Hacker News Reader

Comment by roboneal | Hacker News Reader

Let's assume you get past the obvious problems like politics, privacy concerns, massive improvements in battery technology to implement GPS tracking of guns, etc.

With the estimated 200 Million privately owned firearms in the United States alone, you seem to have a 20 Trillion dollar ($100 a firearm) problem to solve.

That's greater than the US debt (at the moment) and the entire US GDP for the most recent year.

Emotional impact aside, there are a lot more serious problems that could be solved with that kind of money that impact more people with greater efficacy

View on HN

You're correct.

Second hand smoking kills 42,000 people each year in the United States alone [1].

More than 3 times as many as homicide by firearm.

Furthermore second hand smoking in Britain (more common than the US) kills about 5 times as many people per capita as do firearms in the US [2].

[1] http://healthland.time.com/2012/09/21/the-major-toll-of-seco...

[2]http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/healthyliving/sm...

it takes years to die as a second hand smoker, even the smokers ten to live on for decades. but bullets are swift like cyanide, intended to kill and do kill for sure

Not really. Rifles at close range do tend to end people quite badly - providing the bullet fragments or expands. There are many tales from Iraq/Afghanistan where this isn't happening with the 5.56mm NATO. And pistols really only kill about 25% of the time. Remember that in order to kill a human with a normal pistol, your target is the size of a pair of ten is balls separated by 18" of rebar. Hit the brainstem, heart, or spinal column and the target goes down NOW. Miss that, and all sorts of odd things can happen, including living through the hit.

200m x $100 is $20b not $20t.

yeah he got too excited, if it was $20t Boeing and Lockheed Martins would be building it :)

what I would like to point out is the cost to US economy

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-21/shootings-costing-u...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com