Hacker News Reader

I think Australia is a great example of what happens when guns are given up. You have a government that’s going on witch hunts for covid cases and exerting extreme authoritarian pressure for remarkably low covid rates.

Some would say it’s them testing the limits of their populace. What are they gonna do? Protest? That’s illegal when in lockdown.

No you don’t.

You do have one of the lowest Covid death rates in the world. You have a lot of states with complete freedom.

...except if you want to leave, lol.

UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 13

    Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Your response to the accusation that a government is being authoritarian is that it’s OK because there’s “a lot” of places with “complete” freedom? That’s bordering on “this is good for Bitcoin” levels of Stockholm syndrome.

So you're saying that covid measures wouldn't exist if there were more guns, and that would be a good thing?

Maybe the remarkable low covid rates are there because of the authoritarian pressure? Authoritarian is never a good word but if people simply won't listen when it comes to matters of public health (that affect everyone - an overflowing ICU is never a good thing) and thus endanger the health of others then they have to live with the consequences. It's not a matter of politic, opinion or ideology.

The suggestion that this should be responded to with guns is just the most perfect own goal.

The majority of Australians grumble about it but agree with the lockdown restrictions. Looking at the insane number of people dying from COVID in the US compared with Australia I understand why.

This reminds me of my first year of high school in Australia. I had come from the USA and everyone wanted to hear my war stories about people shooting each other (and for me to say 'Watermelon' over and over). It completely blew my mind how misinformed Aussies (granted we were young) were about life in America. It's a huge country, you gotta keep in mind the news and action movies sensationalize and glorify isolated violent events.

Everybody is hugely misinformed about every country, especially kids.

I'm not sure when that was, but in a contemporary setting, the line of questioning (and fascination about what's been normalised) would be highly reasonable.

Consider the frighteningly lengthy list of school shootings in the USA. [0]

I note that Wikipedia does not have an entry for school shootings in, say, Australia. Or in fact most other places.

I'm seeing a figure of ~ 1300 school shootings in the USA since 1970, so it doesn't appear to be an entirely modern problem.

In the USA (contemporary, again, sorry I'm not sure what era your experiences are from) there's ~30-40 (children-aged) victims of gun-related violence a day, with ~8 of those resulting in death. [1]

From outside that society, how people put up with this, living with regular active shooter drills, managing the additional anxiety, etc, is definitely going to be of interest.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th... [1] https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/gun-violence/16-facts-about...

the US does seem to have a rather unique problem with school shootings. it's certainly worth investigating why this is the case and considering countermeasures. at the same time, and I know this is a cold thing to say, the issue really gets blown out of proportion for political reasons. it's about as likely for a US student to get killed in a school shooting as it is for you to get hit by a bolt of lightning.

> From outside that society, how people put up with this, living with regular active shooter drills, managing the additional anxiety, etc, is definitely going to be of interest.

I was in grade school not that long ago, and quite frankly, there wasn't much to "put up with". we did active shooter drills as or less frequently than fire drills (not often). I don't remember ever feeling anxiety about being shot at school, and I am a lot more anxious than the average person.

I know a few friends of mine who are extremely risk averse: they live boring safe lives and think I'm crazy going to those dangerous mountain bike trails. They don't seem to get the concept of freedom: their freedom ends with a choice of a tv movie for the evening and that's enough for them. Some people here really believe that freedom is more valuable than safety, more valuable than the number of deaths or whatever else statistic you might have there. Once these people pass away evenrually, the drive behind this freedom will vanish, and America will turn into Australia, with draconian control of guns, speech and whatever else, but I hope to not be alive by that time.

I think you have a strange view of freedom in Australia.

We'd have to be one of the more free countries around.

Yep, there are some laws that you would see as draconian, but are you offended because they actually impact you, or are they just something you don't like for "reasons"? Many places have laws and conventions that are different, it's about how you live with them. We have crappy and corrupt politicians. We have criminals and we have gangs. we are not perfect. The way we treat our first nations people is frankly shameful. Unemployed are in a in a hard shake, with benefits being far too low to both live and search for a job without family assistance.

We also have a country where you can walk down most streets without concern for your safety. Most places in the city you lock your doors but can get away with not setting an alarm. My current work at home office is on our back deck, and I'm happy to leave my computers out here for a few hours if I need to go out. Most places outside the cities you don't bother locking your doors. If you break down on a country road, your biggest fear is that somebody won't turn up to help you, not that they will come and rob you. Most of us don't know of anybody who has been killed by violence. I know one, she was shot by her boy friend when I was about 8 years old, way before the current gun laws were enacted. Most of the population understand that we need to work together for the common good, be it responding to natural disasters or putting on a bloody mask to help stop the spread of covid. In a disaster your neighbour will come and check that you are ok. If I want to have my say about something, as long as I'm not stupid or violent, there are many forum. I've walked all over the big (lol) cities in the country and never felt threatened or been accosted. This would be different if I were female, but I believe that is a problem world over. I still believe that the police are there to help and look after me, and have no fear about talking to them. Of course I'm white middle class male and my experience is not that of other groups, however police violence is still rare enough that it creates an outcry.

Overall, the only place I would prefer to live than Australia would be New Zealand, and then I'd have to put up with the cold weather.

See, you're putting so much emphasis on safety: your entire text is about how safe Australia feels. I just don't see what's so valuable in feeling safe on a dark alley if you have zero control over the situation should anything go wrong.

You are not more free in the US than you are in Australia. Unless you cherry pick specific laws (guns for example) as the definition of what freedom is. Freedom to me means having choices. So if you pick (say) healthcare then not having access to healthcare in the US (for example) means you have less freedom in the US than most European countries. If you pick guns then people living in failed states have more freedom than the US because there are no laws stopping them from (say) acquiring nuclear weapons (illegal in the US). My point is that claiming that you are more “free” in country A vs. B is very much a subjective assertion.

> Like it does hearing people from the US on HN talking about guns. It just sounds crazy. I read on HN someone from the US saying Australians wouldn't be under lockdown if only we had guns etc. It just sounds insane, disturbing even reading that. What am I gonna do with a gun?!

As an American, the gun discourse especially on tech forums like HN sounds insane to me too.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Japanese_invasion_o...

You might want to consider some counterfactuals where the US kept more to itself.