Comment by king_magic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by king_magic | Hacker News Reader

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I agree that no fly lists are a bit much, but I’m 100% in favor of red flag laws.

RE: red flag laws, I don’t see them rising to the level of thought crime. For example, I do not think it is unreasonable to use a legal process involving a judge to take away guns (either temporarily or permanently) from unstable people who are making thinly veiled threats. Society should have that right, and I for one fully support it.

Equating mass shootings to basically the “well, terrorism is so rare you’re more likely to get crushed by your TV” scare tactic argument isn’t really fair. I’m sorry, 283* mass shootings in one year in one country is absolutely insane. It’s not a scare tactic, this is quite literally a mass shooting crisis.

Short of national background checks, assault weapons bans and a whole host of other common sense things that Republicans and the NRA will never let happen in the US, I think red flag laws involving a judge are worth giving a try.

This new trend on HN of hammering red flag laws is really hard to understand. These laws are not oppressive overreach. They are common sense, reasonable approaches to dealing with the greatest domestic threat we actually have.

*https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mass-shootings-2019-more-mass-s...

> Equating mass shootings to basically the “well, terrorism is so rare you’re more likely to get crushed by your TV” scare tactic argument isn’t really fair. I’m sorry, 283* mass shootings in one year in one country is absolutely insane. It’s not a scare tactic, this is quite literally a mass shooting crisis.

Want to take a stab at how likely it is that you are in a school shooting, even if there were 280 shootings involving three or more people?

To be clear, I definitely support gun control. But I also support expanding medicare/medicaid and I'm probably going to fight more the second than the first when one is likely to save many more lives.

So basically: because the chance is statistically fairly low, let’s abdicate our responsibility to reduce the already absolutely insane number of mass shootings we have in this country, a problem that absolutely no other country has? That may not be exactly what you’re saying, but that’s the conclusion people are drawing here.

Real solid leadership.

By that same logic, let’s go bust out the 737 MAX’s! Hey, they only killed a few hundred people. But nah, must not be that big of a problem.

Come on.

Let me flip this on you: I care about people who are dying because they don't have healthcare, not your dumb political games on guns. Sure, you can spend a year agitating for laws that will ultimately save a few hundred of people throughout the country, meanwhile people routinely die because they aren't paid a living wage, can't afford basic medication to survive, and can't afford shelter.

If you're telling me I'm absurd to be focusing on that rather than a phenomenon that kills a few dozens of people, boy do I hope the people in charge aren't listening to you. I care about helping society, not posturing on an issue that is deemed "insane" or a "crisis."

It’s profoundly sad that preventing hundreds of people being shot to death per year in the US in mass shootings somehow doesn’t quality for “helping society”. To me, yes, that is absurd. This happens nowhere else. It is insane. It’s not posturing: this is batshit crazy.

And guess what, I’m also for expanded healthcare. I just don’t want that to have to include caring for even a fraction of the population having large chunks of their body blown apart.

>It’s profoundly sad that preventing hundreds of people being shot to death per year in the US in mass shootings

Tell that to the MILLIONS of Unarmed North Koreans and Chinese in death camps.

Some local police forces in the US have firepower comparable to some small nation’s militaries.

If any sort of true tyranny came to pass in the US, I don’t have much faith in a bunch of rag tag right wing militia men hiding in the woods fighting back with much success.

> Some local police forces

60 MILLION gun owners... and they All have more than one gun. That's enough guns for Every Man Woman, and Child. Good Luck beating us ;)

Let's be clear that the "prevention" being suggested is monitoring high schoolers faces with AI tracking cameras to see if there are any signs of anger or discontent.

Yes, there are some prices too high to pay and that is certainly one of them.

Gun control? Yes, sure most of us can agree on that. But that's not the context that I was responding to you with.

That’s a disingenuous argument. Nobody is objecting to trying to reduce mass shootings. They are objecting to trying to reduce mass shootings by curtailing constitutional rights of millions of law-abiding gun owners. Even leaving aside the constitutional issue, that’s why the cost benefit analysis is important. It’s justified to try and address a low-probability issue if the solution is commensurately cost free. Gun control is not a cost free solution. It’s an enormously costly one.

So: “well, let’s just give up on preventing mass gun violence because it costs a money”?

No, mine is really not a disingenuous argument. It’s the same thing: you’re saying it costs money to prevent a small fraction of society being horrible maimed or killed with guns. Same for airplanes. Please explain why it it better for society to minimize low-probability deaths in plane crashes at extremely high cost, but not mass gun violence?

But back to the constitutional argument: no constitutionally recognized rights in the US are unlimited. In this case, yup, I’m completely in favor of curtailing gun rights in a limited fashion if it helps prevent this insanity. If that is a problem for you, go ahead and build a coalition to out-vote my broadly held position. You’re entitled to that.

Not cost as in money, cost as in depriving people of the freedom to own useful tools. Also, again, what’s with the appeal to emotion? “Sad?” Such words have no place in this debate. Cost-benefit analysis is how you should decide whether to spend other peoples’ money to do anything.

As to the constitutional point: the second amendment is not up for a vote. While gun rights aren’t “unlimited,” the second amendment must be interpreted consistent with the right of people to effectively resist government agents, and that means stuff like assault weapons bans are not constitutional. If you think those rights are misguided in the modern world, fine, gather up a coalition that can amend the constitution. You might find that difficult, because contrary to what you might think, belief in gun rights is the strongest it has been in half a century: https://images.app.goo.gl/9HJwcRLRrdxepDnUA. Even young adults are more pro-gun rights than the same cohort was when the first assault weapons ban was enacted in the 1990s: https://images.app.goo.gl/Vyc2UduAa9Mqehc68. In 1990, 2/3 of young adults said gun control was more important than gun rights, versus 1/3 saying gun rights were more important. Today, it is evenly split.

There is very broad support for a judicial process to take away people’s guns if they pose a threat as well. If you think that is misguided, I invite you to do the exact same thing.

Saying it louder doesn’t make the point less ridiculous. Mass shooting deaths have never exceeded 80 per year. Nobody is panicked about West Nile fever anymore, but it still causes 100+ deaths per year. You’d think engineers would be resistant to such blatant emotional manipulation, but I guess not.

Your numbers are simply not accurate. And equating this to mosquito-borne disease is not reasonable. Mosquitoes aren’t being radicalized by the far right, they aren’t living in an increasingly polarized society, and they certainly don’t blow orange size exit wounds in people.

*https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_th...

You’re right, I was looking at a chart through 2016. Looks like about 120 this year. Still, the average is under 80 over the same period over which west Nile killed 100 per year on average. And the peak this year is still below the 284 killed by west Nile in one year.

There were 15 West Nile deaths in the US in 2019. It’s not even close to the same thing.

https://www.cdc.gov/westnile/statsmaps/preliminarymapsdata20...

We don’t have full 2019 data. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Nile_virus_in_the_Unite...

> Since the virus has become widely established in the U.S., an average of 130 deaths a year occurred.

Neil Degrasse Tyson tried to use reason. You can't use reason when it comes to things like this. Sure, on a macro level guns kill fewer people than cars do but there are smart people working hard to try to prevent deaths by cars*.

Sure, we could and should do better. For example, why doesn't any SUV come standard with built in car seats in the back for infants and children? I watched a ted talk from back in 2009 which asked this question but humans are irrational. They think clearly little Billy is safer if we spend $599 for a car seat.

If humans were immune to emotional manipulation then Google stock would crash because basically any advertising is emotional manipulation I think.

CBS quotes:

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is facing criticism for a tweet comparing the number of people killed in two mass shootings this weekend to those who died in other ways during the same amount of time. Some perceived the tweet as insensitive, as at least 29 people were left dead and dozens injured in the wake of the tragedies.

"In the past 48hrs, the USA horrifically lost 34 people to mass shootings," Tyson wrote Sunday afternoon. He then compared the "average" number of people who die in other ways across "any 48hrs."

"On average, across any 48hrs, we also lose… 500 to Medical errors, 300 to the Flu, 250 to Suicide, 200 to Car Accidents, 40 to Homicide via Handgun," he reasoned. "Often our emotions respond more to spectacle than to data."

> Neil Degrasse Tyson tried to use reason. You can't use reason when it comes to things like this. Sure, on a macro level guns kill fewer people than cars do but there are smart people working hard to try to prevent deaths by cars*.

Not just cars. A result of the emotional manipulation surrounding mass shootings has resulted in attempts to ban semi-automatic rifles. But rifles are used in about the same number of homicides each year than there are deaths from people falling off ladders.

>why doesn't any SUV come standard with built in car seats in the back for infants and children

Not every SUV buyer has children at car seat age. Those children will outgrow the need for car seats, at which point the built in car seats are wasting space that could be a regular seat.

> but there are smart people working hard to try to prevent deaths by cars*.

No. There really isn't. The solution is simple and every racer knows what it is: teach skid control and proper use of the brakes. That's half the equation right there; the other half is eye technique which would be more difficult to become proficient in But for God's sakes At Least stop telling people to "watch where you going"--which is certain "death" when the car starts to slide, and instead start telling them to "look where they want the car to go".

> Mass shooting deaths have never exceeded 80 per year.

2017 had more than 80 deaths, with the Las Vegas (58 deaths) and Sutherland Springs (26 deaths) exceeding that total for those two events. These events are becoming more common and deadlier, as shown on this Axios chart [0].

You're right to point out that there are many causes of death that are more common, but rapidly increasing and unpredictable causes of death are typically covered more in the media, for better or for worse. It's why the 738 Max 8 was all over the news, even though car crashes are a more frequent cause of death.

[0] https://www.axios.com/deadliest-mass-shootings-common-4211ba...

You’re correct, I was looking at a chart that stopped at 2016. Nonetheless, the peak west Nile deaths were 280+, and the average is over 100, compared to under 100 for mass shooting deaths.

West Nile seems like a pretty unpredictable and scary cause of death. The media covers mass shootings more because reporters are overwhelmingly members of one party and gun control is a critical wedge issue in the culture war. West Nile isn’t.

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