Hacker News Reader

Comment by miles | Hacker News Reader

Indeed. The fact that guns save lives around the country on a regular basis is almost completely ignored by the media:

Guns Save Lives http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/02/guns_save_...

"If someone gets into your house, which would you rather have, a handgun or a telephone? You can call the police if you want, and they'll get there, and they'll take a picture of your dead body. But they can't get there in time to save your life. The first line of defense is you."

http://gunssavelives.net/ has a huge collection of articles like these:

Son Uses Dad’s AR-15 To Defend Home http://gunssavelives.net/self-defense/video/son-uses-dads-ar...

Armed Citizen in TX Stops Shooting Spree and Saves Cop http://gunssavelives.net/self-defense/armed-citizen-in-tx-st...

GA Woman Kills Would Be Rapist With .22 Pistol http://gunssavelives.net/self-defense/video/ga-woman-kills-w...

View on HN

quite frankly, the "gun in your house" thing is a very weird argument. if you actually play out a real-life instance of such a situation, it's not so simple at all. reality is much more nuanced.

for example, a gun is about 120% useless if you have it stored and the bad guy has the drop on you, which is likely the case on multiple levels given that that the 'bad guy' is the aggressor and initiator of a rare situation.

for example, the 'bad guy' may have a gun himself, and seeing you wielding one may cause him to shoot you, when he otherwise wouldn't have. and it's entirely possible or even likely that he has spent more time at the shooting range than you, or that he has killed people before. nevermind that he, having the mental preparedness that comes from being the initiator, may have the clearer presence of mind and less shaky hands

Etc. Etc. the "gun in my home to keep me safe" is a non-sequitur and only makes sense in simplistic cowboy scenarios, and I've even heard statistics saying you're more likely to hurt yourself or a loved one than the bad guy...

...but we don't really have any good ideas about that, because the gun lobby has suppressed research into these things for several years

> the "gun in my home to keep me safe" is a non-sequitur and only makes sense in simplistic cowboy scenari

No, it makes perfect, quantifiable, empirical sense

>> data from the United States, show “a negative correlation,” that is, “where firearms are most dense violent crime rates are lowest, and where guns are least dense violent crime rates are highest.”[1]

[1] beware the PDF: http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_Kate...

That must be why there are so many homicides with other weapons in Western Europe and most of Asia.

> That must be why there are so many homicides with other weapons in Western Europe and most of Asia.

I could never find a good response when my rational argument is met with an off-hand snark. And yet something should be said to avoid the perception that it was a valid counterpoint.

One option would be to point out that there are multiple factors at play, other differences between those countries than just gun ownership. That study after study linked in the post before show no correlation, no meaningful impact of gun ownership. That there are causes of crime that explain reality much better, like family structure.

Other would be to mock. "Sure, let's ban all the guns, jail all the blacks, and live in a crime-free utopia. Oh, and maybe nuke Detroit or New Orleans while we're at it. After all, nothing gives a better picture than a cursory glance."

I'm never satisfied with either.

You certainly do have a point. I'm Swiss and our gun ownership clocks in somewhere after USA and Canada, yet violence levels are about the same as in the rest of Europe. It really seems to have much more to do with culture than with guns themselves. However, defending this position must be quite tough as an American. It means that there is something inherently violent in your culture.

Maybe there is a correlation with suburban car culture? First there is the significant correlation between environmental lead during childhood and violence, secondly I think that having a low population density might make people feel more on their own, the highest goal being to protect their family. I'm thinking that people that are used to a high population density, who are in contact with hundreds of other humans a day, get used to this and lower their defenses. Then again I've seen a study suggesting that the violence leves in cities and on the countryside is pretty much the same (at least after lead levels have evened out).

Maybe, hopefully, the decline in violence in the US will continue and it will level out at a similar point as Europe / Asia - then we'll probably know that you were just poisoning yourselves with lead. I hope that this will have some impact on limiting the power of lobbies. Think of how much lead gasoline, lobbied into the world by the oil and car industry, has cost society, if this really was the main cause of the 70ies / 80ies crime outbursts.

The thing to recognize here is that Swiss culture is the exception, not the rule. Large parts of the rest of the world do not have a culture like the Swiss and would very likely end up like the United States if you flooded them with guns and ammunition.

The idea that the presence or absence of guns is totally divorced from gunviolence is ridiculous, motive, means and opportunity. Take away the bulk means of easily dispatching fellow human beings in your average culture and you see a decrease in violent deaths. See Australia.

I agree with you. I wasn't arguing against gun control laws. Actually, Swiss gun control is very strict, plus it's also not so easy to get ammunition. Most of the guns here are the military rifles people keep after service and the ammunition for those is unavailable - well except if you really really want it. Therefore it's not quite like people have constant access to a gun for those times when they get into the mood for murdering someone. I'm certain that more regulation in the US would help in that regard.

What I'm saying is: I'm skeptical that this alone would bring the aggression levels in the US to European levels (not even speaking about Japan, where it's another order of magnitude below). It would certainly be a good start though and it would be relatively easy to implement. Similar to software development: One should always start optimizing by getting the low hanging fruits.

It's still interesting however, to think about why there is such a cultural difference between the US and Europe, considering our heritage is so close.

> No, it makes perfect, quantifiable, empirical sense

i disagree. the reality of a criminal entering someone's home where guns are involved is much more complicated and unpredictable than that argument implies. and i've also read of other studies that show the opposite conclusion of that study

now that the research ban has been lifted, we will get a better picture eventually

> "If someone gets into your house, which would you rather have, a handgun or a telephone? You can call the police if you want, and they'll get there, and they'll take a picture of your dead body. But they can't get there in time to save your life. The first line of defense is you."

Of course, the flip side of this is "If you're horribly depressed in your house, which would you rather have, a handgun or a telephone."

Same thing for "If your teenage son's irresponsible friends are in your house..."

> Of course, the flip side of this is "If you're horribly depressed in your house, which would you rather have, a handgun or a telephone."

Not much a flip side. Unless you happen to think that suicides by other means are somehow better.

>> The evidence, however, indicates that denying one particular means to people who are motivated to commit suicide by social, economic, cultural, or other circumstances simply pushes them to some other means.[1]

[1] Same PDF as in the next comment http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_Kate...

Suicides by other means tend to be less immediately deadly.

Why should people not be able to commit suicide in the easiest possible way?

Because, in many cases, it's a situation of treatable mental illness rather than rational decision making.

I'm really curious about how this is meant to work in large cities, where there are often lots of people living in a small amount of space, with very flimsy walls between them and so on.

Surely firing a gun in such an environment is likely to cause yet more harm (with bullets flying through windows/walls), even if you do manage to hit the intruder?

There are types of ammunition that deal better with this. Lower loads, softer bullets, etc.

Genuine question: with such ammunition, is there a even a tiny chance it will go through a plasterboard wall and kill my flatmate?

Would a taser be a safer-yet-effective option when living in such an apartment?

Here[1] is an example of said ammunition. The corrolary, of course, is that if something won't go through an inch wall material (most of walls are hollow, after all), penetrating inches of skin, fat, and muscle are also unlikely. I've read of some people who put the first couple of rounds using the safety slugs and then hollow-points for the rest, figuring if somebody isn't going to stop with a couple, fairly large, relatively surface wounds, then they aren't going to stop without something more serious and house mates are in danger in that situation anyway.

Regardless, before I would ever keep a gun for personal protection[2], I would make sure I have enough experience shooting it and hitting my target that my likelihood of missing at short range is exceedingly low. Stress and all that will impact your abilities, of course, but enough training can significantly reduce that risk.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaser_Safety_Slug

2. I love shooting and have a couple, small caliber rifles locked up in the basement, but I don't currently own a gun for "personal protection".

The essence of the argument is the emotional appeal of self-defense, which makes these considerations less important. Someone facing a violent intruder in their house is not likely to think about their neighbors. They are going to do whatever they can in that moment to defend themselves.

It's a tricky one. If I fire a gun, I put everyone living immediately around me at risk. If an intruder has a weapon though, does potentially disabling him or her outweigh the risks against everyone around me?

It's something I really struggle to work out, to he honest.

Ideally you don't have to actually fire the gun for it to be effective.

I agree that thats the ideal.

However, if intruders know that people won't fire guns, surely we remove the whole point of having them?

The idea is that, as a general rule, people will fire the gun if the situation is pressed. Knowing that, criminals will back down when a gun is presented. It's not bluffing, just threatening.

The "guns save lives" argument falls apart when you realize that the plural of anecdote is not data.

> The "guns save lives" argument falls apart when you realize that the plural of anecdote is not data.

No, not really. It works for real data, too.

>> Using cross-sectional time-series data for U.S. counties from 1977 to 1992, we find that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths.[1]

Which never impresses anyone so gun advocates go for stories.

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=10129

From a self defense perspective, how much more can a lethal gun do than a paintball gun loaded with pepperballs?

Is the ability to kill necessary?

The problem is that enthusiast gun owners don't want to be able to deter intruders, they want to be able to stop gun-owning intruders from getting off their first shot, in the hypothetical that the resident can surprise the invader.

In discussions, 45ACP is thus favored for 'stopping power' versus the smaller 9mm. The gun-enthusiast response to the penetration concern is either to ignore it and emphasize aim & intelligent planning, or to create expensive 45ACP 'frangible rounds' that shatter into a granular powder on impact. There also exist somewhat anomalous theories about buckshot/birdshot being safer.

The most common guns, though, are lightweight, low-recoil 22LR-caliber pistols that lower the kill probability significantly over any of the more serious pistol rounds.

One can certainly create less-lethal loadings, either with traditional lead or something else like rocksalt shotshells, but things that can penetrate a chest cavity tend to be able to penetrate drywall.

I'd just go with a Taser and pepper spray if I was concerned about the small chance that penetrative shrapnel ends up energetic enough to hurt a loved one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com