Comment by wonderwonder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wonderwonder | Hacker News Reader

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Most of the points in this post are not accurate. There are more guns in civilian hands here than there are people.

"The Small Arms Survey stated that U.S. civilians alone account for 393 million (about 46 percent) of the worldwide total of civilian held firearms" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership

"Most of them are in the hands of well trained people who are harmless" I am not sure what you base this on, you don't need any training at all to buy a gun, just ~24 - 48 hour waiting period and if you have a concealed carry permit, you can generally walk out with the gun after paying. Depending on the state, training to carry a concealed weapon can take from 2 - 8 hours. Some states don't even require training if you want to open carry your weapon.

In 2010 there were ~20,000 suicides involving a gun. In 2016, there were 11,004 gun homicides. The US leads the world in mass shootings, especially in schools. Accidental gun injuries are most common in homes where guns are kept for self-defense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...

Getting shot by the police is a leading cause of death in young male people of color.

"you might want to figure out who they are and what their agenda is"

Indeed.

You can buy a gun easily enough. However the people who actually do that tend to be enthusiasts who are well trained. To have a loaded gun on your person you need to be well trained in most states.

Again what do you base this on? I got a concealed carry permit after a 2 hour training class. During this class I had to fire a total of 6 rounds at a target ~15 feet away. I was not given any training on how to use the weapon, only a primer on the laws about when I can shoot someone. At no time did I have to demonstrate that I could safely bring my weapon from concealment to ready without shooting myself in the leg or a bystander. I can guarantee that of the 20 other people in my class, most of them did not meet any definition of "well trained".

"However the people who actually do that tend to be enthusiasts who are well trained" - based on what? You can buy a gun even if you have never fired one before.

Thirty percent of U.S. adults say they personally own a gun, while a larger percentage, 43%, report living in a gun household. - "https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own...

Is your argument that 43% of US households consist of well trained enthusiasts and the this is a small number?

> At no time did I have to demonstrate that I could safely bring my weapon from concealment to ready without shooting myself in the leg or a bystander.

It's not hard. If you pull the trigger, a bullet comes out (if the safety is off and if there is one in the chamber). So, simply don't pull the trigger until you are ready to fire a bullet. Most (if not all) people that buy guns, you included, understand this basic concept.

It's not like guns require massive amounts of experience to achieve proficiency. It's a simple tool, not a piano.

Pulling the trigger when you need to sounds like a simple problem in theory, but much more complicated in practice.

My uncle told me a story about when he was deployed to Afghanistan there was a designated area by the mess hall you were supposed to use to ensure your sidearm chamber was clear. Every once in a while, there was an accidental discharge and an officer would be seen over there sheepishly holstering their sidearm. My uncle pointed out that it wasn't required that you had to pull the trigger, just that you had to ensure the chamber was empty. My uncle said he never had a single accidental discharge in the 2 years he was there because he simply never pulled the trigger. If you don't pull the trigger, no bullets come out.

Meanwhile, this happens:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/police-off...

And this:

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/03/19...

So soldiers trained by the US military would sometimes make mistakes with their weapon resulting in a discharge they were not expecting? Seems like perhaps its not so simple a tool after all...

That's like saying a knife isn't a simple tool since chefs sometimes cut themselves despite being trained to use them.

How do you store and carry your weapon safely? How do you transport it? Who has access to it and the ammunition? It is a simple tool that kills tens of thousands of people a year, the least we can do is treat it with at least the level of respect we give other potentially deadly tools (hardly a piano).

Most gun owners give their gun that level of respect.

Car owners kill far more people than gun owners do not give much respect to how deadly their weapon is.

Car owners kill ~38,000 people a year. Guns kill ~15,000 a year (excluding suicides). There are roughly 20,000 suicides a year via firearm. I would argue that if you compared the number of cars driven on a daily basis in the us vs the number of guns fired, that guns cause far more deaths on a per use basis. Seems like Car owners are far more respectful of their 'weapon' on a per capita basis.

+1, on top of that

Car killing people -> mostly accidents.

Gun killing people -> mostly intentional.

> How do you store and carry your weapon safely? How do you transport it? Who has access to it and the ammunition? It is a simple tool that kills tens of thousands of people a year

Unintentionally? I highly doubt that. I would guess the majority of the tens of thousands of deaths were the result of the gun owner intentionally pulling the trigger, not because they were bumbling around transporting it incorrectly, storing ammo incorrectly, etc.

According to this[1], only 500 people died in 2016 due to gun accidents. The rest were intentional.

[1] https://www.aftermath.com/content/accidental-shooting-deaths...

You do realize that 500 gun deaths alone would make headlines in most other countries?

500 accidents in a country with gun rights and a population of over 300M is nothing. You have like a 1 in a million chance of dying by a gun accident. Even lower if you don't own or use guns. It's a non-problem.

The Mask of Zorro (1998)

Don Diego de la Vega [indicating sword]: Do you know how to use that thing?

Alejandro Murrieta: Yes! The pointy end goes into the other man.

He's parroting NRA talking points.

> You can buy a gun easily enough.

All you need is to know some guy.

> To have a loaded gun on your person you need to be well trained in most states.

All you really need is to grab a loaded gun and conceal it about your person. No paperwork required.

The problem is not guns I think, it's the culture of violence, and fear. Don't Swiss families all have shotguns from the military in their homes?

That's not true. To go from a novice with absolutely no experience with guns to a person with a concealed carry license took one day of a seminar in a southern east coast state.

You are making an innumerate argument. The odds of dying in a car vs getting shot are relevant. There’s no meaningful risk of getting shot and the US is one of the safest places in the world. Those are facts. You should try and get out more.

"There’s no meaningful risk of getting shot and the US is one of the safest places in the world"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

The United States is Ranked 94th in the world by intentional homicide rate.

"The odds of dying in a car vs getting shot are relevant." Why? I did not mention cars at all in my post so not sure how you bringing up cars renders my response illogical. Is your argument that individuals killed by gun violence would still be dead if there were no guns? Does this include victims of mass shootings in schools, churches etc.? By your rational, we should allow all countries to own nuclear weapons as the odds of dying in a car crash vs a nuclear explosion are far higher.

In 2017, over 15,000 people were killed by firearms (excluding suicide) and traffic deaths killed ~38,000. A car's primary function is not to kill, whereas a gun has almost no other purpose.

I appreciate the recommendation to get out more, but one of the nice things about modern technology is we always have access to facts wherever we are, and those facts indicate your points are very flawed.

A few things:

First, when you bring up the page, the list wasn't sorted by rate, so being 94th on it is meaningless. It turns out that if you sort it by rate, the US is 89th, so not much difference, but... the unsorted list didn't prove your point.

Next, so what if the US was Xth on the list? Is that good? Bad? Indifferent? Your claim seems to be that that's high, but you don't actually provide any reason to reach that conclusion based on place on the list.

Why are cars relevant? Because most of us accept the risk of driving in a car, without worrying about the danger level. It's low enough that we just casually accept it. If guns kill half as many, that's too many (it's also too many from cars!), but it's not a danger that keeps many of us awake at night.

> A car's primary function is not to kill, whereas a gun has almost no other purpose.

That argument may not be saying what you think. First, the dead don't care either way. But second, if cars kill more by accident than guns do on purpose, does that make cars better, or worse?

Given the amount of ammunition fired into targets and other inanimate objects for fun, I take issue with that "purpose" argument.

Given that I once threw a bean burrito at a road sign for fun as a teenager I take issue with its supposed purpose of being eaten \s

Your argument is invalid.

Now, let's compare the final destination of the average bean burrito vs the final destination of the average bullet.

Most bullets are destined to be fired directly into objects, most guns fired will never be used to take or defend a life.

Maybe if there were an entire recreational industry built around tossing burritos at road signs. But, uh, there's not.

15,000/325,000,000 ~= 1/25,000. Just for scope because 15,000 sounds big but not that huge for a country this large. Yes its way too high, but its not like Americans are Yosemite Sam all the time.

The only countries in the world with a higher rate are:

Honduras, Eswatini, Jamaica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Philippines, South Africa, Costa Rica, Mexico, Paraguay, Uruguay

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