Hacker News Reader

Comment by jib | Hacker News Reader

As a non-american, this is really weird to me.

I grew up around plenty of guns at my friends - they were moose hunting rifles mostly. And they were under lock and key unless actively used for hunting, with guns locked in one location, ammunition locked in another (at least one of them in safe).

The police where I live now (Ireland) don't carry guns except for a few special units.

The fact that wearing guns is something that is every day business and that you can even discuss about is so alien to me that it is fascinating to see. I am glad I dont live in a society with those values though.

More guns means more people killed by guns. That said, I don't know the solution once you already have a proliferation of guns in your society. Personally I don't believe that maximizing the saturation of guns is a long-term solution but I recognize that it is a difficult situation.

View on HN

That's probably not true. More firearms can easily mean fewer deaths. An armed society is a polite society. Historically the most heavily-armed old west towns were the ones with the lowest death rates from violence.

My main problem with this is.. why "armed" have to equal "lethal firearms"? Why no more R&D into nonlethal options (something like an improved taser?).

I don't want to own a gun, because a gun is not effective unless you're willing to use it (in a last resort), and i don't want to do that... I want to own a Taser though (for self-defense).

It's a really hard problem, and even current Tasers are only "less lethal" like every other vaguely effective alternative I'm aware of. So, yeah, there's R&D, but sometimes nature just isn't cooperative.

I'll note that in the up to 2.5 million times a year a gun is used in the US for self-defense (as of some years ago), more than 90% of the time it isn't fired (or hits, but I think it was fired), but the user indeed needs to be willing to fire it if the simple threat of lethal force is not sufficient.

In the American Constitutional case, 'arms' meant firearms. In some newly constituted society you could make a different rule I suppose.

And of course nothing keeps you from carrying a taser now.

There are generally much stricter regulations on non-lethal weapons than there are on guns, so the OP might have to be careful in his choice of taser (depending on where he lives).

I grew up in Texas and was always surprised by how cautious I needed to be with my boy scout issued knife -- carrying it in Houston would have been a felony, but carrying a glock was permitted everywhere. I remember my mom having to carry a can of bear repellant instead of mace for the same reason.

I don't live in the U.S., but you're right that it's defined that way in the American Constitution, and as giaour answers, non-lethal weapons are more strictly controlled.

The main thing preventing me from carrying a taser now is price :) (they're really expensive in my country, the cheapest one, C2, costs 950 dollars - http://www.silvercat.com.uy/pistolaselecc2.html)

"An armed society is a polite society."

I don't buy this.

You don't have to buy it for it to be true.

Here's a town that has required every head of household to own and maintain a gun since 1982. When they passed that law people predicted that neighbors would settle their differences with shootouts, but instead - in 25 years - their crime rate plummeted and they haven't had a single gun murder - https://www.google.com/search?q=guntown+usa

| That's probably not true. *Citation needed

How about Baltimore, today? Completely gun-controlled. Most violent city in America. Call 'strawman' and I'll respond 'illustrative example'.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com