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Comment by setr | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn’t that mean the same thing? They decide to hurt (the impulse), and they grab whatever happens to be nearby.

That is, they don’t see a gun and decide to use it; they decide to use something and see a gun

How exactly would someone like, for example, Jared Lee Laughner have wounded and killed so many without a gun? How many would the Vegas shooter have killed? It’s interesting that harm reduction is fine for some things, but when we’re talking about guns suddenly the concept is discarded or evaded. I’ve talked to people who make the specious argument that if people didn’t have access to guns they’d just make bombs, as if making a bomb to kill dozens or even hundreds of people is trivial.

Imagine if that psychopath who attacked Glasgow airport in ‘07 had access firearms instead of a home brew “bomb” that only succeeds in lighting him on fire? Bombs are hard, knives require strength and skill, an AR-15 in a crowd is too easy.

> How exactly would someone...have wounded and killed so many without a gun?

In addition to bombs and knives, here are some other alternative weapons people have used to kill far more people than Jared Lee Laughner did:

Gasoline

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daegu_subway_fire (192 killed)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire (87 killed)

A truck

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack (86 killed and 458 wounded)

Poison

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_H%C3%B6gel (over 100 killed)

A cord

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Ridgway (at least 49 killed)

Violence still happens but the magnitude would be reduced.

It's a lot harder to kill people with things that aren't guns. If it was as easy then soldiers would primarily equipped with "knife, or acid, or poison, or fists". The army chooses guns as the primary weapon are they are clearly much more effective at killing.

The army doesn't use poisons (chemical weapons) because they are so effective, and so horrible, that their use is unthinkable.

Remember the outrage when Syria did use poison?

So you're suggesting this is the main/only reason poison isn't the primary weapon provided to infantry for most military situations? Interesting.

Don't try to intentionally misrepresent me. You know that's not what I said.

I'm saying that if the army shared the goal of mass shooters - to kill as many people as possible indiscriminately - guns would absolutely not be their weapon of choice; and if the army switched weapons from guns to poison, the magnitude of violence would be amplified, not reduced.

I was discussing what solders carry as a primary weapon but since you brought it up why don't "mass shooters" regularly use chemical weapons now instead? Could it be because they're regulated and not readily available to civilians?

Probably because they think, as you did, that "it's a lot harder to kill people with things that aren't guns."

Fortunately that means they use guns instead of more dangerous weapons.

Not sure there are any good ways to prove it at this point, but I think that part of the appeal is the mass media coverage. You get instagram famous, news at 9 and news at 5 and 10 and 11 TV famous, you get facebook famous.. and the debates about guns and the interest groups and the people who want votes and those who want money and power - they all keep your name in the news for longer than most stories in a cycle.

Then when you trial date comes up it all goes on again - so these people see the fame that others have gotten - and how people have loathed them and feared them, and their shots are heard around the world.

Not so much the case when someone mixes bleach and windex.

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