Gun laws where guns take the most lives • Hacker News Board

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#151

Post by i_am_proteus » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 2:37 AM UTC

arduanika wrote: post #130

i_am_proteus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're pointing out is exactly what the article misses: firearms are not the only tool used in homicides. Negative effects on society from homicide are because of the violent death, not because of the mechanism.

That's a bingo! You can't really draw very much from the poorly framed data in this article. They selected these 6 countries by absolute number of deaths / guns, rather than per capita; mix suicides with homicides; and don't include the overall number of homicides, which (as I think you're suggesting) could be used to tease out direction of causality. Moreover, n=6 lies in the realm of anecdote, not data. There are ~…

You just say bingo.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#152

Post by shitgoose » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 2:42 AM UTC

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.

Hand guns are not banned in Canada. One cannot carry, but there are plenty of legal handguns at homes. Owner can take hand gun to range and back, but not drive around with it.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#153

Post by gotocake » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 2:43 AM UTC

setr wrote: post #131

hexane360 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How exactly would someone like, for example, Jared Lee Laughner have wounded and killed so many without a gun? How many would the Vegas shooter have killed? It’s interesting that harm reduction is fine for some things, but when we’re talking about guns suddenly the concept is discarded or evaded. I’ve talked to people who make the specious argument that if people didn’t have access to guns they’d just make bombs, as if making a bomb to kill dozens or even hundreds of people is trivial.

Imagine if that psychopath who attacked Glasgow airport in ‘07 had access firearms instead of a home brew “bomb” that only succeeds in lighting him on fire? Bombs are hard, knives require strength and skill, an AR-15 in a crowd is too easy.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#154

Post by briandear » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 2:49 AM UTC

jfoutz wrote: post #116

fromthestart wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

10k criminals won’t commit 10k crimes. It will likely be hundreds of thousands of crimes. Not insignificant. Most criminals aren’t one-time offenders.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#155

Post by 2_listerine_pls » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 2:51 AM UTC

updateYourMind wrote: post #67

whiddershins wrote: post #36

This article mixes and matches statistical types and conclusions in a confusing manner. For example, if most United States firearm deaths are suicides, it is misleading to then follow with a quote saying “where there are more guns there is more homicide.”

Yet the US has the highest numbers of mass shootings.

Mexico has mass-killings every single day. To give you an idea, a clandestine mass-grave with 500 bodies was found not long ago. If Mexicans had guns, their gagster politicians would think twice before fucking the economy on behalf of other countries.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#156

Post by gotocake » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 2:51 AM UTC

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…

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.

A gun is a tool, but it is a tool with one use; wounding and killing organisms. A gun when used correctly, as designed and intended, is a ranged lethal weapon. A knife or a hammer, a car, or even a flamethrower have uses which don’t involve hurting or killing anything, and your point stands for them. If you’re killing someone with a car, you’ve misused your tool, but if you kill with a gun you’ve used it correctly.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#157

Post by beatgammit » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 2:57 AM UTC

pat2man wrote: post #4

crowdpleaser wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

I've heard (but I don't have a link right now) that legalization of marijuana has already drastically reduced the amount of marijuana being brought into the country, so I expect further legalization to increase this effect. Marijuana is one of, if not the most lucrative drugs for traffickers.

I don't think rehab will have nearly as big of an effect as legalization/regulation. We should be looking for safer alternatives to more dangerous, often abused drugs. For examine, "magic mushrooms" are generally safer than other psychedelics, and LSD can be relatively safely used under supervision (and has potential for medical uses as well), so we should be considering those for legalization as well once marijuana is legalized.

It's far easier to control a problem if you control distribution than if you don't. Attacking it from a rehab angle doesn't solve the biggest problem with drugs: trafficking. Legalization solves that aspect, and taxes on drugs could fund rehab, so it's a win win situation.

Therefore, I want drug legalization as the primary focus for curbing drug-related violence specifically, and violent crime generally, since I believe it will have the largest positive effect for zero cost (in fact, it should be a net win).

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#158

Post by beatgammit » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 2:59 AM UTC

cascom wrote: post #41

delhanty wrote: post #11

>However, there is a loophole. In a country of nearly 132 million people, there is only one shop that sells firearms, which is located in Mexico City. ... 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. It sounds like it's the Mexicans that need a wall to protect themselves from U.S. firearms!

Drugs and illegal aliens go north - cash and guns/ammunition go south

And the former funds the latter. If we legalize popular drugs and make legal immigration easier, we end much of the flow of guns, as well as the reasons to use them.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#159

Post by acdha » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 3:04 AM UTC

magoghm wrote: post #126

acdha wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada has a much stronger, better funded government and, in particular, they don’t have the drug trade pushing amounts of money rivaling state budgets into crime syndicates. Mexico has been destabilized by U.S. influences fore decades and the widespread corruption is in no small due to the number of areas where honest cops and prosecutors are dead – there’s even a phrase “plomo o plumo” (Silver or lead?) describing…

It's "plomo o plata" (lead or silver).

Oh, you’re totally right - that’s what I get for responding too quickly. Thanks for the correction.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#160

Post by shitgoose » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 3:07 AM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #89

sergiotapia wrote: post #15

Yeah central american in general is a shithole. In Bolivia we are having trouble with colombians bringing in a ton of violence to the streets. To the point where hitmen tried to gun down people leaving their apartment complexes and being killed themselves, left on the sidewalk for everyone to see. Evo certainly didn't help with narcos coming up big league since his illegitimate presidency. These degenerates come to B…

I spent three months traveling through Central America and it’s beautiful and the people are mostly lovely. The violence is concentrated in a few parts of the country. It’s not like you walk out of your house and get shot at every day.

That is pretty much the case everywhere. We better focus our attention on those parts of our countries and see what is wrong with them, rather than generalizing over the whole country.