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Comment by superswordfish | Hacker News Reader

There's a difference between owning a gun and carrying a Glock 22 at all times. It's sad that people imagine themselves in some action film surrounded by violent criminals out for their blood. I take it that where you live there is no police force and that you and your family are always isolated from bystanders who could help, witnesses who would discourage an attack on your family, etc. You've chosen to live in a failed state with your large family, it seems.

Statistically, it's far more likely that one of your children will kill themselves, or a friend, or each other, with your gun than it is that it will be helpful for self-defense. This is going to be a bigger deal as your kids get older.

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Statistically, it's far more likely that one of your children will kill themselves, or a friend, or each other, with your gun than it is that it will be helpful for self-defense.

That can't be true, for the number of fatal gun "accidents" per year is ~600 (scare quotes because some number of those are whitewashed murders or negligent homicides), the number of non-suicide homicides is ~11,000, and the number of suicides using a gun ~19,000.

It's very easy to see that the number of self-defense incidents using a gun is substantially larger than those numbers, from anecdotes, to the very lowest formal estimate of 108,000 (see the CDC funded 2013 monograph at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/18319/priorities-for-research-to-... pages 15-6). The highest estimates range to 2.5 million, but that was a while ago, and crime rates have continued to decrease.

http://content.csbs.utah.edu/~rhuef/courses/Notes5321-6321/t...

The risk is far greater when there's a gun around, especially for children. Also it's a bit disingenuous to compare death figures with self-defense incidents where the outcome may have been simple property theft. Injury would be more appropriate, and even that fails as a comparison.

Nice move the goalposts, that's for children aged 5–14. And since those ages are completely non-standard in the literature, we can be sure the data set was massaged until they could "prove" their point using just that interval.

Texas is the only state in the nation that allows the use of lethal force to protect property, so your other point fails, while, I grant, it's informally allowed to some extent elsewhere.

Pardon my lack of familiarity with "the literature" and its standard age groups. Good of you to immediately dismiss the data as "massaged." I couldn't even view your study.

Don't the ages 5 and 14 strike you as strange? What boundaries do they fall on? Not any standard one I can remember for young children, and 14 is a bit more common, but it's not when you become a teen, or the traditional coming of age which is also generally 13, and more like 16/18/21 in the modern US.

If you've been in the field of science long enough, you learn the smell of bad studies, and this one is patently obvious. But I can look more closely at it if you insist.

As for viewing "my" study, note the "Download Free PDF" button to the upper middle right, all you have to do is supply an email address to do it as a guest. Or ask and I'll put a copy up.

And since your point was couched as a warning to others, another counter is that it's relatively easy to keep your family from joining the bad statistics by gun proofing your kids (which you should do anyway, since you can't control when they might come into contact with one outside your home), and storing your guns responsibly.

It's sad that people are often confronted by violent criminals. If this time were to come, should we just hope that police and/or bystanders will protect us? Criminals seek situations where neither is readily available.

You're free to make your own decision. I'm not about to pack heat every day for some bogeyman. The few times I've felt threatened, it's been trivial to remove myself from the situation. Awareness and caution can go a long way.

And no, I'm not here to advocate taking your guns away. Just trying to suggest that there are certain downsides to always carrying a lethal weapon, and that given our mostly secure society, people might view it as antisocial.

We seem to be in complete agreement. Personally, I do not conceal carry; however, my point was to state why some might want to do so.

Wow, you've made a lot of assumptions about me and not very charitable ones. Let me address a few of them:

1. I'm not a TV watcher. The last movie I saw was "Frozen", and before that I can't remember. I'm certainly not motivated to live-out some TV action-hero fantasy. Moreover, your comment has a strong expectation that egocentrism undergirds one's actions. My obligation as a father is think of my family before myself. If you're a parent, I hope share this ethos; if not, I hope you develop it before having children.

2. Even if I were motivated by TV, I'm not sure which action film you're referring to. I missed the one where the dad is leaving the store with the wife and kids, pushing a shopping cart full of groceries, is accosted by "violent criminals out for blood", shoots and possibly kills the criminals in front of the children, then makes their epic retreat to safety in the minivan, with the wife on talking to the 911 operator in between sobs and episodes of panic-induced vomiting. No doubt this happy tale ends with permanent hearing damage for all involved, years of court appearances, legal fees, and a possible prison sentence, and the kids in therapy after witnessing human bloodshed by the time their 4th birthday rolls around. Doesn't sound like a movie I'd like to see.

3. I'm not sure why you've assumed that violent criminals don't exist, or exist to such a limited degree that their presence should be referenced mockingly. In the United States in 2014, "[t]here were an estimated 1,165,383 violent crimes (murder and non-negligent homicides, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults) reported by law enforcement." [1] Surely this ought to at least make one pause to consider how to protect one's family.

4. I also don't understand why you think the presence of witnesses or general availability of law enforcement is indefeasible deterrent to violent crime, especially in light of the recent events in Orlando. [2] Finally, the Supreme Court has even ruled that police, et al., are not obligated to protect you. [3] Even if the police appeared on the scene the very moment a crime were committed, they would still be reacting to violent crime that has already occurred, and have no legal duty to intervene.

Source:

1. https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2015/september/latest-crime...

2. http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/12/us/orlando-nightclub-shooting/

3. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-pol...

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