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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

Why are guns so terrifying, but not a knife, or a hammer, or a steel bar, or 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".

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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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