American Guns Are Fueling U.K. Crime | Hacker News Reader

American Guns Are Fueling U.K. Crime

nytimes.com

7 pointsbmcn20209 comments

Open articleView on HN

Heh, they almost immediately say most of the guns come from the E.U.

Why don’t we just ban gangs?

Because coming up with a legal definition of a 'gang' is tricky without criminalising a lot of innocent people.

I wish people would stop focusing on crime as something to stop after the fact and focus on preventative measures.

There wouldn’t be demand for illegal firearms without gangs.

Why do people join gangs? Probably because of a lack of career and education opportunities, and family problems because of a lack of career and education opportunities.

Of course, I’m only guessing. I’m sure some very smart people know exactly why people join gangs.

I think the entire reason the UK voted for Brexit and the US “voted“ for Trump is because of increasing wealth disparity and decreasing standard of living for the bottom half of the ladder. People want to “shake things up” when they’re backed into a corner like this.

Until governments start thinking about working for making the life of the common person better, crime and gangs is what they’ll get.

It's a shame you got downvoted, because we know that treating violent crime as a public health issue works.

Here's a UK link that talks about serious violent crime that happens in public spaces: https://www.local.gov.uk/taking-public-health-approach-tackl...

There's quite a lot in there and it's hard to pull out anything that feels powerful enough to describe the work. But there are lots of examples of people and organisations who are slowly, gently, making a difference.

That’s exactly what I was trying to get at.

And of course, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to stop smuggling. It’s just that we might find that it’s less effective and/or cost effective than treating the underlying causes.

This is true of the US government too. We view mental and physical health as separate, and so many mental problems are treated as crime rather than medical issues. Its a tragedy that police are on the front lines of so many mental health crises.

And right now for example we have federal troops "deploying" in several US metropolis areas to "combat gun violence." When obviously we should be deploying public policy experts and mental health professionals.

And yes, the working poor and the shrinking middle class are being left behind in this huge tech rally that's making billionaires out of millionaires. There are no leaders anymore, only con men and managers and stuckees.

I have no idea what my point is, other than to express my frustration with the state of politics and public policy these days. ALL of our political choices are CLOWNS.

If the UK allowed its citizens to bear arms, then the headline could be American Guns are Reducing UK Crime...

Lol sure, as we all know giving a firearm to everyone works perfectly in the US.

Somehow I feel that this wouldn't really solve the problem. Generally, the "the only way to beat a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy with a gun" idea (or whatever the actual quote is) probably doesn't match up with reality.

But maybe that's something borne out of individual ideology.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com