Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

Discussing gun policy with a friend, I mentioned the Freakonomics statistic that having a pool on your property is 100 times more dangerous for your child's welfare than having a gun in the house.

If you really want to see a certain subset of your friends squirm with cognitive dissonance, mention this.

(I hope this doesn't start a flame war. The reason I bring up this particular example is because guns seem so ridiculously evil, while having a pool seems like every child's dream, yet the numbers tell a very different story in terms of perceived vs. actual danger.)

Edit: I regret posting this; but I won't delete it so people know the context of the replies. Sorry HN!

View on HN

> Discussing gun policy with a friend, I mentioned the Freakonomics statistic that having a pool on your property is 100 times more dangerous for your child's welfare than having a gun in the house.

That is nonsense, the way Freakonomics got that 100x more dangerous figure makes absolutely no sense.

Don't get me wrong - pools likely are more dangerous than guns. I'm just arguing that they aren't 100x more dangerous than guns.

In 2008 there were 376 deaths of "children" (aged 14 and below) by gun. In the same year there was 791 deaths by drowning (all sources).

So drowning is is roughly 2x as dangerous as guns but that is drowning from ALL sources, so that doesn't imply that pools are 2x more dangerous as guns since that ignores other sources of potential drownings (e.g. boats, bathtub, etc).

This data is all from the CDC's own web-site (http://wonder.cdc.gov).

What the Freakonomics guys did was take the above numbers and then use the total number of guns and total number of pools, and then abuse those statistics in order to try and get this 100x more dangerous figure.

In interviews he has essentially said he is a pro-gun advocate so that is something to keep in mind too...

As I said at the start, drowning is MORE dangerous than guns (2x). It is just not 100x more dangerous unless you're trying to measure the danger level of each individual gun rather than by measuring the risk to a fixed population (i.e. the danger from the average US child's perspective).

>In 2008 there were 376 deaths of "children" (aged 14 and below) by gun. In the same year there was 791 deaths by drowning (all sources).

You should really be using the number who were killed by a gun kept in their home for this comparison. Also, there are other ways to die in a pool aside from drowning.

Even if what you suggest made sense it would still not come close to 100x more dangerous. Even if we were REALLY generous and called it 3x more, we're still not even in the same universe.

Plus as I said, the drowning statistics above are a huge over-estimation as they don't give individual breakdowns of the context of the drowning (e.g. pools, boats, bathtub, etc).

What he said does make sense. Your numbers are incomplete. You're saying "All firearm deaths" which include drive-by's, hunting accidents, etc. If you can't break down the numbers to ONLY those children who died from a gun that was stored in their own house and children who died in a pool in their own back yard, then you aren't making valid assessments of the multiple at all.

It's simple math.

That's exactly what he's saying though - that the Freakonomics article does NOT break the numbers down sufficiently, for either Drownings nor Gun Deaths. As such the 100x figure they came up with is bogus.

And yes, the Maths is simple. But gathering the right figures to plug into the Maths is hard.

You're not taking into account the difference in risks between children who live in a home that has a pool and those that don't.

> What the Freakonomics guys did was take the above numbers and then use the total number of guns and total number of pools, and then abuse those statistics in order to try and get this 100x more dangerous figure.

I don't understand. This seems sensible to me. Why wouldn't we include this figure to calculate risk? Isn't risk a matter of incidences/exposures?

I agree, it doesn't make sense to compare absolute numbers. The risk of having a gun at home should be calculated as [deaths of children by gun]/[number of family homes with guns], and the same should be done to calculate the risk of having a pool at home.

For instance, if in 2008 376 children died by gun at home and as much as 376000 families had a gun at home, then the risk would be 0.1%. But if the number of families with a gun at home were 752, then this would mean a risk of 50%!

> I agree, it doesn't make sense to compare absolute numbers.

It makes complete sense. We take number of children (i.e. population) and we take the number of times something bad occurs to that population, and that gives us our level of risk per each individual (e.g. 1 in 100,000 or similar).

If we follow the logic of your argument then we start getting into stupid territory very quickly indeed. For example, how many bees are there in the US? And how many people die of bee stings? Well given the number of bees Vs. bee sting deaths we can calculate that you have more chance of winning the lottery two times than dying of a bee string, right? ... Well no, that makes no sense at all.

Basically gun advocates are abusing statistics. They're arguing that keeping two guns in your gun safe instead of one makes guns twice as safe! And four guns is twice as safe again! So as they increase guns the guns get safer and safer, isn't that wonderful...

> It makes complete sense. We take number of children and we take the number of times something bad occurs to that population

So what you're saying is [deaths of children by gun]/[number of children]. That's not an absolute number, 1 in 100000 is just a percentage disguised (0.01%).

My only remark on your comment is that only children living in houses that have a gun should be taken into account when calculating the risk of "having your child killed by a gun that you keep in your house".

Except we're not talking about the likelihood of a child being killed by a gun v. drowning in a pool. We're talking about the likelihood of a child being killed by their guardian's gun v. drowning in their guardian's pool.

In addition, if I'm never exposed to a gun or a pool, then my risk of dying by either is zero. That doesn't mean those things have no risk. It means that my personal risk of dying from those things is zero and I shouldn't be included in any calculation that measures the risk of owning those things.

Zero people in my town were attacked by lions last year, but I'm sure a few were attacked by dogs. Cool! Lions are way safer than dogs!

UnoriginalGuy, I'd suggest taking a step back from your argument for a minute. Every single response here has explained the flaw in your original claim. It might be worth taking a minute to understand where you could have gone wrong in your reasoning.

We may be talking about that, and that would be the figure to find, but that's not the figure the Freakonomics article used. That's the point.

Here's the quote from Freakonomics:

"In a given year, there is one drowning of a child for every 11,000 residential pools in the United States. Meanwhile, there is 1 child killed by a gun for every 1 million-plus guns"

And then the author draws conclusions based on that. It says nothing about "drowning in a pool" - only drowning. It says nothing about death by a gun at the gun owner's house. It says nothing about households with multiple guns (nor households with multiple pools, I guess).

The point UnoriginalGuy was trying to make is that this is absolutely shoddy statistics at work. Now his statistics may be equally as shoddy, but he's not selling books about this stuff.

How many people own multiple pools?

Also how many people are using each pool (and indeed using each gun)?

This makes little sense. Say only 7 people died from inhaling cyanide last year, does that make cyanide 100 less dangerous than guns? Nope, because 100% of the people who inhaled it died.

The real questions is, of the people who are within harms way of home swimming pools, how many suffer injuries, and of the people who are within harms way of fire arms, how many suffer injuries.

Both are not that easy to measure, especially firearms, but looking at absolute causes of death is clearly nonsense.

The number of deaths is a poor measure of harm. One reason is that trauma care keeps improving. So there are now a large number of amputees and brain-injured soldiers that would have previously died.

Cars are getting more survivable, and almost certainly safer, too, but do numerical comparisons with numbers from the past remain valid in light of external influences on these outcomes?

In this case, improvements in trauma care may mask both brain injury from lack of oxygen and serious disability from gun accidents in this comparison. Or we don't know the methodology and they could be counting ER visits, which might provide a better comparison.

I don't know the Freakonomics methodology, but I'm pretty sure the analysis you're making isn't useful.

We're talking about choices an individual homeowner can make.

Those choices are "install a pool" or "keep a gun in the house".

To understand the risks for those two choices, total drownings and total gun deaths of children in the country aren't relevant to an individual's choice.

To get a useful statistic, you need to know how many children died in their home pool in the sample group of homeowners w/ pools, and how many children died from a gun in the home in the sample group of homeowners w/ guns in the house.

Because that's the choice -- do I put myself in this sample group or not?

Think about powered trampolines -- suppose there are only five installed in the country, and on two of them a child has died this past year. That's a HORRIBLE risk, but with your method of assessment, it doesn't even show up.

If you're thinking of installing this kind of trampoline, I'd highly recommend my method of analysis over yours.

Perhaps a valid point that Freakonomics had bad methodology in this instance, though this is similariy bad:

> So drowning is is roughly 2x as dangerous as guns

Drowning kills 100% of people who drown, so it's certainly more dangerous than guns.

Replace drowning with "pools" and there might be something more reasonable to compare, though hard to know what should be compared.

> Drowning kills 100% of people who drown, so it's certainly more dangerous than guns.

I heard from a person that had to go through helicopter rescue training that they're, in their course of training, required to drown at one point; and then, after drowning, are brought back up and revived.

Drowning may kill a large percentage of the people that drown, but it's not a guaranteed death-sentence.

>Drowning kills 100% of people who drown, so it's certainly more dangerous than guns. //

Being shot to death kills 100% of people who are shot to death. I don't think you have a valid point.

The flaw in this argument is that guns and pools have very different uses.

You can't swim in a gun.

Guns have no useful purpose. The fact that pools are more dangerous doesn't justify owning a gun, so there is no "cognitive dissonance" here.

You don't want a gun in your house regardless of any other dangers that exists, just like you want to child proof the house.

You want a pool for the same reason you want a bicycle: it provides lots of benefit. Ultimately we make a choice that the benefit of the pool or the benefit of a bicycle for the child is greater than the risk.

We can't eliminate all the risk.

We can eliminate unnecessary risk (like guns).

> Guns have no useful purpose

Home defense, hunting, on-person defense for women in unsafe areas, etc.

But yeah, continue on your screed. Let's not let facts get in the way of a good diatribe.

People with guns are more likely to get killed than people who are unarmed.

OK, lets looks at the facts. At least, the facts available despite the NRA's diligent shutting down of as much research into the role of guns in American society as possible.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/pro-gun-myths-fa... • A Philadelphia study found that the odds of an assault victim being shot were 4.5 times greater if he carried a gun. His odds of being killed were 4.2 times greater.

Although Myth I also refer to you to: #7: Guns make women safer.

The vast, vast majority of the "research" posted in that post is anecdotal and irrelevant. Just because assault "victims" (did they control for gang-related violence? for obvious malicious intent? etc) had a higher rate of being shot doesn't mean guns are useless.

Same with the "fact" that guns in the home are linked to suicides and assaults and not legitimate home defense. OK? Yeah, that's obvious. But that doesn't control for the fact that many people who purchase guns use them completely responsibly.

I understand you think it's a bad idea that on average, gun crime happens. But none of the "evidence" you posted presents a slam-dunk case for repealing the 2nd Amendment and probably many others (unreasonable search and seizure and the like).

None of this even factors into the whole intent of allowing citizens to own weapons, which is worth a fair amount.

I learned long ago that 90% of motherjones articles are trash. They are the online liberal equivalent of FOX news.

While firearms do provide a means of self-defense, there is also data which suggests there's an association between less firearm laws and higher firearm fatalities:

http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=16613...

Home defense makes no sense unless you believe that if someone steal your TV it's ok that you potentially kill him/her for tresspassing.

The safest defense is to not have this turn into an arms race. Both for you and your children.

What's the useful purpose of a private pool?

Aquatic therapy and exercise. Not being sarcastic.

I think the person you responded to meant that you could go to a public pool. So the answer is: privacy while using a pool for its normal purpose.

Or perhaps: Aquatic therapy and exercise while not swimming in several someone else's urine.

Having fun, enjoying swimming.

Child proofing your house does not include throwing away everything that is dangerous in the house, the same way you lock your liquor and medicine cabinet instead of getting rid of them.

> Guns have no useful purpose.

If I recall, in some countries, the only legal guns are rifles--because they can be used to hunt game. Or, to put a finer point on it: some people use a gun to feed their family.

That's pretty disingenuous. Maybe there are places where it really is cheaper to hunt food with a gun than buy it, but America is not one of them.

Right; I meant to specifically negate the statement "guns have no useful purpose." I never said guns had any useful purpose in America. :)

Once you own the gun, ammunition is cheap in comparison to the poundage of meat from deer, wild foul and other small game animals.

Not that I partake in hunting personally (suburban lifestyle), but my home state (of Pennsylvania) has a significant rural population that takes advantage of the large deer population to supplement its caloric budget.

America isn't homogeneous with regard to its distribution of jobs, supermarkets and population.

Out of interest, who owns the land people hunt on in places like Pennsylvania?

Here in Scotland large parts of the country are privately owned sporting estates and shooting is not a cheap sport!

It's often public land. State or national forests, which are gigantic portions of the US, are generally hunting areas (though state or national parks are usually no-hunting zones).

Hunting is licensed by the states, and is usually relatively inexpensive for in-state residents. People from other states usually pay considerably more for a license. Big game or rarer animals may require special "tags" which come at larger fees and may be limited and awarded by lottery.

There are private game reserves. Georgia and other southern states have massive hunting preserves that can be a mark of old money, for instance. There are similar ranches in the west. And hunting clubs that anyone can just buy their way into.

And, to be honest, there's a lot of what is technically poaching- hunting on the private land of others without permission. That sort of thing isn't all that well policed, though state fish and game authorities are generally pretty tough on completely unlicensed hunting.

Many (most?) state and national forest lands are open to hunting. There's other publicly accessible lands too (but those two are the big acreages).

Here's a symptom of the cultural prevalence of hunting in the U.S.:

http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/sta...

Most states will have such a listing.

There is also plenty of private land kept for hunting, which as you might mean to imply, is not cheap.

"Hunting" in the UK usually referes to chasing about with horses and dogs, "shooting" to pheasants, grouse etc. and if you tramp about mountainsides after deer it is "stalking".

Interestingly enough, in Scotland although most wild areas are privately owned everyone has a right of access - you can wander about pretty much anywhere that isn't explicitly private or where you would cause harm.

My extended family has a modest-sized plot of land in west Pa. where they do farming. It also encompasses some forest though, and occasionally the deer get a little too curious and then my family will get to have venison for dinner for the following month or so.

...America is not one of them.

When my poorer friends here in rural USA ask me what the hell that "privilege" concept is, I'm going to point them at this comment.

You have obviously never been to Alaska, where the option to even buy food is non-existent in many areas. Even in areas where you can buy meat, many don't because it is a lot cheaper to feed a family by killing your yearly moose.

"Maybe there are places where it really is cheaper to hunt food with a gun than buy it, but America is not one of them."

This is not true. Where I went to college, there were people in the surrounding area who ate squirrels. Yes, squirrels are edible, and a handful of squirrels can make a meal.

.22lr ammunition is more than sufficient to kill a squirrel, rabbit, or small bird, and you can buy it at 4 cents per cartridge. That means you can get all the meat needed for dinner for 20-30 cents. Excluding food stamps, where else can you get meat so cheaply?

There is another issue with hunting, which I mentioned elsewhere: overpopulation. In many places in America, there are so many deer that they are considered a nuisance species. I live in an area where there are more deer today than there were when Europeans first arrived on this continent. Hunting deer is a form of population control and the limits on how many deer can be taken are set to meet those goals.

Yes, controlling the deer population is important. Deer cause a lot of property damage, and that problem is worsened as the deer population increases.

> Guns have no useful purpose. The fact that pools are more dangerous doesn't justify owning a gun, so there is no "cognitive dissonance" here.

What is the useful purpose of a swimming pool exactly? Are you proposing that they are a meaningful part of our society? Is this "use" so valuable that it clearly outweighs the deaths it causes? You seem to in your own comment think the bicycle provides the same benefit, so why keep pools if we have such a great alternative? No one swims a gun, but no one swims to work either. At least there are people actually dependent on bikes because they can't afford cars.

> We can't eliminate all the risk. > We can eliminate unnecessary risk (like guns).

So you think pools qualify as a necessary risk then?

Is it at all possible that you may just personally see no use in guns while appreciating the recreational value of a pool despite its risks, while at the exact same time a gun owner may see no use in pools while appreciating the recreational value of guns? You can't swim (useless activity) in a gun. You also can't fire a pool.

I can actually perfectly understand the argument "well, both guns and pools should be outlawed then". I really have a hard time shrugging off pool deaths because they are such a clearly useful thing that is a necessary risk for society though (however that argument works much better for car deaths vs. gun deaths).

Edit: Below I was just commenting on understanding your audience and thus not making arguments that won't resonate with them. There is an entire culture around gun ownership. There are some people that go shooting every day, and it really hurts your position to tell them that that part of their life is not a valid "use". It is actually quite similar to football in some respects. At some point in this country we may have to discuss the very real health issues associated with it, and a part of the framing of that argument should probably not belittle the attachment people have to something that is in fact quite useless (as any and all recreations are to the people that don't practice them).

Let's remember this is in context of owning guns and having children.

Children like to swim in pools. Children like to ride bicycles. I sure hope even the most enthusiastic gun owner doesn't give guns to children to play with.

I don't have to justify the usefulness of pools or bicycles. The kids like them, it's a fact.

As a society we tolerate the risk of those things. Is it rational? Should we? I don't care - we just do and that's a fact.

You can take away a risk associated with a pool or bicycle but only by taking away the fun that children have swimming in pools or riding a bicycle.

It's true that some parents enjoy the things you can do with a gun. It's also true that having a gun in the house is additional, sometimes tragic, risk with no benefit to children.

First, as a parent you're supposed to put the benefit of your child over the little joys in your life, like squeezing a trigger of a 44 Magnum or getting enough sleep.

Second, you can enjoy most of the benefits of having a gun without actually having one in the house.

I'm pretty sure you cannot hunt or discharge firearms within city limits anyway.

You can still indulge yourself in hunting or go to a shooting range without endangering the life of your child by having a gun in your house.

>I don't have to justify the usefulness of pools or bicycles. The kids like them, it's a fact. As a society we tolerate the risk of those things. Is it rational? Should we? I don't care - we just do and that's a fact.

OK, now you've lost me because:

People like to shoot guns, it's a fact.

As a society, currently, we tolerate the risk of those things. Is it rational? Should we? I don't care - we just do and that's a fact.

Did I just win the argument? Because that's the case right now. It is quite legal to have a gun in your home. Done. Or are we both perhaps arguing about the way things should be and not simply reciting to each other the way things are as a matter of fact?

> Second, you can enjoy most of the benefits of having a gun without actually having one in the house.

Sure, and I agree that is probably a wise decision. Having pools outside the house (where there is always an active life guard on duty) is also a wise decision. I will personally choose to not live in a house with a pool if I have kids AND not have guns in my home, because I think they are both wise decisions. In particular if my kid ever drowns I won't think to myself "but since it is a fact that kids like swimming this was definitely worth it".

I seem to agree with most of what you've said: both the context of children and not needing something unsafe in your house all the time. I guess I just don't see the need to (strangely) shrug off one set of real dangers when discussing another. Now I think the real reason you are disagreeing with this is that you don't want me telling you not to have a pool if you have a kid. It's not really that society decided anything, you have made the personal decision for you and your family (which you agree may not even be rational) that it is a risk you are willing to take. I disagree with that risk but accept it is your risk to take. I believe having a gun in my home is similarly my decision, despite me using that ability to decide not to have one.

"Did I just win the argument?"

YES. Let's just assume from this point henceforth you win all internet arguments. You are the goddam internet argument champion and deserve a trophy and a ribbon that you can wear around town!

> Children like to swim in pools. Children like to ride bicycles.

And children like to hunt. What's your point?

> I don't have to justify the usefulness of pools or bicycles.

Actually, when you're claiming that they have more usefulness than some other arbitrary object (in this case, guns), yes you do.

> You can take away a risk associated with a pool or bicycle but only by taking away the fun that children have swimming in pools or riding a bicycle.

That's exactly right, because helmets make bicycles less fun.

> It's true that some parents enjoy the things you can do with a gun. It's also true that having a gun in the house is additional, sometimes tragic, risk with no benefit to children.

Except for the cases in which a gun in the home is used for self defense.

> First, as a parent you're supposed to put the benefit of your child over the little joys in your life, like squeezing a trigger of a 44 Magnum or getting enough sleep.

And swimming, because apparently they're more likely to die doing that.

> Second, you can enjoy most of the benefits of having a gun without actually having one in the house.

Except for self defense, which if we read the Constitution is the primary reason for the second amendment (discussion about self defense from whom aside for the moment).

> I'm pretty sure you cannot hunt or discharge firearms within city limits anyway.

I don't know what city limits have to do with anything, so I don't think this is germane. I'm willing to bet you're more likely to find a pool in the suburbs than downtown, anyway.

But living in a city does not mean you waive your right to self defense.

> You can still indulge yourself in hunting or go to a shooting range without endangering the life of your child by having a gun in your house.

You can still indulge yourself in swimming or go to a public pool without endangering the life of your child by having a pool in your yard.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/03/01/13-year-old-phenom-katie-f...

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57562397-504083/georg...

>I sure hope even the most enthusiastic gun owner doesn't give guns to children to play with.

In some families, a father will put a loaded gun in the hands of his 12-year-old son and have him shoot at targets. You are right. It's never okay to give a kid a gun to "play with". However, giving a kid a gun to teach him respect for firearms is a little different.

Parents give their kids supervised access to guns all the time. I shot guns as a child. Most of my friends did, too. This is common in rural areas of the midwestern United States. I'm guessing that you didn't grow up in that environment, so that seems odd to you, but it's normal for millions of people.

Now this is actually a cogent and reasonable argument. I do think there is a strong argument for the fact that guns are part of American culture, or at least a large enough proportion of the American population to count in that respect. Hunting, recreation, these are perfectly legitimate and reasonable arguments to allow gun ownership.

The problem is that the 'gun lobby' doesn't stop there. They insist that guns make you safer, when the actual evidence couldn't be clearer that they don't. They perpetuate myths such as that an armed society is a polite society, when in fact access to firearms dramatically increases the risk that a confrontation will escalate to lethal violence.

American society is saturated with guns. Those weapons aren't going to go away any time soon. So the IMHO the rational response is to look at what is achievable. Educating gun owners as to the real risks, promoting gun safety, encouraging and legislating for safe practices around gun ownership, storage and use. These are all achievable goals.

The "facts" you just asserted are unsupported.

Do not quote "actual evidence" without citing sources. One need only look at the murder rate in Chicago to see that incredibly strict gun laws do not by definition make a population safer. I'm sure you could find a rural area with an above-average per capita murder rate than other rural areas too.

It's almost as if the mere act of owning a firearm has little bearing on one's overall safety.

Chicago's problem is that their guns laws only affect the city itself. If a criminal wants a gun he need only drive out of Chicago, buy the gun, and drive back home. In fact, a recent article (don't have the link on hand, sorry) pointed out that a large percentage of guns used in crimes in Chicago were bought from a single store just outside the city limits.

The point is that cities don't have monitored borders, and so they have a hard time regulating the influx of guns. A country-wide ban would actually stand a chance of working.

Edit: here's the article I mentioned: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/us/strict-chicago-gun-laws...

They are literally no gun shops in Chicago, it is not possible to legitimately purchase a gun in the city limits.

...

Are you replying to an earlier version of the comment above?

> In fact, a recent article (don't have the link on hand, sorry) pointed out that a large percentage of guns used in crimes in Chicago were bought from a single store just outside the city limits.

I haven't heard this but it certainly sounds plausible.

To me, it says one of a few things are happening: (A) The people buying the guns are not criminals at the time of purchase, and shouldn't be prohibited from buying them in the first. Whether they go on to commit a crime with the gun or the gun is stolen and then used in a crime is mostly irrelevant; (B) The people buying the guns are criminals at the time of purchase, and the NICS check didn't alert the owner properly. This would be more a failure of the FBI than anyone else; (C) Least likely, the people buying the guns are criminals at the time of purchase and the owner of the shop knew this and either did not perform the NICS check or performed it with fraudulent data.

I should also point out that since it's illegal to purchase a gun in Chicago it's not at all surprising that guns in Chicago happen to come from gun shops immediately outside the city borders.

Do you still stand by your claim about stricter gun laws not making people safer though? Clearly the gun laws in Chicago are irrelevant to the point. This is the problem with so many arguments we see from the gun lobby, they technically can claim to have some highly legalistic version of the truth, but with little bearing on actual reality. This does not need to be the case.

I do believe a large majority of Americans would be fine with high gun ownership levels, if only there was a safe, healthy, well informed and responsible gun ownership culture to go with it. Many gun owners do meet that description, but far too many don't and any attempts to rectify that or even provide evidence based advice are blocked at every turn.

You can't swim in a gun. Guns have no useful purpose. The fact that pools are more dangerous doesn't justify owning a gun, so there is no "cognitive dissonance" here...We can eliminate unnecessary risk (like guns).

And you can't kill your potential killer or rapist, unless you invite him in the pool and hope he drowns, with pools being dangerous and all. I hope you never have to wish you had a gun near you. Personally I have no pool, but...

Pools, unless they are Olympic size ones used to do laps for most people are useless, "just [extremely dangerous] fun." Fun, like shooting a gun which also can save your life, or the life or your neighbor. Mighty useful if you ask me and much safer than pools.

Isn't bringing up potential killers or rapists just fear-mongering in order to justify gun ownership? Is there any data supporting that gun ownership results in fewer rapes or deaths? I find defense being thrown about as a very valid reason for owning a gun, but in a country like the US, is there concrete evidence that gun ownership caused fewer home break-ins? I don't hope to be in a situation where I need a gun near me, but I also don't hope for someone confronting me having a gun in his/her hand.

When it happens to you, the % jumps to 100%/. end.of.story. Suppose you make illegal all guns right now. Do you think it will be hard for a crook to his hands on a now illegal weapon?

All I need to know: A gun will help me defend myself and family. A gun can be kept safe by adhering to certain known gun safety principles. Accidents happen but then a brick from a building's facade can smack you in the head in the morning. Cops are great, if you have one right there, right when you need him/her. So, I think to myself, why not have one? Leaving all fun aside, it's a piece of mind.

This is a common argument, and while it has some merit, it also reeks of illusion of control bias. Guns make people feel safer because they feel more in control of their safety.

In reality, if someone is armed and has broken into my house, I want it to be absolutely clear to them that I am unarmed. I want them to know that they have no need to attack me, and that they should just take some of my stuff and get out (by far the most likely reason they're there), leaving me unharmed. The alternative possibilities sound much worse to me.

This is true in almost every situation where people talk about guns being useful against crime. I think I am more likely to harm myself, to incite the other party to harm me, to harm a bystander (maybe someone in my household), or to harm someone that I perceive as a much more serious and dangerous criminal than they actually are, than I am to successfully be a "good guy with a gun who stops a bad guy with a gun".

My impression, from speaking to gun owners, is that in most situations in which a gun is useful you do not actually end up firing it. Your mention of "almost every situation" brought to mind the Portland mall shooting, where the shooter stopped and killed himself after seeing another man taking aim at him[1]. Other much more publicized mass shootings may have gone significantly better if the government did not publicly designate large, completely unsecured areas in which only criminals are allowed to have firearms.

[1]: http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-s...

This is the same fallacy that makes people who are afraid of flying say they feel safer driving (in) a car because they are 'in control'. It doesn't change the fact that in reality they are orders of magnitude more likely to get hurt or even die while being in a car than while being on an airplane.

Not having a gun when someone armed threatens me will most likely increase my chances of survival/getting out of the conflict unharmed. Maybe with a gun I have a better chance of retaliation but I'm also more likely to die.

The bottom line is: any weapon you /add/ to a conflict rises the stakes for /all/ parties involved. And vice versa.

> Not having a gun when someone armed threatens me will most likely increase my chances of survival/getting out of the conflict unharmed. Maybe with a gun I have a better chance of retaliation but I'm also more likely to die.

And this is known as the fallacy of making things up and asserting that they are most likely true.

The 1st sentence can be easily backed up by statistics about gun crimes. The 2n part is purely speculative on my behalf but I'd dare say that's straightforward enough to conceive by noticing the word 'maybe', prominently placed at the beginning. ;)

I'd be curious to see your statistics. If they control for situations where two criminals have guns and are shooting at each other (i.e., they're actually about defensive gun use by the good guys) I'll be pretty shocked.

I agree with you, but I just wanted to point out that it's fairly easy to read the Maybe as applying only to the first clause:

> (Maybe with a gun I have a better chance of retaliation) but (I'm also more likely to die).

Just a general observation: your forceful, emotional phrasing/expressions only serve to discredit your position.

'end of story', 'All I need to know' are expressions that begin to end a discussion, they certainly don't make way for a healthy and productive exchange of ideas.

(I don't mean to knock on you here, just thought I would point it out so you can think about this on your own. Cheers).

'end of story', 'All I need to know' are expressions that begin to end a discussion, they certainly don't make way for a healthy and productive exchange of ideas.

No exchange of ideas on this topic, I've considered them all and I have decided to be armed while in my home. Whether I use it, how and when I use are a different story, but at least I may have that option. Others may choose not to have a gun, it's their choice.

> No exchange of ideas on this topic

So you are commenting just to offer your hard-won life wisdom to the rest of us?

Thank you?

Have you ever actually had an intruder in your home?

I have had it happen twice. Once right after we moved into a brand new house (3-4 days after move in). Some local kids had figured out that the front door could be opened because the lock was installed wrong and were using the house to party while it was empty. They hadn't realized that people moved in.

Our golden retriever scared the crap out of them and they never made it 5 feet into the house - even though the dog was on the second floor. Now there is a solid defense system. I'll note that at the time, we had 5 guns locked up in the closest safely stored. The dog was down the stairs and dealing with the situation before I was even conscious enough to think. The whole thing would have been over before the guns were out if it was worse than some dumb kids.

Second time it happened was only 18 months ago. This was a little different because I was on a boat at night, but again I was certain that two big adult men were robbing boats in the vincity. I called the cops. The cops sent the coast guard. We hunkered down and hid (probably not the right call, should have turned on the lights). I wish I had a gun in that moment, they were 15 feet from our stern and definitely coming onboard. There is no where to go on a boat like that. I had a mag light and a radio, and when the guys started heading for my boat I hit them with the light. Meanwhile the cops went from sneaking over at 5mph to screaming over at 45mph. That defused the situation, but if there weren't cops and/or I had a gun I would have definitely shot a round or two into the water to scare them off. Possibly more.

When the cops actually picked them up, it turned out they were 2 14 year olds sneaking onto boats at night stealing booze. The cops made them apologize for scaring the crap out of us, so I met them. They couldn't have been 115 pounds each. If I hadn't saw them, I honestly could have sworn under oath they were 300 pound linebackers based on their silhouettes on other boats. Thank god I didn't have a gun that day, I'm almost certain I would have shot one of them. This is how kids get shot while holding skittles and even trained police officers confuse wallets for guns. Your mind plays tricks on you.

My lessons learned: keep the lights on. Own a dog. If there are intruders, make them totally aware you are there because most of the time, they want nothing to do with people. I'm not against owning guns, but if you store them safely they won't be as much help as you think.

Nice story, but it's a bit like management fad books. Experiences of a sample size of one extrapolated to the status of general truth.

Breaking and entering under the cover of darkness is a very dangerous activity and one for which I don't have much sympathy, but I agree with you, communication is key: communicating that your domicile is occupied, and if the criminal persists, communicating that you are armed prepared to shoot.

I have very little regard for the life of a robber. I don't feel that I should take valuable time out of my life to learn skills for applying measured non-lethal force to dissuade a person who intends to take my personal property by force. The only reason why I would be very hesitant to just shoot someone who broke into my house, would be my inability to identify them -- I don't want to shoot my mother-in-law.

But shooting a 14 year old trying to steal some beer?

> Is there any data supporting that gun ownership results in fewer rapes or deaths?

The claim was that "guns have no useful purpose". To refute this assertion, we don't need to prove that gun ownership results in fewer rapes or deaths (on, for example, a nation-wide basis), only that when someone attempts to harm you, a gun can be useful in defending yourself.

I mean, when you buy a bag of chips you don't ask yourself whether there is proof that chips actually results in a more satisfied society. You buy them because you feel it benefits you, and that's an entirely acceptable justification, in my opinion.

Well, people dissuading a killer/murderer by brandishing a gun and people being otherwise killed by guns are both very rare events, so I'd say that if one is "just fear-mongering" so is the other. In practice it's very hard to figure out whether gun ownership causes a reduction in crime, because it's well known that crime causes gun ownership and you have to have to be lucky in finding a good natural experiment to get around that. I'm not aware of any convincing research on the subject one way or the other, I'm afraid.

And before bringing up the number of gun deaths that would be considered justified versus suicides or murders, we do have pretty good evidence that in those cases where a gun prevents a crime it's mostly by the threat of its use, not its use itself.

Does it always have to come down to killing ?

Does it always have to come down to killing ?

It depends on what the intruder /attacker has in mind.

A gun has no other purpose, so yes.

You don't get to decide the purpose of all guns. Mine are for target shooting.

Perhaps a non-lethal gun could be used for that purpose?

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airsoft_gun)

It could be but I have a swimming pool, kitchen knives, and stairs also so it isn't a high priority.

Oh, and my bath mat. I'm very worried about my bath mat.

And what is the point of target practice? Target practice is to guns as boxing practice is to boxing. Even if you never actually fight.

How about fun?

I used to shoot at targets with a bb gun as a kid. I sure as hell wasn't practicing to be a bb gun killer....

Would you want to go on a hunting trip with someone who had never fired a gun, or who did not know how to aim? There is a big different between knowing abstractly that you need to pull the trigger and having actually done so, especially with higher-caliber rifles.

You're arguing my point: target practice is to gain skill to kill with the weapon. I wasn't taking a specific moral stance, I actually believe as long as the government is allowed to have weapons the people should be able to as well. I simply have no illusions what guns are for.

You've obviously never been in a life threatening situation.

It's very unlikely owning a weapon (gun, knife, spray, whatever) will be of any use. "Killers" or "Rapists" (whatever that means) take you by surprise and pulling a gun is not an option (even if you had the mental discipline and self control to do it).

If you care about self defense, learn Krav Maga or another martial art that will condition you to actually increase your odds of survival... After years of rigorous training.

Just for the record, if you live in the 1st world, the probability of dying because of murder is so low that mentioning is a waste of time. Turn off the TV. ;)

I'm sure Krav Maga would work well against a 800 pound brown bear.

I have several friends who've defended themselves with guns during a home invasion. It does happen.

Where the heck do you live? Are you not able to move for some reason? Stories like this seem so foreign to me.

The woods, or some of the shadier areas of the city, places where police aren't immediately accessible

I would rather like to live in the woods if I had the chance. I find it a wonderful location, quiet, peaceful.

Guns still have a place in this world, it just might not be a place that you, personally, see.

Oh, I have no problem with guns. I own a rifle and enjoy target shooting. I recently got my hunting license and plan to start hunting this summer.

I have also lived in very rural areas and some very shady parts of town. I'm in Canada though, so handguns just aren't as prevalent up here (although I do have friends with restricted licenses and handguns they can shoot at the range).

I had an "interesting" youth. Growing up in rural area means I'm no stranger to seeing people at parties getting beer bottles smashed over their heads during fights or hit with ash trays at bars. Looking back at that, there was not a single situation where a person having a handgun would have made things better. It almost definitely would have made things much worse. People would have died as opposed to just need stitches at the hospital. Even in this rural area, it wasn't that difficult to talk my way out of bad situations. I was blasted out of the blue once, but it was a case of mistaken identity.

I think that if home invasions were a real threat to my family then I would really start to think about moving. There are just so many nicer places to live.

As an interesting side-note, I imagine many of the people there may have actually owned guns and even had them on them. And yet they didn't use them. If they indeed had them, then they also knew the importance of proper gun safety, even when drunk and angry :)

And yes, probably.. as long as you weren't hundreds of thousands of dollars upside down on your mortgage with 5 kids (requiring a large house) [and so on, insert rough situation here]

Canada has a very different culture despite its proximity to the US. You can't even compare the two. In my experience, people in the US are taught to feel that they are losers if they don't achieve a certain amount (or basically get what they want), whereas Canadians, in general, seem far more serene about the ups and downs of their lives.

Yes, it is a generalization, but it is very real. For instance, look at the disparity between violent crime rates in Seattle and Vancouver.

On your second point, I feel that you are speculating. Neither you or I know what a handgun would bring in those situations. People who do concealed carry in the US are statistically very unlikely to commit violent crime, far far less than the general population. The mere presence of gun isn't as big of a deal as many people fear.

The thing that troubles me in the US is that gun control advocates continuously attempt to paint a future where there are no handguns. We can't even keep cellphones out of prisons in the US, or eradicate drugs (which have been illegal for decades). With that in mind, essentially telling criminals in a society of extremes that they have nothing to worry about, that law-abiding citizens will be disarmed, seems incredibly foolish.

If we had it to do all over again, I'd be for strict gun control in the US, but we have to deal with the way things are now, not some imaginary reset. Maybe the issue for today is an early ban on armed drones.

If you care about self defense, learn Krav Maga or another martial art that will condition you to actually increase your odds of survival... After years of rigorous training.

So a thief or a potential rapist /murderer is in my living room at 4am. I should approach him without knowing his ultimate intention or what weapons he has, and try to some martial arts moves against him? Should I ask if he likes a cup of coffee first?

How about unmistakeable shotgun click from a safer distance?

You're right. Scaring someone who has got less to lose than you and might be on drugs is a good option.

Martial arts teach you confidence and self control, this is what will be useful. One of the first thing you learn when you're taught self-defense is that if someone asks for your wallet with a blade, you give the wallet. You use self defense only as a last resort.

If someone is inside your house just lock yourself in the bathroom, head low in the bathtub, and call the police. Maybe do some noise to scare the thief, or say out lout "get out, I'm calling the police". In this situation, if you have any sort of weapon, yes, take that with you as a last resort.

Shotgun negotiation? Who are you kidding? If you take out a weapon, you must be ready to use it. Are you ready to shoot? Can you live the rest of your life with the death of someone? Are you even trained for that kind of situations? Probable outcomes: injury, prison or death. For you.

Which (hiding) would work great for one type of bad guy you apparently see a lot of on TV - the drugged out guys who picked a random house and wants $50. If this guy robs you he'll stop to pick up your shoes (to sell for drugs) so you can drop anything and run to safety. If the bad guy who broke into your house showed up on your security cameras' view with a "Type 1 Grunt - Snatcher" label you might even be safe to assume he would act this way.

But that's not realistic so you have to figure out who he is and what he wants from his actions starting with the 2am kicking down of your door. Guess wrong and he might be a drugged out rapist instead.

Really, if he's not yelling 'Fireman!' (And didn't arrive in a special truck) he's not kicking down your door to help. Some of the things that may be done to you may only (mostly) involve your things, or only hurt you not kill you, and people can give you a big song and dance about laws and morality - but don't YOU want to choose prison over death for yourself, if those really are your only two options?

I'm with you, partly. No need to fight this guy to be a hero. For your additional safety, hide in bathtub, sound a siren, and get help - while holding the shotgun you will use to kill him and his accomplices if they try to open your hiding spot before help arrives.

Unless you have significantly stronger bathroom doors than the average person, locking yourself in the bathroom will buy you an extra 5 seconds, tops. Locked interior doors are very easy to open with even a little force. Not to mention most people leave the keys on the moulding above the doors...

Most home robberies occur when the occupant is not home. People who just want some cash or stuff do not want to risk a confrontation. If a person breaks in with you home you MUST assume they are out to do physical harm to you.

If someone is inside your house just lock yourself in the bathroom, head low in the bathtub, and call the police.

Great idea! My kids can fend for themselves!

So what if I have learned Krav Maga (and Muay Thai, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and dabbled in Sanda/Sanshou and wrestling) - and still feel incapable of defending myself against an armed assailant.

Is it okay for me to own a gun now that I've jumped through your arbitrary hoops?

  > And you can't kill your potential killer or rapist

So, how many of those were killed/wounded in defense last year in US compared to all gun deaths?

Wikipedia has some links to studies collecting statistics on that. Though it's important to note that you're asking the wrong question; if I recall correctly, in something like 90% of defensive gun uses, no shots need to be fired. The threat alone is enough for the criminal to surrender or retreat. What you want to measure is how often a gun use prevents a crime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use

Anyway, it seems a middle of the road number from the studies is . . . about a million defensive gun uses per year? Lower bound is 55,000 - 80,000.

Wikipedia also gives a homicide with guns rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Stat..., looks like about 8,000 in 2012. It should be borne in mind that a lot of those homicides are from things like gang violence, and would be conducted with illegal guns or other weapons even if gun laws were super-tight.

So I'd say the numbers show a clear win for guns.

A 25 metre long pool is easily used for lap swimming of any intensity and even smaller pools remain useful for people who only require low intensity exercise.

> Guns have no useful purpose

Yes they do. Some people enjoy firing them, therefore their useful purpose is to make people happy (which at the end of the day the same end purpose for everything people do). Ditto with pools -- some people like swimming, so they also fulfil the useful purpose of making people happy.

The flaw in your argument is that guns do have a useful purpose.

I'm sorry that you're so obtuse that you can't understand what that purpose is.

"Guns have no useful purpose"

Correction: guns have no useful purpose that you can personally imagine (or that you are personally willing to accept).

Yes, I am a gun owner. I own three rifles, and at least two have a clear utility argument:

1. .22lr is for basic practice (aiming, breathing control, etc.) at low expense.

2. .270 is for hunting deer. Where I live, there are more whitetail deer than there were when Europeans first arrived on this continent, and the only way to keep that population under control is by hunting. Deer are the cause of numerous automobile accidents and cause quite a bit of property damage. In some suburban areas where deer hunting is not allowed, towns occasionally hire people to exterminate deer because they have become pests.

Right there, you have useful purposes for a large class of firearms. Killing pests on farms is another common use of rifles.

"We can eliminate unnecessary risk (like guns)."

So what you are saying is that anyone with children should not be a hunter or farmer, or that they should store their guns somewhere other than their home (and hope they are not stolen)?

The problem with your argument is that it is a blanket statement -- you are talking about guns as a general thing, which covers little BB guns all the way up to naval canons. Some guns have immediate and obvious civil uses, but you leave no room for that.

If guns have no useful purpose, police shouldn't carry them.

Pools are for swimming. Food is for eating. Cars are for transporting. All of those things can be hazardous.

Guns are for "safety", but they actually decrease safety:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2011/04/guns-in-the-home-lots...

http://www.iansa.org/system/files/Risks%20and%20Benefits%20o...

>Guns are for "safety", but they actually decrease safety:

Well, that's just like, your opinion man. Other people have other uses for guns, like recreational shooting. Kinda like motorcycles increase traffic deaths but are hobbies for some people, and useless to others.

Yes but motorcycles tend to kill their riders not other people.

Thanks for a rather nice example :)

Actually, it's somewhat meta for me: While I didn't squirm that much in the fireplace example, I'm a bit surprised by the amount of 'squirming'/'flaming' shown in this thread. I don't want to believe it. I want HNers to be able to discuss the topic at hand (confronting your own dilusions) instead of falling into the trap warned twice of (by OP and you).

I regret posting this; but I won't delete it so people know the context of the replies. Sorry HN!

Even if the statistic isn't bulletproof, and even if some of the discussion this sparked hasn't been of the caliber we've come to expect from HN, I don't regret that you posted it. It's an interesting thought experiment.

I think the stat that got me was staircases (we had a particularly nasty one in our house at the time). That said, it doesn't mean that gun control isn't a good thing, just that there are other things to consider. And I'll never look at a domestic staircase the same way again.

Dude, risk/reward. The reward for having a pool is tons of fun, exercise, comfort... Besides you can't go to statistics for gun safety: either you handle them safely or not: you are not a xx% safe statistic.

But does this take into consideration the children that are saved from drowning in an intruder's pool by the presence of their own pool?

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a pool is a good guy with a pool.

Define dangerous.

dangerous as in death by drowning vs death by shooting http://www.freakonomics.com/books/freakonomics/chapter-excer...

A lot more people die from gunshots than people drown, even if you count all drownings, not just pool-related (in the US, of course).

You cherry-picked one child-dangerous item in the house. Yay for "logic".

If you look at children 14 and under, 390 drowned, and 376 died by firearms, including accidents, murders and suicides. And if you only look at accidental firearm deaths, there were 62 for children 14 and under, and 123 for 20 and under. Pools really are dangerous, even compared to guns.

Using Consumer Product Safety Commission 2008 numbers for drowning, and the anti-gun group Children's Defense fund numbers for firearm deaths.

http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Newsroom/News-Releases/2012/New-CPSC-...

http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publicat...

Your pool deaths are inflated. The 390 is over 3 years 07-09. And gun deaths spike after age 14 where I presume pool drowning a continue to fall. Further, guns lead to very large injury numbers which I'm guessing greatly exceed pool-related injuries even more. Pools aren't that dangerous.

The 390 is the annual average number for those 3 years, not total. According to wonder.cdc.gov, for ages 0-14, there were 334 pool deaths in 2008 alone.

You're right on the pool death numbers being an average. But I'm still not sure you're point has been made.

390 over three years.

Again, why are you only talking about children deaths, one group that's not even supposed to have access to guns? That's cherry picking.

I wonder what the statistics look like when taking into account injuries too.

You can't get very injured in a pool (I guess you can slip outside the pool - but you can slip anywhere playing so does that count?). But there are probably more firearms injuries than deaths.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com