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Comment by patrickod | Hacker News Reader

As someone who's been mugged before the proliferation of firearms in the states really unnerves me. I got jumped in a shady area of Dublin one dark winters night, was punched repeatedly in the face, and had my bike stolen. The Gardai (Irish name for the police force) handled it very well and recovered the bike that very night. The individual was known to them and it went on the long list of offenses that this person was generating for one hell of a court date.

Gun crime doesn't exist in Ireland like it seems to in the US. The idea that someone out to mug me and take my wallet would have a firearm pointed at me and not just their fists is, to me, quite scary. I don't know what the statistics are like for such crimes at gunpoint and while I write this I realise that this fear might well be the result of my limited exposure to American news outlets.

I guess my question is: is it justified or is this just my lack of experience of living in the states running amok ?

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> I guess my question is: is it justified or is this just my lack of experience of living in the states running amok ?

The most dangerous places are places where there's access to firearms for criminals, but they're illegal or prohibited for citizens. The most heavily armed states in the USA actually have lower gun crime and violent crime. Likewise, extremely heavily armed countries like Switzerland and Israel also have low violent crime rates.

You've got to go to one side or the other to be safe. Near complete removal and prohibition of firearms (like Japan) works. Arming all legitimate citizens who want arms works. But having firearms available easily for purchase on the black market, but restricted/prohibited legally tends to promote the worst of both worlds.

I don't see how you can realistically have either of these extremes. In Ireland handguns, with the exception of a particular class of law enforcement and competition .22 calibre guns, are illegal - period. You can buy firearms but it's a very drawn out process and the ultimate decision lies at the discretion of your local police Superintendent. There are still murders committed in Ireland with handguns between rival city gangs but the common mugger will not have one. Do I feel safer? Yes

It seems that Switzerland has a low gun-crime rate but I wouldn't be so quick to give credit to their gunlaws for this. Switzerland and the United States are very different places.

Again this is just my $0.02

If you live in the country, getting a rifle isn't thaaaat dificult. There are still a bunch of hoops to jump through, of course, but it doesn't take a lot either. And if the local Superintendent says no, then you're out of luck, of course. I do feel safer knowing there aren't a lot of guns around.

I lived in Ballymun for a year and witnessed all sorts of craziness - arson, vandalism, stabbings - but not once a gun crime. I've never been attacked or robbed myself either, thankfully.

Last place I lived the dude in my basement had three guns and the guys on either side of me each had shotguns and rifles. I felt very safe.

I think the difference is that due to demographics the Irish don't face the constant threat of the urban zombie hordes attacking.

Interesting medical perspective. http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediat...

> The most heavily armed states in the USA actually have lower gun crime and violent crime.

Is that true when you compare cities of similar size / population density? Sure, Montana has a ton of guns and little crime, but it's also rural and has no people. Looking at cities >250k, the high-crime cities (let's say, those over 10 violent crimes per 1,000 inhabitants) don't seem to skip states with loose gun laws: St. Louis, MO; Memphis, TN; Indianapolis, IN; Kansas City, MO; Atlanta, GA; Houston, TX; and Tulsa, OK; are all high on the list.

(Data from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_r...)

I just did a quick google and I'm not finding stats, but I've seen in a couple places features on the percent of population that legally owns firearms and on violent crime - if I remember correctly, they're reverse-correlated. The last time I saw it was in a feature by Al Jeezera which was linked to from a HN comment, I think.

The population point is interesting and I'm not sure about that. Maybe something to do some looking into at some point, I'd be curious to know more.

Edit: This seems almost comically biased and appeals to emotion a lot, but does cite some stats - http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/493636.html

John Lott is kind of a flake with several credibility problems: allegations of academic fraud in his studies and of not actually conducting a survey he claimed to have done, proven allegations of sockpuppeting ("Mary Rosh"), lack of corroboration of his claims by any other academics...

More Guns Less Crime is a snappy title, but mostly seems like a work of ideological pro-firearm propaganda in light of its author's many documented ethical issues.

Lott is also the guy who predicted that Australia would become a lawless wild west with stricter gun laws in place after the Port Arthur massacre. He overlooked the point that we never really had guns anyway, and the laws were only restricting automatic rifles and requiring guns safes at home, and that after a one year slight rise in crime (crime is cyclic), crime has dropped markedly since that point (for reasons entirely unrelated to guns, because guns don't really factor into our society).

This wouldn't be so much of a big point, except that he did spend a lot of time trumpeting about this single year of slight rise in crime. If you read his studies at the time, he also grossly misrepresents things like doing that trick where you report going from 4 to 5 incidents a year as "OMG! 25% increase!" (can't remember the exact number)

Kleck is another guy with crazy stats. In one report he mentioned that concealed handguns saved 230k lives per year in the US. I crunched the numbers to see how that would translate to our 'lawless', 'gunless' country, where criminals 'have free reign', and it would mean we would have 15k deaths because we don't do concealed gun laws. Turned out that our annual murder rate from all sources combined is about 300. Part of the pro-gun propaganda is the implicit assumption that every crime involves death or rape.

I've spent a lot of time looking at gun issues over the years and started out from a total anti-gun perspective, with the exception of farmers and security. As I've examined it, the problem really seems to be handguns. Rifles don't seem to be so much of an issue - anecdotally at least, it's hard to conceal a rifle. The armed Swiss that's so often reported are armed with rifles, too (interestingly the 'armed society is a polite society' people always seem to leave out west Africa...). When you start looking at the statistics in the US, it really jumps out at you how bad handguns are there. I've also never, ever, seen any pro-gun argument make note of the role of the startling increase in US incarceration have an affect on crime rates. It's an interesting topic and blinkered passion rise on all sides, that's for sure.

OTOH rifles are the weapon of choice for spree-killers. Australia had a surprising number of these for such a small country (my father narrowly missed driving through the Hoddle St massacre). I don't think we have had a spree killing of any significant scale since the gun bans passed following the Port Arthur killings.

Spree killers were part of my original total anti-gun position, but the more I looked, the more I realised they are an outlier.

Port Arthur was a very large massacre with ~35 dead and made up about 10% of our annual murders, but usually spree killers comprise a much lower percentage. Legislation shouldn't be made based on the outlier case. It's even worse in the US - the high visibility spree killers would only total 100-200 per year, but there are about ~17k murders annually in the US (11k of those are with handguns). The spree killers that make the headlines are a drop in the bucket in the US, and in Australia they're actually pretty rare - separated by years, not to mention that we haven't had much in the way of such things this millenium.

In short, focusing on spree killers misses the bigger picture. The sheer number of spree killers is immense in the US as compared per capita to its contemporaries, but even there it's still a drop in the bucket.

---

six degrees of separation: one of my teachers at high school taught Julian Knight (Hoddle St bloke) how to shoot, in the school's army cadet programme...

six degrees of embarrassment: I had been seeing a lass from Tasmania for a month or two and was making a short series of dark jokes (my MO) about the Port Arthur massacre. She waited patiently to the end of it, then let me know her aunt died there. She said it was worth waiting to see my suitably embarrassed expression...

Virginia has a lot of urban areas and population and almost anyone can get a concealed carry permit in short order. Many people do concealed carry. I really don't know the stats, but I've never heard of a mugging in Virginia, whereas ten minutes away in DC (very strict gun control) crimes like that are common place.

"I've never heard of a mugging in Virginia"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond,_Virginia : Richmond was ranked overall as the 5th most dangerous city and the 12th-most dangerous metropolitan area in the United States for the year of 2005.

Houston is well below a number of cities that have strict gun laws. D.C. being the most glaring example; among the strictest gun laws in the country, and the highest crime rates.

Houston also has a significant low-income population, and experienced white flight to the suburbs on a massive scale through the 70s and 80s; leaving behind a wrecked shell of a city (downtown has only recently started to come back to life; when I lived in Houston, downtown real estate was dirt cheap, but everyone was afraid to go there after dark).

In short, I don't think it's anywhere near as simple as "guns lead to more/less crime".

I sorta wonder if the feds make DC really really picky about reporting everything. It's easy to imagine secret service peeking over regular cops shoulders.

I could see Houstion being a little more laid back about recording every little gunshot. For one, guns in texas are sorta like bread and butter. For another, it doesn't look good to have an excess number of reported gunshots in a given annual report.

It's not, but pointing to DC as an example that gun laws don't work ignores a number of significant factors; specifically, the fact that guns are easily purchased just outside of the District's small expanse.

NYC's another interesting data point (but merely that) -- violent crime rate is roughly the same as Phoenix's... one city with a heavily armed citizenry and one virtually defenseless, same results. Obviously, other factors matter more.

If you go down the list of US cities with violent crime problems in order, the unmistakable trend is they're all at the bottom end of the economic spectrum. Safe bet that the local unemployment rate has a lot more to do with crime than gun laws.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_r...

Thread OP here. It's funny you'd bring up Switzerland as an example, because I'm actually originally from Switzerland, but have lived across the world including Switzerland, South Africa, Japan, Russia, Oakland & SF. I've had interesting experiences at some of these other places wrt. to safety etc., but that's a story for another day.

In Switzerland, though, I think it's important to keep a few things in mind when you look at the statistics, before you judge it as a heavily armed country:

- It's mandatory for every male to serve in the army, where we are all issued rifles. We get to keep the rifles at home when not on duty, and get to keep them after our duties are complete should we wish to. This makes up a huge part of the guns owned in CH. Military rifles are very hard to conceal and do not make for very good armed robbery weapons.

- While guns are common, ammunition is hard to come by. Military ammunition is only given while on-duty, and must be returned to the arsenal when not on-duty. While many people have guns, few have ammunitions.

- For almost everybody, guns remain locked in the attic / basement to be used only should the military call.

This is a really good point, and it's statements like "Switzerland is heavily armed but relatively safe so..." that destroy credibility. Mind you there are plenty of misleading stats for the counter argument as well.

Please let me know if you ever find a truly unbiased study on gun laws and their impact on crime. Seems like everyone's got an agenda, which is unfortunate because it's really a pretty interesting topic.

"The most heavily armed states in the USA actually have lower gun crime and violent crime."

That's not true in the slightest. Prevalence of guns directly equates to a greater incidence of gun crime, on both an international (say, U.S. vs. other nations) and intranational basis.

From the HN guidelines:

"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

I really doubt there's anything new or interesting to be had from rehashing the gun politics argument over again.

Please, not this argument, not on HN.

Worse than that, there's two of them going on on the frontpage right now, one in here, one in the thread about glasgow carpark gangstas.

I'll just report a comment I made 5 months ago when this happened:

"THIS debate definitely does not belong here. Seriously, even if humankind ever does sort out the essentially intractable problem of governmental control over the carrying of lethal weapons by the citizenry, I am willing to bet everything I own that we won't be sorting it out here on Hacker News.

I reckon we could have a fucking boring argument about it though. I've seen it done, it looks easy."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2028182

is it justified or is this just my lack of experience of living in the states running amok ?

The latter. Most of us live in places where crime is not a problem. We're not all in mortal fear for our lives, having property stolen left and right at gun point.

And .. the modest amount of actual crime I've seen, no guns were brandished.

I'd rather be threatened with a gun than by a big palooka with his fists.

* Fists or a gun, you're going to do what he says. He's got the drop on you, we can assume he's picked a place where help is unlikely to come, you can't get away quickly.

* A guy like that is big, likes to fight. He's going to do some damage. If he gets into it, he can cripple you for life, rack up some serious hospital bills.

* Criminals with guns don't seem to have much of a chance to learn to use them well. Contrary to TV, while shooting a gun is easy, actually hitting something is difficult. It takes practice.

"Most of us" live in places where crime is not a problem. Does anyone live in a place where crime is a problem as you describe it?

It seems that the Westerner attitude is that "somewhere else" things are really bad. New Orleans has close to the highest murder rate in the world.

Does anyone live in a place where crime is a problem as you describe it?

I have.

It seems that the Westerner attitude is that "somewhere else" things are really bad.

If I lived in a place where crime was a problem, I'd say so.

New Orleans has close to the highest murder rate in the world.

Cape Town was higher, last year.

And? I don't especially care about New Orleans: don't live there, wouldn't want to live there. It's a problem, but there isn't anything I can _do_ about it, so why worry?

Thanks for the data point re: Cape Town. That's interesting. I suppose my only point was that we like to think that things are way worse somewhere else (or perhaps someone likes us thinking that?), the State Department likes to issue warnings about how dangerous Country XYZ is, but you'll never see a travel warning w.r.t. visiting New Orleans.

The New Orleans Chamber of Commerce would throw a snit fit if the government issued a travel warning for their fair city. The Chamber of Commerce in Cape Town is somewhat less influential in that regard.

About your larger point, maybe. If true I doubt it's a cultural thing but just the way people are.

Wait, so being threatened and robbed is more scary to you than being savagely beaten and robbed?

An itchy trigger finger could mean a life threatening injury. I'd rather take the hit and have a bruise that would heal and not end up with a bullet in me.

Actually, a single punch can kill you. (see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1392113/Aspiring-rap...)

A single punch killing you is so unusual, you had to back it up with a link. Gunshots do not share this condition.

You can fight back if they punch you. If they have a gun, and you do too, then one of you will likely wind up dead.

That said, there are worse ways to be mugged. I had a friend develop a pretty bad smelling problem, and his sponsor in NA used to mug people by sticking a dirty needle into their neck and threatening to inject them with whatever was in it. Pretty savage.

This is mostly a problem of the areas in the U.S. that attempt to ban firearms. In Texas, for instance, gun crime is much less prevalent because many more people have guns. In California, you can legally carry an unloaded weapon, but you'll get harassed by police officers who like to joke about executing civilians who choose to carry guns openly. An unloaded weapon will also help you surprisingly little if the stranger who is mugging you is pointing a loaded weapon at you. You can apply for a concealed carry permit, but you will be denied, even if you live in Oakland.

A friend in LA told me that apparently tinted side car windows are illegal there, supposedly so an approaching cop isn't blindsided by a firearm. It just seems innately odd that firearms are legal, but tinted windows aren't in case you have one...

On the other hand, isn't Limerick still known as Stab City?

I wonder if the mugger's lack of a gun is WHY you got repeatedly punched in the face?

I've never mugged anyone, but I would guess that the first step is to establish control over the victim. With a gun against an unarmed victim, the mugger gets control easily. With neither armed, the mugger might need to actually attack and force submission before the victim decides if he should fight back or not.

You assume that everyone follows a sound method of thinking, but if he just wants cash for a fix and he hasn't had one in a while he won't be rational.

My experience of being mugged leads me to believe that the degree of violence meted out is not necessarily the amount strictly needed to gain control.

Is sulfuric acid illegal in Ireland? I would rather have a gun pointed at me than a large man threaten to burn my face off.

Why are guns so terrifying, but not a knife, or a hammer, or a steel bar, or a broken bottle?

Could have something to do with the fact that you can be shot from quite a bit greater distance than you can be stabbed with a knife, hit with a hammer, struck with a steel bar or cut with a broken bottle.

It takes far less effort to kill someone with a gun than with many other weapons. They also don't need to be close to the victim: being shot from 10 feet away is just as bad as being shot from 2 feet away, while being 10 feet away makes all of the alternatives you mentioned pretty ineffective.

It's amazing how much harder it is to shoot something with a pistol from ten feet than it is from two. Unless the person practices regularly (which I suspect most street thugs do not), your chance of unharmed escape increases pretty much exponentially with distance.

That's not to say that I hope to ever have one pointed at me.

> "It's amazing how much harder it is to shoot something with a pistol from ten feet than it is from two."

Not to mention how much harder it is to shoot something moving, compared to something that isn't.

I completely forgot to consider that, so thanks for pointing it out. Personally, I would feel much less safe 10 feet away from someone with a gun than 10 feet away from someone with a knife, so I suppose that that and popular culture were biasing my view.

This seems like a good place to mention the Tueller drill. A melee attacker can cover 20 feet in 1.5 seconds

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill

This being said, the US has a very high murder rate (triple its contemporaries) with the bulk of them done by handgun. It seems that it's not that easy after all to escape...

... and this is part of the problem with the gun debate on both sides - there's so much emotive argument on hypothetical situations, and very little examination of what actually happens in the world out there.

One example is "if mugged, would you rather knife or gun?", but that question doesn't allow for my answer "I'd rather have better social programmes so the chances of being mugged in the first place are lower".

Guns are an impersonal method of killing someone. With the others you have to be up close and really want to do some damage.

Seriously? I think that one's pretty obvious. When guns are involved the likelihood of dying seems to increase somewhat - even if it's only perceived at such close range.

Is this a serious question? If someone has a gun pointed at me all they have to do is pull the trigger and I'm likely dead. If someone is going to kill me with a hammer, steel bar, knife or broken bottle, they have to overpower me and then repeatedly use them on me to have the same effect. From the perspective of someone who killed animals for food, it is SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult both physically and emotionally to kill something with a knife than it is with a gun.

Not quite true. You can - and people actually are - be shot multiple times and survive, yet one blow from a hammer can cave your skull in.

Remember that you are dealing more likely than not with a psychopath; it's as psychologically easy for them to knife you as to shoot you. The issue is that a gun is technically harder to use than a knife. Even at 10 feet, trained marksmen regularly miss moving targets.

I'd be suprised if most muggers were psychopaths. I'd guess they're more likely someone strung out looking for a fix, and that they really don't want an outcome where they end up killing someone. They just want you to fall for the threat. In that case I'd think guns would be way more unsafe than other weapons.

Obviously there's an exception to every rule, but I'm pretty sure statistics is heavily skewed to the likelihood of surviving an altercation involving a hammer over a gun. Just saying. It's pretty easy to sidestep a hammer.

If I saw someone walking around on the streets with a broken bottle, I'd be pretty damn concerned to. Ditto if they've got a big-ass ka-bar in their hands.

A hammer or steel bar, on the other hand, is not immediately threatening because for the most part they aren't used to harm people.

I was walking behind a guy this weekend and noticed a Glock sticking out of the back of his pants. It's a little unnerving that one would just stroll around with a weapon that can do so much damage, so easily, in such a casual way.

As a Canadian living in the US, I don't think I will ever get used to the sight of casually toting around guns on the street - particularly when it's just tucked into your waistband.

Where do you live that you see people doing that? Serious question.

Seattle. This was the corner of Pike and 6th - so by no means a sketchy part of town.

Well this makes me feel safe while going to the UW. </sarcasm>

I would venture a guess that the person with the glock tucked in their waistband was either an idiot, or more likely, carrying illegally. I live in an open carry state and unless you have a concealed carry permit you can carry your gun on you at all times in most places so long as it's in plain view. Tucked into the waistband would require a permit and anyone that's been through the concealed carry classes should be smarter than to just tuck a gun in their waistband.

Especially a Glock which lacks manual safety and so you have to rely on a good holster.

To be fair though, there are holsters that go inside the pants hiding the gun and leaving only the handle sticking out.

Both are excellent points. IWB holsters are primarily used for the purpose of concealment so to see the handle sticking out of someones waistband would be somewhat unusual. I probably wouldn't use an iwb without a jacket so the jacket would have to open for it to be visible.

As an American living in the US all my life, I've never seen anyone casually toting around guns on the street anywhere, except on TV.

EDIT: I'm not denying that you saw that guy with the glock, but your last sentence makes it sound like it's a common occurrence in the States, and it really isn't.

It is more effective. The world's armies don't march into battle with swords anymore, do they?

No, they just use knives and bayonets.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1485926/I-bayoneted-p...

"I slashed people, rifle-butted them. I was punching and kicking. It was either me or them. It didn't seem real. Anybody can pull a trigger from a distance, but we got up close and personal."

20 insurgents killed at knife point with zero British killed.

Because guns fire projectiles over the speed of sound, whereas people with hammers run at about the same speed I do.

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