Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

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Root causes of this particular incident? The possession of deadly weapons by people who rarely have a legitimate need to have them beyond "MY RIGHTS" and "SECOND AMENDMENT". This has nothing to do with poverty.

I don't think any kind of punishment could effectively deter this because I don't believe this was intentional or that the perpetrator even imagined that the bullet could still kill someone despite the distance and obstacles on the way. Not to mention that as another comment points out, capital punishment is a thing and that still isn't enough to deter murder/etc.

The main problem here is that people have access to and an obsession with deadly weapons. This obsession leads them to acquire those weapons even when they have no legitimate reason to own/carry them. Accidents are bound to happen even with trained users, but typically the risk is worthwhile when you have a legitimate need to own/carry the weapon. When you don't have a legitimate need however, it's just needless risk-taking that will eventually produce situations like this.

> Root causes of this particular incident? The possession of deadly weapons by people who rarely have a legitimate need to have them beyond "MY RIGHTS" and "SECOND AMENDMENT".

This is most certainly not what I or anyone else means by root cause. Guns are just instruments. This is like blaming hammers for building houses. The root cause is that which causes someone to use a gun they have or get a gun they don't have. Having the right to have one is not that cause.

> This has nothing to do with poverty.

You've provided zero evidence or argument for that yet sociologists over deacdes have accumulated masses of evidence that poverty does cause gun violence and countries have responded to this in real life by reducing poverty which in turn actually reduces gun violence.

> The main problem here is that people have access to and an obsession with deadly weapons. This obsession leads them to acquire those weapons even when they have no legitimate reason to own/carry them. Accidents are bound to happen even with trained users, but typically the risk is worthwhile when you have a legitimate need to own/carry the weapon. When you don't have a legitimate need however, it's just needless risk-taking that will eventually produce situations like this.

This is just a litany of assertions with no evidence or argument behind them which happens to contradict all research on the topic and effective policy (in most of Europe).

> The root cause is that which causes someone to use a gun they have or get a gun they don't have.

My argument is that the US has an unhealthy culture around guns that prompts people to acquire/carry them to make a point as opposed to a legitimate need of them for self-defense/etc. This in turn leads to more weapons being out there than necessary and more opportunities for someone to be stupid with them. I don't believe this particular shooter was involved in any kind of legitimate use of a gun during this shooting, and I doubt they had a good, rational reason to have one on them at the time. Rather, they were bored, stupid or under the influence, a gun was within reach and they decided to play with it.

> You've provided zero evidence or argument for that yet sociologists over deacdes have accumulated masses of evidence that poverty does cause gun violence and countries have responded to this in real life by reducing poverty which in turn actually reduces gun violence.

I definitely believe poverty causes intentional shootings. But so far I don't believe this was an intentional shooting (even if the original target was different); this sounds more like idiots negligently discharging a gun many times without thinking about the consequences but there was never an intention to kill or harm, so I'm not sure the usual statistics (which are mainly due to gun-related crime which can definitely correlate with poverty) would apply here.

> This is just a litany of assertions with no evidence or argument behind them which happens to contradict all research on the topic and effective policy (in most of Europe).

Potentially, and you are indeed welcome to disagree. This is just my personal opinion based on noticing an obsession with guns that I haven't seen in other countries that allow guns.

> My argument is that

Its not an argument, it's just an assertion with nothing to back it up.

Anyway, if you do ban guns, you'll just end up with rampant knife crime like the UK. This has all been tried before and we know what works and what doesn't work already. Why not just do what actually works.

RAMPANT!!?

It's really hard to believe that people still write stuff online without doing some basic searching. But here we are...

Here's a couple links to illustrate how RAMPANT knife crime is in the UK:

[1] For the year ending September 2019, there were 221 homicides involving a knife or sharp instrument recorded by the police. This figure is for England and Wales only and it excludes data from Greater Manchester Police (GMP).

[2] Recorded knife crime rose by 7% from just above 41,000 in the year to June 2018 to just above 44,000 in the year to June 2019, knifepoint rapes, robberies and assaults logged by police continued to rise.

I think it's pretty clear that your "rampant" is off BY A LOT. Knife crime in the UK is definitely not something to dismiss but guns (and gun crime and gun accidents) in the US tromp pretty much every other crime statistic in the "modern, civilized" world.

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_statistics_in_the_United...

Even if we assume that intentional kills will stay as-is and just switch to knives, it'll still be a net positive as accidental kills will be reduced: it's much harder to accidentally kill a bystander with a knife than a gun.

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