Hacker News Reader

Comment by danShumway | Hacker News Reader

> mere numbers cannot capture the significance of the harm to children.

Oh, bull crap. By this argument, literally no protection or liberty that allows even one child to be harmed could ever be tolerated. Why stop at vetting baby-sitters or teachers? We ought to require mandatory background checks for every person who ever visits a family or goes into a public space that might contain children. Law enforcement also ought to be able to track every underage child at all times, via mandatory GPS collars.

At the risk of sounding callous, there are occasionally some situations where you really do need to shut up and multiply.

View on HN

The argument about children is easily invalidated by the fact, that for some reason that during the Vietnam / Afghanistan / Irak war many children were harmed for much less than everybody's privacy.

Those are other people's children.

The reptilian brain will respond differently to children from different cultures on the other side of the world. I understand the logic behind your argument but policy isn't driven by logic.

Hell, it’s nakedly visible in policy in treatment of children from different cultures in the US itself. Xenophobia is a known route to power. This impulse CAN be countered by putting it in the light. Policy can and should always be driven in part by logic.

Yes. Mr. Attorney General can also demonstrate his concern for children by investigating the ICE and their detention facilities.

I think 99% of arguments that claim to be in defense of children are disingenuous obfuscation of advocacy of censorship to enable fascism.

If they cared about children they'd be putting money and effort into the education system instead of surveillance. Napkin math - It costs the feds roughly $1000 per child per year for school, and the NSA about $250,000 per employee per year. BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN we could be spying on!

> By this argument, literally no protection or liberty that allows even one child to be harmed could ever be tolerated

It's an appeal to emotion and a commonly used tactic of politicians to get what they want (and to convince people it's what they want too). Used all the time in gun control debate.

By this argument, literally no protection or liberty that allows even one child to be harmed could ever be tolerated.

Well, I think the aim is to create (or in this case, maintain) a emotional button that when pressed, create such an extreme picture in the person's mind that they instantly respond with "your freedom? versus this?, yeah screw your freedom, we gotta stop this."

The extreme the pictures shown on media, the more minachean the TV plot, etc, the stronger reaction.

Something must be done, this is something, so it must be done. (Ignore the fact it won't really help)

> mere numbers cannot capture the significance of the harm to children.

I completely agree. Now can we talk about guns just lying around the home?

If mere numbers cannot capture the harm to children then... why do we break out these equations when we're talking about fracking near school grounds.

I wonder why they don't use this argument to advocate gun control.

I love how so many people instantly associated that argument with gun control :)

Maybe because guns harm more children than Facebook?

I would put money on that being absolutely, positively, patently false.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if data could be generated that shows cyber bullying on Facebook results in more child suicides than children murdered in school shootings per year.

Congratulations your a prophet.

Some data, presented neutrally with little comment.

> child suicides

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr67/nvsr67_04.pdf

> In 2016, suicides numbered 2,553, while homicides numbered 1,963

> Firearms were the leading method of homicide for persons aged 10–19 years during 1999–2016, accounting for 87% of all homicides in 2016

> Suicide involving suffocation was the leading method among children and adolescents aged 10–19 years in 2016, slightly outnumbering suicide involving firearms (1,103 and 1,102, respectively).

There are some age and gender difference to the method chosen for suicide.

We probably need to include some deaths by unintentional injury, although 85% of those deaths are motor vehicle traffic, drowning, and poisoning.

I'm still getting to grips with the way the US counts deaths by suicide and I still find it a real struggle to find the data and to understand what they've counted and how they've counted it, which is why I only use the CDC data.

"In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over." –Dan Hodges

> By this argument, literally no protection or liberty that allows even one child to be harmed could ever be tolerated.

[argument]: Considering that a large amount of child abuse is perpetrated by the parents of children, perhaps the people who need to be vetted first are...

/of course, that devolves into "vet everyone"...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com