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Comment by daenz | Hacker News Reader

It's been mind boggling to see anti 2A people in my social circle cheer for normal Ukrainian citizens arming themselves with "weapons of war" that "wouldn't do anything against a country with drones and nukes." I hope a silver lining of this conflict is remembering that protecting your life and your family's lives with firearms is an inalienable right.

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I'm someone you would describe as "anti 2A". I still think the "defense against home invasion" style argument is mostly nonsense. It's super rare, and I don't think the benefits of guns outweigh the downsides for that kind of self defense. (Having been a victim of exactly such a crime, I'm glad neither I nor the burglar had a gun.)

However, seeing Ukrainians take up arms to fight an invasion has caused me to re-evaluate my position in general, and I actually think an armed population is likely better than the alternative. I'm sure Finland isn't unhappy that they're heavily armed right now.

> It's super rare

Is it? How do you define super rare? I live in a low crime US suburb and still personally know 3 homes that have been invaded: friend's next door neighbor, a house 200ft away, and the literal across the street neighbor.

Home invasion means forcefully breaking into someone's house where there are people in it. It's very different than a burglary. Burglaries are common, but the former is rare.

And having a firearm to protect your life in that rare situation is still important…

The police are the cleanup crew, those first 5-10 minutes you’re on your own.

The danger of owning a firearm, especially if it is always armed for such an occurrence, is more dangerous to the household than the risk of home invasion (which again, is rare). It is an idea that people defend using the concept of "safety", but in reality is motivated by fear or hypermasculinity as the main cause.

You don't seem very open to changing your perspective, but if you care to peruse a subreddit dedicated to reporting defensive gun use in the news, it contains a ton of stories that you've likely never encountered[0]. You may disagree with many of them, but some are absolutely defensible, like an ex-boyfriend breaking into woman's apartment and beating her until she is able to shoot him[1][2] (from the front page of that subreddit).

My point is, become familiar with the frequency that these reports happen before you make the claim that it's rare.

  0. https://www.reddit.com/r/dgu
  1. https://kfor.com/news/local/oklahoma-woman-shoots-and-kills-ex-boyfriend-during-break-in/
  2. https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/wickliffe-woman-shoots-boyfriend-after-being-struck-multiple-times-boyfriend-later-arrested

I get the feeling you have that problem in reverse. All defensive gun use is very rare. Certainly, rarer than the opposite (offensive gun use). Combined with suicide risk and accidental deaths or injuries, it is rarely justifiable. Study on this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2848468/

The CDC reports 60,000 to 2.5M instances of defensive gun use per year[0]

0. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.htm....

The numbers regarding defensive gun use is very likely to end up being a classic example of commercial interests affect scientific research. Nearly all of the high numbers come from a handful of sources that have connections with the firearm industry. There are many methodology problems with their numbers too.

In the relatively small amount of research on this subject that is not influenced by commercial interests, the numbers suggest that defensive gun use is very rare: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00917...

So the evidence linked on the CDC website is compromised because of commercial interests? Please post evidence of this specific example.

> You don't seem very open to changing your perspective, but if you care to peruse a subreddit dedicated to reporting defensive gun use in the news, it contains a ton of stories that you've likely never encountered[0].

Of course there are cases of defensive gun use. But there are also cases of idiotic gun use:

> Deputies with the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office arrested three people after one man was shot. Investigators said the shooting victim was shot after an argument about the victim’s alleged littering.

* https://www.wkrg.com/northwest-florida/escambia-county/man-s...

> Houston man accused of shooting restaurant workers over BBQ sauce

* https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2022/02/26/houston-...

> A Utah father was taken into custody after police said he told his 4-year-old child to fire at officers following a dispute over an order at the McDonald's drive-thru in Midvale.

* https://kutv.com/news/local/suspect-in-custody-after-shootin...

Examples taken from:

* https://twitter.com/well_regulated_

Right across the US border Canada manages to have a safe society without everyone packing heat. And it's not like gun ownership is unheard of in Canada, given it's 7th in per capita ownership:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...

For tracking mass shootings, the US has a separate Wikipedia page for each calendar year:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

Meanwhile the list of massacres (not even all being shootings) fits on one page for Canada:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Canada

The idea that firearms make one safer, either at home:

* https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M13-1301?articleid=1...

or in public:

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/

does not seem to be borne out by the statistical data.

You seem to not understand that gun owners train how to use firearms, and a proper one will practice high levels of gun safety in a home. Sure, there's going to be morons who own them and make the news. But it's not a toy or for fun. Just as they find out.

No worries, the “hyper-masculine” men with badges will come save you. I have no problem with you wanting to take your chances and let someone with evil intent to have their way with you or your loved ones. Just don’t try and take the ability to defend, from others, because you have a problem with masculinity.

> And having a firearm to protect your life in that rare situation is still important…

Firearms in the home actually increase your odds of death:

> Access to firearms is associated with risk for completed suicide and being the victim of homicide.

* https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M13-1301?articleid=1...

Specific examples of domestic violence against women:

* https://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/18000522/guns-domestic-violenc...

There's one study that showed that even carrying a gun on your person increases your likely hoot of being shot:

> Results. After adjustment, individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 (P < .05) times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession. Among gun assaults where the victim had at least some chance to resist, this adjusted odds ratio increased to 5.45 (P < .05).

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/

Generally, the idea that firearms make one safer in the home does not seem to be borne out by the statistical data.

Okay... that doesn't change a thing though. People still have the right to defend themselves. I don't care if someone is stupid with a weapon. You can find occurrences of a weapon, tool, vehicles, any object, being used improperly and in an unsafe manner that can cause harm or death.

All you illustrate is that being a responsible gun owner is important (which is not debated whatsoever in any firearms community.) The vast majority of law abiding gun owners are responsible with their weapons.

> Okay... that doesn't change a thing though. People still have the right to defend themselves.

The numbers seem to indicate that having a gun is actually more detrimental, on a 'net' basis, to one's well-being than not having a gun. Having a gun is more dangerous for you and yours:

> But about 30 careful studies show more guns are linked to more crimes: murders, rapes, and others. Far less research shows that guns help.

* https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/more-guns-do-not-...

> We use epidemiological theory to explain why the “false positive” problem for rare events can lead to large overestimates of the incidence of rare diseases or rare phenomena such as self-defense gun use. We then try to validate the claims of many millions of annual self-defense uses against available evidence. We find that the claim of many millions of annual self-defense gun uses by American citizens is invalid.

* https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-thr...

> Results. We found no robust, statistically significant correlation between gun ownership and stranger firearm homicide rates. However, we found a positive and significant association between gun ownership and nonstranger firearm homicide rates. The incidence rate ratio for nonstranger firearm homicide rate associated with gun ownership was 1.014 (95% confidence interval = 1.009, 1.019).

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4167105/

Riding a car will greatly increase the odds of your death. So what?

Also all the studies you've cited don't prove causality, they prove correlation. Maybe it's the other way around? Maybe living in a more dangerous place increases the likelihood of people owning guns?

> Riding a car will greatly increase the odds of your death. So what?

If you don't want you or a family member to become a firearms statistic don't own a gun, especially since owning one doesn't seem to be useful against strangers:

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4167105/

It's not that hard to arm a society when war breaks out. That is the same mentality that countries like Switzerland has. The "2A argument" is quite a bit different, and has very few similarities with what is going on at the start of a war.

If you give out guns to people who never used them, they won't be as effective. Also I think you're underestimating the logistic difficulty of storing and transporting tens of millions of weapons (and ammunition) before blitzkrieg cuts you off. You could have a storage in each city, but you still need to move the guns to smaller towns and villages, as well as enemy spies could sabotage such transports...

You're trying to rationalize the situation in the US, not looking at it objectively. You can quickly train people to use a firearm, including long before fighting starts. You will need to store a vast amount of military equipment anyways. Storage is highly unlikely to be an issue.

>You can quickly train people to use a firearm, including long before fighting starts.

1. It took months to vaccinate the US population. Training them to use guns would most certainly take longer.

2. Your previous comments seem to suggest you're anti-2A. What's your position here then? Are you against gun ownership, but think that if some enemy wants to invade us, there's going to be enough advance warning that we can train and arm everyone?

>Storage is highly unlikely to be an issue.

And what about transportation?

You need close to 100% vaccination rates for vaccines to really work. Not so much for creating a makeshift army.

This is an example of framing of the issue, and in this case it is deeply misleading. Nearly everyone wants what makes us safe. The problem is that certain groups in America have transformed that into something dangerous while disguising it as a form of safety. At some point, society will move away from this kind of thinking regardless of how it is perceived today.

Dude, I don't live in the US and I know little about american problems with guns, so no, your guess is a big miss. I'm not trying to rationalize anything, apparently you're the one being heavily biased here, to rush into such conclusions.

Not to mention that Switzerland is 15,940 mi², while USA is 3,797,000 mi².

Switzerland is a special case, as everyone who took up military service will be periodically trained until their 40s and keep their arms and equipment at home. In case of mobilization, only ammunition needs to be given out.

That does run counter to the "arming a society is easy" take, as specially in Switzerland it's a pretty safe bet that most households do possess weapons, are even required to by law you could say

The main issues I have with the (usually US right-wing talking point of) "All Swiss have arms at home!!1~" argument is that, yes, they do, except:

a) They don't have any ammo. So, i dunno.. throw your gun at an intruder...?

b) Ammo in any case is hard to procure

c) If you do your annual military training, the ammo handed out is checked/counted, and woe is you if you can't explain any missing ammo

d) You're seen as a near-sociopath weirdo if you brag about "weapons and ammo i have at home"

Citation: Spent my first 30 years in CH.

It's not super rare. We see how it plays out all the time. Protestors protest, government comes down on them hard - mass arrests, mass killings, mass civil destruction of liberties.

We literally saw a version of this in Canada a month ago, where actually peaceful protesters were declared terrorists and got arrested and their money seized.

It's not always about some other country's government coming on you hard, your own can be just as rotten.

> It's been mind boggling to see anti 2A people in my social circle cheer for normal Ukrainian citizens arming themselves with "weapons of war" that "wouldn't do anything against a country with drones and nukes."

The only thing that will stop a bad guy with a Luftwaffe is a good guy with a Luftwaffe and a bunch of SAMs. A bunch of randos with AKs have little chance against the Russian-equivalent of Hellfire missiles IMHO. It's just that the Ukraine military seems to have been underestimated.

Further, Russian SEAD seems to suck:

* https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defe...

and their logistics, once they start getting far from their railheads, seems to deteriorate quite quickly:

* https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-...

If there is political will and logistical support, a mainstream army can keep an insurgency down as shown by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. The main recourse coupe to wait out the patience of the 'occupier' (which is what the Taliban did).

Whether Russia/Putin has the will and/or resources is another question.

> I hope a silver lining of this conflict is remembering that protecting your life and your family's lives with firearms is an inalienable right.

Even with the threat of Russian invasion, especially after 2014 and Crimea, Ukraine seems to disagree, as licenses are still needed for gun ownership:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_Ukraine

Though UA has mandatory military service to an extent:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service#Ukraine

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