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Comment by endymi0n | Hacker News Reader

Actually, no, study after study shows that the amount of guns in a society is strongly correlated to its homicide rate, both directly as well as indirectly (i.e. more violent police raids because they assume residents to be armed).

Taking your shark tank metaphor, some people believe it‘s simply not possible to remove guns from a society, which is untrue as well, as the recent example of Australia shows.

Heck, lots of people in Germany used to have a gun in WW2, while in 2011, German police shot a whole of 85 bullets in total. Which, incidentally, is exactly one bullet less than Texan police emptied into a single, unarmed suspect after a car chase in the same year. Well, you get what you vote for.

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Switzerland has a very high gun ownership rate and yet a very low homicide rate. It turns out that it’s complex, like every other political issue.

I am neutral / undecided on the gun ownership issue but simplifying and using misleading information doesn’t help anyone.

Could it be that people there are simply more responsible/comfortable in life in many ways that US etc citizens are not?

Right, but Switzerland still has the draft, and consequently more awareness about gun safety among owners, as well as inflated gun ownership statistics because you are required to take your gun home with you. And while guns are relatively easy to buy, ammunition is much more controlled.

Switzerland also has a lot more social security than the US. I agree that it's more complex than "guns are bad", but using Switzerland as an argument for gun ownership is just glossing over the details to come up with an artificial example where gun ownership doesn't result in increased violence.

> come up with an artificial example where gun ownership doesn't result in increased violence.

Though I do not concede the use of the word "artificial" as correct in your sentence, bringing in the Swiss data point is incredibly relevant in response to a claim that "Actually, no, study after study shows that the amount of guns in a society is strongly correlated to its homicide rate, both directly as well as indirectly."

Some of the things you said are neither here nor there. You shouldn't just mention a random police shooting (note: unarmed != unjustified) or allegations of voter irresponsibility without describing how that supports your claims.

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