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Comment by ExoticPearTree | Hacker News Reader

Except the police cannot instantly teleport to your location if you are in trouble, hence you have guns to protect yourself until the police arrives.

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the calculus that I, everyone I know and care about, and everyone that i've ever heard about, relies upon is that you're far less likely to need to police to teleport instantly to you if our divorced angry next door neighbor don't have a gun for his self defence

Maybe not a gun, but an axe or a chainsaw tend to get the job done pretty well. Not as fast, but still.

And why a divorced guy living in his house be an issue with your friends or neighbors?

> if our divorced angry next door neighbor

Why is “divorced” relevant. Maybe he should be the one worried about NIMBYs.

it's literally a hypothetical person. He studied marketing and made okay money for a while, but he's been out of a job for a bit over a year and a half now too :) His one good friend died a little while ago too.

I made a profile of a person that fits the profile of somebody that might be a little angry at society. Clearly I've struck a nerve here, and maybe thats something worth interrogating.

For what its worth, there are plenty of guys I know who are divorced, and it was probably the right decision, and they're great people. Most marriages end that way, in fact. It doesn't mean the "divorced jaded man who lost his social place in the world, struggles to find kindness or peers, and lashes out" is a stock character that will go away. It's a real problem

Fun fact: The divorce rate spikes to about 60% for second marriages, but only about 40% of first marriages end in divorce.

Yeahbut, 60% + 40% = 100% :-)

> Clearly I've struck a nerve here, and maybe thats something worth interrogating.

Oh god… please fix me.

Anyways it read to me like an obvious generalization. My bad if you weren’t. After all, some of your best friends are “x”.

That's based on a misleading "fact." Many people claim that most victims of homicide knew their killer. That's true only when the relationship between the two was known. The most common relationship, by far, is "relationship unknown". [1] You are much more likely to be killed by a stranger or somebody who is "relationship unknown" than anybody else.

And furthermore most gun crime is committed by people who do not legally own the firearm being used. [2] I'm loathe to link to that site, but this is an issue that is poorly reported and so it requires exploring a web of data sources, which they actually competently do, on this issue at least.

You can also kind of sniff test this claim by considering that homicide rates are much higher in urban than rural areas, yet urban areas have dramatically lower gun ownership rates.

[1] - https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim...

[2] - https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/mar/12/john-faso/...

>You can also kind of sniff test this claim by considering that homicide rates are much higher in urban than rural areas, yet urban areas have dramatically lower gun ownership rates.

You should take a refresher on statistics and the difference between correlated and causative

And you should read the post I am responding to. The claim was that there was a correlation between gun ownership a region and your chances of being killed by a gun. When in reality the correlation that exists there is the exact opposite.

On paper that could work if people didn't have children.

Problem is it is impossible to combine: - responsible storage of firearms - immediate availability of firearms anywhere at home when faced with hostility

Also most gun violence is domestic so having firearms at home do not solve a problem but creates it.

Strong disagree. Education is key, as are not leaving children that are too young to be educated alone where a weapon (not just a gun) is.

Curiosity is the number one problem with kids and guns, and that's because we hide them behind a mystique and don't make them understand. But talk to any redneck kid, and guns aren't a big deal, because they've had the mystique removed through education and familiarity.

Not redneck here, but introduced and taught fun safety at a young age. Recently, my kids came down to ask me if they could play with their nerf guns. They had the guns aimed down, finger off the trigger, and already put on the safety glasses. I wiped away a tear knowing that they are responsible with toy guns.

Nice anecdotal stories aren't worth anything against statistics.

Also people can be responsible for years until they aren't. As much as you believe you couldn't hurt someone you love, there is no way you (pr anyone else) can be 100% sure that reality will never change. If there was a way to know, people would be stopped or would surrender their weapons before they commit crimes.

Like anything else, it's about safety. There's all sorts of dangerous stuff in a household, like a stove. You don't lock them up, you teach kids thst stoves are hot and not to touch them.

That said: lock up your guns. Your mid will probably survive a stove burn.

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