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88 pointsanorphirith165 comments

Folks, the number of shooting crimes (including school shootings) in the United States is going down. I know times like this are the worst times to mention this fact, but it's true [0].

The media frenzy makes this look like some kind of out-of-control epidemic, but that's just not the case.

This does not mean we should do nothing about them...any shooting is an event that should not happen. But it's important to realize this fact because too many people are approaching the topic emotionally rather than rationally and proposing extreme reactions to trends that simply aren't as extreme as they perceive them to be.

If you disagree, ask yourself why there are so many cases of shootings in the news all of a sudden. While some recent shootings have indeed been tail-event massacres (i.e., unusually major), many have been events that would otherwise not have attracted much attention (that psycho teacher who shot himself in a closet a few weeks ago comes to mind...why the heck was that on national news?).

[0] https://mises.org/wire/there-are-fewer-school-shootings-now-...

This is one of those statistics where there are only two distinct values that matter:

- Zero shootings - Too many shootings

Any number bigger than zero is too much and we should do our best as a society to decrease it to zero.

That's not my point. My point is that facts are being overlooked in order to exaggerate the trend.

Pick a random person on the street and they'll probably tell you the number of shootings in the USA is going up, not down.

As I said, action should be taken. But if people are misinformed, the correct action cannot be taken.

If we are to continue to reduce the number of events, we need to be more upset about each event.

edit: I agree that we should have the correct information. But it's important to keep pushing to improve.

Even conceding that point, so what? There are probably fewer cases of workplace sexual harassment than there were 20 years ago. That doesn't mean people shouldn't be vehement about ending them altogether.

Reducing the outcomes to a binary, eliminating the ability to perceive incremental improvement, is a toxic, antisocial and anti-intellectual bit of rhetoric.

He's saying that the ideal is zero shootings. Having fewer shootings is good and can be appreciated, but the ideal goal is still zero.

Anything more than zero shootings is too much? What a ridiculous assertion.

What about deaths from car accidents?

What about deaths from hammer?

Choking on your toothbrush?

Jaywalking?

Infections resulting from not washing hands?

Carbon monoxide?

Your absolutism is dishonest and unhelpful.

Yes, there are too many deaths from all of those things, except possibly the toothbrush thing.

You may be joking about "Infections resulting from not washing hands," but hospital-acquired infections, which can easily come from exactly this, kill something like 100,000 people a year.

And many of these are more highly regulated than guns.

Stabbing everyone to death would reduce shootings to zero.

Probably not a good policy, even so.

There are about 800 people from Las Vegas with bullet wounds that would have fared better against an elderly man with only a knife.

The parent's comment wasn't that eliminating guns would simply lead to more stabbings. It was an example of a policy - literally stab everyone to death, first order - that would have the desired effect but where clearly other aspects than "no shootings" obviously dominate.

That said, it's not a perfect response in that it's a logical elaboration of presumably non-literal rhetoric.

> That said, it's not a perfect response in that it's a logical elaboration of presumably non-literal rhetoric.

You might view it as a pointed way of seeking clarification of the argument really being made behind that presumably hyperbolic rhetoric.

Sure. That was meant to be quite mild criticism.

"He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither and will lose both."

- Benjamin Franklin

> He was writing about a tax dispute between the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the family of the Penns, the proprietary family of the Pennsylvania colony who ruled it from afar. And the legislature was trying to tax the Penn family lands to pay for frontier defense during the French and Indian War. And the Penn family kept instructing the governor to veto. Franklin felt that this was a great affront to the ability of the legislature to govern. And so he actually meant purchase a little temporary safety very literally. The Penn family was trying to give a lump sum of money in exchange for the General Assembly's acknowledging that it did not have the authority to tax it.

https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...

Is this statistic different other statistics about homicides and other forms of death?

- domestic violence that results in homicide - homicides in prison - automobile related deaths - drug overdoses - suicides

I think most people would agree that life is precious and should be preserved. I'm not sure most people would agree that we could get any of the above statistics to zero.

"The media frenzy makes this look like some kind of out-of-control epidemic, but that's just not the case."

That's exactly the case. Just because numbers are going down doesn't make it any less of an epidemic.

"people are approaching the topic emotionally rather than rationally and proposing extreme reactions"

Suggesting people don't own assault rifles is not an "extreme reaction".

First off, the term assault rifle probably isn’t what you think you’re referring to.

Second, the reason effective conversations can’t be had on gun control is because of how emotional and out of touch the anti-gun crowd gets. A lot of this is due to activists and the media riling people up.

Gun owners are all about safety and personal responsibility, and many do support sensible gun control laws. The problem is, as soon as someone stands up and says “Oh hey here’s an idea why don’t we just ban all guns lol!!” then you know the conversation is over, and after that point it’s just a downward spiral.

Nothing can be done unless people start taking a rational, sober approach to these issues. Not with tear-fueled rage.

The people you are arguing with didn’t shoot and kill your family, in fact quite the opposite, if they had the chance they would probably jump at the opportunity of saving them with a firearm. You could argue whether or not they’d be effective, but it’s the thought that counts.

"Gun owners are all about safety and personal responsibility"

Not all gun owners.

Since HN only shows vote totals, I want you to know that you aren't alone.

Thank you, it will be some comfort after this post has long been downvoted and dead.

Whatever in the world are you talking about? Forget about the strawmen in your head and read what people are actually saying here.

Coming from a country where people don't have guns, I don't really see the problem with no guns. They're an awful public health risk. They have basically no advantages. Even for their use in suicide alone, they would be just as reasonable to ban as any commodity you could name - for instance, heroin, or dynamite, or crystal meth.

Come spend some time with gun owners here in the states, and you won’t see a problem with people owning guns either.

I'm sure there are many nice, reasonable gun owners. If I lived in the states, I'd probably buy a gun myself - I think they're cool.

On the other hand, as a reasonable, intelligent adult who reads and understands statistics, I can say without any doubt they are awful for the USA as a whole. So, just like I'd ban leaded gas, selling alcohol to ten year-olds, and driving drunk, I'd ban guns. There are many, many less harmful things to go full-libertarian on than machines designed to kill people.

They absolutely have the advantage of putting a check on government power. The US is a very heterogeneous country (probably much more so than the country you’re referencing). Not all groups have a great relationship with the government and very sensibly feel that giving the government a monopoly on firearms is not in their best interest.

This argument is absurd. Most of the time, Americans can't organize enough to start a union, or even join one. The idea of Americans organizing an insurgency is ridiculous. The idea of Americans winning an insurgency, against the largest army in the world - an army that has more counter-insurgency experience than anybody except perhaps the IDF, is still more ridiculous. Guns will never check anything because the only thing that checks power is another powerful organization - a protest movement, or a union. Guns are what happen when a protest movement fails, and if you're relying on civilian-grade stuff at this point, your protest movement is screwed anyway.

There’s more to the government than the army. Go talk to some people from an ethnic group over represented in prison and ask them if the idea of police being armed while citizens are forcibly unarmed sits well...

This argument is absurd. Any "reasonable, intelligent person" who's read basically any history book ever written would know that the United States would not descend into civil war with its military intact.

I guess Iraq and Vietnam didn't get the message on this.

"Defeating" the military isn't the goal, in the same way that the goal of Iraqi and Vietnam insurgents was not the goal.

The goal is to make the conflict so expensive and costly that they decide not to continue it.

For example, imagine if those hundreds of thousands of uninvolved civilians that died in Iraq were instead innocent Americans caught in the crossfire of a war.

This would be an extremely high cost to the ruling government.

Yes, even if the government is "evil", because real life entities are not comic book villains.

They are rational entities with rational motivation. And presumably one of those motivations of any government, even an evil one, is to not rule over a desolate wasteland of ashes.

Or in other words, sure the government could launch hundreds of nukes and kill all of its enemies. But it would do that, because the government is not a literal doomsday cult.

The point of an armed citizenry is to act as a DETERRENCE. It is to increase the costs to the government by saying "yes, you can win this... But only by killing millions, and since you are not a doomsday cult, this is a high cost".

It is a deterrence in order to stop the government from becoming an evil dictatorship in the first place, kinda like have a nuke pointed at your own country.

Guessing you've never been to Idaho

Do they really curb the power though?

What is one reasonable scenario of a thing the government may want to do, that we could stop because we have a firearm.

I have a gun, and I don't think the government really has a right to tax me for an unjust undeclared war. If I don't pay my taxes, I don't think the United States military or law enforcement cares that I may be armed.

I think the police would be even more aggressive if they knew citizens were unarmed.

I think the police are more aggresssive because they know any citizen can be armed

When there’s a power imbalance, it’s sadly human nature to exploit it and become aggressive. For instance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

There are so many guns, police have to assume everyone is armed in dangerous. So accidental shootings by police of innocent civilians is significant and, unfortunately in our society, seen as mostly unavoidable.

This is completely unrelated to the Stanford experiment.

Whenever I hear that brought up as an argument, I recommend listening to what Jim Jefferies had to say about gun control. Despite Jim Jefferies being a comedian and phrasing his arguments in a comical, comedic way, I've yet to see anyone give a convincing counter-argument, especially to the "you're bringing a gun to a drone fight" part.

Jim Jefferies on Gun Control, part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0

Jim Jefferies on Gun Control, part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9UFyNy-rw4

I personally think this part of the second amendment is outdated.

The check on violent government overreach are the moral compasses of individual soldiers, peaceful protests and a free media. If we get past all of these things, no "well regulated Militia" is going to stop the U.S. Army. The best chance would be state national guards. My point here is that fully automatic fire, tanks, artillery and air support make any resistance useless. Perhaps a guerrilla war could be fought, but to someone seeking complete control fighting guerrillas is an annoyance, not an obstacle.

This is mostly because the FDA tightly restricts ownership of 'destructive devices', which are the weapons needed to fight an effective war.

Just this week I saw footage of police murdering an unarmed man in Baton Rouge. Had that person actually been armed, maybe he could have defended himself.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/03/3...

Had that man been armed, they wouldn’t have even bothered with an investigation after shooting him. Hey, he was armed, waved a gun at a cop, must have been a bad guy.

Likewise, given an active shooter at a school and armed teachers, how do police tell the difference between the perpetrator and the armed teachers defending the kids? Ya, they don’t.

Adding more guns to a situations where police are using guns unjustly is not going to end well.

I also come from a near gun-less country, and think a similar system in America would work. However, there are some arguments in favor of guns that are not trivially ignored.

- Simply, guns are fun. Marksmanship is a serious sport of discipline and self-control.

- Hunting is also great recreation, is sometimes good for population control, and hunting is another reason for preserving and protecting nature.

- Self-defense. Sometimes, you need to use violence for self defense. Guns are a great way to apply violence.

- Independence. Partly, this ties in with self-defense above. Partly, this is about the government applying 'collective punishment' on all gun owners for the action of a very select few. Finally, some of this is about being able to resist a potential unjust government (i.e. the militia mentioned in the second amendment)

Now, all of these points have counter arguments. I think non of them hold up to the point of "we should keep semi-automatic weapons with 30 round magazines". But the arguments exist, and ignoring them isn't gonna help convince those that want to keep their guns.

I'm not American - so I'm not particularly out to convince anybody. I think gun-ownership is really embedded into the deep and often weird tangle of american identity, and it's basically immune to rational argument at this point.

On a purely technical level, I think the problem with the arguments you've mentioned are they don't generally stand on an even footing with the arguments against gun-ownership, except perhaps the one about self defense. Gun violence is a problem that costs lives, tears apart communities, and destroys families. For gun ownership to make sense, it needs to serve a similarly grave purpose. In that vein, only self-defense would fit the bill.

At which point, we break out the statistics - and it turns out that guns are kind of terrible for self defense. I think Americans would be better off just paying more taxes (with the money they would have spent on guns), and spending the money on police or social programs.

That said, many iconic possessions of western society are pretty horrible from a cost-benefit perspective. So I guess guns are just the most egregious.

Yes, the overarching counter argument is that these aren't good enough reasons given the bad results of legally owned guns.

I also missed the argument "gun-ownership is part of my identity" it is not an argument that comes up, because people don't expect it to convince gun-opponents. But I think it is the main reason opposition to gun-control is so strong. Thank you for pointing that out.

Guns are certainly part of the American identity, for many Americans at least. Sadly, there are some pretty horrible biases and misconceptions as well.

There is a theory that democracy flourishes, when the Government is not that much better armed than its citizens. So, the idea that we need to be armed against tyranny.

There are a couple of problems with this, in present-day America. First, as citizens get better armed with greater lethal force, simultaneously, the police have militarized. So while people are better armed, authorities are too.

The other problem, requires some deeper understanding. Tyranny is always a threat, but the tyrannical government of the 21st century won’t bust in to take your guns. They don’t need to. The tyranny is more subtle, often financial, and when they control public opinion they don’t need to take the guns.

> Finally, some of this is about being able to resist a potential unjust government

Anyone who truly believes private citizen gun owners in the US could ever band together and overthrow the US government is deluded, at best. The US military would shut them down in record time.

It is indeed, a wrong idea. Nevertheless, it is an idea that needs to be addressed, not swept-aside. The same goes with all the other arguments I mentioned. If we just ignore these and say "There is no possible reason for owning guns" we are essentially arguing in bad faith.

Generally, convincing people isn't helped by immediately dismissing their entire position as trivially wrong and deluded.

> Generally, convincing people isn't helped by immediately dismissing their entire position as trivially wrong and deluded.

Who's doing that, though? Seems like a very small minority of people say "there is no possible reason for owning guns" and then refuses to elaborate when presented with possible reasons.

Don't open with "there's no possible reason for owning guns". Perhaps open with 'on balance, I think the arguments for gun ownership are far outweighed by the arguments against it'.

Sure. But in that case I'd ask that people on the other side of the debate not open with blatantly absolutist statements as well.

Let's not hold the two sides to different standards of argumentation.

Keep in mind, the US Military is largely composed of American humans.

Sure. I don't think a potential dictator would stand a chance if he/she didn't have the support of the US military, or at least the support of enough of it to suppress the rest. Either way, private-citizen gun owners are a rounding error in the equation. They just don't matter in this scenario.

> First off, the term assault rifle probably isn’t what you think you’re referring to.

It probably doesn't mean what I think, either, yet we're all still perfectly capable of understanding GP's point.

> Second, the reason effective conversations can’t be had on gun control is because of how emotional and out of touch the anti-gun crowd gets. A lot of this is due to activists and the media riling people up.

I don't think it's intellectually honest to blame it all on "anti-gun crowd", especially since we're talking about a highly heterogeneous group. It would be equally dishonest to just blame it all on "pro-gun crowd" being overly emotional and riled up by NRA.

> Gun owners are all about safety and personal responsibility, and many do support sensible gun control laws.

I'm sure all gun owners are all about safety and personal responsibility, just as much as every gun-control activist is for banning all guns.

Here's an interesting question: if so many gun owners really do support sensible gun control laws, how come this country hasn't had sensible gun control laws put in place to deal with this problem? And let's not pretend it's not a problem, either.

> Nothing can be done unless people start taking a rational, sober approach to these issues.

I completely agree. A rational, sober approach to these issues does not go down the path of laying blame exclusively on one side of the debate, no matter which side that is.

> if so many gun owners really do support sensible gun control laws

Would you be willing to outline what you count as sensible gun control laws and what you hope to accomplish with these gun laws?

First off, legalizing CDC research into gun violence seems like a reasonable step

I think that would be a great first step. For it to be acceptable it will need to be very careful to ensure the privacy of gun owners.

While I’m all for unbiased, scientific research on gun violence, I have little confidence that it won’t just become the liberal’s version of climate change denial.

The CDC was never explicitly banned from researching gun violence, though the Dickey Amendment "outlawed spending tax dollars on gun control advocacy", which made it difficult to determine what sorts of research might be allowed. This was recently clarified to explicitly allow gun violence research, though that still isn't funded.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...

Look at Germany’s gun laws. Way saber than the USA.

Not German, can you explain what Germany's laws are and how it makes them safer than the USA?

Storage laws are super strict, police can and do come in your house to check that you have your gun in your safe. You aren’t supposed to lose it, or let anyone else get ahold of it. Psych evaluation required for those under 25 (to cut down on school shootings), more restrictions on fuller background checks and so on.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_legislation_in_Germany

I would be for (and think it could pass) psych evals for those under 25 if we paired it with allowing anyone over 18 who passed to buy guns.

We could do better on background checks but the devil is in the details.

There is no way police checking storage at any time would pass at the federal level and I am doubtful it would have a noticeable effect on gun deaths but I could be convinced otherwise.

We already allow anyone over 18 to buy guns, without the psych evals.

> There is no way police checking storage at any time would pass at the federal level and I am doubtful it would have a noticeable effect on gun deaths but I could be convinced otherwise.

German statistics say otherwise. I love how pro-gun arguments are always "Ya it worked in country X, but it wouldn't work in the USA because we are third world" or something like that.

There is currently a restriction for selling handguns to people under 21.

>German statistics say otherwise.

I completely believe that the totality of German gun laws help reduce gun deaths. What I am specifically unsure of is how police checks of storage influence gun deaths. My initial assumption is that they would cause a <1% reduction in gun deaths but I don't have any data backing up that assumption so I could be persuaded that it would have a larger effect.

One of the common argument of the pro-gun crowd is that gun control doesn't work because criminals who would fail background checks still manage to get guns...e.g. they get them from friends or they still them from houses. Or to say "the criminals will easily get guns, while those law abiding citizens will find it hard time getting guns to protect themselves."

Gun storage laws (and smart gun laws if the NRA would allow them) are designed specifically to address that.

If gun storage laws only lead to a 1% reduction in gun deaths, (mostly via suicide via dad's gun), then they are totally worth it. I'm sure the effectiveness is a bit higher than that.

Police busting in your home to check anything is dead on arrival. They need a warrant and probable cause. Not happening. The other stuff is good.

They don't bust in, you have given them permission already. This is like signing a contract with a bails bondsman, they can enter your house and you can't sue them for trespassing.

This is what sane gun laws look like in developed countries.

> It probably doesn't mean what I think, either, yet we're all still perfectly capable of understanding GP's point

The 1994 assault weapons ban implemented by gun control advocates defines it as a gun with a bayonet mount on it (among other cosmetic definitions that it used).

So going by that definition, I would be curious as to why the OP wants to ban bayonet mounts.

Perhaps that is unfair but that is the literal definition that gun control advocates used!

Lets say the OP is instead talking about semi automatic weapons as at least rate of fire is a quality that a reasonable person could identify as being dangerous.

If they are talking about that, we'll then I'd like to point out that basically all weapons are semi automatic.

So that means that the OP either wants to ban bayonet mounts or wants to ban almost all guns.

Both of these positions I'd regard as ridiculous.

I want to point out an imbalance in your reasoning. Essentially, you are judging both sides by a different standard.

> how emotional and out of touch the anti-gun crowd gets > someone stands up and says “Oh hey here’s an idea why don’t we just ban all guns lol!!”

Here, you are essentially judging gun-opponents by their worst examples. That is, you are judging them by their members that are loud and unreasonable.

> Gun owners are all about safety and personal responsibility, and many do support sensible gun control laws.

Here, you are judging gun-owners and presumably those who are against all firearms being illegal by something better than their worst examples. When you say "Gun owners are all about safety and personal responsibility" you are essentially judging this group by their ideals, not their practice. Moreover, it seems unlikely that literally all gun owners actually hold these ideals. Those that don't are a fringe crowd, but you judged the 'anti-gun' people by that same fringe.

Now, I am not accusing you, this is rather natural. You yourself are a gun-owner that is responsible and cares about safety, and most if not all gun-owners you know are the same. So, it makes sense to assume that this holds for all gun-owners. At the same time, the less outrageous gun-opponents are much less noticeable to you. Mostly because outrageous things get propagated.

Note that the opposite happens among gun-opponents. They share outrageously irresponsible gun-owners, and presume gun-opponents are reasonable like themselves. To make actual progress on gun laws, we need to start engaging the reasonable part of the opposing side.

This still involves tough choices, because in the end one side wants to restrict gun ownership a lot more than the other side. Gun-owners are afraid to give ground because it might be a slippery slope, and gun-opponents are frustrated that even the most reasonable proposals are rejected.

The pro gun crowd is as irrational, if not more, than the anti gun crowd. Ever since the NRA in the late 1970s shifted its focus away from responsible gun use to guns as a means to fight against internal tyranny, the “Personal responsibility” aspect has fallen by the wayside. Any laws attempting to enforce personal responsibility (insurance, storage) as in other gun using countries (Germany, Switzerland) are promptly lobbied against because that isn’t what that side is about anymore.

You're calling the other side irrational, and yet you're comparing America with a homogeneous nation that is 95% white. Why not use Latin American countries that have very strict gun control laws instead of Germany?

I don't see how race has anything to do with this.

America is supposedly a first world developed country, not a third world undeveloped or developing one, though we are often left wondering.

> Gun owners are all about safety and personal responsibility

If that were universally true, we wouldn't have so many gun deaths in the US. I absolutely believe that some (perhaps even many) gun owners handle their guns safely and responsibly, but the laws ensuring such safety and responsibility are few and far between and lack teeth.

> Nothing can be done unless people start taking a rational, sober approach to these issues. Not with tear-fueled rage.

You're attacking a straw man here. The majority of the pro gun control crowd pushes sensible restrictions and limits on firearm ownership: universal background checks, stricter controls on what can disqualify some people from owning a gun, mandatory training and licensing, restrictions on ammo purchases and magazine size (notice how I'm not even mentioning "assault weapons" here). Sure, there are some (unfortunately loud) people who scream "ban all guns", which isn't productive to the discussion, but those people are in the minority. In the end, we can't even get these sensible regulations in place due to rabid groups like the NRA that spread FUD and whip their constituents into a frenzy.

>universal background checks

This would be worth doing.

>stricter controls on what can disqualify some people from owning a gun

Possible but it would depend on what you wanted to disqualify people for.

>mandatory training and licensing

I don't think this is reasonable or politically feasible.

>restrictions on ammo purchases

Not sure what good this would do in reducing gun deaths. You would be hitting target shooter pretty hard for not much gain.

>restrictions on ... magazine size

I don't see how this would be very helpful and always strikes me as something advocated for by people who don't understand guns very much. It's part of why you see such opposition to it.

> > mandatory training and licensing

> I don't think this is reasonable or politically feasible.

I agree that it's not politically feasible, but am curious as to why you don't think it's a reasonable requirement. No one reasonably complains against people have to complete a training course in order to get a driver's license (or to the requirement of a license itself). Both activities require a proper understanding of operation and safety, and operation and safety failures of both can easily result in severe injury and death. Ignoring the political issues around this, I'm entirely baffled how the idea of this requirement could be considered unreasonable.

> > restrictions on ammo purchases

> Not sure what good this would do in reducing gun deaths. You would be hitting target shooter pretty hard for not much gain.

In the recent Las Vegas shooting, the shooter reportedly fired several hundreds of rounds. Presumably if he had been legally limited to owning, say 50 or 100 rounds (more than enough for self defense in the home, and sufficient for most hunting outings), fewer injuries and deaths would have occurred.

I will grant the argument that mass shootings are by far the smallest percentage of gun deaths; you only need a single round to commit suicide or for a child to accidentally shoot him/herself, or a few rounds to kill your family, so this sort of limit wouldn't help there.

Regarding target shooters, I think we can easily make an exception for ammo purchased and used at a licensed gun range, as long as the ammo purchased for target use does not leave the gun range. (Shoot it or lose it, basically.)

But I think at the end of the day the question is "what can reduce unlawful harm without putting an undue burden on lawful use?" ... and I think ammo purchase/ownership limits pass that test.

> > restrictions on ... magazine size

> I don't see how this would be very helpful and always strikes me as something advocated for by people who don't understand guns very much. It's part of why you see such opposition to it.

Perhaps not, and I'll admit I'm certainly no gun expert. But a reload or magazine swap isn't instant, and in the case where a shooter is actively engaged with law enforcement, having to pause to reload after (say) 10 rounds instead of 50 could easily mean fewer deaths. Again, if I apply the test I suggest above, I think it passes.

I'll also admit that I personally do not believe in the need or fundamental "right" of private firearm ownership. I'd be fine with a repeal of the 2nd Amendment with an explicit directive to allow the individual states to make their own gun laws, and would be fine if my state banned private gun ownership entirely... so I'm comfortable with many more restrictions than probably most people are. I have no interest in owning a gun and find the vast majority of the reasons people use to argue for gun ownership to be entirely disingenuous. At the end of the day, aside from minor exceptions, the only real reason is "I think they're cool and fun and I and just want one". Which is totally fair and legitimate, and I wish more people would admit that's the real reason they support private gun ownership.

> That's exactly the case. Just because numbers are going down doesn't make it any less of an epidemic.

'Epidemic' is usually used to refer to the rate of spread of something. This sort of hyperbole is exactly why it's hard to have honest or productive discussions about this topic.

> Suggesting people don't own assault rifles is not an "extreme reaction".

I would assert that it depends on whether or not you feel altering (or violating) the Bill of Rights is an "extreme reaction". Getting the USA constitution modified takes a lot of effort and is a big deal.

>I would assert that it depends on whether or not you feel altering (or violating) the Bill of Rights is an "extreme reaction". Getting the USA constitution modified takes a lot of effort and is a big deal.

No, it doesn't mean that at all. It just means that we interpret the 2nd amendment differently. There is clear precedence for limits on arms ownership. It's just a question of where they should be.

I'm British, so I'm not really concerned by it. The US is collectively losing its mind, on many levels.

Well, it's a good thing that the countries are not tied to one another, Politically, Economically, Diplomatically, Socially. . .

To be fair, the European's and British, losing their mind on many levels as well. (I'm german)

It's a good thing that the crazy European, British, and Americans were around to counter those sane, rational Germans in the 1940s.

The US is not perfect, for sure! But don't let sensationalism in the media shape your perception of everything outside of Britain.

The current interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, that it's a blanket grant for anyone to be allowed to own a firearm, is actually recent (2008!). Before that, it was well understood that there are limits to the forms of firearm ownership that the 2nd Amendment grants.

There is nothing preventing us from going back to the older (IMO correct) interpretation.

One question that perhaps we should be asking is Should the right to bear arms include assault rifles or only lower power guns similar to what we’re available at the time of its writing? There seems to be general public agreement that the right to bear arms does not include RPGs or stinger missles, etc. Yet those are certainly arms. Why are assault riffles in the same category as shot guns?

Almost all guns are semi automatic.

So banning semi auto weapons, as you suggest, would be equivent to an almost total gun ban.

You are free to believe that, but you should realize that this is a very extensive ban.

Hmm. Not sure why you were down voted. I’m interested in hearing logical arguments. I have no idea if your statistics are correct for “almost all guns are semiautomatic”.

One impression I’ve had regarding recent 2nd amendment rights arguments is that we need guns for hunting, home protection, self protection, and protection from the government.

1. I’ve never met a hunter that insists on semi automatics for hunting. To many that seems un sportsman-like. 2. Shotguns are very effective for home protection against the most common types of home “invasion” since they don’t need perfect aim. They are not generally semi-Automatic. 3. I understand that for many, self protection may mean a hand gun. Sure some are semi-automatic. 4. If a modern government “wants you”, no amount of currently legal private arms will stop them regardless if they are semi-automatic.

So of those scenarios, only #3 has a strong argument for semi-automatic imho. And we don’t often see hand guns as the main tool in mass shootings (though they are clearly a tool in general crime related gun violence - gang shooting, robbery, demos tic abuse, etc).

I’m interested in logical arguments why the gun lobby argues against this idea. Note, I’m not saying I agree with the idea that guns are the best solution for 2 and 3. I do believe in responsible hunting. I have fired a number of different types of guns.

Given that all guns, and a large number of non-gun objects (such as vehicles or big rocks) can be effectively utilized to kill nontrivial numbers of people in a soft target situation: is it possible that a more effective intervention may be found somewhere in the fact that several dozen young American men/boys feel compelled to murder as many strangers as possible before commiting suicide each year?

This also seems to me, at the very least, to be a less intractable/objectionable avenue. Less media coverage would probably do more to ease this problem than the banning of some subset of firearm.

I struggled for a long time with where I would draw the line here - I don't think it's reasonable for civilians to own nukes or other crazy weapons of warfare. I saw a suggestion that sat really well with me - civilians should be able to be just as armed as the police force. This does not mean I favor de-arming citizens or the police force.

Yes, Black and white is easy to agree on. Gray, not so easy.

Can you tell us more about your reasoning for drawing the line there? Please note I’m not critiquing your line, just curious about how you came to this opinion.

My opinion:

I don't have a perfect knowledge of the law. I'm also oversimplifying. Bear with me.

Back when the second amendment was created, it was entirely reasonable that citizens could arm themselves and realistically overthrow their policing force and government. It's a large part of how the US was able to gain it's independence.

I don't think that is reasonable today - weapons for waging modern warfare do more to infringe the rights of others when owned by civilians. Also, US citizens would not stand a chance in armed combat with the military.

I like drawing the line with a police force because I think police should be made up of citizens (not soldiers). Policing a population and national defense are totally different objectives that should not overlap. There should be a clear, consistent line where on one side of the line the police are deployed to enforce the laws of the locality and on the other side the military is deployed to protect the nation. If the police force deploys weapons that the military uses for national defense, that line is very blurry and citizens can be oppressed without the use of the military. It should be a very explicit, unambiguous action for a government to use military force against it's citizens.

A person that breaks the law by murdering someone and then taking a hostage is not a national defense concern and military tactics and weapons are not necessary.

A person that makes meth and sells it on the street, is not a national defense concern. It may be a concern to the society that this happens in, and the community should police this behavior (if it wants), but military tactics and weapons are probably not necessary here either.

There is a lot of grey area here. I'm sure there are edge and corner cases that are not so clear. I don't have all the answers. It does not bother me that G.I. Joe has tanks, grenades and automatic weapons. It very much bothers me that Jane the Street Cop could have semi-automatic rifles, flash grenades and body armor between 9-5, but I could not. To be clear, I don't want to de-arm the police.

Do you think this is a coordinated, planned effort by the media, or an organic event? Did they decide they wanted to convince the public that shootings are suddenly a much bigger issue, or did shootings start to be great selling news so now they seek them out aggressively.

It kind of reminds me of the late 90's and early 2000's when all of a sudden kids getting abducted became huge news. That forever changed the way adults could interact with strange kids, and how parents viewed unknown adults.

You're right it's part of a huge conspiracy by the media to inform us that people are dying. Why newspapers and cable news would seek to inform people of current events remains a mystery, but it seems awfully suspicious.

Prior to that there was the Satanic Panic of the eighties, which did even more to the shifting relationships between children and adults. The panic was a seemingly organic media ratings fest, and reading up on it (I was born later than the audience) has been fascinating.

I cannot speak to your other proposals, as I would be adding additional speculation to something borne of tragedy that cannot be denied, regardless of specifics.

I suppose we can kill the hysteria driving mass gun ownership then! I'm sure the NRA will be happy to turn down the hyperbolic rhetoric about how you could be double rape-murdered at any given second now that these results on violent crime have come out and we can all breath easier.

> Folks, the number of shooting crimes (including school shootings) in the United States is going down.

This is not supported by other analyses that look at the issue. FiveThirtyEight looked at several measures of school shootings / mass shootings and came to the opposite conclusion. [0]

[0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-matter-how-you-measu...

Then we need to figure out which numbers are correct. That shouldn't be rocket science. But either way, hysteria still isn't the way forward...it never is.

I won't attempt to debate any of the points made in your article, as I'm not authority on the subject myself, but thanks for linking it.

However, you might find this article written by a former member of the FiveThirtyEight team interesting:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-used-to-think-gun-...

The article you linked seems to make reference only to school shootings, while the article posted in response to you doesn’t limit itself in such a way.

Is there some minimal number of school shootings that's acceptable? My position is that we clearly have shown that this country cannot be trusted with personal possession of firearms, so let's all calmly proceed towards no longer having them around.

Less is always better, and so we should jump on board with efforts that will reduce them.

At the same time, it was laid out in the Federalist Papers (No. 46) that the intention of our Second Amendment is to protect against government tyranny. To summarize the American philosophy: School shootings and gun violence are awful, but the possibility of a genocide or enslavement is worse.

I'm not enough of an expert in any field to speculate which is objectively better, however I've always personally believed that the U.S. will be safer when viewed in a longer timescale compared to our neighbors.

Is there some minimal number of fatal auto accidents that's acceptable? My position is that we clearly have shown that this country cannot be trusted with personal possession of motor vehicles, so let's all calmly proceed towards no longer having them around.

hear, hear!

Now this I can get behind.

Car companies fought against seat belts.

But there ARE actions taken to prevent accidents. Anti-texting campaigns, DUI enforcement, street planning efforts, safer cars, signage and reflective material on roads. These things have undoubtedly saved some lives.

But when it comes to guns we just throw up ours hands and say whaddya gonna do.

There are actions taken to prevent mass shootings. Background checks, mandatory waiting periods, gun free zones, banning certain guns.

Stop acting like there are no laws about guns, as that's ridiculous. Funny how in Parkland and it seems even with the YouTube office the police were aware of threats these people posed and did nothing. Seems like there should be more scrutiny put on the police, instead of a push to rely on them to defend the public; something they aren't even legally obligated to do.

My position is governments can't be trusted with prohibiting citizens from owning firearms, so let's keep them around.

My question: How the hell are you going to use your hand gun against a lot of pretty well trained soldiers with much better guns?

Even in this very unlikely case your gun is going to be very useless. Maybe you could shoot yourself.

The down side of having guns in many (dumb/unstable) people's hands is pretty well discussed already.

That ignores the psychological factor and assumes those soldiers will just follow the order. I don't think that would be the case, particularly as they're the type of people that typically own multiple firearms personally.

Beyond that, it is like people have never heard of guerilla warfare. The United States is a vast area and lots of it is lightly inhabited. It would be very difficult to suppress an insurrection.

Wooolllvvveeerrrinnneesss!!!

This, and the "but the government has nukes" argument, assumes the only scenarios are "no resistance" or "all-out war". In reality there's likely a step function where even the possibility of some armed resistance would go a long way in dissuading a would-be tyrannical government, especially in this age where anyone can instantly broadcast video across the globe.

That assumes a large enough portion of the population that wants to resist owns guns. I wish more liberals (especially groups likely to be persecuted) owned guns for this reason.

Both numbers are correct- the person you replied to misread the original commenter's comment.

You're comparing two different numbers. The parent is referring to net firearm crimes while the data you cited is "mass shooting deaths".

If you check CDC data through 2016 (https://wonder.cdc.gov), the non-suicide firearm-related death rate is effectively flat for the date range they have data for, varying at most by about 0.1%.

If the rate is flat, then the quantity is increasing due to population growth.

We need the rate to go down proportional to population growth just to keep the number of shooting deaths constant.

It's unrealistic to expect the quantity to stay constant or go down with such growth, it's already a pretty low rate.

Why are you comparing trends in school/mass shootings to trends in all shooting crimes?

> the number of shooting crimes (including school shootings) in the United States is going down

His statement is absolutely correct. Your link shows that the number of school shootings is going up. Note that school shootings make up a small portion of all shootings. All shooting crimes are going down.

The link is not only factually wrong but also from a biased source.

Mass shootings in the US: there have been 1,624 in 1,870 days

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/oct/...

I don't want to sound picky, but wikipedia isn't the best source on controversial topics.

Guardian: "1,624 mass shootings in 1,870 days"

Wikipedia (sourced from CNN): "90 mass shootings between 1966 and 2012"

They both use the same definition of mass shooting (four or more victims) so how is there an order of magnitude difference between their numbers? Ah, I see. CNN excluded gang violence in their numbers, and the Guardian included it. Seems like they may have a few biases of their own.

Are you Progress Man? :) https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/excelsior

America is 12th in the world in per-capita gun deaths by country. Should we be satisfied with 12th?

That's surprisingly good considering the number of guns in circulation and ease of obtaining them in general.

Source please. I’m almost certain that includes suicides.

Why wouldn't it?

Because including suicides paints a misleading picture. When you say “gun deaths” with no qualifiers people think murders involving a gun.

Why is it misleading? It's mostly impulsive acts of violence. Most, but not all, of it is against the self.

The key method of reducing violence to other people and reducing death by suicide is to reduce access to means.

Reducing access to guns would help both problems.

I disagree. One of the main arguments against the proliferation of guns is that they're too powerful to have, barring a good reason.

Accidental death (a child getting a hold of one, for example) and suicide are often brought forward as examples of this, alongside murder in a 'heat of the moment' situations.

In fact, I've rarely heard 'predetermined' murder as the primary argument in discussions I've had on the matter (at least over here in Europe). Mostly because murderers who intend to do so with guns will not be deterred by guns being illegal, so it's relatively weak argument.

We are 31st when you don't include suicide or accidents FYI.

So still well above average?

On gun violence, yes. Violence in general, no

Why would you not include those?

Because suicides don't violate anyone else's freedoms and accidents are accidents.

1) that assumes gun ownership has any bearing on someone's freedom. I'd say that's very much disputed. 2) a gun offering easier impulsive suicide strikes me as a good reason to curb their proliferance. 3) accidentally shooting yourself in the face is quite different from accidentally doing something that doesn't involve the destructive power of a firearm.

My point is that for many people, the 'freedom' argument doesn't really hold. Whether it does or doesn't, I do think the suicide/accident angle is a very serious one.

I've known people who have attempted suicide, and I am convinced that the risk to their lives would've been greater if they had a gun. I also know many people who have done really stupid things, whether as kids or teenagers or adults. I'm happy guns weren't in the mix.

> 1) that assumes gun ownership has any bearing on someone's freedom. I'd say that's very much disputed.

You can dispute it, but you'd still be wrong.

> 2) a gun offering easier impulsive suicide strikes me as a good reason to curb their proliferance.

I understand this position. Unfortunately there are rights involved. Infringing rights should not be done lightly, especially if there are other options. Let's increase mental health services in our communities and eliminate the driving cause of suicidal behaviors if possible before we remove our rights.

> 3) accidentally shooting yourself in the face is quite different from accidentally doing something that doesn't involve the destructive power of a firearm.

Yes, different things are different. I'm not sure your point here. People have accidents while piloting 2 tons of metal every day, which certainly has more kinetic energy at 60mph than a 9mm bullet.

> My point is that for many people, the 'freedom' argument doesn't really hold. Whether it does or doesn't, I do think the suicide/accident angle is a very serious one.

You're going to have to be more clear and precise than that. What do you mean "it doesn't really hold"? People don't care about their freedoms? Or they don't care about my freedoms?

> I've known people who have attempted suicide, and I am convinced that the risk to their lives would've been greater if they had a gun. I also know many people who have done really stupid things, whether as kids or teenagers or adults. I'm happy guns weren't in the mix.

For any example like this, there are examples of defensive gun use that saved lives.

Accidents often involve children and negligent adults and I think they should be persecuted (and not solely prosecuted) as it represents a fundamental breach of the responsibility not only of gun-ownership but adult responsibility in that regard.

There are many responses to the various arguments that the article employs, some more reasonable than others, but really the thing that stuck with me was that this is the worst plot I have seen used unironically in 2018:

https://mises.org/sites/default/files/styles/full_width/publ...

I just wish we would talk about things that are causing the shootings in the first place and not boil it down to overly simplified explanations of "can't stop crazy" vs "why do we even need guns?" All that does is create an endless loop of stupidity and people dying. I mean the gun death problem is extremely multifaceted and there's a huge difference in how school shootings, active shooters, gangs, suicides, etc happen and how you mitigate them.

Can you not start this discussion while the blood is still wet on the ground? What is wrong with you?

To be fair, it wasn't dry from the last shooting (Parkland) yet before it got wet from this one. If you have to wait until it's dry to discuss solutions, at this rate you'd be waiting forever!

The GP isn't talking "solutions", he's talking media conspiracies and down playing the issue.

> The media frenzy makes this look like some kind of out-of-control epidemic

Any rationale behind media sensationalize shootings? Just purely for the stun/shock factor? or perhaps borderline propaganda towards certain agenda?

mises.org is well known as a strongly libertarian site. I personally have trouble taking opinions from them at face value. I think it would be roughly equivalent to taking Fox News's opinion of Democrats at face value. Yeah, maybe they have a good point, maybe they don't, but I don't trust the source enough put the effort in to work it out.

What a damning indictment of our culture that this is a feature.

Absolutely. It's been well worn advice from psychologists to the media that the loud, panicked approach to shooting news encourages more shooters.

The media takes the advice to always mention suicide help lines when reporting on suicide. But they never take the advice to cover shooting news locally, without detail on the shooters identity and without hysterics.

Given that suicidal shooters often crave attention, this is the wrong signal to send.

Thank you, I think the best policy for approaching these rampage suicide murderers is to minimize their exposure in popular culture and forbid the use of their name in the media.

This has the added benefit of not stigmatizing their family, who likely have little to do with the event.

As an aside, I also think any killers of this kind should have their wishes for burial null and void with their brains and bodies given immediately to scientific research.

> Given that suicidal shooters often crave attention, this is the wrong signal to send.

This CAN NOT be said enough. Blasting a name and attention (fame) leads to copycats.

Not really. This is just GPS data for Google's SOS alerts, which could be any kind of disaster.

Note that this feature isn't just for active shooters -- it's for emergencies and crises in general [1].

[1] https://support.google.com/sosalerts

large pot holes and bad railroad crossings would be nice too... should be easy to automatically detect them using all the sensors in the phones crossing them

This would be pretty useful for eskates too !

Skating would be pretty easy if the streets were not in an awful state.

This could be a great tool for both detecting and prioritizing repair efforts as well, and robust even in the shape of shifting traffic patterns.

The where's Waldo April fool's joke makes it a little surreal: https://imgur.com/a/DoQEl

(Pardon the phone screenshot)

I had a similar feeling when it was reported that the injured were transported to Zuckerberg General Hospital[0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_General_Hospital

I thought this was an onion article.

I'm working with a team to create a consensus-based distributed alert system for emergencies [1], and as horrible as shootings are (having personally been stuck in the middle of mass panic due to a gun threat I can say it's insanely frightening), providing spatial and statistical tools to display, model, and alert dangerous events like shootings will be critical in helping reduce response times and increase assistance to victims, as well as figure out commonalities between events. It's interesting to see Google try to tackle that problem through augmenting emergencies over Google maps.

1: http://proximityapp.xyz

The phrasing of this title is far too flip for a tragedy, especially one this fresh.

Wondering if the dot is placed as the center of gravity of the building , or it is the actual room when you zoom in.

Also I wonder why some of the rooms are given names on the map such as "space invader" and "residence evil" but not the other ones.

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