Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gun laws where guns take the most lives

latinamericareports.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 204 posts

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#111

Post by mdorazio »

tathougies wrote: post #96
gpm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt it. Our border is really too big to guard effectively, and frankly no one really cares to. There is a border crossing that literally just consists of some cameras and phones: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/northwest-angle (admittedly to smuggle things through this you would have to take a boat to get there, and if you did this regularly someone would probably notice) There are towns (and houses, a…

The united states and canada invest heavily in a physical barrier. Both countries regularly clear the forests on the border so that the entire border is more easily patrollable. Because of this physical barrier and cooperation between the countries it is extremely difficult to cross the canadian united states border without being immediately noticed and caught.

Wtf are you talking about? There are numerous stories of people accidentally crossing the border without even knowing it while hiking or boating. And you're really going to tell me that clearing the forests for 20ft at the border magically prevents people from crossing if they want to? Do you think there are thousands of drones patrolling the clearings or something?

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#112

Post by jorvi »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #95
baroffoos wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns are like a megaphone for violence. Violent people will still exist but their reach is far less with a knife

You are a bit quieter with a knife though. A gun gives you away immedietly to all around you unless you have a silencer but those arent so easy to get in the USA (class 3 if I remember correctly). In England people get knifed and who can know? And if its not a knife it will be a car, power tools, planes, boats, pushing someone off of a building. I rather retain my right to protect myself from crazies and die trying t…

> You are a bit quieter with a knife though. A gun gives you away immedietly to all around you unless you have a silencer but those arent so easy to get in the USA (class 3 if I remember correctly).

There's a ring adapter you can screw on most weapons (Econo-can) that allows you to suppress any weapon with a regular oil filter. It would be easy to 3D print and is surprisingly effective, even on a full auto rifle[1]

> And if its not a knife it will be a car, power tools, planes, boats, pushing someone off of a building. I rather retain my right to protect myself from crazies and die trying than be disadvantaged compared to criminals who wont follow the law...

And yet in most European countries a tiny percentage of the population has (access to) guns, yet we're magnitudes safer than America. Australia banned a huge swathe of rifles and shotguns in 1996, yet there hasn't been a huge rise in victims of crime.

> A gun is a tool. Anybody can use a tool correctly and anybody can use a tool incorrectly. Any tool can be bought legally and illegally. People who do not follow laws will have an advantage against those who do in terms of available tools.

This is an extremely tired old chestnut. I mean, come on dude. Do you see someone with a knife killing 58 people and wounding 400+[2] within 10 minutes?

[1] https://youtu.be/haiqFcIXTqs?t=51 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#113

Post by jcranmer »

foobarian wrote: post #84
jostmey wrote: post #55

The debate here has focused on guns as the problem. Guns are not the problem, they are an expression of the problem. To quote the article: "The Economist stated that rapid urbanisation and inequalities in wealth distribution were some of the largest factors in violent crime, and as one of the most unequal countries on the planet, Brazil backs up this claim." I think this statement applies to Mexico and other Latin Am…

How much of it is cultural? Were the indigenous peoples of the Americas particularly murderous (I seem to remember depictions of human sacrifice where large cages were filled with people to be burned)? How much of it came from the Spanish inquisition/conquistador culture? These are the questions I ponder whenever related subjects come up, but unfortunately I have no answers.

The Aztecs--and I specifically mean Aztecs here and not the Mexica in general--were probably some of the most profligate sacrificers in human history. But outside of them, the pre-Columbian Americans don't seem to be unusually inclined to human sacrifice, especially in comparison to the rest of the world. The difference is that they were first contacted by European society at a time when they still practiced religious beliefs that included human sacrifice while the Europeans had forgotten just how much they had sacrificed humans a millennium earlier.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#114

Post by rdiddly »

crowdpleaser wrote: post #10
pat2man wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mexico would also benefit if we solved our drug problem. We’ve created a huge economic opportunity for the black market in Mexico. If we really focused on drug rehab instead of just throwing people in jail I bet a lot of the violence in Mexico would go away.

Why can't Mexico perform the basic state function of protecting its citizens from organized violence? Drug rehab may sound like a panacea, but as it's practiced and administered in America, rehab centers seem to respond to their perverse incentive to treat addicts enough to get them out the door and relapsed back into treatment. I think we're doing a lot to treat addiction, but Mexico can't count on us to solve the h…

RE Mexican govt. protection: If you're the cartel and the police are giving you trouble in a certain area, you have some options: Bribe whoever needs bribing to make it stop. Brazenly shoot up the police station until they all quit. Murder everybody on the force and their families. Or offer to hire them all at 2-3 times the salary and murder the ones who refuse. This is what people are talking about when they say wealth inequality is a destabilizing influence.

RE drug rehab: "Solving" drug addiction would be a sufficient, but unnecessary, way of stopping violence in Latin America. You don't have to tackle that whole big problem; all you have to do is legalize across the board. That makes drug production the province of legitimate businessmen right here in the US, not a vocation that only the poorest/most desperate/most violent/least risk-averse will take on.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#115

Post by ppseafield »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #95
baroffoos wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns are like a megaphone for violence. Violent people will still exist but their reach is far less with a knife

You are a bit quieter with a knife though. A gun gives you away immedietly to all around you unless you have a silencer but those arent so easy to get in the USA (class 3 if I remember correctly). In England people get knifed and who can know? And if its not a knife it will be a car, power tools, planes, boats, pushing someone off of a building. I rather retain my right to protect myself from crazies and die trying t…

> Having gone to the range here in the US I gotta say its not as easy as most think. You have rules amongst people who handle fire arms you must follow or get banned from a range.

I don't think being banned from one particular range significantly reduces the chance someone will commit an act of gun violence.

> ___ is a tool. Anybody can use a tool correctly and anybody can use a tool incorrectly. Any tool can be bought legally and illegally. People who do not follow laws will have an advantage against those who do in terms of available tools.

Does this argument scale? At what point is it too much?

Replace ___ with explosives, tanks, grenade launchers, or even just bigger guns. Uranium is a useful tool to generate power.

> Worse yet: Oppresive governments usually take away the rights of citizens to defend themselves before they begin total oppression of the people. Just ask Venezuelans who has guns there...

What about Australia? After a nasty rampage in the 90s, they had folks turn their guns in. You can still own one under certain circumstances, but there's a lot more process and conditions involved. And yet 20 years it hasn't devolved into authoritarianism. In fact their rates of gun violence have dropped significantly.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#116

Post by jfoutz »

fromthestart wrote: post #54
jdavis703 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both countries could benefit from an EU-style NAFTA that allows for truly free movement of people and goods (no passports, no tariffs, no customs inspections, etc) between borders. Today that proposal would probably be problematic, but the U.S. Mexico and Canada should be pursuing "ever closer union" to borrow the EU's phrase.

Mexico is a crime ridden third world country. What do you think it's citizens are going to do if you open up the border? How many millions of people do you think the US can suddenly take on? And you don't think they'll bring crime with them?

1) Come work. 2) 1 seems pretty doable. 3 is probably pushing it. Still less than 1% increase, but would be a stretch. 3) yes? We aren’t exactly crime free today. More labor, bigger economy, police and courts and jails would scale up >1%, just as if a bunch of people moved here.

We currently run at just shy of 1% in prison. If we admit a million, 10k criminals wouldn’t even be noticed.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#117

Post by dahfizz »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #98
jostmey wrote: post #55

The debate here has focused on guns as the problem. Guns are not the problem, they are an expression of the problem. To quote the article: "The Economist stated that rapid urbanisation and inequalities in wealth distribution were some of the largest factors in violent crime, and as one of the most unequal countries on the planet, Brazil backs up this claim." I think this statement applies to Mexico and other Latin Am…

Then how do you explain India? There exists massive wealth inequality in India as well, yet the murder rate is infinitesimal compared to Latin America. I believe the issue is more cultural than economical.

Does india have a drug problem or such a corrupt, unhelpful government? I don't know which way the causality goes, but all of the above (drugs, culture, crime, poor government) seem to be correlated.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#118

Post by leereeves »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #110
leereeves wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia as primary source? If you'll check the references for that statement, they're all news articles based on a single study. A study that the link above already discussed. A study that "excluded gang-related shootings, drive-by shootings, hostage-taking incidents, robberies and acts of genocide or terrorism."[1] In other words, it's a custom-designed, cherry-picked statistic designed to make the US look worse t…

It's not cherry picked, it focuses on the phenomenon of mass shootings specifically. Gang wars and genocide are certainly tragic, but they are a very different type of gun violence than what people mean by mass shootings. The study is asking why in America people are shot by the tens or hundreds at ordinary, law-abiding venues such as schools or concerts, which is relevant in its own right.

Actually the study defines "mass" as four or more victims, not tens or hundreds.

And I've never understood who decides whether a mass killing is an "act of terrorism" or not.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#119

Post by technothrasher »

meowface wrote: post #48
peterwwillis wrote: post #8

Nobody seems to point out the obvious fallacy of the "right to protect yourself". If having that right actually results in being more likely to be harmed, or harm someone else, having that right is an unacceptable public safety risk. A common argument against gun control ("should we ban hammers next?") is obviously fallacious when you compare it to an even more extreme comparison ("should we ban private ownership of…

What you're basically saying is there's a spectrum, but people just disagree over how to demarcate the spectrum. I agree, and so does the US government. Right now, automatic rifles and anything more powerful than them are illegal to privately own. That's just where a large part of the US draws the line right now: semi-automatic and below are okay, anything above is not okay. Maybe that line will move in the future, b…

FYI, fully automatic firearms are not actually illegal to privately own in the US. They are just heavily regulated. Guns that weren't registered by a 1986 cut off date are banned for private ownership, but even that is reasonably easy to work around with the appropriate Federal Firearms License. Although I don't own any fully auto guns myself, I know plenty of people who do legally own them.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#120

Post by hellllllllooo »

jostmey wrote: post #55

The debate here has focused on guns as the problem. Guns are not the problem, they are an expression of the problem. To quote the article: "The Economist stated that rapid urbanisation and inequalities in wealth distribution were some of the largest factors in violent crime, and as one of the most unequal countries on the planet, Brazil backs up this claim." I think this statement applies to Mexico and other Latin Am…

> Removing guns from the streets may reduce gun deaths, but the violence will probably remain as long as the underlying social injustices are not addressed.

The old no solution unless it's the perfect solution response. No-one is saying social issues and inequality shouldn't be addressed too but easy access to guns sure makes shooting people a lot easier.

Post reply on HN