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Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

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Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#211

Post by mindcrime »

tome wrote: post #177
BryanB55 wrote: post #173

I'll start by saying we do not have a gun problem in this country. We have a people problem. Speaking of people problems, I started reading these comments in hope of finding a different attitude than what I have been hearing around the topic of gun control lately. To me, HackerNews has usually been a place with more educated and informed comments but I didn't really find that here. I'm still finding misinformed peopl…

Does anyone here really believe that when your life is imminent danger that you are better off with a cell phone in your hand calling the police and waiting for them to arrive to save your life than you are with a gun in your hand using everything you possibly can to protect yourself and your family? In the UK, yes we really believe this.

And is the average response time of a police officer to your home, less than a minute, everywhere in the UK, any time of day or night, regardless of any other circumstance?

If not, maybe you lot should reconsider your irrational fear of guns.

FWIW, the USA is much larger than England, and some of our rural areas are very rural, so it's hardly an apples to apples comparison... but just to illustrate a bit: I was a 911 dispatcher for a while some years ago. The county I dispatched for was one of the larger ones (by square mileage) in NC, and mostly rural. Law enforcement was provided by the county sheriff's department, as well as town police forces from the 9 or 10 incorporated towns which were large enough to have their own police force.

On an average night shift, there would be 4 sheriff's deputies plus a sargeant on patrol. That's 5 people, plus the one or two town cops from each town. Now this is to cover a county where driving all the way from one end to the other, north/south down Highway 17, would take about an hour, and crossing the county east/west along Highway 211 could take a good 45 minutes.

So what do you think the response time for a cop was, if you dialed 911 at 3:00am and happened to live out near the Brunswick/Columbus county line? Well, if the "area 3" deputy happened to have been on an earlier call that took him down towards Southport, you were looking at probably 45 minutes. What if he was actively tied up on another call? Now you have to ask somebody from another district to respond, or get one of the town officers to respond. And they're even further away.

Interestingly enough, even in big cities with much greater population density and more police officers, you still can't (except by blind chance) expect a particularly fast response time for a cop. Certainly not fast enough if someone with ill intentions is creeping around outside your home.

The simple truth is, the idea of police responding to a life threatening emergency, and arriving in time to stop it before anyone is harmed, is a myth. Police exist to A. act as a deterrent, and B. respond after the fact and attempt to locate the perpetrators.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#212

Post by Tangaroa »

tome wrote: post #129
mseebach wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the problem with that is that it's not that simple as Iraq and Afghanistan has taught us. Guns, of course, are only part of the equation, but I'm pretty sure both wars would have looked a lot different had the population been generally unarmed. Also, the evacuation of the jews of nazi Germany would have looked a lot different had the jews been armed.

The Nazis overran nation states with mobilized armies. A small segment of the populace with guns would have been irrelevant.

The French Resistance and Warsaw Uprising were not entirely irrelevant, even if they were defeated.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#213

Post by allerratio »

notdrunkatall wrote: post #59
fakeer wrote: post #6

Good that the man was not found there(in a sense that no one was harmed). I still would like to understand few things. Of course I shall not be able to understand how it feels to have a gun when you want it(and afterwards take a decision on how to use it. To defend yourself or flash in malls or kill children for fun or out of depression) as I live in a country where having fire-arms is either a luxury for powerful an…

>But I still don't understand that how can guns be allowed in such a manner when they don't let you handle a gas cylinder at a public place or a take a metallic fork on an air-plane. "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." -Thomas Jefferson You can't fight tyranny in government with metallic forks and ga…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Germany#The_193...

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#214

Post by brazzy »

BryanB55 wrote: post #192
tome wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone here really believe that when your life is imminent danger that you are better off with a cell phone in your hand calling the police and waiting for them to arrive to save your life than you are with a gun in your hand using everything you possibly can to protect yourself and your family? In the UK, yes we really believe this.

I'm interested in hearing your thought on this in more detail. Can you explain how the police in the UK are able to get to your house fast enough in the middle of the night when someone breaks in? It takes hardly even 30 seconds to kick in a door or break a window and enter a home. Are you really capable of calling the police, having them respond, enter and clear your own home before that person does harm to you and…

In the UK and most other developed countries, that scenario is simply not something people worry about. It just doesn't happen much. You don't feel the need to be prepared for getting hit by lightning either.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#215

Post by alanctgardner2 »

BryanB55 wrote: post #192
tome wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone here really believe that when your life is imminent danger that you are better off with a cell phone in your hand calling the police and waiting for them to arrive to save your life than you are with a gun in your hand using everything you possibly can to protect yourself and your family? In the UK, yes we really believe this.

I'm interested in hearing your thought on this in more detail. Can you explain how the police in the UK are able to get to your house fast enough in the middle of the night when someone breaks in? It takes hardly even 30 seconds to kick in a door or break a window and enter a home. Are you really capable of calling the police, having them respond, enter and clear your own home before that person does harm to you and…

I'm always really interested in the straw man 'home invasion' fantasy that the pro-gun lobby brings out. Why would someone invade your home with a weapon? For financial gain? Just for jollies[1]?

The thing about giving everyone a gun is that it makes every crime that much more likely to be fatal. In Canada, for example, if I break into your house for your TV and you catch me, we're sort of at an impasse. Maybe I have a knife or a hard-to-get, illegal gun, but more than likely I hadn't thought it out. I'll run away, you'll call the cops.

Compare to the US, where I'd get a gun before I break into your house, because why not, they're everywhere. Now I want some crack, break into your house, get startled and shoot you. Or you shoot me. By introducing guns into what would have been a non-violent crime, you've significantly increased the risk of injury or death for all parties.

This is not to say that it's impossible to get an illegal gun if you think it might be beneficial; as in your 'holding up a convenience store' example. But why would I cap a bunch of random bystanders, and turn my potential armed robbery charge into first-degree murder? If I do have an illegal gun, and I know everyone else is unlikely to be armed, I hold all the power. The gun is merely a tool to keep people in line, I don't have to shoot anyone to achieve my goal. If I think everyone has a concealed carry, suddenly the situation is fraught with peril for everyone.

Gun control in the US is some terrible, bad-faith arms race where everyone 'needs' to defend themselves against these random, nun-toting boogey men.

1. One would argue that mass shootings are this sort of irrational behaviour. However, they tend to involve legally purchased guns, and they represent a very small proportion of gun-related deaths.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#216

Post by mixonic »

Anechoic wrote: post #171
Turing_Machine wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Given the massive mismatch of firepower, training and numbers between the government and the very best armed/trained groups " ~700,000 cops, 1.4 million active duty military and ~200 million gun owners (many of whom have had military training) is quite a mismatch, all right, but not in quite the way you think.

and ~200 million gun owners Where are you getting this number from? 200 million gun owners means that nearly 2 in 3 US citizens owns a gun which doesn't sound close to correct. http://rense.com/general62/gns.htm says 80 million gun owners. http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp says 70-80 million adult gun owners. I can't find any better numbers, but 80 million sounds more reasonable. (still an order of magnitude mo…

There are not 200 million gun owners, but there are ~270,000,000 privately owned guns in the US (http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-states). That's a gun for 8.5 out of 10 Americans. Or 3.4 guns for every legal gun owner.

I think this is a fact gun rights folks miss. We can clear people when they purchase guns, but a gun is a lethal weapon for years. You can't guarantee it won't fall into other hands in 30 years.

Some people argue we should give up, and embrace the number privately owned weapons in the US: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-case...

Others argue that registration of weapons is a better solution: http://swampland.time.com/2013/01/24/fact-check-the-gun-regi...

But the sheer number of these things is amazing. FWIW, the country with the second highest number of guns per capital is YEMEN. With a gun for only 5.4 out of 10 citizens. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_co...

(IMHO, gun registration and improving our mental health system would go a long way toward addressing gun violence)

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#217

Post by MrMember »

curiousdannii wrote: post #203
BSousa wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not american here so this is just a supposition. I think the main issue with it is related to the constitution. While the idea as far as I understand, was for citizens to bear arms and form a militia to protect against a foreign power, many of the people that defend the right to bear arms do so based on a limited knowledge of it (i.e.: 'The right to bear arms is in the constitution' but have no idea what comes next).…

So a silly question: does the constitution protect the right to own ammunition as well as weapons?

I highly doubt any ultra-restrictive form of 'ammunition control' would pass Constitutional scrutiny. Saying the 2nd Amendment doesn't protect ownership of ammunition is like saying the 1st Amendment only protects free speech in a literal sense (words coming out of your mouth) and not speech on the Internet.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#218

Post by mindcrime »

tome wrote: post #207
BryanB55 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in hearing your thought on this in more detail. Can you explain how the police in the UK are able to get to your house fast enough in the middle of the night when someone breaks in? It takes hardly even 30 seconds to kick in a door or break a window and enter a home. Are you really capable of calling the police, having them respond, enter and clear your own home before that person does harm to you and…

(I'll answer in the most crude general terms without aiming for nuance just to give you an idea of the culture here. Of course the reality is much more detailed than I can describe in a few paragraphs and what I say is only true to the coarsest approximation.) UK residents are simply not afraid of being shot, because there are so few firearms. Armed robberies (with guns and with other weapons) do happen and as I unde…

Even when such crimes cause outrage, civilian gun ownership is never suggested as a means of reducing the crime rate.

I wouldn't say "never".

http://www.armbritain.com/forum/index.php

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#219

Post by bo1024 »

Zelphyr wrote: post #150
msluyter wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that violent crime in America has actually been decreasing steadily since the 90s: http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/29/justice/us-violent-crime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States Weird that we have we're getting more fearful and selfish, and more and more violent, and yet violent crime is going down. (Weird how these finger in the wind takes of the zeitgeist work...)

You can thank the media for that. Its not that the violence is increasing. As you say, it is the opposite in fact. But the amount we HEAR about violence is skyrocketing. So everyone, do yourselves a favor; STOP WATCHING THE NEWS! Stop reading it! It doesn't benefit you. Take it from a recovering news junkie. You won't miss it. You won't feel less informed. The important stuff will always make it to your eyes and ears…

And not only that, but the media by glorifying anti-hero school-gunman or batman-shooting types also encourages this stuff by turning national attention on these loonies, making the next one want to do it even more.

The most hypocritical part is the media will turn around and talk all day about gun control, violent video games, etc etc when they themselves are the biggest problem.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#220

Post by rimantas »

rickdale wrote: post #183
BryanB55 wrote: post #173

I'll start by saying we do not have a gun problem in this country. We have a people problem. Speaking of people problems, I started reading these comments in hope of finding a different attitude than what I have been hearing around the topic of gun control lately. To me, HackerNews has usually been a place with more educated and informed comments but I didn't really find that here. I'm still finding misinformed peopl…

I am with you on every point you make except that guns are not comparable to a screwdriver, car or a knife when it comes to life and death. Of course there are similarities between the 'tools', but a gun is a much easier and definitive way to take a life. The differences are what stand out to me. Again, I agree its a cultural problem more than a gun problem, but I do think it all intersects.

Hurting others is the only purpose of the gun. Using screwdriver, knife (in most cases) or car to hurt other is a misuse.
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