much lower use
| of guns in crime. These countries are counterexamples to
| the argument:
|
| _Making guns illegal won't be effective because making
| drugs illegal hasn't been effective._
|
| As such this argument is not valid. A person who wants to
| intelligently argue why banning gun ownership in the U.S.
| won't work must use a different argument.
|
| All criminal laws have as their aim to make prohibitions
| of certain behaviors. All fail at 100% efficiency but
| most do well in terms of regulating acceptable behavior
| over time. The prohibition on slavery was quite effective
| in the U.S. If you want to argue that banning guns in the
| U.S. won't work go ahead and argue that. Just don't use
| the foolish argument that since banning drugs didn't work
| in the U.S. then banning guns won't work. It is sloppy
| thinking.
|
| I can think of a lot of reasons why banning guns in the
| U.S. won't work. You alluded to one of the reasons why I
| think this. None of my arguments on why this won't be
| effective in the U.S. have anything to do with the
| ineffectiveness of the war on drugs.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| You've obviously never spent time in Brazil, where all
| criminals have guns, but guns are illegal.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| Obviously.
| cbmuser wrote:
| Brazil is bad example, they have much more serious social
| problems.
|
| Compare with any European country and you will see that gun
| control works.
|
| Of course, there will always be criminals who will acquire
| illegal guns, but overall it's much harder to get a gun.
|
| If your standard is 100% efficiency, you could make
| everything legal including murder, because making murder
| illegal doesn't avoid it by 100%.
| theodric wrote:
| Switzerland is shall-issue for semi-auto and may-issue
| for full automatic. Gun crime is microscopic. Culture
| plays a major part.
| africanboy wrote:
| That, but also Swiss are rich and are an exception in the
| entire World.
|
| But looking at the numbers to add more context:
| Switzerland is very different from USA.
|
| First of all gun ownership in Switzerland is around 25%,
| it's over 40% in USA.
|
| Secondly, 25% of Swiss own a firearm, not a gun, in USA
| gun ownership (meaning a gun) is at 22
|
| In Italy gun ownership is at 12% and gun deaths are
| almost zero, as in Switzerland most of the legally owned
| firearms are rifles for hunting purpose, kept locked in a
| cabinet.
|
| Nobody in Switzerland sleeps with their gun under the
| pillow and nobody thinks it's a solution to crime, that's
| the biggest difference.
| [deleted]
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| I always find it odd how Europe is used as an example of
| gun control success. Especially when it comes to the
| issue of oppressive governments.
|
| World War 2 happened less than a century ago. During
| Weimar and the 1930s, pretty strict gun laws were put in
| place.
| pintxo wrote:
| This might be because we are still waiting for a
| conclusive argument how wide-spread gun ownership would
| have prevented WW2.
|
| Hint: Hitler was legally voted into power. It's not that
| the Nazis had guns and the rest of the country was in
| fear to oppose them.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| That's a counterfactual argument. It is by definition
| unprovable. I said that Europe shouldn't be considered a
| gun control success, _not_ that if there were guns, WW2
| would have been prevented.
|
| During the Weimar era and the Nazi era, gun control laws
| were put into place. That is a historical fact.
|
| Also, hint: saying that Hitler was voted into power as if
| it were an average democratic vote _deeply_
| misunderstands the situation. I suggest reading more
| about the era, specifically Ian Kershaw 's book.
| pintxo wrote:
| I might have miss understood your argument, but to me it
| reads like you wanted to imply that the implementation of
| gun controls ~lead to~ supported fascism and ultimately
| lead to WW2.
|
| > I always find it odd how Europe is used as an example
| of gun control success. Especially when it comes to the
| issue of oppressive governments.
|
| > World War 2 happened less than a century ago. During
| Weimar and the 1930s, pretty strict gun laws were put in
| place.
| blackshaw wrote:
| > Also, hint: saying that Hitler was voted into power as
| if it were an average democratic vote deeply
| misunderstands the situation.
|
| This is correct.
|
| Richard Evans's _The Coming of the Third Reich_ is
| excellent too.
| syops wrote:
| There are no such examples among the rich nations of the
| world. As such the example of Brazil is not apt. Even if
| you persist in it being apt you must all compare the number
| of such examples to the number of examples where gun
| ownership is illegal and where criminals rarely have guns.
| zepto wrote:
| The comparison is apt because there are hundreds of
| millions of guns that wouldn't disappear if you made them
| illegal.
| syops wrote:
| There are valid reasons to believe that gun prohibition
| will not significantly decrease the use of guns in crimes
| in the U.S. Believing that gun prohibition won't work
| because drug prohibition hasn't worked is as invalid as
| the argument that gun prohibition will work because
| slavery prohibition worked. There are examples of
| countries that suddenly implemented strict gun control
| laws successfully whilst unsuccessfully prohibiting
| illicit drugs. Therefore it is not valid to reason that
| gun laws won't work because they haven't worked with
| drugs.
| phobosanomaly wrote:
| Through buyback programs and legal penalties for
| possession, the amount of weapons in meaningful
| circulation would likely decrease substantially over a
| period of years.
|
| As that process occurred, the value of the weapons would
| spike as scarcity took hold, and tactically-useful
| firearms (e.g. semi-auto) would become _expensive_ on the
| black market. This would mean that criminals would need
| to be far more judicious with how they carried and used
| them.
|
| It is very plausible that this scarcity effect would lead
| to a meaningful reduction in the possession and use of
| firearms by low-level street criminals, which would also
| by extension lead to a reduction in levels of firearms-
| related homicide, assault, and intimidation.
|
| A low-level narcotics broker is less likely to carry
| around a Glock that costs $10,000 (which they have to
| dump off of a bridge or in a storm drain every time it's
| used in a homicide), than they are to carry around a
| black-market stolen Glock that cost $600.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I live in Canada, we have very strict laws about who can get
| and how to get guns. 80% of gun crime is committed by people
| that don't have a license, and got them from unauthorized
| places. Making something illegal doesn't make it go away,
| just creates a black market. Criminals also don't give a hoot
| about laws, by definition.
| syops wrote:
| The relevant statistic is not the one you mentioned. One
| expects the outcome you cited. What is the frequency of gun
| involvement in crime in Canada vs. the United States?
| That's the relevant comparison.
| [deleted]
| cbmuser wrote:
| Make murder legal then because the law to make it illegal
| doesn't keep it from happen 100% of the cases.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _Only because all criminals have guns. Because guess what.
| Guns are legal._
|
| There were many stories during the "firey but mostly
| peaceful" demonstrations last year of people who were
| ordinarily liberals trying to buy guns for personal and home
| defence and discovering to their horror that that actually
| there is a background check and a waiting period, you can't
| just buy one on a whim. Nor can a friend legally just lend
| you one.
| wongarsu wrote:
| The solution should be better police (probably a major police
| reform), not more guns. You don't solve public safety by arming
| everyone.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| Police don't create safety. They are violence workers who
| punish the "unsafe." Better police is less police.
| milkshakes wrote:
| yes and the solution to homelessness is to build more homes.
| somehow we have neither and the horizon is bleak
| wongarsu wrote:
| The solution to homelessness is free mental health
| services, better safety nets (easy to get, unconditional
| unemployment benefits) and a public health system that
| doesn't bankrupt people.
|
| In the bay area "there are no homes" is a real problem, but
| the systematic reasons for homelessness are even more
| important to solve.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Homelessness is generally not caused by a lack of homes.
| Providing homes works well for those who are homeless for
| economic reasons. It works very poorly for those who are
| homeless for reasons of drugs/alcohol or mental illness.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| It's worse for them than not having housing at all? I
| find that hard to believe.
| playingchanges wrote:
| But I can buy a gun now and that police reform thing keeps
| not actually existing.
| bobcallme wrote:
| "Better police" does provide more "public safety". This
| argument has been used to create the system that we have now,
| caging people you don't like or don't look like you; it can
| never be "reformed" in any meaningful manner. I'd rather have
| a 20% greater chance of being randomly shot than to continue
| with this push for a system that cages people for victimless
| crimes or creates more criminals because Karens' across the
| country feel that they need to control everyone and
| everything. Everyone should have the right to defend
| themselves against _any_ threats against themselves or their
| neighbors; this is not negotiable.
| core-questions wrote:
| > caging people you don't like or don't look like you
|
| This is such a toxic, false statement. It denies reality:
| people are getting jailed for their actions. Due process is
| still in effect, you understand; and if anything, far fewer
| people are jailed than probably should be due to
| overcrowding, high costs, etc. Recidivism rates are very
| high.
|
| Pretending that people are being jailed because of the
| color of their skin is ridiculous, especially considering
| that in many cities the jury, lawyers, judge, clerks, etc.
| are also of the same skin color. People are being jailed
| for committing crimes; and yes, these crimes are being
| disproportionately committed by some groups - as statistics
| have consistently shown for decades.
|
| Statements like yours throw the entire justice system under
| the bus. You essentially call into question the entire
| appartatus that remains to protect normal folks in the
| burnt out husks of cities like Baltimore and Detroit.
|
| > Karens' across the country feel that they need to control
| everyone and everything
|
| Karen is an anti-white slur. "Karen" expects people to
| follow the rules and to be pro-social, and gets mad when
| they do not; this used to simply be good, mutual
| enforcement behaviour that everyone engaged in to keep
| people honest and to fight corruption. Stereotyping
| middleaged white women who simply want the process to be
| observed as written is offensive, and as sexist/racist as
| any other single term you could use these days.
| gugagore wrote:
| > Pretending that people are being jailed because of the
| color of their skin is ridiculous, especially considering
| that in many cities the jury, lawyers, judge, clerks,
| etc. are also of the same skin color.
|
| The extremely abbreviated way to make this point is to
| say "racism is over because Obama, and Kamala, and black
| faces in high places".
| bobcallme wrote:
| > Pretending that people are being jailed because of the
| color of their skin is ridiculous, especially considering
| that in many cities the jury, lawyers, judge, clerks,
| etc. are also of the same skin color.
|
| That is not the point. People should not have to sit in a
| cage and then be "judged" by a system that is no longer
| blind and is stacked against anyone who goes through it.
| How long do you want to sit in a cage for "something you
| did not do"? It's no longer about "justice" or "reform",
| it's about revenge and benefiting those who make it up.
|
| > Statements like yours throw the entire justice system
| under the bus. You essentially call into question the
| entire [apparatus] that remains to protect normal folks
| in the burnt out husks of cities like Baltimore and
| Detroit.
|
| The system needs to be thrown out because of how it was
| created and what it has become. Instead of only being
| used to "reform" the most reprehensible individuals in
| society (violent crimes, theft, fraud), it has become a
| weapon for use against anyone the two parties did not
| like. First it was the racist Democrats who used it
| against those who did not look like them and then the
| fundie Republicans pushed it even further to use it as a
| tool for the things the church did not like. Many people
| sitting in jail right now should not be in jail because
| their "crimes" never affected anyone else or society at
| large.
|
| > Karen is an anti-white slur. "Karen" expects people to
| follow the rules and to be pro-social
|
| Being a cunt is not limited to any one group or
| ethnicity. "Karen" is applicable to any busybody who
| should mind their own business and leave people alone.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >"Karen" is applicable to any busybody who should mind
| their own business and leave people alone.
|
| If there was a meme name for an angry woman would you
| have an issue if it was a predominantly black woman name?
| There is a sterotype of the angry black woman, so even if
| you would be fine it would immediately be called racist.
| harshreality wrote:
| Both sides are true.
|
| Police need to enforce the laws in economically depressed
| neighborhoods where crime, gangs, and drugs are much more
| common. However, police are also abusive in that
| environment, and the criminal justice system perpetuates
| economic and social hardship in those neighborhoods by
| disrupting good home/family environments.
|
| Both forces -- neighborhood criminality and an overly
| harsh criminal justice system -- work against true social
| justice. One of the worst consequences is poor
| psychosocial development in children growing up in that
| environment (constant stress and fear, broken families,
| etc). For a somewhat anecdotal view of this sociological
| phenomenon, see Alice Goffman's book _On the Run_ (she's
| the daughter of Erving Goffman).
| [deleted]
| throw0101a wrote:
| Reducing poverty would also reduce crime, and have other
| positive effects. A better welfare state, especially with
| regards to infant/child care and early childhood education, is
| probably a better ROI.
| boredumb wrote:
| An armed society is a polite society.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Really? Because I have a guy screaming burnt into my retinas
| for watching that horrible video from New Jersey where a couple
| taunt a man who snaps, gets his guns and shoots them both.
|
| I made the mistake of watching it about a month ago, when it
| leaked, and I can't get the husbands screams out of my head.
|
| If that's a polite society then I'll take an impolite society
| without guns over that any day.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| > a couple taunt a man who snaps, gets his guns and shoots
| them both.
|
| I missed this one, what happened?
| BaseS4 wrote:
| Arguably, everyone in that neighborhood will err on the side
| of politeness for the foreseeable futute.
| analyte123 wrote:
| The subtext of "armed society is a polite society" is that
| you don't taunt or start petty arguments in the first place,
| in case the guy turns out to be like the one in the video.
| Daho0n wrote:
| Then it is provable wrong. I can't believe anyone who has
| watched news from the US could believe in such foolishness.
| If anything it is just the opposite. Just goggle that
| video.
| INTPenis wrote:
| But that's exactly what happened. In a state where you can
| legally own automatic rifles these people relentlessly
| taunted a man until he got his pistol and his rifle and
| shot them both.
|
| And someone else said "well now everyone in that
| neighborhood know better", sure, and it only took three
| lives and orphaned children to make it happen. Congrats.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I've lived in the US and countries that barely have guns, the
| US is far from the most "polite" place I have lived.
|
| Unfortunately far too many people get brave with a gun,
| particularly while driving, and others seemingly look for
| opportunities to use their gun to "win" arguments both are
| featured regularly on the evening news[0] (and they aren't
| always fatal, but always depressing).
|
| The US is a country that already has a bunch of cultural
| issues, guns just add chaos to an already borderline healthy
| society.
|
| [0] https://www.cleveland19.com/2021/03/08/female-patron-
| threate...
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Great quote from a science fiction novel. Emphasis on the
| fiction.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Are American drivers more polite due to the higher amount of
| cars in the US?
|
| The correlation is not direct
| CincinnatiMan wrote:
| The article is extremely short on data related to the headline,
| and in fact it's just a tiny blurb in the introductory paragraph.
| Would love to read more about these stats.
|
| On an unrelated note, the person being interviewed really
| expresses a binary world view of left vs right with no in
| between, which is discouraging.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| Right!
|
| The hypocrisy is totally lost on the interviewee.
| sndean wrote:
| I think the article and this Brookings article (which has some
| graphs) [0] are talking about the same data. It's based on the
| number of background checks by NICS [1].
|
| Out of the top ten highest weeks for background checks, nine
| were in 2020/2021, the other was in 2012 [2]. A month after
| Obama was reelected? Not sure what else was going on in
| December 2012.
|
| [0] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/07/13/three-
| mil...
|
| [1] https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/nics
|
| [2] https://www.fbi.gov/file-
| repository/nics_firearm_checks_top_...
| seibelj wrote:
| The number one reason I support the right to own firearms is
| protection against the state. If it was as easy to own and buy
| guns in Hong Kong as it is in the USA the current situation with
| the destruction of democracy and the imposition of authoritarian
| rule would have been a much fairer fight.
|
| Beyond that, my extended family is almost entirely based in the
| Deep South of the US, one of my cousins is a professional firearm
| dealer, and another works for one of the largest sellers of
| hunting apparel. One of my best friends owns about 50 guns. The
| number of irresponsible uses of guns in my family and friends
| group are zero. Guns are a tool like anything else - if it's
| legal to own a chainsaw, a hunting knife, or a sledgehammer then
| it is not ridiculous to have licensed responsible adults to own
| guns.
|
| I applaud the sale of firearms and the continuing spread of the
| culture to all people, races, and genders. The more people learn
| responsible use of guns and own them, the safer they will be, the
| safer society will be, and the less likely some idiot group of
| politicians will ban them.
| [deleted]
| adflux wrote:
| I agree entirely, even though I am not from the US. The US has
| a mental health and poverty problem, NOT a gun problem. Plenty
| of examples of wealthy countries with lots of guns (Sweden,
| Switzerland) and little to no gun violence.
| muglug wrote:
| Those countries have massively more stringent rules around
| gun ownership, and much lower gun ownership rates. Not at all
| comparable.
| GcVmvNhBsU wrote:
| Not to mention conscription, which probably helps with both
| discipline and meeting people not like you.
| muglug wrote:
| "A fairer fight"? It would have been a bloodbath.
| seibelj wrote:
| I think living under the steel toed boot of communist
| dictatorship is something worth fighting and dying for. But
| I'm a freedom lover from the Land of the Free, not someone
| who could mentally accept living under a dictator at any
| cost.
| muglug wrote:
| A lot of those freedom-lovers from the land of the free
| tried to prevent a democratic election from being ratified.
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| Just wanted to let you know that cosplaying a freedom
| fighter on the internet is quite different from doing it in
| real life.
| seibelj wrote:
| It's hilarious you think the US citizens would allow a
| President Xi type dictator to take over. You do not
| understand US culture.
| [deleted]
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| Bro, please. Let's not make this any more embarrassing
| than it already is.
| seibelj wrote:
| Found the Chinese puppet account. You do realize your
| boss is one fat fucking loser right?
| dang wrote:
| If you break the site guidelines this egregiously again
| we will ban you.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Comments like
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26455436 aren't
| acceptable either. Please stop posting flamewar comments
| --it's _not_ what this site is for. An experienced HN
| user like you ought to know and do much better.
| dang wrote:
| This is not a site for flamewar, and we ban accounts that
| post like this. Please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| stick to the rules when posting here.
| nemo44x wrote:
| One nice thing about having such a large military budget
| is our civilian population contains many millions of
| people with formal military and combat training.
|
| So yeah, there's certainly Internet tough guys who just
| need an outlet to express their frustration. But there's
| a large community of people that do in fact know which
| direction to point their rifle.
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| Sure. This dude isn't one of them though.
|
| And as the cosplaying freedom fighters found out in
| January, reality is different from q-fantasy.
| [deleted]
| hntrader wrote:
| The (largely theoretical) argument is asymmetric warfare
| where the dictator and their family/sycophants/officers need
| to be constantly preoccupied with a credible threat of an
| assassin around every corner. This asymmetric warfare is then
| sufficiently destabilizing that (when combined with sanctions
| and external pressure) it leads to a successful overthrow.
|
| Of course, it's not realistic that the civilian populace will
| be capable of engaging in open-field combat with the
| military.
| muglug wrote:
| The Reagan assassination attempt wasn't for any political
| reason, but because a crazy person wanted to impress Jodie
| Foster.
| [deleted]
| nemo44x wrote:
| It really depends on your tactics. Hong Kong is an
| interesting battlefield as it has very few advantages for a
| traditional military. Dense population and few open areas
| provide many tactical advantages for an insurrection.
|
| With these advantages and coordinating securely being
| generally available, I think an insurrection could create a
| lot of troubles for an occupying force. Lots of opportunities
| to document and share atrocities the occupying forces would
| commit as well which would at the very least ensure
| sympathetic governments and organizations would help continue
| the smuggling in of supplies and weapons.
| gostsamo wrote:
| I'm playing the chinese government. You are the HK
| citizenship, well-armed with handguns. You have the city,
| you are protesting against my actions and during a protest
| the local police stations are occupied, occupied are also
| the universities, the tv stations and the local government.
| Self-proclaimed leaders of the protest go on air and
| announce that they are seceding from the totalitarian
| regime and HK is independent nation. Freedom loving
| citizens are blocking the road with mainline China, they
| are taking control of the airport and the sea port.
|
| The Chinese government in a few steps:
|
| 1. Cut off the internet, jam the radio signals and the
| satellite signals to blackout the entire island. Impose a
| sea blockade.
|
| 2. Stop the drinking water.
|
| 3. Wait 72 hours and gather the bodies. Blame local
| terrorists for destroying the water pipes.
|
| And this is only the simplest way to smash the resistance.
| Without mobile communications and GPS, all groups will be
| cut off from each other, exposed from the air to drone
| attacks, and totally unable to retreat, because there is
| nowhere to go.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Why would HK rebels take all those positions they can't
| hold?
| hntrader wrote:
| HK vs the CCP isn't a great case study, because the
| center of power is outside of the country and it isn't
| mixed in with the disgruntled people.
|
| A better counterfactual case study would be North Korea,
| Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia or present-day Myanmar; where
| the regime largely lives amongst (albeit in a
| stratified/segregated way) and selects from the populace
| that it controls.
|
| I'd be especially interested in the early days of the
| regime, before its power is fully solidified and when
| it's the most unstable.
| gostsamo wrote:
| This is a strange fantasy that many gun supporters share with
| you that having a gun makes you a warrior. It is even bigger
| fantasy that a persistent resistance can exist in an isolated
| urban setting when under the control of an overwhelming well-
| organized, well-supplied, highly technological armed force that
| has no restrictions to be civilized or respect individual
| rights such as is the situation in Hong Kong. It is very nice
| that you all have this gun fetish and it keeps you happy, but
| guns can't substitute for sound institutions, social cohesion,
| and rule of law.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _overwhelming well-organized, well-supplied, highly
| technological armed force that has no restrictions to be
| civilized or respect individual rights_
|
| The Soviets had no qualms whatsoever, even booby-trapping
| childrens toys. But they couldn't hold Afghanistan.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Can you tell me how long is the boarder between Pakistan
| and Afghanistan? Do you remember that a big part of the
| soviet defeat in Afghanistan was the US that was able to
| regularly supply money and guns to the resistance, giving
| them even land to air missiles? Do you know that the
| talibans had and still have bases in Pakistan that allowed
| them to lead the gorilla war that they did? Don't even try
| to compare Afghanistan with HK, because the two situations
| have nothing in common.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _Do you know that the talibans had and still have bases
| in Pakistan that allowed them to lead the gorilla war
| that they did?_
|
| Yes I'll concede that fighting a _guerrilla_ war without
| external support is difficult but it was always thus.
| Another example would be the Cuban revolution. However
| civil wars are often fought without any external backing
| being the decisive factor.
| [deleted]
| seibelj wrote:
| This isn't a fantasy. It's simply a fact when you have a huge
| number of people owning guns, implementing a dictatorship is
| harder. We also have a culture of loving freedom. In HK, you
| have a formerly free society that was brutally repressed by
| the authoritarian state. Saying "it will never happen" belies
| the fact it literally just happened!
|
| I have family that lost everything to communism and had to
| restart in America. If you have never had to live under
| authoritarian rule, as a huge portion of civilization had to
| in the past and still currently do, it's easy to think a
| reversion to the mean will never happen. But it can and does!
| gostsamo wrote:
| I'm from a former communist country. We had anti-communist
| gorilla fighters to the mid fifties. Guess what, the
| gorillas were hunted down and neutralized one by one. Guess
| why, they didn't have arm supplies, they didn't have
| outside power that would provide them with air cover, they
| didn't have safe bases for recruiting and training new
| fighters, for healing and planning operations. Without
| those basics your freedom loving people will be a sitting
| target. After a sufficient bloodbath, many will be killed,
| many will be imprisoned, many will be deported to other
| ends of the country, many will be broken, and the rest
| would prefer to forget and to return to some semblance of
| normality.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> This isn't a fantasy. It's simply a fact when you have
| a huge number of people owning guns, implementing a
| dictatorship is harder.
|
| > I'm from a former communist country. We had anti-
| communist gorilla fighters to the mid fifties. Guess
| what, the gorillas were hunted down and neutralized one
| by one.
|
| What proportion of the population were those fighters?
| It's obvious that a small poorly-supplied force can't
| stand up to a brutal state, on the other hand "a huge
| number" of armed people might be able to, or at least put
| up a respectable fight. Furthermore, there's a deterrent
| effect from having an armed population that has to be
| taken into account.
| gostsamo wrote:
| I'm trying to explain that no matter of your handguns,
| tanks are an anti-infantry platform created with the
| explicit goal of killing people with handguns. The
| difference of putting a thousand and a hundred thousand
| people in front of a tank is how many times the machine
| guns will have to be reloaded.
|
| You imagine that a totalitarian regime will be hesitant
| to use excessive force against its own population. A
| corrupt and decaying regime might be, like the russian
| military coup 1990. Compare it to China 1989 or if you
| want to be more recent to the arab spring civil wars and
| you will realize that handguns matter only if the
| military decides to not intervene. Tunis - the president
| fled. Libya - the rebels were cornered until someone sent
| the heavy guns. Egypt - the military changed the
| president twice. Syria - it is a mess, but those with the
| heavy guns will write the history. That's why gun
| ownership is a fetish that gives people the illusion of
| having control over much more complex reality. A single
| person can't stop a militarized regime. A million single
| persons can't do it either. Only if united in a
| coordinated and resourceful structures, they can oppose
| another organized and resourceful structure.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I'm trying to explain that no matter of your handguns,
| tanks are an anti-infantry platform created with the
| explicit goal of killing people with handguns. The
| difference of putting a thousand and a hundred thousand
| people in front of a tank is how many times the machine
| guns will have to be reloaded.
|
| I don't think anyone would seriously think that someone
| could mount a resistance with handguns. IIRC, the US
| figured they're more or less useless militarily prior to
| WWII. You'd need to use rifles.
|
| And IIRC, tanks haven't rendered infantry obsolete. They
| require infantry cover otherwise they're vulnerable, and
| there are environments where they just don't work well.
| Also, the tactics taken up by such a resistance would
| have to avoid head-on confrontations with tanks unless
| they have (captured) the right weapons to do so, since to
| do otherwise would be dumb.
|
| > Compare it to China 1989...
|
| The Tiananmen protesters were totally unarmed, and
| Chinese gun laws are extraordinarily restrictive, so I
| don't know what that's supposed to prove here. I'm not as
| familiar with the details of civilian gun ownership in
| the other countries you mentioned, but some cursory
| research shows that both Libya and Egypt have pretty
| restrictive civilian gun laws. There are also
| counterexamples to your thesis (e.g. Afghanistan) where
| poorly-equipped fighters have been able to effectively
| resist modern militaries.
|
| > A single person can't stop a militarized regime. A
| million single persons can't do it either. Only if united
| in a coordinated and resourceful structures, they can
| oppose another organized and resourceful structure.
|
| This is true. But arming those million single persons is
| a _prerequisite_ for them to coalesce into an organized
| structure that could oppose a regime. Arming them doesn
| 't mean a resistance will be successful, but disarming
| them would guarantee that any resistance would be a
| failure.
| cassepipe wrote:
| And China has also drones and an organized military. A military
| face to face with a nation state is always a losing bet. Which
| is why there are guerilla tactics but you can't expect a whole
| population to adopt guerilla warfare, there's not enough room
| in the jungle. What works is to make the economic cost of
| repression very costly with massive strikes and massive refusal
| to pay taxes, an organized military is very costly and when
| soldiers don't get paid they may disobey too. You also have to
| make the moral cost of being on the good side of the gun costly
| too then parts of the military may go into disobedience/mutiny.
| But this is generally taken into account by states and they
| will avoid sending batallions from a region in that region.
|
| On a different note, how do you justify having 50 guns for
| personal protection?
| auganov wrote:
| > On a different note, how do you justify having 50 guns for
| personal protection?
|
| The point is exactly that the gun debate shouldn't be just
| about everyday personal protection. In case of a massive
| conflict it's great to have enough supplies to last years and
| to hand out to those who need them. You may not be able to
| just go to a store and get more.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| > If it was as easy to own and buy guns in Hong Kong as it is
| in the USA the current situation with the destruction of
| democracy and the imposition of authoritarian rule would have
| been a much fairer fight.
|
| Unless anti-tank munitions are also available, armed HKers
| would've just led to armoured fighting vehicles on the streets.
| The State will always have more firepower than you.
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