Hacker News Reader

Comment by rmc | Hacker News Reader

Guns are an interesting case. Thee are many tools (eg computers, knives, hammers) that can be used to kill someone, but most of the uses of them are not killing people (more tomatoes are cut with knives than people killed). I'm not so sure about guns. Are most of the instances of guns being fired being used to kill/hurt someone (or practice to kill/hurt someone)?

Perhaps it's the European in me that can't wrap my head around the American idea of guns. To me "Guns are dangerous" seems obvious.

It's an interesting cultural difference.

View on HN

I don't agree with it, but I think the American idea of guns is like what you said about knives: hunting guns are okay (like how kitchen knives are mostly used to cut tomatoes), but there's a line drawn somewhere for "assault weapons" (nobody cuts tomatoes with a switchblade).

Personally I think that although this idea makes sense for knives, guns cannot be justified because they have no purpose other than killing (hunting is still killing).

> guns cannot be justified because they have no purpose other than killing

Suppose someone is trying to kill you or your loved ones. Do you really not see how a gun could be beneficial? Do you really not see how killing someone could be the right thing to do?

Yeah, I know my view is idealistic... Having a gun for self-defense may be reasonable, but killing is never "the right thing to do" except as an absolute last resort in such situations.

Do you really not see how widespread gun ownership can be harmful?

On the front page is a story about someone recovering a camera from a thief. One comment says that confronting the thief could be dangerous, since they might have a gun ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5505464 ). Here in Ireland if some low level criminal stole my camera, they wouldn't have a gun when I meeting them in a café.

My hunch is that hunting guns are a minority (or small percentage) of all gun firings, whereas with knives, it's the other way. The illegal killings (with knives) are the (small) minority.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com