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Comment by frereubu | Hacker News Reader

Genuine question: can you elaborate on "without any problems"? As a European I find the level of gun violence in the US to be shocking, so I don't understand why lax gun laws like these are not a problem. The Bill Hicks quote "There's no connection between having a gun and shooting someone with it, and not having a gun and not shooting someone, and if you make one you're a fool and a communist" is perhaps overly simplistic but it does feel like it gets at a truth that when you have lots of people walking around with guns, lots of people are going to get shot. I recognise that how the US gets to low gun ownership from where it is now, and whether the US even wants that, are tricky questions, but I really have trouble wrapping my head around the view on gun ownership in the US in general, let alone particular aspects of it like private ownership of assault weapons.

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This article is specifically about lawful carrying, not ownership. Criminals generally don't care whether carrying is lawful or not, so you wouldn't expect this particular law to matter a lot.

There just aren't a lot of cases where someone without any criminal intent carrying a gun all of a sudden gets mad and starts shooting people over an insult or something.

You are kind of right that the sheer volume of guns in the US, more than one per person (even if you count babies), could contribute to the homicide rate by making it easier for prohibited owners to still acquire a gun. But even that is complicated and has a lot of nuance.

The murders are very localized here to areas which throw off the average, and are much more strongly associated with factors other than guns. If you aren't in one of those areas, the murder rate is much lower.

In my opinion, guns are mostly fine most places in the US. But the general availability of guns does enable volent areas to be more violent based on specific local problems.

www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/02/26/gda-texas-mass-shootings-rise-in-2020-data-reports/115506570/

Were they criminals before they shot everyone?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/two-women-shot-in-secon...

I haven't heard that any of the suspects in the two events on 6th street were carrying illegally or were already criminals (they could have been).

We seem killing more people here in TX already. Letting more drunks have the right to carry and conceal isn't gonna make things better. Maybe it won't make things worse either but it's already pretty bad.

Sincerely, Getting the F Out Of TX, ASAP

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

California and Texas have similar homicide rates: 4.3 vs 4.9. Both numbers are low in the sense that homicide isn't something you should be afraid of in either state, unless you are in a specifically risky place or situation.

And regarding your anecdotes, it's doubtful to me that a law would prevent many of those people from carrying a gun. Maybe some, but nothing that would show much signal in aggregate data.

That's where the similarities end though.

CA has a much poorer population at the bottom end, the price of living is 70% higher, multiple-point higher unemployment, less space, lower education outcomes, etc, etc, etc.

CA's problems are not TX's problems.

The facts you posted are interesting; thank you.

But I don't follow your point. Why would the parent "Get the F Out" of Texas if the murder rate is both low and comparable to the most obvious alternative?

Okay, maybe I didn't get your point. You introduced CA into this, but igetspam didn't say GTFOTX-and-go-to-CA. I see that you're using it because lots of people do look at the two states as two options for setting up shop.

I guess I was really pointing out that parts of CA has much bigger problems that make it ill-advised to compare state-for-state. Maybe that's unfair but they're both pretty colossal states.

And there are other options. Portland, Seattle, etc.

I should have put it as "Texas is in the middle of the pack in the US". But there are at least a couple ways that could be challenged as well: (a) middle of a list of states is not the same as having equal populations above and below; (b) it raises the question of whether the U.S. murder rate is a reasonable benchmark.

On HN, really anything is subject to some kind of challenge.

I like comparing the two states because they are both big (and therefore not as subject to cherry-picking) and have fairly different governing philosophies.

At the end of the day, you don't choose a state based on minimizing your chances of lightning strikes. You stop climbing trees in the middle of a thunderstorm and you forget about it.

Maybe you'd choose specific cities or areas, but state is kind of ridiculous.

States that have passed these laws saw no dramatic increase in shootings, and optional permits actually went up in these states. Everything related to buying, owning, shooting a gun is exactly the same, the only difference is you no longer need to pay $50-400 to carry it on your person, which criminals do for free.

Ah, OK, so "no problem" in the sense that it hasn't made things any worse. Fair enough.

If anything it has made it better, which I'm sure a lot of people will roll their eyes at, but people are much less likely to start anything if they know most people are carrying. I know the media skews your views on america, but it's not like the movies, we're not over here root'n toot'n with our guns out like it's the wild west. I have lived in Texas for 10 years and have seen 1 or 2 guns in holsters. Every other one is concealed. I have never heard a gun shot other than a gun range, and have never witnessed anyone pull a gun or shoot one at someone. The only guns I've seen pulled are those of the police, pistols and rifles.

Yeah, having visited a few times I get that the media portrayal of the US being a 21st century Western is off. And I sort of get the idea that "people are much less likely to start anything if they know most people are carrying". But there's a tacit assumption in there that criminals have guns. For all that legal owners may not be a problem in the vast majority of cases, the more firearms there are, the bigger the pool of firearms there are for criminals to get their hands on. Having read through a few of these responses it seems to boil down to how much US citizens trust their government compared to other countries. The fact that there are federal bodies - such as the army - with enough firepower to flatten a city, yet people insist on carrying guns because they don't trust the government feels a bit off. But I think I'm straying from your point there.

I don't want to go further down a tangent here, but you also see how little Americans trust their government in the number of people reluctant to get vaccinated and the number of people who seriously believe the election was stolen. Both of those examples are mostly right leaning people. But this is also the same group that's most interested in gun rights. Is there similar distrust for the government on the left, if so how does it present? What irrational behaviours do democrats have because they distrust their government - or is distrust of the government mostly focused in the right of the political spectrum?

Wanting to defund the police? Having this opinion and at the same time wanting to ban guns is truly puzzling.

Good example! So mistrust of the government is probably universal in the US and just presents differently on the left and the right.

> Having this opinion and at the same time wanting to ban guns is truly puzzling.

It's irrational, don't try to apply logic to it. It's a simplistic emotional response.

That's my view.

Ask Vietnam or Afghanistan if you can fight off the American military with rifles.

As a practical reality, the vast majority of Americans never see gun violence their entire lives, it isn't part of their lived experience. They view guns as a tool, not a significant risk. Almost all of the gun violence is concentrated in a handful of neighborhoods with long histories of violent crime generally where, ironically, gun possession is often illegal.

Technically speaking, Americans can legally own almost any weapon they can safely store. There are even a few ballistic missiles floating around the US in private hands.

My view as an American:

I trust my sketchy neighbor with a gun much more than I trust the government with a gun.

But your government does have guns, don't they?

There is very little gun violence in the US. What you're seeing is a media problem.

But if you look here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r... - the USA has a very high per-capita gun homicide rate (4.46) compared to most other comparable countries (e.g. the G7 countries which are 0.2, 0.52, 2.33, 1.04, 1.13 and 0.02). Interesting that France (2.33) is so high - I hadn't realised that.

The vast majority (practically all) gun homicides happen in a handful of counties where guns are completely banned and are gang members killing gang members.

That's a cultural and economic problem that isn't solved by gun laws.

> As a European I find the level of gun violence in the US to be shocking

this is probably a perception problem. the uk doesnt have guns but has much higher violent crime with knives. in some ways, stabbing is much more violent and interpersonally malicious than pulling a trigger. there is a very close prevalence of violent crime per capita in US and UK, its just that stab wounds are easier to trest than gunshots.

the US has above average gun violence per capita, but acting like its some widespread danger is largely a construction of fear-driven media and sensationalism. most of US gun violence numbers come from highly localized pockets like detroit, LA, and chicago. its not a problem in almost all of America.

It's more of a problem where more Americans live, is what you're saying.

Fair point in some ways - perhaps knife crime is higher here. But on balance it's surely better to have violent crime that's more likely to involve treatable outcomes rather than death?

You will also find knife-crime in Europe (especially the UK) is just as concentrated, if not more, to a few inner-city neighbourhoods.

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