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Comment by SlowRobotAhead | Hacker News Reader

Guns don’t cause injury and disability more than they prevent it. Sorry, but that’s the truth.

We have 340,000,000 people, more guns than that. And 10,000 homicides where the vast majority are drug and gang related.

We have a problem, but it’s not with guns.

Edit: more truth, more downvotes. I’m curious as to why there is such effort against an enumerated right - when putting even 1/10th the effort into fighting heart disease which kills 700,000 a year would have such a greater impact?

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Guy says it's an area of partisan dispute, and you write a post that proves it.

Yes, it's partisan. Your facts may be right, but the argument is one sided.

It’s not partisan to me, i could care less how fellow gun owners vote.

One side has emotional plees, logical fallacies, or stubborn ignorance of the topic - I won’t appologoze for not being on that side.

Many countries that have essentially completely banned guns somehow have also managed to have low injury / death rates. Yes crimes still occur but are much less lethal with knives or other weapons compared to guns. So saying guns cause less injury vs preventing it sounds like it could be true but also is a symptom of our current culture in the US that has zillions of guns.

>>Many countries that have essentially completely banned guns somehow have also managed to have low injury / death rates.

As long as you go back only a few years - many of those same countries have experienced genocides and holocausts from their powerful governments acting against a disarmed citizenry and driving their long-term violent death rates to astronomical levels.

I would say that this observation is relevant because the argument for citizens being armed is to curtail the abuse of a powerful government.

Sadly this is true.

This is what guns are supposed to protect you against.

At this moment in history, I am way more concerned about the thread of far-right violence than of a derelict government that needs to be put down. What if the people hoarding the guns end up allying with an authoritarian regime instead of rising up against it?

In that case the authoritarian regime already has all the guns it needs and the threat is not significantly bigger than before.

> many of those same countries have experienced genocides and holocausts from their powerful governments acting against a disarmed citizenry

More from the fact that a few armed citizens aren’t a match for an industrial state’s military. The Jews in the Warsaw uprising had guns, grenades, etc. but nowhere near enough people to defend against an army.

If you want to avoid atrocities, strong civil institutions matter a lot more than fantasies about LARPing Somalia.

> The Jews in the Warsaw uprising had guns, grenades, etc. but nowhere near enough people to defend against an army.

Well, they delayed the Germans. That is impressive. Another time when the international community isn't too busy looking the other way it might buy enough time to save some people.

> If you want to avoid atrocities, strong civil institutions matter a lot more

Don't disagree. But there is no conflict between driving carefully and also wearing a seat belt.

Guns have an amplifier effect on suicides, domestic violence.

Guns have a force multiplier effect on self defense.

Guess which one of our arguments happens more frequently?

Pretty sure it's domestic violence.

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