Good, finally people can stop trotting out the inane adage "if you ban guns you have to ban cars" whenever the gun control debate comes up.
A gun is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the U.S
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Re: A gun is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the U.S
#12From the article: > By contrast, safety features on firearms—such as smartguns unlocked by an owner’s thumbprint or a radio-frequency encryption—are opposed by the National Rifle Association, whose allies in Congress also block funding for the sort of public-health research that might show, in even clearer detail, the cost of America’s love affair with guns. Can someone explain the NRA to me? At this point they come…
As I understand it, the NRA oppose these safety features as it provides a stepping stone to the full control/ban of guns. ie once you have a mechanism to restrict guns to an individual, it's easier to extend that (technically/politically) to a wider restriction or total ban.
Re: A gun is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the U.S
#13From the article: > By contrast, safety features on firearms—such as smartguns unlocked by an owner’s thumbprint or a radio-frequency encryption—are opposed by the National Rifle Association, whose allies in Congress also block funding for the sort of public-health research that might show, in even clearer detail, the cost of America’s love affair with guns. Can someone explain the NRA to me? At this point they come…
There are good reasons to oppose expensive ineffective gimmicks. Gun lobbyist sometimes look like 'cartoon villains' because people draw them that way.
Re: A gun is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the U.S
#14From the article: > By contrast, safety features on firearms—such as smartguns unlocked by an owner’s thumbprint or a radio-frequency encryption—are opposed by the National Rifle Association, whose allies in Congress also block funding for the sort of public-health research that might show, in even clearer detail, the cost of America’s love affair with guns. Can someone explain the NRA to me? At this point they come…
This is going to be unpopular, but the NRA is really just a bunch of conservative rednecks who throw tantrums when they don't get things their way. It's the kind of people who post pictures of their $20k arsenal on Facebook, like to shoot at empty bottles in their backyards with semiautomatic weapons just because they think it's fun, and somehow they have it in their heads that blowing things up every Sunday afternoon is their God given right- any form of additional regulation gets in the way of their fun.
It's hard to imagine when you're a well educated, well spoken rational person living in a large city: if you want to understand, go spend some time in the rural southern states, where you will meet many such people.
I get that it's not good mental hygiene to say things bluntly and generically like I am in this post, but coming from a country where guns are treated with much more circumspection than they are in the US, having lived in the south and met many of the aforementioned types, I just have to call a spade a spade. I tried for a long time to develop a better understanding of it than "just dumb dudes who like seeing things blow up", but I have failed.
Re: A gun is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the U.S
#15From the article: > By contrast, safety features on firearms—such as smartguns unlocked by an owner’s thumbprint or a radio-frequency encryption—are opposed by the National Rifle Association, whose allies in Congress also block funding for the sort of public-health research that might show, in even clearer detail, the cost of America’s love affair with guns. Can someone explain the NRA to me? At this point they come…
There was a documentary on them just a few days ago.
I didn't watch it, but heard the producers talking on the radio. In the 60s NRA was basically a sports/ gun safety organization. At some point they pivoted to be a gun rights organization.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections...
Politicians fear them, because they have money and get out the vote power. There is some thought that the NRA cost Al Gore his presidential run.
Its complex, because a lot of the US (The more rural parts mostly) have a much stronger gun culture. There is some distrust of government and any regulations.
Within 50 years quality 3-d printed guns will make a lot of regulations moot anyway.
Re: A gun is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the U.S
#16Including suicides seems unfair.
> The U.S. Department of Justice reports that approximately 60% of all adult firearm deaths are by suicide, 61% more than deaths by homicide. [1]
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Stat...
Re: A gun is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the U.S
#17From the article: > By contrast, safety features on firearms—such as smartguns unlocked by an owner’s thumbprint or a radio-frequency encryption—are opposed by the National Rifle Association, whose allies in Congress also block funding for the sort of public-health research that might show, in even clearer detail, the cost of America’s love affair with guns. Can someone explain the NRA to me? At this point they come…
Well, among the key facts necessary to understand that is that the "safety features" are not pure cost-free benefit, and the NRA believes the costs outweigh the benefits. They have some decent arguments for the existence of the costs; reasonable people could disagree about the relative degree of each.
It is also not generally the case that guns are always "bad"; guns are also significantly used in self-defense, usually without even being fired. Those who present "oh, just remove the guns" as a cost-free move are being disingenuous; again, people can reasonably disagree about the relative nature of the costs and benefits but those who present this as a zero-cost transaction are trying to pull one over on people.
It is also worth remembering that even as the number of guns have increased, the death rate has, as the article pointed out, gone down, and crime has significantly dropped in the past couple of decades. This is not exactly a set of circumstances that leads a rational person to leap to the conclusion that the presence and ownership of guns is an obvious root cause... and, yes, again, there may be confounding variables at play, but it still provides a bound on what you could even hope for if guns were entirely removed.
When you find yourself completely unable to understand how anyone could possibly believe something, that's usually a sign that you've been exposed to only the propaganda of one side. Note that I said understand, not agree with or believe. I understand many points of view I do not agree with. Some of them I even had to go chase down, in accordance with the principle I just gave, because I could tell I'd just been fed one side of the propaganda.
Re: A gun is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the U.S
#18Google cache link to get around paywall: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp...
I understand that Hacker News is a sharing and discussion website and that it sucks not being able to read the submitted stories, but it seems people here are generally against paywalls and try to subvert them in any way possible. It also seems that many people here also subvert non-paywall sites that monetize their content using ads by installing various adblockers.
As a publisher myself, I'd be interested in hearing if there are any other ways to monetize my website and content other than paywalls and advertisements which people seem to dislike so much?
Re: A gun is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the U.S
#19For some perspective, check out the CDC's "Leading Causes of Death":
Re: A gun is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the U.S
#20Scary title, but I think I'll mark this one up as a victory for auto safety. Especially considering a good chunk of death by firearms are (tragically) suicides.
As a European it seems blatantly obvious that your gun laws are absurd in the States. (I am assuming you are from the States from the fact you see the argument that way around, correct me if I am wrong).
Most of the perceived absurdity comes from disingenuous framing of the issues. Here are some examples:
Over half of all quoted gun deaths are suicides. [edit: removed mention of suicide survivability as I don't have a reference handy. But remember: The most likely person to shoot you is yourself.]
Let's remove suicide from the discussion and talk about violence. The primary driver for violence is socioeconomic. The US has a huge wealth and education disparity problem, exacerbated by a drug war which focuses primarily on the lower economic classes. Most political rhetoric surrounding gun violence focuses on denying lower-class individuals access to firearms and is inexorably linked to institutionalized racism [ cite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_night_special#Economic... ]
What these stats don't show is the EXTREME socioeconomic skew involved in violent crime. If we look at gun deaths by wealth quadrile we find that the upper 40% have very, very few gun deaths -- on par with the nicer areas in Europe. Our inflated gun death statistics come almost entirely from the lower 40%. That is, gun deaths are emblematic of America's class divide.
The right to self defense is a convenient target for politicians to score easy wins. Constructively addressing the USA's violence problem is a very different issue and frankly is almost entirely unrelated to firearm legislation.