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Comment by popey456963 | Hacker News Reader

I'm looking at this with a foreign eye, so I apologise for any ignorance on my behalf, I just find it amazing that so many Americans feel that gun control wouldn't help with decreasing shootings (Kasey_Junk linked this poll [0]).

Can someone shed some light on the views of these people? Living in the UK, with rather nice gun control restrictions, means we can't just buy guns at the local supermarket but of all of the ~ 8 people I know who has wanted a gun, every single one got a license and went through little to no hassle to get it, simply filling out a few forms. Yet seemingly because of this, our firearm related death rate is 0.23 per 100,000, compared with the US' 10.54 (~45x as many deaths [1]).

[0] http://www.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/187511/america...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...

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I think you need to be clear on the nuance of that opinion. Lots of Americans don't think that gun control will decrease "mass shootings" which is an imprecise term but is generally thought of as "multiple people being shot indiscriminately".

Its not even clear how mass shootings inform the firearm death rate as some places that track it include shootings with no deaths and others don't. Generally speaking mass shootings are rare everywhere, they are just less rare in the US.

So it is relatively easy to believe for instance that banning pistols (which the UK did) would have a huge impact on the firearm death rate of the US but no obvious impact on the number of mass shootings.

> Can someone shed some light on the views of these people?

I'm one of them. I see firearms ownership and self-defense as base civil rights, on par or even more important than speech or religion.

It doesn't even matter if strict gun control would decrease shootings, although I don't believe it would in the US. Abandoning the Fourth Amendment and allowing warrantless searches of homes and persons would undoubtably reduce crime as well, but proposing to do that would be met with near-unanimous protest. In both cases, it's not a matter of justification, but of basic human rights.

Two points. One, these polls give one an idea of how people might feel about an idea in principle, but don't tell you how people feel about the implementation of the idea as a law. Many of the gun control bills that are proposed have flaws that disproportionately affect law-abiding gun owners, and given the general skepticism of the efficacy of gun control laws here, the bills fail to advance.

The second point is that it isn't informative to average across the US to make statistical inferences: it's too heterogenous. Most violent crime in the US (keeping in mind different countries define violent crime uniquely and report it with varying rates) is cultural and is highly focal in limited parts of cities. Even with firearms, many parts of the US are statistically similar to similar areas in Europe when considering violent crime.

The point isn't to prevent shootings. The point isn't to protect your home. The point isn't to be able to hunt.

The point of the Fourth Amendment is that the citizens should have sufficient arms to be able to form an effective military force. Anything else is a side effect.

Could we do it? Well, let's say that President Trump turns into a tyrant, declares martial law, and suspends all civil liberties. Some fraction of the military would back the president, some would want to sit it out, and some would oppose the president. Ditto for the police. But if the citizens decided that they weren't going to put up with it, they could sway the balance - if the military was divided. Against a united military, probably not - unless there was foreign intervention.

Argh. Second Amendment, not Fourth.

As an Australian, my general understanding of the US stance is that:

- There's a constitutional right to bear arms so restrictions can only go so far.

- If it's criminal to own a gun, only criminals will own guns.

- The sheer number of guns in the US is so enormous that it would be near impossible to remove them all.

Unfortunately even if they enacted the same gun control laws used in the UK or Australia, it wouldn't do much in the short term. Long term it'd be a good start but it could take decades to get the genie back in the bottle.

> If it's criminal to own a gun, only criminals will own guns.

Note the implication here - if it becomes criminal to own a gun, many people will become criminals rather than surrender them.

> The sheer number of guns in the US is so enormous that it would be near impossible to remove them all.

Reports say around 375,000,000, but most people in the firearms community seem to believe those estimates are quite low.

> Unfortunately even if they enacted the same gun control laws used in the UK or Australia, it wouldn't do much in the short term.

Sure it would - it would make criminals of millions of Americans, including me. I would strongly assume that the enactment of UK- or Australia-style gun bans in the US would immediately precipitate mass civil disobedience at a bare minimum, and would be very likely to start a large-scale insurrection.

Being one of "those people", sure. It's a statistical fact that the countries with the strictest gun control laws have the most murders per capita. America actually sits at the bottom of that list, with one of the lowest murder per capita rates despite having one of the highest gun ownership per capita.

Those statistics you linked are inaccurate. Up to 2/3s of those firearms deaths are suicides.

If you prefer a more emotional argument, scott adams provides a perfectly good one here[0]. tl;dl: we want firearms to protect our homes and families from the millions of violent muslims you're importing.

Something else important to consider: whether you agree with me or not, there are enough people who feel the way I do about the issue that if a gun control law was to actually pass there would be a civil war.

[0]: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/146307088451/why-gun-control-ca...

> America actually sits at the bottom of that list, with one of the lowest murder per capita

What stats are you looking at? Surely you have a link that backs this up.

Wherever obama got his from. I'm guessing a CDC report.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/05/obama-adm...

And there's this chart

https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://...

that I got from this article

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

Also this chart

http://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-IN-...

and this chart

http://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-IN-...

Enough?

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