Hacker News Reader

Comment by 01acheru | Hacker News Reader

> The shooting happened early Sunday morning

> the sound of more than 30 gunshots coming from an apartment complex directly behind Shepards

> The shooting appeared to be a random act involving individuals participating in the reckless discharge of firearms

How can this happen and keep happening?

It is not only about the number of weapons around in the US: the households with weapons in the US are 42% (2017 data), 37.9% in Finland, 16.6% in New Zealand, 28,6% in Switzerland (2005 data). But stuff like that in the US is in the tenfold to hundredfold when compared to similar episodes in any other country that is not bloody poor or a war zone.

Why is that?

data: gunpolicy.org

RIP

View on HN

> But stuff like that in the US is in the tenfold to hundredfold when compared to similar episodes in any other country that is not bloody poor or a war zone.

I think the US has an unhealthy obsession with guns that I haven't noticed with other countries. This encourages US residents to acquire/carry guns to make a political point about the second amendment or their rights as opposed to any practical need, leading to way more guns out there than actually necessary for hunting/self-defense/sport.

In other countries you mention, I'm pretty sure guns are something people acquire when they have a legitimate need for them (even if just recreational shooting) but otherwise are a fairly trivial item with no "culture" nor politics associated with it - people don't obtain/carry them just to prove a point about the second amendment or their rights.

Thanks for bringing good arguments to the discussion.

> I think the US has an unhealthy obsession with guns that I haven't noticed with other countries

Where do you think this obsession comes from?

> but otherwise are a fairly trivial item with no "culture" nor politics associated with it

Why would that reduce their risk? Flipping the question: why would this gun culture bring to more guns being actually fired? (for recklessness, violence, whatever stupid reason)

Different societies have different thresholds and criteria for what problems can be solved with violence or the threat of violence.

We can see this manifest in the use of violence by the state authorities. E.g. if state applies capital punishment to certain crimes then this reinforces the idea that violence is a solution to problems.

Whether the state holds this position because the society does or vice versa or some mixture of the two I'm not sure.

So in your opinion the US are a more violent society than most around the developed world?

For gun violence, murder, and rape, yes I think it's pretty clear cut for the US as a whole.

I would hazard a guess that there are large parts of the US where violence is more comparable to, say, the average Canadian levels.

> Where do you think this obsession comes from?

American action movies? Call of Duty?

My money would be on a lack of social cohesion, where people tend to not care much about their neighbors or society as a whole. Guns aren't themselves the problem, they just highlight the disease at the core of american culture.

Other countries have more history and culture and religion that bind them together. Being a young country of immigrants the US doesn't have those qualities.

If you don't feel part of the wider culture then you don't care about those people.

> lack of social cohesion, where people tend to not care much about their neighbors or society as a whole

Thanks, that's a really good point.

Which factors in your opinion influence this lack of social cohesion more? Social inequalities, racial, religious, educational?

Thanks. I think here in the West we have turned our backs on religion, and are now seeing the fallout from that. Religion not only defines a culture's moral code, but produces all sorts of additional glue binding people together. I'm am atheist but appreciate the benefits of Christianity for example, as that's what I grew up with and have continued with Christian traditions.

Celebrating Christmas is an obvious example here.

I'm not sure what the answer for the US is? Forcing everyone to church? As a kid I hated Sunday mass. As an adult I'm glad i went through that.

I found this:

> The United States has a religious makeup that’s broadly similar to that of many Western European countries. Most people on both sides of the Atlantic say they are Christian, for example. At the same time, substantial shares in the U.S. and Europe say they are religiously unaffiliated: Roughly a quarter of the American adult population identify as “nones” (23%), similar to the shares in Germany (24%), the United Kingdom (23%) and other Western European countries.

> At that point, however, the similarities end: U.S. adults – both Christian and unaffiliated – are considerably more religious than their European counterparts by a variety of other measures, according to an analysis of data from Pew Research Center’s 2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study in the U.S. and a 2017 survey of Western Europeans. For instance, about two-thirds of U.S. Christians pray daily (68%), compared with a median of just 18% of Christians across 15 surveyed countries in Europe, including 6% in Britain, 9% in Germany, 12% in Denmark and 38% in the Netherlands.

Also to my perception US citizens always seemed much more religious than Europens.

I grew up in Norway. During my childhood I never once saw a live gun in Norway. It was a shock visiting other countries in Europe and seeing armed police.

Norway is one of the most secular countries in the developed world today. The US is often used in Norway as an example of religion taken to the extreme, and it's often mocked.

Norway also has quite easy access to guns, yet the amount of gun violence is a tiny fraction of the US.

I think it’s much more political than that. Every other country also watches action movies and plays Call of Duty.

Thanks for the feedback... But did you read the rest of my comment?

> Where do you think this obsession comes from?

The following is anecdotal. My grandparents grew up in the rural west with guns because they needed them for legitimate protection from animals. They were never gun obsessed. Their children grew up naturally learning how to shoot guns, but none of them are gun obsessed except for my father. What is the difference between my father and his siblings? He is a doctor and the military paid for his medical school. His obsession with guns was a direct result of his service in the military. My cousins, whose parents did not serve in the military, are not gun obsessed. Most of my siblings are.

The USA has an obscenely huge military. I think our gun obsession culture is a direct result of so many people and their parents having served in the military. For some reason, the USA military engenders more of a gun obsession/culture than other countries militaries. Maybe it is the combination of the 2nd amendment and military service.

A counter point, I grew up in a country where military service is compulsory.

From my experience, having to carry an assult rifle night and day for months is very effective in curing childish notions about guns .

I don't think the point is about how many people actually perform military duty, but about how the US military culture works in practice.

Switzerland for example has a heavily compulsory military duty but IMHO a less violent, less patriotic, less indoctrinated and less glorified military culture.

It is a culture thing, just not millitary culture.

Even if gun obsession is a cultural thing, how that translates to gun violence? And to gun recklessness?

Not an American but for whatever it's worth:

* American society is deeply mistrustful of itself.

* Firearms are freely available

Everything else follows.

Guns being a political statement means more people will get guns to make that political statement. This translates into more guns being around that could cause accidents (which I believe this one is) or would escalate already violent situations to a deadly level.

How can "firing 30+ rounds on a Sunday morning in a residential area" be an accident?

It is like saying that driving a truck on a crowded street on LSD and killing somebody is an accident.

An accident in the sense that I don't believe their objective was to kill. They were stupid and reckless, but if they actually wanted to kill people there are much better ways than firing rounds towards a forest and hoping to get "lucky" and hit someone.

As someone once in the military, I never cared much about guns. When I got out, I got one just to feel safe from all the idiots with guns. For example, I got in a friends car once and opened the glove box to put something in it. I found a gun pointing right at me. I carefully picked it up and cleared it. It was loaded with the safety off. I chewed him a new asshole and we weren’t friends after that (not my doing, but they didn’t appreciate my verbiage after accidentally threatening my life).

Part of the problem is like me, getting one just to protect yourself from everyone else that has one.

Thanks, even if anecdotal it is a really good point. The US military is something that highly differentiate them from almost if not all other developed countries.

That's one of the best answers I got this far from under my comment, you're lead running for my totally worthless medal :)

The 'obsession' comes from the 2nd amendment which has no equal in other countries.

> Where do you think this obsession comes from?

"2A issues" have been, AFAIK, a hot political issue for at least a few decades. The right is generally "pro-gun"; we may also ascribe to the right (not to exclude the left from the same, but it seems less relevant here) a general enthusiasm for openly contrarian signaling and behavior. Another good example is "rolling coal"—maybe I just don't understand the appeal, but to me it seems like a totally pointless and destructive exercise that can be traced directly back to their hatred of environmentalist policy. The popularity of hybrid cars and cyclists as targets for "coal rolling" supports this.

I'd say their "obsession" with guns is coming from a similar place. To a lot of these people, guns are much more political and social symbols than they are tools. The same urges that make them drive around in lifted trucks covered in Trump flags compel them not just to buy and shoot guns, but also to decorate them with political slogans and symbology, to conspicuously and (often) trollishly display them, to argue vehemently against any policy that can possibly be classified as "gun control", and so on.

Thanks!

Even if gun obsession is a cultural thing, how that translates to gun violence? And to gun recklessness?

> gun violence

In some cases (e.g. the recent murder of Ahmaud Arbery), I think it comes directly from attitudes ingrained in right-wing gun culture and associated spheres. The murderers had been socialized to believe they were completely in the right to pursue, detain, and ultimately murder a man on no basis beyond their own (frankly) unhinged, malignant racism.

In other cases, I think it is less directly political and more a result of certain socioeconomic issues, organized crime paradigms, and the general availability of guns.

> gun recklessness

This is speculation, but I think subcultures that glorify guns and (sometimes hypothetical) gun violence are less likely to treat guns with the appropriate care and respect. It's not a sober mindset, and often these people seem to have a very clear idea of who they imagine they might shoot with their guns (yes, people, not animals) and very little empathy for them.

Even putting aside how toxic that mindset is by itself, the fact that your gun may just as easily kill you, a loved one, or an innocent bystander is a very sober fact, and not very compatible with said mindset. For instance, I don't think the kind of person who e.g. has the words "You're Fucked" milled on the inside of his AR-15's ejection cover^[1] is particularly concerned with minimizing violent outcomes.

Please note that I'm not saying all right-wing gun owners are like this. There are many, even those whose politics I may vehemently disagree with, who are perfectly responsible and sober gun owners.

^[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver

Thanks a lot again for taking the time to fuel this discussion!

After reading and rereading all comments here I'll try to generalize those findings.

Once the number of weapons starts growing without proper control you hit a first threshold that ticks weapon deaths: two groups begin being significant, those that are armed and stupid and those that are armed and violent.

If the number of weapons keeps growing you reach a second threshold, that boosts weapon related deaths by a lot: the group of people that are armed and violent and stupid starts being significant, a really dangerous subgroup.

You can keep boosting this argument adding other kinds of people: desperate, psychos, stressed.

Probably arming too much people that are stupid, desperate, violent and stressed... you end up with a big mess, like in some hotspots around some US cities.

>> but otherwise are a fairly trivial item with no "culture" nor politics associated with it

>Why would that reduce their risk? Flipping the question: why would this gun culture bring to more guns being actually fired? (for recklessness, violence, whatever stupid reason)

Availability, if nothing else. See also: Tide Pods

> Where do you think this obsession comes from?

I responded to another comment but I feel it would be relevant here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30050462

> Where do you think this obsession comes from?

The US is a society founded by colonists who needed guns to protect themselves against the people they were enslaving and the people whose land they were stealing.

For Switzerland I also imagine a lot of assault rifles just lying around from mandatory service

So how comes that "lots of assault rifles lying around" mean nothing in Switzerland but mean mass shootings and random firing in the backyard in the US?

I would assume the Swiss have received the necessary firing weapon training (which surely comes with a lot of safety measures drilling) which could have an impact.

I would also assume that the Swiss don't just allow anyone to join the military and thereby obtain an assault rifle, but that there is some psychological screening, that would prevent an unstable person from joining the military.

Meanwhile, in the US such a person just walks up to the gun shop and buys a firing weapon.

Because in Switzerland people have guns to defend the state from invaders. In the US people have guns to defend themselves (from the state or other people).

Also in Switzerland people store their military service gun but they don’t have bullets.

I believe they don't get to keep the rifle personally anymore. I would doubt there are many assault rifle nor semi-auto versions in the civilian population.

I agree they have been politicized. I wonder if that has anything to do with the political fight over gun regulations that seems to be unique to the US, or at least have a unique level of divisiveness. It seemed that my grandparents generation viewed guns as just a normal tool, but also didn't have as much active legislation, news coverage, etc. It seems, in my view, it's mostly the increasing disconnect between the urban and rural areas.

There’s definitely a fight over gun rights in the US more than other countries. It’s a positive feedback loop: gun-related violence prompts for more restrictions which in turn prompts people to acquire (and carry) guns in defiance despite not having other, more practical (self-defense, recreational shooting, hunting, etc) to do so and in turn cause more gun violence, intentionally (escalating confrontations to deadly shootouts that would otherwise be resolved without deadly force) or accidents like this one seems to be.

It doesn’t help that guns are also a political weapon - whenever a party wants to introduce gun restrictions, the other can use this as an advantage to secure votes (supported by pro-gun organisations such as the NRA). This of course isn’t limited to guns per-se but guns happen to be there and have a cult-like following often defying rationality - a perfect tool for politicians to take advantage of.

I’m not sure what a good solution to this would be. In my mind, the right to bear arms is already meaningless - my understanding is the the original purpose of the second amendment was to allow people to be armed to defend themselves against an abusive government - as using these arms to defend yourself against abusive law enforcement is already outlawed and can only result in life imprisonment at best and death (as in by deadly force used by police) at worst.

In this case (assuming my understanding of 2A is correct) I believe a solution might be to forcefully restrict gun ownership. There’s definitely going to be turmoil and collateral damage (I believe guns can be owned and recreationally enjoyed responsibly without harming anyone and it would be a shame to let that go) but the advantages of having less guns around might pay off in the end.

Theoretically, if the government became abusive enough, factions of law enforcement and military would take sides. Not that I see a civil war as being likely, although some experts see signs pointing to the possibility. It's certainly an interesting topic to research - a 1st world government abusive enough to cause the people to fight, and would they actually fight or would it be resolved through succession etc.

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-close-to-violent-conflict...

I totally agree that reducing weapons around should reduce weapon related violence, and also weapon related anything.

But why does a gun in the US kill more than that same gun in almost any developed county by an N factor?

Is this also a cultural factor? Or maybe social or political?

Or maybe there is a threshold over which weapon violence rises with a higher exponential in relation to weapon ownership?

For example over a certain threshold you end up having a significant number of armed individuals that are poor, desperate and armed which boosts potentially lethal criminality. Or stupid and violent armed people.

Or maybe: over a certain threshold you have too many people that are simply both armed and stupid. Occam's razor point towards this one IMHO.

I think you're right.

I've lived almost my whole life in rural areas, and have owned guns almost my whole life. With my brothers, father, grandfather, etc. Most of my friends own guns. I have never known anyone who shot somebody (with the unfortunate exception of suicide.)

I guess it's an urban thing.

I was mostly talking about the different views on guns. But it does seem that certain crimes occur at a higher rate in one area or the other.

https://www.ncjrs.gov/ovc_archives/ncvrw/2017/images/en_artw...

> I guess it's an urban thing.

It's probably an EDC thing:

* https://twitter.com/well_regulated_

In rural areas I think long guns are generally more useful, whereas in the non-rural, (sub)urban areas it's pistols that are carried about. Every time a gun is handled there is some probability of an ND, and the larger the number of guns, the more often the dice will roll for that ND.

Adding to that is that some people have no right/business owning a firearm in the first place because they lack self control and/or have psychological/emotional issues that need to be looked at:

* https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/wake-county-news/1-dea...

* Via: https://twitter.com/Well_Regulated_/status/14799401563460485...

There needs to be some kind a filter about ownership, even if it's as simple a one day course learning gun safety:

* http://www.firearmstraining.ca/actsprove.htm

* https://www.bulletproofset.ca/page8/page12/prove.html

The folks with absolutely zero discipline will be unlikely to bother with that course.

"In rural areas I think long guns are generally more useful, whereas in the non-rural, (sub)urban areas it's pistols that are carried about."

It's generally pistols that are carried in either setting. My state has has carry license (effectively only covers pistols) numbers at the county level. The number of licenses are much higher in rural areas. This also matches with the higher rural ownership numbers.

"Every time a gun is handled there is some probability of an ND, and the larger the number of guns, the more often the dice will roll for that ND."

True. The real question is what level of probability is acceptable. I would expect this to be a highly opinionated. My own view is that AD/ND happens so infrequently, and even more rarely hits someone other than the carrier (usually shooting themselves in the foot/leg), that it's a non-issue compared to many other daily activities that carry risk.

"There needs to be some kind a filter about ownership, even if it's as simple a one day course learning gun safety...

The folks with absolutely zero discipline will be unlikely to bother with that course."

We could teach it in schools. That's supposed to be the purpose of schools - educating society to be a fully capable responsible member of society. Whether that's with safety issues, self sufficiency, financial literacy, etc, it seems we are doing a poor job. The benefit to teaching everyone is that people who are non-owners may come across a situation where a gun is present.

Switzerland has a high rate of gun possession because it has mandatory military service and people take their weapons home with them.

And though many households may have a gun, they don't have ammunition. In the event they need to use the gun for military service, the canton will distribute ammunition from the arsenal.

Aside from service weapons, it is possible to simply buy a personal weapon and ammunition for it but firearms are much more regulated. You are never permitted to carry a loaded firearm in public for example (aside from a few permitted purposes like a security guard with a permit), only an unloaded firearm that you are transporting (and the police aren't going to buy any bullshit like "I'm transporting this gun to the protest").

So comparing the US to Switzerland just doesn't make sense. Sure there are guns but the rules and culture around them are completely different. It's not impossible in Switzerland but it's close.

Plus, the whole economic situation in Switzerland is different. There isn't such a huge part of the population living on the street or just barely scraping by. There isn't a whole lot of violent crime in general, let alone gun violence.

Swiss have guns because they trust their government

Americans have guns because they distrust their government

The concept of a collaborative governing body does not exist in the US, everything about the governance concept employed in the Swiss system would be a culture shock to Americans

Because cowboys and rap music and manifest destiny.

But seriously, you don't have to look that far. Canada's gun ownership and gun crime rates are also puzzling to compare with America's.

It's because of the NRA, which is a trade group of gun companies preventing regulation, and high ownership due to lack of regulation. The high ownership is there goal, a gun costs hundreds of dollars on the low end, and it's an 11-figure market.

Canadian gun ownership and gun laws are not comparable to the US. They have 1/3 the guns and 1/3 the gun crime per capita compared to the US, and ownership is more highly regulated.

Isn’t NRA more of a white Americans thing, while these kind of shootings are more gang-related?

Even better for the NRA. Fear of the Other helps the NRA drive more gun sales.

It sounds more like people were recklessly popping rounds off for fun than anything gang-related.

Well they do have 5 million members, so I don't think it's necessarily accurate to call it a "trade group of gun companies". They may be a significant part of the organization but there are a significant number of individuals who are part of it.

>They have 1/3 the guns and 1/3 the gun crime per capita compared to the US, and ownership is more highly regulated.

My quick stat check shows double the households with guns[1] but 6X the rate of gun deaths[2].

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Figure-One-Percentage-of...

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

Many state/city governments are captured by a certain party. They openly encourage criminals in an effort to destabilize the country enough to become the ruling party for good. So some ethnicities are forced to study, work hard, pay for the festivities, and get punished for as much as a speeding ticket. Others are given welfare and get to burn down cities. It happened many times before in history (Russia 1917, Germany in the 30s).

I lived in a bad area of town growing up. Lots of shootings outside. In fact the very first week we moved into that house there was a MAJOR shoot out. My entire family lying flat on the living room floor - face kissing the ground. Someone asked if they should call the cops or not. "Shhhhh, be quiet don't move" We laid on the floor like that for a long time. Kids all outside later watching the cops pick up bullet casings...

Fast-forward 15 years - bringing my wife over to the same family house. Me, "uh-oh, they're shooting again, get on the floor". My wife looking around, everyone on the floor "Oh, you're not joking?!"

It's not a new problem and it's not a good way to live.

I’d bet there are very few handguns in Finland, mostly bolt action hunting rifles.

According to the wiki, out of 1.5 million registered firearms there are about 225000 handguns.

Though there could be as much as a million weapons from WWII.

If you discharge a gun in most European cities, I believe police will respond and will make sure you don't get an opportunity to do that again. I think many times if a gun is involved it results in a pretty serious response, potentially directly the local equivalent of SWAT. I'm pretty sure 30 gunshots from an apartment complex would be a full SWAT response.

As soon as a gun comes into play, police take it extremely seriously.

It seems like in some US cities not much is going to happen unless and until someone actually dies.

This article is the best explanation I've read;

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/19/charle...

Old wild west myth never ceased, the myth of the hard wild frontier, where everyone must defend by himself. And civil war, I guess USA never really made peace with itself after civil war, primarily because it's a federation of states.

>Why is that?

Many americans like to kill and die by gunfire, and consider it their constitutional right. That's why. And many of those opposing them, still agree to treat the Constitution as some holy scripture - they might differ on the interpretation of the gun related law, but they wont go out and say "who cares if the Constitution gave you the right, it's 2022 and it's just a piece of paper, let's change it anyway".

So in that sense, they reinforce their opponents argument (which is based on their interpretation + the Constitution, by upholding the second part, and thus keeping it at the level of a debate of interpretation).

And why do US citizens like to kill and be killed by gunfire? It's not only because of lots of weapons.

I know! We are all just sitting around waiting to kill or be killed and every year and unfortunately 99.9994% of us are disappointed that we didn’t get to kill or be killed.

I'm so sorry to hear that, better luck next time! :D

> Many americans like to kill and die by gunfire, and consider it their constitutional right

How does this sarcastic, mocking comment contribute to any kind of rational discussion? You have no idea what you're talking about.

>How does this sarcastic, mocking comment contribute to any kind of rational discussion?

That's part of the whole point. That selling guns to civilians, and treating them as a hobby and point of pride to own at home, considering it some "right" to carry (or even "open carry") them, and them a necessity for protection from "the bad guys" (and especially the kinds of automatic guns allowed and routinely sold), should not be part of any rational discussion.

In fact, in saner countries, it isn't.

>You have no idea what you're talking about.

Please, enlighten me then, because your comment thus far has less informational content than mine had, and doesn't even state a position (without any argument would do to) to make up for it. It's pure personal insult.

Changes to the constitution are called amendments and constitutional amendments are, by design, almost impossible.

https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution/artic...

So, if as a politician you want to amend the constitution it needs to be that figurative hill you are willing to die on, everything else be damned, and have sufficient leverage to ensure other politicians don’t have to suffer your early career death.

Why can't we have "well-regulated" gun clubs that allow anyone to own any kind of weapon, tank or whatever? Edit: on the premises. That fits the letter and spirit of the second amendment.

And then have reasonable gun laws outside of those militias? It sucks having to worry about getting shot in a city in America.

It’s because of gun culture in the US.

Its the second amendment.

It’s because of an inner city gang culture. It’s primarily just one specific demographic in the US that glorifies gang violence and shooting. If we eliminate this demographic culture, the gun violence issue will be solved.

Because, in some senses, the US is bloody poor and is a war zone.

Thirty shots fired is not random. This isn't kids shooting at bottles in the backyard.

Feels like details here are being omitted.

If thirty shots can be fired in your neighborhood without an immediate and massive police response, you should move immediately.

define immediate. it takes seconds to fire thirty rounds. it takes minutes for police to respond to anything

Ten to twenty minutes, and closing down the whole 1+ mile area, like it was a terrorist attack.

That would be the case in a civilized city/country. Else, it appears as if 30 gunshot rounds is like routine in that place, so it's a kind of shithole.

In the west coast city I lived in last year, it wasn’t uncommon (more than once per week easily) for people to drive around in trucks at night (or even in the day sometimes) and just unload magazines into the sky for no apparent reason. In any other country I’ve ever visited, this would result in a huge news response condemning the act along with a significant police response. I never even saw most of these on the news or saw any significant police response.

In some Arab countries this is a normal day time activity often done during weddings.

Well we don't need the police to scoop up the bullets out of the air. If they can get there within 20 minutes, and find a pile of shell casings and dudes with warm guns in their posession, and sulphur smoke in the air, maybe they can do something as a deterrent to future cases, such as presenting all of them to the DA with a nice bow on top.

When seconds count police are minutes away.

the police were already responding to the gunfire as the girlfriend was calling 911

If you expect police to do anything to help you, you'd probably have to move into the whitehouse.

30 is not that much if someone nearby is doing target practice. They're going to get someone killed some day, but the police don't care.

"They're going to get someone killed some day..."

Most of the time - no. Most farms I know of have a good backstop, consistent with any "official" gun range.

There's kinds of farms. The kind nearby is the kind someone buys because they're rich enough to own a farm without caring about paying for it with the farm. A farm for someone who can't bridge the gap between their self-identification as a working-class conservative and the amount of money they have.

I checked the particular neighborhood in the article, and it's all single-family homes, so probably someone in their backyard goofing off. A neighbor in a similar place liked to run around shooting squirrels with a pistol. The police never showed up. It was an awkward, anxious few years before he moved out. He also liked to shoot bottle rockets without regard for direction. I got buzzed a few times.

Georgia is a land of contrasts.

From the article:

> Shepard, whose apartment is in the Atlanta suburb of Brookhaven, who told the television station that the couple woke up on Jan 16 to the sound of more than 30 gunshots coming from an apartment complex directly behind Shepards.

Seems pretty clear that this wasn't a case of someone target shooting with an insufficient backstop.

Pretty sure the comment i was responding to mentioned people on farms (not related to the article), but is now edited.

The edit came before your comment, but you must have had the page open already. The downside of HN being one of the last remaining major web 1.0 sites that doesn't change everything right under your efforts to interact with it.

This happened in Atlanta (technically Brookhaven). The police were looking for the source of gunfire reported at the 3600 block of Buford Highway [0] and the 911 call related to the shooting came from the 3100 block of Clairmont Rd.

There are some single family homes in the area, but it's not low density suburbs or a rural area.

As I said in another comment, this sort of thing is unfortunately not uncommon in Atlanta. My wife is an attorney and has worked on several lawsuits arsing from stray bullets hitting people inside in their apartments. For whatever reason, knuckleheads go out in the parking lot or the nearby wooded area and shoot off their guns. Tragically and inevitably someone gets hurt or killed.

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/place/3600+Buford+Hwy+NE,+Atlant...

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/3100+Clairmont+Rd,+Atlanta...

Pretty sure the comment I was responding to mentioned people on farms (not related to the article), but is now edited.

As someone living in a relatively poor state, thirty shots is just another normal night.

The police doesn’t do shit.

What are these people aiming at?

> If thirty shots can be fired in your neighborhood without an immediate and massive police response, you should move immediately.

rephrasing: if thirty shots can be fired and nothing ever changes and the same things keep happening again and again, you should move ASAP, I agree.

You should move abroad to a more civilized country.

EDIT: this happened a month ago.

https://www.ansa.it/english/news/general_news/2021/12/03/col...

USA is no country for civilized people.

TBF some of them are dangerous even outside of their borders

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/world/europe/americans-mu...

In 2021 the whole EU (population 448 millions) registered ~3.5k homicides.

USA (population 332 millions)? > 20k (+29% compared to 2020, during a pandemic, while in the rest of the World homicide stats went down considerably)

I was going to reply that this sort of thing isn't all that uncommon here in Atlanta. Then I clicked the link and saw this this happened in Brookhaven, which is formerly a neighborhood of Atlanta proper. <sigh>

Quote from TFA: "Police were in the vicinity pursuing reports of gunfire when the 911 call from Shepard came in."

How else would you keep the house prices from skyrocketing /s

Reply on news.ycombinator.com