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Comment by akira2501 | Hacker News Reader

It's weird to think as a society that we can build a walled garden around human nature. Mentally unwell people who attack schools will use other weapons if you somehow take all the "assault" rifles away and we've seen this in other countries who have tried it. When a school shooting happens we don't talk about psychiatric medication or prescribing practices for them.

The #3 cause of death is "accidental self inflicted injury." I'm not sure tracking children is the answer. You're just shifting the burden for risky behavior from the child to the parent through a radio with _zero_ redundancy. There's probably more useful ways to achieve this outcome.

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Other countries don’t have the bodycount of dead children like the USA. If anything it proves that less guns makes you safer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%2...

> It's weird to think as a society that we can build a walled garden around human nature.

We literally can. We built lane assistance and airbags and cars that sometimes self drive because humans naturally are bad drivers.

We created fire alarms and automatic sprinklers because sometimes people forget about the thing in the oven.

We invented medication for mental illness and obesity. We invented padded rooms and rehab and all sorts of stuff.

Hell, we invented locks on our front doors.

Guns are one of the most dangerous things a person can own. You can kill someone by pointing a metal tube and pressing a button. It’s very hard to stop once that button is pressed. Almost any other weapon is a lot easier to stop and a lot harder to kill with. That’s why other places don’t have the same death rates as America.

> We invented padded rooms

Precisely.

> Guns are one of the most dangerous things a person can own

Actually it's an extension ladder.

> any other weapon is a lot easier to stop and a lot harder to kill with.

Where's your can do spirit now? We literally invented metal detectors and have dogs that can smell guns and explosives because sometimes mentally unwell people have weapons.

> That’s why other places don’t have the same death rates as America.

That's one possible explanation. It's very thin and there's much contrary evidence. You'd have to make a stronger case.

>> Guns are one of the most dangerous things a person can own

> Actually it's an extension ladder.

Fair point, but I think it's more useful to consider that an extension ladder is a tool designed for non-violent uses, and deaths involving extension ladders are (nearly?) all due to accidents.

Guns are tools designed to inflict injury and death. While many gun deaths are accidental, the guns in those instances are performing to purpose.

> We literally invented metal detectors and have dogs that can smell guns and explosives because sometimes mentally unwell people have weapons.

I don't particularly want to live in a world where we have to have metal detectors and dogs present at the entrance to any decent-sized building. That sounds pretty dystopian.

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