Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#751

Post by slothtrop » Thu, May 26, 2022, 1:20 PM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #358

beloch wrote: post #83

Canada is the U.S.'s neighbour and is probably closer, culturally, than any other nation. Gun ownership is also high in Canada. In terms of guns per capita, the U.S. is #1 by a long shot, but Canada is #7 [1]. In Canada, guns owned per capita is one third of what it is in the U.S.. Canada also has mass shootings. The annual deaths from mass shootings per capita in Canada is 0.032, which is about one third that of the…

"Where many U.S. states permit concealed carry of handguns, handguns are virtually illegal to carry in Canada. Transporting them from your home to the range is legal, but they must be unloaded, locked, and permits are required for the transport." I see no mechanism by which those laws would reduce mass shootings. A mass shooter would simply ignore them. The other policies you mention may be more relevant, but it goes…

> A mass shooter would simply ignore them.

School shooters are usually teenagers with easy access to a gun at home. They don't have a criminal history or ties to the underworld, they're loners. It's really a question of whether dad has a concealable firearm. In Canada, they do not.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#752

Post by jihadjihad » Thu, May 26, 2022, 1:20 PM UTC

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #701

Step 1: repeal the Second Amendment. There's never going to be useful progress here until America unsticks from the idea that the right to arm yourself belongs in the same category as the right to free speech or due process.

I don't see this happening for at least a handful of generations, if ever, even though it has happened once with the 21st amendment (repealed the 18th).

A supermajority in both houses is doable, but you need all but 12 states to vote in favor, too. There are comfortably 15+ states in the "ain't ever gonna budge" category on that front, and while attitudes could shift in future generations that make such change possible, there is no doubt in my mind that it would take literal generations to happen.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#753

Post by mLuby » Thu, May 26, 2022, 1:20 PM UTC

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #719

tcspence wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

How about because: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. ... is no longer either a true or useful statement? I think I'm probably happy to toss the Third Amendment on a similar basis: No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a man…

Just because the third amendment doesn't invoked doesn't mean we should lose that protection. It's #3 for a reason.

Wait till some general presents innovative cost-cutting measures called something like "homes for heroes" that no patriotic American could object to.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#754

Post by Damogran6 » Thu, May 26, 2022, 1:20 PM UTC

artificialLimbs wrote: post #707

dgfitz wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking to my wife about this the other night and we came to the same conclusions as the points you made. What we posit at this point is: what didn’t exist in 1969? Social media. The internet. Legislation won’t change anything. Proponents of stricter gun control are being idealistic. Having kids in school right now, we are both quite concerned about the current state of affairs when it comes to school shootings…

>> what didn’t exist in 1969? Mass distribution/encouragement of antidepressants.

That doesn’t seem to be a correlative factor. How would medically treating depression increase gun volence?

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#755

Post by renata » Thu, May 26, 2022, 1:21 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #691

BobbyJo wrote: post #685

I think a good first step everyone can agree on to stop gun violence is: stop it's gamification. Almost every mass shooting in the last decade was someone looking for media attention and high score. And yet, every shooting is followed by detailed biography and a tally of bodies. Something as simple as a one month moratorium on information for anyone outside the community would probably work wonders, as the public eye…

Enforced by whom? What is the punishment if you break it? This is just not realistic suggestion.

Self-enforced, the same way the media no longer glorifies teen suicide because of the risk of suicide contagion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide#Journalism_cod....

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#756

Post by cout » Thu, May 26, 2022, 1:21 PM UTC

dgfitz wrote: post #677

bko wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> empirical evidence instead of lofty ideals The problem with a lot of anti-gun measures is that the proponents readily admit that they would not have stopped any particular shooter. For instance, people talk about background checks, but this shooter and many others did not have a history and were not known to police. They would have passes a background check. Often times the person acquiring the gun already broke a…

I was talking to my wife about this the other night and we came to the same conclusions as the points you made. What we posit at this point is: what didn’t exist in 1969? Social media. The internet. Legislation won’t change anything. Proponents of stricter gun control are being idealistic. Having kids in school right now, we are both quite concerned about the current state of affairs when it comes to school shootings…

Social media as we know it today didn't exist in 1999 when the Columbine high school shooting happened. That's the first mass school shooting in my memory, though Wikipedia lists several before that, as far back as the late 80s.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#757

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Thu, May 26, 2022, 1:21 PM UTC

krnlpnc wrote: post #79

What if guns were treated similarly to cars? Mandatory training, License w/ renewals, registration w/ renewals, insurance mandatory, yearly inspection mandatory, etc. Personally I feel people should be able to defend themselves while at the same time deterred from stockpiling and accessing mass casualty capable arms.

Fundamentally, because unlike driving our right to bear arms is enshrined in the 2nd of our 10 foundational constitutional amendments, and licensing, registration, etc. are historically used to disenfranchise certain groups in favor of others. See: voter ID debate. We make IDs required and "all you have to do" is go to the DMV that's only open during hours you work, has absurdly long wait times, and we close down the ones near predominantly black neighborhoods. The same would certainly happen for the kinds of firearm regulation you propose.

Which isn't to say there isn't some reasonable compromise to be had there, just that there is a pretty reasonable argument why we don't do that.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#758

Post by throwaway894345 » Thu, May 26, 2022, 1:22 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #662

librish wrote: post #89

It's time we start legislating based on empirical evidence instead of lofty ideals. Yes, if everyone was responsible perhaps it would be OK for all of us to own firearms. But so many people are utterly irresponsible, and guns make that irresponsibility lethal. People should safely store their fire-arms, but they don't and guns get stolen and sold illegally, or used by their teenage child. People shouldn't point a gun…

> empirical evidence instead of lofty ideals The problem with a lot of anti-gun measures is that the proponents readily admit that they would not have stopped any particular shooter. For instance, people talk about background checks, but this shooter and many others did not have a history and were not known to police. They would have passes a background check. Often times the person acquiring the gun already broke a…

> So the conversation from anti-gun people basically amounts to less guns everywhere, but that genie might be out of the bottle already. There are already hundreds of millions of guns in the US and it would be impractical to seize even a tiny percent of them.

And even if we could wrangle the hundreds of millions in circulation, 3D printing democratizes gun manufacture and seems prohibitively hard to regulate.

> Wyoming should have a higher murder rate than Michigan. … In fact, guns were often brought to high schools. In 1969, most public high schools in NYC had a shooting club. And yet there were no school shootings.

I haven’t heard these observations before; I would be really interested to hear potential explanations debated.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#759

Post by quickthrower2 » Thu, May 26, 2022, 1:24 PM UTC

BobbyJo wrote: post #685

I think a good first step everyone can agree on to stop gun violence is: stop it's gamification. Almost every mass shooting in the last decade was someone looking for media attention and high score. And yet, every shooting is followed by detailed biography and a tally of bodies. Something as simple as a one month moratorium on information for anyone outside the community would probably work wonders, as the public eye…

The horse bolted on that in about 2006 when Facebook become pretty popular.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#760

Post by NovemberWhiskey » Thu, May 26, 2022, 1:24 PM UTC

jihadjihad wrote: post #752

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #701

Step 1: repeal the Second Amendment. There's never going to be useful progress here until America unsticks from the idea that the right to arm yourself belongs in the same category as the right to free speech or due process.

I don't see this happening for at least a handful of generations, if ever, even though it has happened once with the 21st amendment (repealed the 18th). A supermajority in both houses is doable, but you need all but 12 states to vote in favor, too. There are comfortably 15+ states in the "ain't ever gonna budge" category on that front, and while attitudes could shift in future generations that make such change possib…

I agree with you, I don't say it because I think it's a useful thing to try to achieve right now; I say it only because I believe it's true, and I wish we'd start from the fundamental problem.