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Comment by BobbyJo | Hacker News Reader

I honestly don't see this as a symptom of that. Economic and tax base problems, where our best knowledge can point to us doing the "wrong" thing, or at least not doing the "right" thing, sure. Those objective things that we mess up are indicative of systemic issues.

Some people just aren't scared of guns, or of a world where everyone has one, regardless of the real risk such a world would entail.

Differences within the populace with regard to risk tolerance and perception doesn't tell you anything about systemic issues. It just points to cultural differences. That is itself an issue, but certainly of a different flavor than "declining empire". It could still tear things down, but it would be more explosion than stagnation and collapse.

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> Differences within the populace with regard to risk tolerance and perception doesn't tell you anything about systemic issues.

How we deal with it as a society does though - some people don't mind going fast but we as a society decided to impose speed limits on roads, especially around schools. Some people don't mind the smell of cigarettes but we as a society decided that indoor smoking shouldn't be allowed in general. No one likes paying taxes but as a society, we accept that we need it to function, however imperfect the process may be.

This is where US feels like a dysfunctional society when viewed from outside. If US views occasional mass-shootings as a non-issue, sure. But if it does see it as a problem and it's not able to deal with it because for whatever reason (culture, freedom, constitution etc.), I think that's a problem.

> This is where US feels like a dysfunctional society when viewed from outside. If US views occasional mass-shootings as a non-issue, sure. But if it does see it as a problem and it's not able to deal with it because for whatever reason (culture, freedom, constitution etc.), I think that's a problem.

My interpretation isn't that some people don't see a problem, its just that different people believe in different solutions because the 'cost' of proposed policies is different to them. The cost of new guns laws is huge for some, and non-existent to others.

Honestly I think the national gun debate is kind of a joke. Most of the farthest left states don't even enforce or do a good job implementing the laws they have already. What difference would it make if the policy in DC changed when the cops on the street and the capital at home don't care. Buying a gun in California is just as easy as it is in Florida, it's just a bad idea because you can be thrown in jail the rest of your life if you use it even in self defense, so people don't buy them as often.

You can burn a lot of words for sure. This culture also exists in other places and owning an automatic military grade gun in the society is perfectly acceptable. Want to know the name of this place? It is Afghanistan , Sudan and a host of places like that. They may be highly cultural but not exactly civilized society as per our norms and not something we ever aspire to be. We want to reach for the mars ? First let us learn to not empower people to kill each other.

It's not appropriate to compare the United States to Afghanistan or Sudan. Better to pick countries with similar GDP per capita.

Switzerland is a good point of comparison; they have about half as many guns per capita as the US which includes military-grade weapons, but no mass shootings.

Yes but USA population is 329 Million , Switzerland 8 million. Switzerland has the highest number of gun deaths in Europe.

Source: google.

That's true, but additional gun deaths in Switzerland are suicides. Gun homicides in Switzerland are below the EU average.

Scared of guns or not, they seem to be willing to put "guns" before lives. children's lives. Unwilling to make even the smallest compromise to prevent mass shootings like so many other countries have.

It feels like gun-owners in the US hav made lots of compromises about weapon ownership. I feel like saying otherwise is dishonest.

To be honest, many potential murders sacrifice themselves so much that I can live safely. I really should have thanked them for not killing me.

There are plenty that think any compromise is anti 2A. And the amount of compromise is wildly dependent on state.

This is my point - people are dying. Lots of people. Children. And your response is “we’ve made enough compromises NO MORE! Let them continue to die” because your gun is more important then 100s of children's lives each year.

1000 kids a year die because of cars, are you putting cars before kids lives by not outlawing them?

We have many laws and regulation in place to lower children MV deaths. This includes things like seat belt, booster seat, child seat expiration and couple zones, and rollover protection.

The fact of the matter is that

“The previous analysis, which examined data through 2016, showed that firearm-related injuries were second only to motor vehicle crashes (both traffic-related and nontraffic-related) as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents, defined as persons 1 to 19 years of age. Since 2016, that gap has narrowed, and in 2020, firearm-related injuries became the leading cause of death in that age group. From 2019 to 2020, the relative increase in the rate of firearm-related deaths of all types (suicide, homicide, unintentional, and undetermined) among children and adolescents was 29.5% — more than twice as high as the relative increase in the general population.”

So outlawing vehicles is not proposed but laws, and regulation to control risk appears to be effective.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761

And with all of those laws and regulation, still 1000 kids a year die. So, again, why are we choosing cars over kids lives?

Well, we aren't. We are applying cost benefit analysis, which is subjective. Society agrees pretty uniformly that motor vehicles are worth the risk. It's the same with guns, there just isn't as much of a consensus. Some people thing the risk is worth it, others don't.

If you frame it as a binary right and wrong based on your own risk tolerance rather than making genuine arguments for certain trade offs you aren't having a good faith conversation, which is what I was satirizing.

I agree, further to this line of thinking I’m not really seeing how widespread adoption of arms by the general public has as many benefits as private vehicle ownership. Apart from environmental externalities, we know the cost for one is higher in terms of strict mortality… to that end shouldn’t the social utility of fire arms be higher? I can use my car to get my kids to school at least.

Perhaps we go in on a startup to modify the AR platform to distribute COVID tests or vaccines?

> I’m not really seeing how widespread adoption of arms by the general public has as many benefits as private vehicle ownership.

If you listen to gun fanatics, the benefits of widespread arms ownership is a government scared to overstep. How much that is worth to you depends on how much you worry about the government infringing on your rights, and how much you think guns being around prevent that.

I personally subscribe to that ideology to a degree (not full tilt, but somewhat). The US has the oldest constitution, and that's arguably only possible if the federal government hasn't pissed us all off too much :P

I never said outlaw, I said compromise. Are school speed zones not a thing in America? Child seats? Speed limits? Cross walks? School crossing guards? All the other steps taken to make cars and the roads around schools and playgrounds safer?

We all recognize cars are dangerous and there are laws and regulations to combat that.

We gain massive societal benefit from the existence of cars, what equally large societal benefit is gained from the easy availability of firearms?

Well they said nothing of entirely outlawing guns, but yes a lot of people put cars before kids’ lives and I would like to see that change.

No one is driving SUVs down elementary school hall ways

So it's only bad if kids die in school? If the same number of kids were killed every year by gun violence, but there weren't any school shootings, then there wouldn't need to be any change?

No of course there still needs to be a change. Your comparison falls apart because there isn't a epidemic of targeted violence against children using cars, while there is with guns.

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