I almost died in a mass shooting | Hacker News Reader

I almost died in a mass shooting

huffingtonpost.com

38 pointselectic32 comments

Er...this is a strange title. The closest the author comes to saying that he almost died in a mass shooting is this:

> Do you know how a properly functioning society would react to an event like San Bernardino? I do — because I’ve had the misfortune of living through such an event. On the 28th of April, 1996, a gunman equipped with an AR-15 assault rifle — the same kind that the San Bernardino shooters used — opened fire in Port Arthur, in Australia. 35 people were killed and 23 were wounded. It remains one of the world’s deadliest shootings by a single person.

Uh, maybe he was actually present during the shooting? But "I’ve had the misfortune of living through such an event" is a pretty vague and passively-constructed statement. It could mean that he was in Australia during the time of the shooting and subsequent change to gun rights. Which, OK, is fine -- a constructive, convincing argument need not be rooted in emotional authority...but my particular problem is that this piece is mostly invective and ad hominem...while the author's recounting of the mass shooting is brief and antiseptic.

I mean, technically, I can say I "lived through 9/11" even though it happened while I was halfway across the country...

Really, is that all you take away from the article?

Well it's also not the title of the article (maybe it was before?) so it's a fair criticism. I clicked expecting a description of the experience, or aftermath, or something.

I was however pleasantly surprised to find something I did want to read, even if it wasn't what I had intended to read.

What else should I take away from it? The Port Arthur tragedy is something that is cited many times in this debate -- if I had never heard of it before, sure, I'd find it enlightening.

But not in the way this essay simplifies things. I haven't read much deep background into Port Arthur, but I'm going to guess that it was a lot more complicated than just "Australia collectively got its shit together" in the way that the civil rights movement, or even just the successful Montgomery bus boycott was a lot more complicated and drawn-out than just, "Rosa Parks got arrested and people got mad."

When meaningful change happens, it's because people get mad and focused collective action and political strategy work together to break the status quo. The author's weak rhetorical logic undermines this concept. It doesn't even make any sense when you get past the bare surface: gun rights and privacy -- as they manifest themselves in this incident -- are orthogonal issues. By going for this angle, the author's argument for data privacy is completely undermined in a case where the attackers use a bomb to perform mass murder. Whereas I would argue: data privacy is important whether or not a massacre is committed by guns or bombs.

Of course the biggest flaw in the author's argument is that the FBI and Justice Department are currently under the oversight of President Obama -- I know Trump has gotten a lot of coverage lately, but he is not the president yet. President Obama has made no secret of his personal sentiment against personal firearm ownership and it was something that was a big issue in his 2008 election.

Emotions are important. But if you truly want to effect change, you have to accept that things are complicated and thus, require more intellectual and personal commitment than the self-righteous sentiment "WHY ISN'T EVERYONE ELSE SEEING HOW CRAZY THIS IS?"

That said, I'd be fine with the submission if it contained what the submitted title implies, "I almost died in a mass shooting". Not because I think that one survivor's experience should dominate all others based on that one personal experience (recently, an actual survivor of Columbine made news for advocating that guns should be allowed in school) but because I'm interested in hearing experiences that I have never personally experienced, and how they've led the person to think what they think

It's a political article. It exists to make a point, not to provide take-aways. You're meant to either agree with it or disagree, and share it if you agree. Whatever information that exists there is only there in service of that point, limiting it's general usefulness.

I hate it when people start talking politically at me in the guise of "teaching" me something.

"Almost" is a pretty subjective term. I tell people that I was two trains behind one which was bombed on 7/7 in London, and they go "you almost died!", and I just sort of raise an eyebrow, and explain that no, I went to the pub for the day, and was at no point anywhere near dead.

Anyway, it's sort of beside the point of the article, but a fair point.

To me, the statistic that 316,545 people have been shot to death in the US in the last decade is staggering. I'm sure that includes things like police shootings as well, but that's still an enormous number. In the UK, the figure for the same period appears to be about 3600 (going by a few parliament reports over that decade - haven't added them all up but it averages 300 a year or so and I'm being pessimistic).

64M in the UK, 320M in the US, 316,545/5 = 63,309. 63,309/3600 = 17.6. So - you're 17.6 times more likely to be shot in the US than in the UK, where firearms are banned for most purposes, and gun deaths actually seem to have risen proportionally over the last few years - perhaps as police are more frequently armed in supposed response to the supposed ongoing terror threat, criminals more frequently feel the need to be armed in response...

I haven't considered things like knife crime etc., but the US approach to gun ownership is anachronistic at the very best, and is out of step with what is viewed as civilised elsewhere in the world. I suppose there's a sort of duality of mind in the US, where people wish it were still frontier times, a brave young nation, the wild west, where you need to personally defend your self and property, but also want to live in a modern civilised society where the function of gun ownership and law enforcement is carried out by, well, law enforcement, and can't quite resolve their dichotomy. Would US law enforcement be as hostile and trigger happy as it is if they weren't so worried about getting shot, as seems to be their principle justification for "shoot first" tactics?

Sorry, this has ended up a bit of a ramble, but I can't understand how it can be viewed as sane to allow gun ownership as it stands to go on. It's a pandemic.

For the sake of dealing with better numbers, about a third of that figure is suicide. And very, very, very few gun deaths are by rifle. Last year ~9k people were shot in the US - ~8450 by handgun, ~300 by shotgun, and many of those killed by rifles were shot by police.

I know this doesn't change the calculus for most people. Just trying to get more realistic figures into the conversation.

The suicide rate in the US is twice that of the UK - take from that what you will, but brits are as a whole a pretty depressed bunch, and I dare say gun availability is a factor in suicide prevalence - the professions with the highest rates of suicide tend to be those that easily provide the tools to definitely painlessly kill yourself - doctors, dentists, veterinarians, farmers.

I'm hypothesising, but I honestly think reducing availability of firearms would cause more people to not be able to kill themselves with facility, and therefore more likely to have the time to reconsider or seek help.

"brits are as a whole a pretty depressed bunch" - have you been watching TV again?

Thankfully, it isn't someone else's choice when, how or where a person makes the decision. People will find a way.

I was in EMS for 15 years. There are worse ways to go... Bleach for example... really, any other way is worse if you think about it. everything else drags out the pain and suffering.

...but guns are louwd and scawy..

Just across the 49th parallel gun deaths are 1/6-1/10th of what they are in the US. The gun rights people are quick to blame "mental illness", surely there aren't 6x more mentally ill people in the US than Canada! But there sure are many many times more guns, sadly :-<

Every time someone writes an article about gun control, you can rewrite it to be an attack on encryption. If you're going to be holding "amoral objects" responsible, why not encryption?

> Do you know how a properly functioning society would react to an event like <The Silk Road / misc darkweb crime>? [...] Within months, the country's governing party led a bipartisan effort to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again (by banning TOR).

> The <technology> used in <misc crime ring> that resulted in all those <abused children> were legally <downloaded>

> The logic is outrageous: "<Children> got <abused>. So we need a backdoor into your phone."

And you could go on and on. The First and Second Amendments are related, now more than ever.

One last point. The author cites gun control as the solution to mass shootings, but there's a bit of a hole in his logic. France's gun control laws did nothing to prevent the Bataclan shooting from happening. All it did was make a room full of people that couldn't defend themselves.

Don't think encryption has ever killed someone.

The FBI would like to disagree with you on that. Why do you think they're trying to hack the iPhone? (Or at least, their claimed motive.)

To get more information about what caused the shooters to kill people using guns.

Edit: I mean, nobody walks into a bank and says "Everybody get down! I've got encryption!"

Understandably, but does it matter how directly encryption is involved? You could come up with contrived examples if you want.

Jigsaw the serial killer (of Saw infamy) has been captured by the police. However, he's got his final victim in a booby trapped room where he'll drown in an hour. The location and instructions to disable the traps are encrypted on a thumb drive, which he'll decrypt if the police set him free.

Edit: What should be evident is that no matter what means are used, the person behind it is responsible. Focusing on tools that are used by good people to protect themselves doesn't follow.

Oh, I know this one. You use some fancy suspending gear and enter Jigsaw's dreams to retrieve the clue![1]

[1]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209958/

Let's see....

If it were possible to remove all guns in USA with a wave of a magic wand: Number of deaths due to Gun Violence: 0

If it were possible to remove all encryption in USA with a wave of a magic wand: Number of deaths due to Gun Violence: A lot, lot , lot bigger than 0.

France's gun laws prevent more people getting killed. The Bataclan was an exceptional event. Mass shootings in the US seem to occur every frigging month. They aren't even exceptional anymore. Even the media refer to them as "another mass shooting" they are so common.

I wonder why the fact that 61-64% of all 'gun-related' deaths are suicides, was not mentioned... Most people here (from what I've seen) support 'death with dignity' (suicide), but just not with a gun...

ain't nothin' dignified about leaving a mess behind for someone else to clean up

so that's effectively saying 'suicide is fine, but only if "you" approve of the method'.

i'm saying find a way that doesn't leave so much mess behind for someone else to clean up

The author needs to get his head out of his ass, or at least move it a little in that direction.

As others have said, if reducing overall violence is the goal then rifles shouldn't be a major focus, reducing handgun ownership among people who engage in crime as a large part or all of their income should be a focus.

Extremists and lunatics with rifles have nothing on organized crime in terms of overall body count (which is allegedly what everyone wants to reduce).

The original Medium article[0] appeared on HN earlier. Can't find the link tho.

[0]: https://medium.com/@jamesallworth/the-u-s-has-gone-f-ing-mad...

>Which of the following would you attribute responsibility for what happened

Neither of these appears to be the person who committed the crime. How can an inanimate object bear responsibility for anything? The mind boggles.

Yeah, Australia does not have the almighty sacred 'right to bear arms' dogma which the NRA (and it's supporters/lobbyists) says is it's 'god given right' (or something to that effect) . Never mind that the government has access to my whole life and can track me and direct my life, and has me misinformed through propaganda. At least I have a gun.

While the government can actively access and track most of your life, the one thing they can't track is whether or not you own a gun. Attempts to create a national gun registry are routinely attacked by the same politicians who want access to your phone.

Main points are:

- People shot dead by terrorists are way less than by some gangs or psychopaths

- Privacy protects us from foreign surveillance

- To reduce number of people shot dead by gun (not by polices, not suicides), it is more reasonable to restrict gun access than to create backdoors for mass surveillance

Agree/Disagree?

In America, it's important that everyone have a gun in case the government starts doing things that the people disagree with. This way, the people can rise up and dismantle the tyranny.

Just like those fellows in Oregon, fighting the important fight of not wanting to pay to use government land for ranching.

Or all the people rising up against the rapidly growing police state the US government is building. I'm sure they'll rise any day now.

I'll be honest, there is a touch of sarcasm in this comment.

Those unfortunate victims of police shootings last year would have been perfectly fine if they'd had an AK-47 in their hands when the cops arrived instead of being unarmed.

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