Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds • Hacker News Board

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#371

Post by clipradiowallet » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

8note wrote: post #335

KorematsuFredt wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PS: I am strong supporter of Gun rights and proud gun owner. I fully agree with anti-gun crowd that having vast majority of guns in hands of citizens (legally or illegally) leads to more deaths. USA's comparison with Angola is actually more serious than the numbers tell you because you need to realize that USA has far better medical response and doctors trained to handle gunshot wounds. So to truly compare Angola and…

In america, are you allowed to shoot a police officer who is violating your rights?

No...because no matter what the reality is, you will be painted as a criminal, and charged/convicted as such. It's more likely there is no charge/conviction step, and instead you will be murdered by another police officer under a false pretext of a "firefight". The story that we all hear will not reflect reality; you will take the truth to your grave.

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#372

Post by Zababa » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #286

nradov wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just that police forces have been reduced. In some major cities police abandoned certain areas to anarchy. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53218448

Christiania has been operating in Copenhagen for generations and that's one of the wealthiest and healthiest cities on the planet.

Christiana is very different from the areas the person you replied to described.

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#373

Post by rpmisms » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #255

greenie_beans wrote: post #160

i live in the american south, where everybody owns guns. i own a gun for hunting. but for self defense, i have pepper spray and bear spray instead of guns because i don't want to kill somebody regardless of their intentions. i'd be curious to see the stats of self-defense/firearms, because it seems like self-defense gun owners are LARPing over imagined intruder situations. they're definitely not about to take up arms…

it's interesting that you criticize owning guns for self-defense, but claim it as a (partial) reason for owning your own guns. perhaps you mean self-defense against wildlife rather than people, since you use pepper/bear spray to avoid chancing murder? but yes, there's is roughly a 0% chance that using a gun defensively in a hostile situation will result in successful self-defense, where only the perpetrator is incapa…

> but yes, there's is roughly a 0% chance that using a gun defensively in a hostile situation will result in successful self-defense

I and the dozen other people I've met who have all done so, me without firing a single shot, would all disagree with that bold and ignorant claim.

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#374

Post by cltby » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:22 PM UTC

redstripe wrote: post #323

chmod600 wrote: post #73

There's something admirable about the idea that a government would not take away all the guns. The idea that people should not have to give up all of their ability to fight. The idea that people should not be entirely dependent on police for their defense. And the idea that physically weaker people (often women) can defend themselves against the strong. Does this idea work? Surprisingly well. If you had to guess the…

What's admirable about it? This is just a fiction that you Americans tell yourselves about the next revolution. Name one, just one way, that ease of gun ownership has protected Americans from their government in a way that citizens of other western democracies have suffered? There is no scenario in which any citizen with a gun in any country defeats their government. Your gun will keep you safe about as well as your…

> There is no scenario in which any citizen with a gun in any country defeats their government

Imagine writing this not one month after the Taliban wins its war against the US.

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#375

Post by Throwawayaerlei » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:22 PM UTC

8note wrote: post #335

KorematsuFredt wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PS: I am strong supporter of Gun rights and proud gun owner. I fully agree with anti-gun crowd that having vast majority of guns in hands of citizens (legally or illegally) leads to more deaths. USA's comparison with Angola is actually more serious than the numbers tell you because you need to realize that USA has far better medical response and doctors trained to handle gunshot wounds. So to truly compare Angola and…

In america, are you allowed to shoot a police officer who is violating your rights?

Yes; it usually doesn't end well, and as NoImmatureAdHom notes the rights violation has to rise to the level at which lethal force is justified in self-defense, but it does happen and people get cleared of the inevitable charges, that's happened in my home town although the shooting did not kill the officer. And armenarmen's link doesn't include the case where black grandmother was killed in her dwelling, that didn't end well for the police.

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#376

Post by NoImmatureAdHom » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:22 PM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #128

sofixa wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the U.S. murder rate is not all that remarkable, really The US is at 4.96/100,000 for 2012. For reference, Angola is better at 4.85. Bulgaria and Romania, the poorest countries in the EU, are at 1.3. France is at 1.2. If by not remarkable you mean 3 as bad as other developed countries, sure. The numbers are only for intentional homicide, not even counting accidents and suicides which are also made worse by the…

3x a small number is still a small number. Your chances of getting struck by lightning increase if you live on a hill, but no one is basing home buying decisions on that. The real argument is that guns enable acts that, while rare, and while they affect few people, are so egregious that we as a society will go to great lengths to ensure they never happen (school shootings).

I'd actually argue that guns don't enable these egregious acts, they're just a popular tool. If someone wants to kill a bunch of people there are lots of ways of doing it. Guns are fixed in the imagination because we've evolved to be specifically good at modeling intentional, face-to-face interpersonal violence. See action movies.

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#377

Post by truffdog » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:22 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #96

chmod600 wrote: post #73

There's something admirable about the idea that a government would not take away all the guns. The idea that people should not have to give up all of their ability to fight. The idea that people should not be entirely dependent on police for their defense. And the idea that physically weaker people (often women) can defend themselves against the strong. Does this idea work? Surprisingly well. If you had to guess the…

> But the U.S. murder rate is not all that remarkable, really The US is at 4.96/100,000 for 2012. For reference, Angola is better at 4.85. Bulgaria and Romania, the poorest countries in the EU, are at 1.3. France is at 1.2. If by not remarkable you mean 3 as bad as other developed countries, sure. The numbers are only for intentional homicide, not even counting accidents and suicides which are also made worse by the…

The US murder rate isn't normally distributed. It's highly concentrated in a few hotspots, with most of the country living in areas with European murder rates.

The news is national though, so you wind up in this weird situation with suburbanites buying guns and worried about urban Chicago a thousand miles away.

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#378

Post by teawrecks » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #113

sofixa wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the U.S. murder rate is not all that remarkable, really The US is at 4.96/100,000 for 2012. For reference, Angola is better at 4.85. Bulgaria and Romania, the poorest countries in the EU, are at 1.3. France is at 1.2. If by not remarkable you mean 3 as bad as other developed countries, sure. The numbers are only for intentional homicide, not even counting accidents and suicides which are also made worse by the…

A rational person compares risks on an absolute scale first. Out of all the things that could happen on a given day, is getting murdered a real concern? For people in the U.S., it's not really worth worrying about unless you have some other risk factors for murder, like criminal activity. If you are selling lion repellant that makes a lion attack 80% less likely, that's not something I'd be interested in. That being…

You said, "the U.S. murder rate is not all that remarkable". Someone pointed out that claim is demonstrably false. So your response is, "is getting murdered a real concern?" You established a metric, and when it was shown not to support your world view, you try to discredit your own metric. That's called moving the goal post. It is not something a "rational person" does.

An irrational person uses irrelevant data as justification to ignore preventable deaths. We're not talking about how many car wrecks, or heart attacks, or rabid vending machines are out there, we're talking about gun-related homicide and suicide. Preventable deaths that we can prevent just like every other first world country does, but we just choose not to.

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#379

Post by zepto » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #314

Bhilai wrote: post #279

A friend of our family recently bought a gun and that made me ask them why. Their response was of course personal safety at which point I asked them some more questions and turns out they keep the gun in a gun safe and bullets in another location so as to not cause any accidents as they have kids. But this practice seemed utterly useless if their home was being actively being robbed/attacked since they wont have the…

I imagine the friend may believe that being confident in one's ability to use guns safely and effectively is also a hedge against danger, independent of the utility of that specific gun. That specific gun may make training and becoming confident with guns possible. Playing it conservatively with storage and handling as a someone new to firearms seems like the reasonable path.

> Playing it conservatively with storage and handling as a someone new to firearms seems like the reasonable path.

More than reasonable. Highly recommended. Just like driving a car, it takes some practice to routinely handle guns in a safe way. Even if you eventually become an expert who is comfortable with having a loaded gun available at all times, it’s a great idea to respect your own level of knowledge, and to take time to develop practices that make sure nobody else can gain access to your gun.

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#380

Post by rpmisms » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #357

zeteo wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably overestimating how fast a home invasion can proceed. Unless the intruders are completely silent and/or have perfect information about the home layout and people's locations in it, it will take them quite a few minutes to round up everyone.

Yup, and common advice by well known firearms experts is not to confront intruders, but to retreat to a known location, ideally upstairs and call the police. Only if the intruders seem like they are going to come up the stairs do you announce that you have a gun and that the police are on their way. The purpose of the gun is not to kill the intruders. It is to deter them from approaching you and your family, and make…

This is correct, guns are a last resort. They come out when your life is directly in danger, and you shoot to kill, not wound. Most scenarios, like the one I was in, are resolved without a shot being fired.

Edit: I don't believe this warrants downvoting. I'm sharing useful information that would be covered in any Concealed Carry class.