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Absolutely. I'm consistently surprised that things like [1] are not seen as absurd and even illegal. I found another article, "Gun homicides in Poland are about as common as deaths from bicycle riders being hit by cars in the United States" (and many other variations) [2] very sad, too. How is it that a civilised nation allows such things to happen? The US seems like a very cool place, with so much potential, but increasingly, i'm considering putting it on my personal blacklist as far as destinations to look for work go. I just can't imagine living in fear of some concealed-carry-permit holding goon deciding to shoot the place up (and that's not even considering the violence perpetrated by legitimate LEOs...).

Why would you want to have a killing machine lying around at home? That sounds horrific.

1. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/02/gun-tv-home-s...

2. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/upshot/in-other-countries-... (was on HN recently)

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"I just can't imagine living in fear of some concealed-carry-permit holding goon deciding to shoot the place up."

You don't need a concealed-carry permit to carry a concealed gun; you just need one to do it LEGALLY. I would venture to guess that a person who carries concealed with the intent of committing murder will not have bothered to get a permit.

My reasoning for keeping a killing machine (it lies around either in a safe or on my person at all times) is because crime happens, and criminals are willing to do things like use force and/or weapons. Police can't be everywhere, and while their response time here is pretty good, it's generally more than enough time for the criminals to do what they want and escape. I'd be happy to go back in time and un-invent guns, but as it stands, I don't see any way to remove all of them from all criminals' hands. So it seems to me the only viable preventive measure is for citizens to defend themselves with the same tools the criminals illegally use to commit their crimes.

That's one side of it, and it's a pretty common rebuttal to hear. I have some thoughts on that.

If tomorrow all gun possession (except perhaps by LEO, but even that is debatable IMHO) was made illegal, then within one year i'm sure there would be many less guns in circulation (without considering who owns them). In my books this is a net win, because a criminal entering the scene at that point in time will arguably have a harder time sourcing a gun than is currently the case. Profit, i would say. Indeed the stable state of this system is, as you point out, that only non-law-abiding citizens will be in possession of guns, but that is collateral i'm willing to accept (as in the society where i currently live. Death rate per capita by guns is much lower here than in the US, see my linked article from The Guardian). The end game of your desired society seems to me that it's an arms race (excuse my wording): everyone who wants to be 'safe' should have a gun, therefore criminals have more incentive to have guns, etc.

The other question i have is how one explains the fact that in many societies where gun possession is not legal, the situation is far from the doom scenario where criminals with guns are rife. Of course, they exist, and of course shit happens, but it still seems that the evidence (just the statistics, no moral arguments) points to the desirability of outlawing gun possession.

And finally, no matter how carefully you treat and/or store your gun, it is still more likely (even if the likelihood is only epsilon) to accidentally go off or get played with by a child than my gun, which does not exist at all.

That exact same reasoning supports the war on drugs.

"Indeed the stable state of this system is, as you point out, that only non-law-abiding citizens will be in possession of guns, but that is collateral i'm willing to accept"

You have just described present-day Mexico. How much safer do you feel when there, versus when in the U.S.?

> The US seems like a very cool place, with so much potential, but increasingly, i'm considering putting it on my personal blacklist as far as destinations to look for work go. I just can't imagine living in fear of some concealed-carry-permit holding goon deciding to shoot the place up.

The US homicide rate is around 3.8 per 100k. That is higher than much of Europe (UK 1.0, Finland 1.6, Norway 2.2, Germany 0.8) but not to the point that it is rational to fear coming to the US.

Would you fear taking a vacation to Bermuda or the Bahamas? They have much higher homicide rates than the US (7.7 and 29.8, respectively).

Also note that homicide rates are taken over the whole country. They vary considerably from place to place within the country. For most tech jobs that a typical non-US HN reader might come to the US for, you'd almost certainly be working in a location that has a much lower than average homicide rate, and would be making enough money to live in a place with a much lower than average homicide rate.

In invoking "concealed-carry-permit holding goons", the commenter is making a point that isn't easily rebutted by geography. They're referring to the rate of mass shootings, not of homicides in general.

The death rate due to mass shootings in the US is much lower [1] than the death rate due to homicide, so I was trying (unclearly) to imply that since the latter is so low as to not be worth worrying about when deciding whether or not to work in the US, then the former must also not be worth worrying about.

[1] By one or two orders of magnitude, depending on whose definition of"mass shooting" you use [2]. Mother Jones maintains a list, and theirs says that there have been 4 mass shootings so far this year, with 37 deaths. The Mass Shooting Tracker says 353 so far, with 462 killed.

[2] http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-san-bernardino-mass-shoo...

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