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

131–140 of 204 posts

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#131

Post by setr »

hexane360 wrote: post #106
leereeves wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't see a gun and decide to use it. They decide to hurt someone, then look for a weapon. If it's not a gun, it will be a knife, or acid, or poison, or fists, or a vehicle...

This actually isn't well backed up by psychology. The large majority of violent crimes aren't premeditated--they're impulses.

Wouldn’t that mean the same thing? They decide to hurt (the impulse), and they grab whatever happens to be nearby.

That is, they don’t see a gun and decide to use it; they decide to use something and see a gun

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#132

Post by arduanika »

Scramblejams wrote: post #108
ouid wrote: post #2

> Small Arms Survey reported that in 2017, Mexico had 12.9 guns per 100 civilians, although of the 16,809,000 guns estimated in circulation in that year, only 3,118,592 were legally registered. >This high level of unregistered firearms has been attributed to Mexico’s proximity with the United States, as thousands of gun retailers sit just over the border. A report on gun trafficking between the US and Mexico revealed…

A subtlety in that quote: most guns were not submitted for tracing in the first place. Of those that were, ~90% led to the US. The whole 90-percent-of-Mexican-gun-crimes-happened-with-US-sourced-guns argument never passed the smell test with me. Guns are expensive at retail. And wholesale prices aren’t low, either. Who wants to spend truckloads of cash on brand new guns from licensed dealers when all manner of ex-mil…

> most guns were not submitted for tracing in the first place

Kind of like claiming that fewer than 10% of accusations for a given crime are false, based on the fact that, out of the cases that prosecutors decide to bring to trial, over 90% result in convictions.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#133

Post by alacombe »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #69
trackofalljades wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Canada and Mexico both have more guns per capita than the USA does, but one has less gun violence than the USA and the other has more...feel free to look it up and double check me on that though my brain is rusty and I think I last looked into it around Y2K.

Canada has substantially fewer guns than the US, and handguns are basically banned. As a Canadian I've never seen one in my entire life other than on a cop or military.

Because you haven't seen one does not mean it's banned. There is easily millions of legal handguns in private hands in Canada, probably another few millions illegal ones (including both the ones in criminals hands, and those in otherwise "law-abiding" families who never bothered to register them).

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#134

Post by alacombe »

crowdpleaser wrote: post #3
ouid wrote: post #2

> Small Arms Survey reported that in 2017, Mexico had 12.9 guns per 100 civilians, although of the 16,809,000 guns estimated in circulation in that year, only 3,118,592 were legally registered. >This high level of unregistered firearms has been attributed to Mexico’s proximity with the United States, as thousands of gun retailers sit just over the border. A report on gun trafficking between the US and Mexico revealed…

Mexico has a firearm homicide rate of ~6.3 murders / 100k people / yr. The United States has a lower rate, 4.62 murders / 100k people /yr [0]. If American guns are the problem, why aren't the gun homicide rates higher in the United States than Mexico? But at the very least, it sounds like Mexico could benefit from stronger border security, too many guns are flowing across its porous border with the US. How many Mexic…

> The United States has a lower [homicide] rate

No it has not, the wikipedia article mentions "death rate". "homicide" != "death". About 2/3 of America's death rate is suicide. Canadians statistics show that gun control has no effect on suicide.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#135

Post by arduanika »

ouid wrote: post #2

> Small Arms Survey reported that in 2017, Mexico had 12.9 guns per 100 civilians, although of the 16,809,000 guns estimated in circulation in that year, only 3,118,592 were legally registered. >This high level of unregistered firearms has been attributed to Mexico’s proximity with the United States, as thousands of gun retailers sit just over the border. A report on gun trafficking between the US and Mexico revealed…

This article suggests the main externality from the USA contributing to violence and instability in Mexico (not to mention Colombia before the current peace process) is guns. That's laughable.

The first rule of clickbait is that it has to make me feel something, anything, whether it's anger, fear, warm fuzzy, or here, moral superiority. I can easily read this and think, oh, it's those hick gun nuts who are causing Mexican children to die and mayors to be shot. Doesn't have anything to do with all those drugs that I and all my friends have tried at least once, or with our puritanical legislators who think that protecting their constituents from temptation is more important than the lives of Mexican civilians. Carry on, as you were.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#136

Post by arduanika »

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.

I'm shocked. The country that leads the world in stereotypically American mass shootings, narrowly defined to fit our cultural context and exclude problems endemic to other countries, according to one study quoted by the Amazon Post and other left-leaning outlets, is the USA. Say it ain't so.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#137

Post by jandrewrogers »

Cyph0n wrote: post #60
crowdpleaser wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One of the answers is money. It would be convenient if it were true, but I don't think money is a great explanation. I come from a rural area in the Midwest, the people are very poor (even poorer than the urban poor) but have a lot of guns. Despite being poor and armed, the gun homicide rates are very low (the suicide rates are unfortunately not that low). Can you help me understand why poor farmers in the midwest d…

The answer to your question was in the comment: > for policing, for prisons, for making sure corruption and taking bribes from crime is less of an attractive choice Does this rural Midwest area have an active police presence? How well policed do you think a rural area in Mexico is?

The rural areas of much of the US effectively have no police presence. In these regions, the primary law enforcement is the county sheriff (and a few deputies) and they may have responsibility for an area the size of a small European country. You generally don't see them unless you call them. Honestly, murder rates in many of these parts of the US are negligible and people tend to sort out their own issues -- the sheriff often acts as an arbitrator when neighbors can't. Sheriffs are typically elected, local, and have an enormous amount of autonomy within their jurisdiction.

I've seen more "police" in rural Mexico than I have in many parts of the rural US.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#138

Post by Pinckney »

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.

Doesn't India actually have a fairly low Gini index? Lower than any country in South or Latin America, save Uruguay.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#139

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

briandear wrote: post #129
ppseafield wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 boug…

In Australia, homicide has decreased by nine percent since 1990 and armed robbery by one-third since 2001, but recorded assaults and sexual assaults have both increased steadily in the past 10 years by over 40 percent and 20 percent respectively. Crime was already decreasing in Australia before the 1996 ban, however since that time violent crime overall has increased significantly.

I'm not the author of the message, but I wonder why the downvotes?

Is the message factually incorrect or you think it's irrelevant?

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#140

Post by baroffoos »

briandear wrote: post #129
ppseafield wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 boug…

In Australia, homicide has decreased by nine percent since 1990 and armed robbery by one-third since 2001, but recorded assaults and sexual assaults have both increased steadily in the past 10 years by over 40 percent and 20 percent respectively. Crime was already decreasing in Australia before the 1996 ban, however since that time violent crime overall has increased significantly.

Downvoting because you have not provided references for your statistics and because sexual assault is unrelated to gun violence.
Post reply on HN