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Comment by hellllllllooo | Hacker News Reader

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

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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?

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.

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.

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