Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by jaywalk | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

jaywalk

> If you want to know, it's pretty easy to tell whether a household has guns

Oh, really? How so?

View on HN

If you want to steal a gun, just wait around outside a gunshop or gun range and tail someone then rob them for the gun:

https://www.khou.com/article/news/crime/houston-police-crime...

That's a great way to get shot.

Read the article, apparently people are getting guns instead of shot.

Bumper stickers, t-shirts, 2nd-amendment-related flags are probably a good place to start. Campaign signs, etc. Voter registration, political donations, etc. I'm guessing pitbull ownership is also correlated. Souped up trucks. Mailers from firearms-related organizations.

This comment exposes your pre-conceived notions and is pretty offensive.

I would like you to expand on your supposed pitbull ownership correlation as well.

You'd be very surprised at the diverse demographics of gun owners.

Heh, maybe they think pitbull owners need a gun in case the pitbull goes nuts.

Because a lot of people claim they want a pitbull for home protection purposes, so it makes sense that they'd be more likely than average to have other means of protection as well.

People do have guard dogs, yes. But guard dogs aren't always pitbulls and pitbulls aren't always used as guard dogs.

I'd say most pitbull owners aren't using them as guard dogs. That would be a stereotype. As is stereotyping the actions of pitbull owners.

If you asked pitbull owners what the benefits of their dog was, I assume most would put something like 'protects my family/house' on their list, or joke around about what would happen if an unlucky intruder chose their house to break into.

The idea of the dog protecting the family is common amongst all large dog owners, it's not really specific to pitbull owners.

Most pitbull owners are just normal dog owners. I think you have this sort of caricature of this junk yard scene that you see in movies/tv.

Your assumptions makes leaps of logic, you could just as easily say a family got a large dog instead of getting a gun for protection.

> The idea of the dog protecting the family is common amongst all large dog owners, it's not really specific to pitbull owners.

Ok then my argument still holds true, and you're just upset that I called out pitbulls specifically. Your argument for negative correlation also doesn't really make sense - if it did, gun owners would just stop at buying one gun because they already have one. People who take their self-defense seriously don't usually just stop at the bare minimum.

> Ok then my argument still holds true, and you're just upset that I called out pitbulls specifically.

You stereotyped pitbull owners specifically, not dog owners. Then you backed off as the logic fell apart. You're just spouting off assumptions (which you've admitted are assumptions) without anything to back it up.

> if it did, gun owners would just stop at buying one gun because they already have one.

Many gun owners do only have one gun for protection. Again, another stereotype assumption.

Some people aren't comfortable with guns, so they get a dog for protection.

Now that you've done "gun owners" and pitbull owners would you like to stereotype anyone else?

Or do you just want to stop at the one that is acceptable to?

> Many gun owners do only have one gun for protection

You keep using this logic, but it's just another strawman. I've never claimed these statements apply to everyone - that's a very weak interpretation, so I don't think you're arguing in good faith.

You keep using strawman incorrectly in this thread.

First off, that response was not refuting your main point, but a secondary point. (I'm really not sure what your main point was as you changed it from profiling pitbull owners to profiling dog owners after I pointed out the flaw in your logic)

I was simply disputing your statement that dog owners would have also have a gun because gun owners own multiple guns. That's not sound logic.

Your logic is jumping around and you don't have a cohesive point.

Would you like to rephrase your main point so we can add straw back to the man?

I'm not using the term incorrectly. You're changing my argument's meaning from 'some' to 'ALL' - and then refuting the weaker argument. I feel like you're arguing from a place of emotion and clearly are offended, and I'm not interested in continuing that.

What if I told you there were millions of gun owners out there that don't subscribe to any of the cliché things you listed in your comment? Gun owners aren't a monolith caricature like you imagine.

That's a straw man (I never said this applied to ALL gun owners), and I'd actually say that making straw man arguments in response to perceived negative comments about guns is also correlated with ownership - thus, I assume you are a gun owner. Not that hard.

Clearly, it is not all gun owners. It's just that there are plenty of people who do fall in this category that you will have an endless supply of houses to rob, if so inclined.

Out of the ~120 million households in the US, somewhere around 50-80 million of those (depending on which polls/stats you look at) have a gun in them.

Which of your incredibly classist and racist indicators above can you apply to that many households?

Well I assume rural areas have much higher rates of gun ownership, for one.

There are FAR more people like me, with none of that shit, than the caricature you described. I worked a gun shop counter for a few years and boy would you be surprised who has guns.

You may be right - but enough people do make it obvious that criminals wouldn't ever have a problem locating those households. Even without that obvious stuff, I've found that a lot of gun owners can't resist 'gun talk' which is also a pretty obvious giveaway.

What do you mean ‘gun talk’? Like they come up to strangers and start talking about guns?

yes

Not necessarily strangers, but just in casual conversations with people in public places. Which guns they think are badass, the high price of ammunition, the annoyances of new regulations, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com