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Comment by lern_too_spel | Hacker News Reader

Nothing like that has ever happened to me. In fact, I have never been in a situation where I would have been better off with a gun on me. Funny how people who own guns seem to end up in dangerous situations so often.

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I'd be careful implying causation here. Another way to look at it is that people who often find themselves in dangerous situations feel the need to have guns to protect themselves. When you think about it that way, it doesn't sound so 'funny'.

Well, in this case it might be. In a society where no one owns guns, the chance that some intruder has a gun is near to null, so you don’t need a gun either.

Clearly a 5'1", 105lb woman has no need of a gun when a 6'4", 240lb man breaks into her home.

How is that clear? Where is the data that backs up your claim?

The studies cited in http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/having-a... certainly point the other direction.

The article you cite discusses intimate partner violence and seems to suggest that abusive households which have a gun present may result in the gun being used against the woman. If you read my comment, I was discussing attacks by strangers.

Here is an article, for example, that suggests violent resistance (ideally with a gun) is the best way to avoid property loss and injury when attacked. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2004....

Are you seriously asserting that a small female under attack by a large male is better off unarmed?

Of course it is possible to imagine situations in which a gun makes you safer. The point is that in the real world, you are more likely to end up in a situation where it makes you less safe. More specifically, women are far more likely to be killed by their abusive partners than they are to face a life-threatening home invasion.

So don't buy a gun if you have an abusive intimate partner, and do buy one if you are single or have a non-abusive partner. Pretty simple.

Also, upon rereading, your article doesn't even really support your claim that a gun makes women less safe. Note the comparisons made: "More than twice as many women are killed with a gun used by their husbands or intimate acquaintances than are murdered by strangers..." "A very small percentage of these women (7%) had used a gun successfully in self-defense..."

Note the comparisons NOT made: the percentage of women in households without a gun who successfully defended themselves, or P(murder|abusive husband && gun) vs P(murder|abusive husband && !gun).

It's not "my" article.

> the percentage of women in households without a gun who successfully defended themselves

Irrelevant, since the whole point is that lethal home invasions are very rare. In other words, even if having a gun provided 100% protection against a murderous home invader, and even if lacking a gun made it 100% certain that he would kill you, owning the gun would still have a negligible effect on you overall safety.

> P(murder|abusive husband && gun) vs P(murder|abusive husband && !gun)

You can't have it both ways. Either guns make it easier to kill people or they don't. If they don't, then they're no good for self defense. If they do, then you're more likely to be killed by your partner if he has access to a gun than if he doesn't.

Irrelevant, since the whole point is that lethal home invasions are very rare.

If women defend themselves successfully 7% of the time when a gun is in the home but 3% when it's not (the relevant comparison), then guns are effective in preventing domestic violence. The article doesn't even discuss this statistic, which is the only important one.

Either guns make it easier to kill people or they don't.

They do - no one disputes this. No one disputes that an armed man vs an unarmed woman has a better shot than an unarmed man vs an unarmed woman. So what?

Having a gun in the home makes it easier for each partner to kill the other. Thus, I don't see how it could possibly make one partner safer than they would otherwise be. It would appear to make both of them less safe. (And the real solution to this problem is to GTFO of an abusive relationship, not to buy a gun because then maybe there's a tiny chance that you can kill the guy before he kills you. That's just nuts.)

I'm not sure why you keep harping on statistics, since neither of us has any direct statistical information regarding whether a woman owning a gun makes her less likely to be killed by her partner. There are no statistics supporting your position either.

Strange then, that the people who most agitate for and carry guns are not short women.

I am a 5'10", 120lbs woman, and I feel more safe knowing that no one has a gun.

That's a really ignorant statement. The problem with the gun debate is that nobody wants to walk in another's shoes.

There are many people who live in areas where police response is nonexistent for many types of crime or response times are awful. Guns are a great equalizer for the weak.

The overblown prohibition push over the years has empowered the more extreme gun advocates and created the potential for more problems.

I had a man break into my home when I was there. He got in through the roof, going up scaffolding on a derelict building next door.

I offered him a cup of tea, and told him it would probably be safer for him to leave via my front door and down the stairs rather than back down the scaffolding. He declined the tea, but I went and made one for myself and called the police. He went back out the way he'd come in. The police caught him in the garden, where he brandished a bottle at them. They did not shoot and kill him[1], they de-escalated then caught and cuffed him. He served a short sentence, got some drug and alcohol rehab, and is now only engaged in minor crime.

At no point did I think "this would be better if any of us (me, him, the police) could have a gun".

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/armed-police-...

Armed Police in England and Wales only fired their weapons twice out of 14684 operations in 2013/2014.

And let's not forget that the UK has terrorist and paramilitary groups operating here.

That's nice, especially since he didn't have one of the very many knives which are, I gather from the news, such a perennial problem in your neck of the woods. Here's hoping you stay lucky!

Knife crime is rare in UK. Stats are skewed by gang violence in Glasgow, some parts of Manchester, and London.

I never fear knife crime in my small town (pop approx 100,000).

Knife crime was popular in the news for a while because they reported on disproportionally many cases, presumably because of the lack of something more exciting - like gun crime.

I'm genuinely glad you had the composure and wherewithal to handle that situation.

Funny part was, I didn't even own a gun for the break in or when I found the dude breaking into my neighbors house. In fact, I was lucky enough that there happened to be a cop driving by right as I ran out the door to try to grab his plate number. In the case of the carjacking, that happened to my boss when he pulled over to render assistance to a man who crashed his motorcycle. Him just trying to be a good Samaritan at 3 in the afternoon on a Sunday. After the break in I bought a rifle, and after my boss nearly got carjacked I bought a pistol and am pursuing a concealed permit. I'm not going into with a John Wayne mentality, rather I have something of a Scout's Motto mentality. Be Prepared.

My two takeaways are to have a strong door and to let the proper authorities handle accidents that don't require immediate aid. Those two behaviors seem safer for all involved.

The Scouts aren't armed with concealed weapons.

Incorrect. Every Boy Scout I know carries at least one knife, after they get their Toting Chit.

Given that your HN posting history mostly consists of you saying how you really want to join the army and kill people, can you honestly say that self defense was your primary motivation for buying a gun? It sounds to me like you want to use it.

Your stories don't really support your position because everyone involved is still alive. If you'd had a gun, then at least one person could very well be dead as a result of committing a not particularly serious crime.

So now you're gonna go pick through months of comment history for a comment or two and take it out context? Why not evaluate how my love of Java and type-safety informs my desire for the segregation of society</sarcasm>. You're probably one of those Twitter mob types that tries to get folks fired for their opinions, aren't you?

I bought a firearm because I like shooting little paper targets. I can legally carry a loaded firearm in my car, but I don't, so what does that tell you? I have a single handgun, so I must be a homicidal maniac, right?

You said the following:

>I lust for the thought of besting other young men, I want to win, I want to be the one standing when the dust settles. Maybe it will sate that appetite, maybe it will give me some appreciation for the world that I lack. Who is to say? I don't feel the desire to go out and slay my fellow man, except in that one specific context.

You'll forgive me if I don't find the last sentence very reassuring!

Look, I know I'm not going to persuade you to stop loving guns. But do you realize how you come across? You come across as quite a literally a gun nut: a crazy, angry dude with a gun who can't wait for an opportunity to point it at someone. You are making the case for more gun regulation better than I ever could.

I don't understand how a gun would make things better in any of these scenarios. Without a gun the worst case scenario is that some property is stolen. Big deal. With a gun the worst case scenario is that a human being's life has been snuffed out.

here's an idea. Get property insurance instead of a gun. That way if your shit gets stolen you'll get a shiny, brand new replacement from the insurance company!

And nobody dies!

This is a fallacy. You're anecdotal evidence and generalizing gun-owners' experiences.

Correlation is not causation.

Who said it was?

"Funny how people who own guns seem to end up in dangerous situations so often."

You implied it.

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