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Comment by flowerlad | Hacker News Reader

Just yesterday night I saw this story about a "road rage" incident: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/05/22/califo...

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The fact that carrying is so prevalent in Texas is one reason I'm always polite on the road and don't flip people off. You never know when someone is just going to lose it, but to be honest, a car is a deadly weapon as it is. It's just a good idea to avoid confrontations with strangers.

I've noticed that the homeless population in Texas is much less aggressive than in Chicago and San Francisco and New York. My pet theory is that when any citizen might be armed, it promotes a type of herd immunity against assault. I don't carry, personally, but as far as the aggressive homeless man is concerned, or the road rager is, I might be armed.

I like that, and I like this law.

>I like that, and I like this law.

Are you able to imagine the reverse? where instead of some insane person losing it and addressing some ugly words at you he will just kill you, your family will probably won't like the it anymore.

Insane people may kill you, and your family whether this law exists or not.

It is not the same if an insane person enters my home or a school with a pocket knife. And I am thinking at "temporary" insane people, like the ones that after the girlfriend dumps them they go at her work place/home and kill everyone they find including children. Same dude without a gun will do 1-x less damage.

But if the citizens decided this is what they want I am not arguing against that. Just feels weird to hear someone say : "beggars will be nicer since they know I might have a gun" but not also consider the reverse "me, my family will have to be more cautios since anyone could have a gun".

Sane people make irrational decisions in the heat of the moment. Shooting you could be that decision. But hey, it could be crazy person too so no big.

That would be very bad indeed, but it's also a situation that is statistically more likely to happen in California than Texas, just to add some perspective.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr...

Violent crime (which is a very broad spectrum of crimes, most not life threatening. Spitting on someone. A bar fight. And more severe violence) is slightly higher in California.

Gun crimes are way higher in Texas. Over 50% higher than California. Aren't all those guns supposed to cow the criminals?

Are "gun crimes" a thing? Isn't that covered by violent crime? It expected that violent crime uses a weapon of convenience and since CA restricts firearms, then firearms figure less often in violent crime.

What's clear from the statistics is, restricting firearms did not make a statistical difference for violent crime in CA.

Well yes, gun crimes are a thing. They are tracked separately. They have separate penalties.

And there are loads more of them in Texas than California. Is it because "CA restricts firearms", then you're countering the guy above who claimed that Texas is a more peaceful society because of all of those guns.

For that matter, Texas has more murders per capita than California. For all you hear about the wild streets of San Francisco, the crazy gangs of LA, etc... more murders in Texas.

For that matter, NYC violence "exploded" over the past year. New York state still has less murders per capita than Texas despite a catastrophically bad year.

Ouch. Guess those guns aren't keeping everyone safe. In reality they end up getting used to murder people.

Comparing the murder rate of two random states with different gun laws doesn't actually tell us anything about the effects of gun laws on the murder rate. Would love to know how a comment based on the same logic arguing the reverse would do on HN. Brazil has way more restrictive gun laws then the US and way more murders. "Ouch." Guess those guns are in fact keeping everyone safe.

The thread started where a person used stats to prove his point and someone else pointed out that the stats are prove the reverse... so conclusion in US laws of statistics do not apply.

As a constructive thing, I suggest we figure out why the gun crime stats from 2 different states or from same state but different time are wrong or partially wrong.

This is an interesting and new take. So to be clear, we should take someone's vague hand-wavy claims about it being better, but we should refute actual empirical metrics. Okay.

Not sure how they're two "random" states when they're specifically the states the person I replied to used as their example. Though generally, the more gun permissive a state is, the worse their murder rate is.

Though I'm not sure Texans should feel great about your belief that we should lump Texas in with Brazil more than California. I mean, both are states in a rich, first world nation, and many on here are claiming Texas is a utopia compared to California. Instead we need to grade it on a curve where it's actually Brazil. "Ouch."

In practice this is something we simply do not have enough data points on (places where the population is armed). It’s easy to speculate one way or another, but you are only legally protected in self defense, not homicide. I’m not convinced that people being armed would increase homicide rate, could just as easily decrease it (ie Cold War effect).

As the original comment poster mentioned cars are lethal weapons as well, and you don’t see many intentional hit and runs. Guns are very loud and you’re not likely to go unnoticed committing gun violence.

Personally I don’t know that it is a good thing to have everybody armed, but it really is on nobody but yourself to protect yourself and your dependents. To this end, I carry (and recommend others carry) pepper spray, which is very effective in non-lethally disabling an agitator in self defense without the mental or legal burdens and pains of injuring or killing another human being.

(Disclosure: I used to work in EMS, violence is everywhere in different forms. Additionally I own a shotgun for the sole purpose of hunting food, and I think the idea of “keeping it handy for self defense” is the dumbest home protection idea I’ve ever heard; you’re more likely inflict accidental self harm keeping a weapon handy in the house or carrying it than safely locked up)

>you are only legally protected in self defense,

From what I seen in US you can kill anyone if you then can argue that "I was afraid for my life" and you are white and have some money.

I am not sure how exceptional this cases are though. But if this laws are what the citizens want then I am not against it, just the argument I responded felt wrong.

> As the original comment poster mentioned cars are lethal weapons as well, and you don’t see many intentional hit and runs.

All hit and runs are intentional, but the only intent required is foe the “and run” part. Because intent for the “hit” isn’t part of the crime, and its already a serious felony where injuries occur, its rarely worth the effort to try to ascertain or prove intent for the “hit” case.

OTOH, its worth noting that thr same political faction behind loosening gun carry restrictions has also been actively working to loosen restrictions on intentionally hitting people with cars, in direct response to people committing criminal homicide that way.

(Weirdly, its also the faction that likes to pretend to be “pro-life”.)

It may be that the “run” part is intent in the legal sense, but I meant using a “hit and run” as a a tool of intentional homicide.

There are plenty of other ways to harm or kill people out there. More terrifying are those in which the victim lives but is intended to be permanently injured (such as vitriol or poisoning).

Politeness and civility should not be enforced by fear.

There's something to be said when one claims they like homeless people acting a certain way.

I think some people summarise that as "an armed society is a polite society" but it seems more like "a fearful society is a repressed society". In some countries the populace is oppressed by the fear of an authoritarian government, in others they're oppressed by the fear of the person stood next to them. An authoritarian government could be considered preferable as at least they are more predictable than random strangers.

The "we'll be civil through guns" argument is profoundly destroyed by every possible empirical metric, yet somehow it always makes an appearance in every gun advocacy post.

People are much more civil, social and considerate in virtually every other Western nation than in the gun crazed United States. The people who want to carry a gun are overwhelmingly the problem, and now you've armed them.

Is there ever going to be a point where people stop believing the nonsense?

There is a bit of a paradox that the people who eschewed masks, think COVID is a hoax or overblown/no risk, etc, are the ones sure they need to carry a gun at all times lest some sort of movie scenario erupt in front of them. It is fundamentally broken logic.

You're polite on the road so people won't murder you. Read that back a few times. You feel your life is at stake if you get upset while driving. That's good?

This road rage incident occurred in California, which has some of the strictest gun regulations in the country.

And some of the lowest Per Capita gun deaths.

Stop using anecdotes as data.

But is so with gun murders? According to this chart (2015 data) is it not one of the lowest

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

however it did seemingly fall in rank if not numbers from 2010

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

2/3rds of gun deaths are suicides, and so any differential in the firearm suicide rate will tend to swamp differences in the firearm homicide rate.

[1] puts CA as 3.4 gun homicides per 100,000 people per year, and TX at 3.2. Top of the list is DC at 16.5 (and then LA at 7.7), bottom of the list is VT at 0.3.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_death_rates_in_the_Uni...

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