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Comment by palerdot | Hacker News Reader

Freak incidents are heart-breaking, particularly when we don't really know what one could have done to prevent them. As an outsider to a typical U.S lifestyle, one thing that puzzles me is why do people need a gun even when they are in a social place like a bar. This is not a first of its kind shooting happening in U.S. As far as I can remember, all the freak incidents in U.S some way or other involve shooting, out of the mind gunmen etc.

I'm thankful that at least in my country I will not get killed by a random person with whom I'm having conversation with.

P.S: I'm from India.

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You may not but it is more likely because you are affluent at least by Indian standards and when poor die all the time, it will be invisible to you.

It is likely you are not at receiving end of nativists in Mumbai/Bengaluru/Hyderabad and so on.

Your thankfulness looks more like an arrogance where death of less fortunate people would be random people dying in random towns/villages/cities and you couldn't possibly be bothered.

I disagree. Yes, there are freak deaths in India by its own standards. People die without being able to afford a nominal medical fee etc. I'm not at all denying that.

But, this is whole different thing, where individual's frustration and wrong perceptions results in death of people, which is not at all a case in India (or not as frequent as US gun killings).

Your point of poor people dying has nothing to do with any individual in India. It is a result of our whole political system which is designed in such a way that it is not easy to get solutions for seemingly straight forward things.

The closest thing which is similar to this incident is attacks based on caste which is common in India, but that too are not random, as victims are not taken by surprise when they are attacked/killed. Mostly they are overpowered by small group of narrow minded individuals, resulting in freak deaths.

I'm not sure if you are from India, and if yes from which part, as I really don't get the "nativists in Mumbai/Bengaluru/Hyderabad" part. I'm also not sure what you mean by nativists in India, as it may signify one of 100 things, depending on which part of India you are from.

Again, I'm not saying there are no freak deaths in India. It is common in every corner of the world where there is more than one man. But, death by an individual in a public setting is not common and that too by a gun is almost impossible in India. That was my whole point.

> Again, I'm not saying there are no freak deaths in India. It is common in every corner of the world where there is more than one man. But, death by an individual in a public setting is not common and that too by a gun is almost impossible in India. That was my whole point.

Absolutely understandable observation. Factual even. I don't own a gun and have no financial interest in companies that manufacture or sell ammunition. However, I'm afraid the perception among readers might be that this is a problem we can solve by reducing or eliminating access to guns.

I'm not aware of the full details of what happened but I think we need to address the underlying issues as well.

There's clearly a lot of cognitive dissonance and leaps of faith even in this discussion because apparently the Klan's activities amount to terrorism but actions of a deranged lone wolf do not.

As much as we talk about us being civilized, conversations like this remind us that we are all fundamentally animals with a very limited capacity to care about issues that we don't see as directly affecting us.

I think the question I care about is how do we prevent these things from happening repeatedly? I'll be blunt. I have no interest in "justice" for the victim's family for the sake of "justice".

By the way, I wouldn't call what happens in India as "freak deaths".

http://m.hindustantimes.com/india/it-is-beef-says-lab-about-...

> Police maintained that the report was of no use in the investigation into the murder and assault.

Not trying to single out India. There are people who benefit from this bountiful harvest of fear and hatred everywhere. I'm just saying the issue is more than gun control.

It is perfectly well-known how to avoid such things: Stronger gun control to raise the difficulty of achieving death of others; state-enforced education levels with low to zero cost. Sadly these things run counter to the convictions of a loud enough part of the US population that they cannot usefully be implemented.

American just love their bear arms.

Problem is not enough people carry guns. This guy knew he wouldn't be met with any resistance and that's why he was able to do what he did.

Please tell me you mean this as a joke. D:

It's not an uncommon belief in the US. Whenever a school shooting occurs or other mass shooting occurs, Americans come out in droves to blame it on gun control, and insist that the solution to gun violence is more guns in the hands of the "right" people.

Events like that tend to lead Americans to buy more guns and ammo in anticipation of stricter gun control laws, rather than consider whether the proliferation of guns contributes to the problem at all.

You need to be a special kind of idiot to actually think that increases safety.

Is the fix to some countries having nuclear weapons that everyone has the right to nuclear weapons?

Or, have we come to the conclusion that non-proliferation is the answer?

Often, people like this don't have the right to bear arms. It's not described whether the victim was a permanent resident but considering when he graduated from college, I think it's reasonable to say that he wasn't.

Being an Indian national, he would have had to have waited 8 years or more to become a permanent resident. In that time, he would have had his visa renewed repeatedly. His visa is likely to have been an H1-B.

I suppose, then, the questions are: Are you in favour of foreigners in America bearing arms? Or are you in favour of a faster permanent residency process?

Both of those things are the only real way that the victim could have legally carried a firearm.

I am in favor of legal immigrants carrying arms provided they can pass all the other legal requirements for ownership and carry.

Even still, it need not be just the intended target victim that is armed. You need a critical mass of enough bystanders having the capability to defend others. That is the only way to provide a chance at an effective defense as well as a strong psychological deterrent.

Talk to soldiers, talk to police officers, talk to marines, talk to any professional who's ever experienced actual battle. Ask them:

Would you feel confident to use your gun when you're relaxed in a social setting and someone suddenly starts shooting?

(I won't spoil the answer for you, plenty have been asked, you can google it.)

It's a reasonable question, but I know I certainly wouldn't feel confident unarmed in that scenario.

Why doesn't this logic work in the rest of the developed world?

Not sure what you're saying. Every place in the world has shootings and mass killings, not just the US. They're all marked by the same tragic feature - the total inability of the victims to defend themselves.

I understand, but in the developed world, every country with lower murder rates than the US (nearly all of them) has stricter gun laws, and in most cases much stricter. There is a somewhat rough relationship between stricter gun control and lower violent crime rates, which is the opposite of what you would expect if violent criminals were encouraged by defenseless civilians.

Also, there are instances in the US and elsewhere of shootings on places like military bases where everyone is armed, and many cases where the shooter planned for a confrontation with armed police. It might seem counter-intuitive, but much like the death penalty does not seem to be an effective deterrent for murderers, I don't see much evidence that armed civilians are an effective deterrent for murderers. I think murderers in general just don't think very logically.

The core question I'm asking is, why is gun control so effective in every other developed country? Why don't murder rates increase when gun control increases and ordinary people can't defend themselves?

Edit: Also, I want to address this claim:

> They're all marked by the same tragic feature - the total inability of the victims to defend themselves.

This is not always true. For a recent example, look at the shooting in Dallas. The victims were all armed, as were many civilians in the area:

> [The Dallas police chief] said 20 to 30 people, some of them wearing camouflage, showed up at the peaceful Black Lives Matter protest carrying AR-15 rifles and such items as gas masks, ammunition gear and bulletproof vests. “Doesn’t make sense to us,” he said, “but that’s their right in Texas,” where people can legally carry long firearms in public.

> Those people “began to run” when the shooting started, Brown said. “For our officers, they were suspects” until any involvement in the deadly sniper attack could be ruled out, he added.

- https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/dallas-police-chief-...

You can also look at the history of shootings on military bases: http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/A-History-of-Shootin...

There's shootings like the 2011 one in Tucson, Arizona, where very lenient concealed carry laws did not seem to deter the shooter.

There are also instances of crimes being stopped by civilians with guns, I just want to point out that "all mass killings are marked by this feature" is not true.

First, you can't control a right.

Second the cities in the US with the strictest gun control laws have the highest gun death rates. I.e Detroit.

The thing that puzzles me most is the seemingly American tendency of aggression towards strangers. The same man in Europe might have thrown the same slurs, but just gotten drunk after that; or if he were so deranged, maybe killed himself. Maybe I misunderstand it, but there seems to be a tendency to let others pay for your bad feelings.

This is a stereotype that isn't racism only because it is nationalist in nature.

I haven't had a personal altercation get violent since I was a child. I could find dozens of anecdotes of violence in Europe, but that wouldn't lead to any greater understanding...

You cannot deny that murders are way off the charts in the US. I also keep hearing anecdotes like "random guy stands on a highway bridge with a semi automatic rifle and shoots down at the oncoming cars, until one of the people on the highway snipes him down". Those are WAY rarer in other parts of the world.

I get that you are offended, I think I could have gotten my wording better. I'm referring to the American culture somehow not suppressing such behavior enough, and I'm not saying people in the US are intrinsically worse than others.

> why do people need a gun...

That's my sincere question, too. Even a sight of people toting guns gives me chills.

> Even a sight of people toting guns gives me chills.

That sounds like a psychological condition known as hoplophobia. I think it's best treated by familiarising oneself with weapons of all sorts.

In general weapons aren't, in and of themselves, scary. It's the intent of the people carrying them which can be scary or not. Drunken half-wit shouting slurs? Scary. Single mother buying groceries with her kids? Not scary.

A sidearm on a belt is as inherently scary as a knife clipped to a pocket: not very, IMHO. It's all about the person carrying it.

As for why folks need weapons, IMHO arms-bearing is the fundamental difference between a slave and a freeman. I'd love to live in a modern Western society in which every adult carried a weapon of some sort as part of daily life, although I'm not wishful enough to think that our current society could do so safely.

> That sounds like a psychological condition known as hoplophobia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoplophobia

"Hoplophobia is a political term and not a recognized medical phobia."

Where I come from, there's no need for firearms or other weapons.

Guns are already forbidden where drinks are consumed. More laws was not the answer in this case.

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