How to Reduce Shootings (2017) | Hacker News Reader

How to Reduce Shootings (2017)

nytimes.com

11 pointshadrien0116 comments

As a German I find it a bit unsettling that the ratio in guns-per-person between the US and Germany is smaller than that between Germany and, say, Italy. We do like to fingerpoint a lot at American gun ownership (it really feels absurdly archaic to the average German), but we're apparently not that much ahead.

I wonder how the numbers would look if they were broken down further into "made to be pointed at people" (designed for military, law-enforcement, or self-defense use) and "others" (hunting, dedicated competitive marksmanship). Hunting must be huge in the US, but the whole field of "testosterone booster" use cases from small scale "defend my family" right up to the field of full-scale second amendment militia fantasies (sorry if you are a believer) must account for quite a bit as well. I guess that dedicated competitive marksmanship might be low, I suspect that Americans who are into that kind of thing would tend to do it with hardware from somewhere in the "designed to be pointed at people" range.

Not sure what you mean by "fantasy", since it's the case that, right now, widespread gun ownership would have completely prevented the catastrophe that is current Venezuela, and probably wouldn't have allowed Hong Kong to escalate to this point. It's always crazy that the government would turn against its citizens, until it isn't, and it's happening.

You are seriously positing that HK with guns would somehow have avoided its current fate? That is surely fantasy.

How so? Would the Chinese government be able to just wantonly and unilaterally degrade HK citizen rights as they've done? They know there is no consequence for their actions, because HK citizens have no power. The threat of force only comes from one side. As of now, HK's only hope is to appeal to international actors that do have power.

America is deeply, deeply ill. Our gun ownership is a reflection of how deeply broken our society is. We are stuck in a predator-prey relationship and the predators run our society. We seem unable to change that relationship.

Citation needed. Most gun owning americians I know are generally more well-adjusted than the rest. Your own dislike of guns does not make others with a different outlook broken. Maybe your own perspective needs work.

The point is that those well adjusted Americans believe they need guns. That's not exactly a sign of a healthy society.

I think you're misreading me. I'm saying an accurate view of reality necessitates gun ownership.

I am a gun (and crossbow) owner. I don't feel like I can trust my government. I lived a few blocks from where Kelly Thomas was killed and watched the police officers who did it beat the system and get off.

As far as I'm concerned, until those folks are brought to justice, and until the architects of the financial collapse are brought to justice, the law in this country is meaningless because some people are not subject to it.

Reading your comment made me think: Wow Germany must be like the US! Who knew!

But then I read the article and was super or even mega surprised to see that Switzerland, Sweden, France, and even Canada, they all overcome Germany based on this measure (Guns per 100 people). Something tells me that maybe you should not be concerned about the position your country has on that list ...

I was really surprised by Switzerland being the #2 on this list. Maybe it is indeed due to hunting habits the country has? I wonder how similar their gun thinking is to the US gun thinking.

Actually it’s because every Swiss male keeps their service rifle following service. However, it’s forbidden to keep ammunition.

I see! This is indeed very different from the US, more like an award I guess.

A frustration I have with articles like this is that it's very easy to for the author to make the statistics support the conclusion they want to write. For example, from this article:

> One study by the Violence Policy Center found that in 2012 there were 259 justifiable homicides by a private citizen using a firearm.

The implication is that firearms were only successfully used for self defense 259 times in 2012, but that's not true. Most incidents of successful self defense using a firearm do not lead to the death of the attacker. The same report from the VPC[0] says people used firearms in self defense an average of 67,740 times per year from 2007 to 2011.

> Tightening Gun Laws Lowered Firearm Homicide Rates

But did it lower homicide rates overall? I don't think it's much of a benefit if murderers switch weapons and complete the same number of homicides. If the overall homicide rate is reduced, that would be a much more persuasive figure to cite, which leads me to suspect it isn't.

[0] http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable15.pdf - note that the VPC is an anti-gun advocacy group, and this study is written to be persuasive rather than analytical.

> I don't think it's much of a benefit if murderers switch weapons and complete the same number of homicides.

I guess you'd keep the deviously planned murders (even if guns are available, I'm not sure they would be the weapon of choice in most cases), but lose most of the escalated arguments, escalated property crime, fights that would otherwise have ended with a fracture or two. And mass shootings. Mass stabbings can be surprisingly deadly as well, but the same killer with a bag of guns? Surely not less deadly than with a knife.

That may be true, but if it is, why don't people quoting this statistic talk about the overall homicide rate?

I had issues with more than a couple of the statistics in the column, but that one in particular stood out to me. Saying that guns were only used in self defense when the perpetrator is killed (or even injured) is super disingenuous. It would actually be quite difficult to account for every real time a gun is effective in self defense. For instance, a potential perpetrator deciding not to take any action at all either because an area has concealed carry and anyone in that area could be carrying or because they see someone carrying and decide not to take the chance.

Cars getting safer is cars getting better at what they are designed for, I think it’s a rather poor comparison and the chart of them getting safer over time makes it seem silly in contrast with guns.

It’s also silly to say “guns keep you safe but from a birds eye view more people die” because it has to be viewed on a case by case basis, if someone was able to defend themselves or their family that was good, it shouldn’t be viewed as if it was at the cost of other people who were killed by guns unjustly.

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