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

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

#401

Post by jfengel » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #337

jfengel wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Murders aren't the only issue, though. Just the possibility of a gun being present changes a lot of interactions in the US. Every police encounter has to assume you have a gun. A lot of innocent deaths at the hands of police are treated as "I thought he had a gun", which makes everybody scared of the police -- especially minorities. School children go through metal detectors every single day, never turning up any gun…

> but the ability of guns to appear at any instant keeps the entire country on edge, all the time. This is a fantasy. I’ve never been in a situation I’m the US where I thought a gun could appear at any time, and I don’t even live in a particularly great neighborhood.

Congratulations on never having encountered a police officer. If you do, you'll be very aware of the fact that they're treating you as if you were armed. I am aware of it, and I'm not even black -- and I've seen how much worse it is for black people.

Congrats, also, on graduating school before school shootings became a big thing. Me, too. It was great not having to go through metal detectors on my way to class.

I am sorry you don't ever fly, though. It's not a lot of fun, but there are a lot of great places to go, and it's usually worth the hassle of being checked for guns.

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

#402

Post by ssully » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #308

ssully wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily the modern left is the only group of people who let their prejudices dictate their perceptions.

> Luckily the modern left is the only group of people who let their prejudices dictate their perceptions. I never said they had a monopoly, but I'm not going let them off the hook just because they've got competition. Their displays of that repulsive tendency also clash more harshly with their rhetoric.

Well enjoy your endless conflict, because what you describe as your biggest issues with the modern left is simply a trait (some would call a flaw) that affects all people. I would work on something more concrete when it comes to your issues with a political leaning if I were you.

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

#403

Post by clipradiowallet » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

endymi0n wrote: post #235

phendrenad2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Note this is just murder, but murder is merely a small fraction of gun deaths. The multiplier for all firearm-related deaths between the US and EU average for example is around 12X, more than an order of magnitude [1]. The elephant in the room however is that the main argument simply doesn't hold up. Owning a gun doesn't just make the owner slightly more likely to get shot, but also everyone around them [2] Or, as th…

> I wish Americans could get a feeling of how different a society without a perpetual feeling of danger and paranoia feels like.

Me too, but that will never happen. Consider America's past: armed revolution, native genocide, violent [secret] coups with foreign governments, murder of its' own citizens by "peace officers", it goes on and on... It's not a peaceful place with a peaceful history, so I don't think your wish is too realistic. That said...you did say "wish", and I wish it also.

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

#404

Post by adamrezich » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #296

endymi0n wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note this is just murder, but murder is merely a small fraction of gun deaths. The multiplier for all firearm-related deaths between the US and EU average for example is around 12X, more than an order of magnitude [1]. The elephant in the room however is that the main argument simply doesn't hold up. Owning a gun doesn't just make the owner slightly more likely to get shot, but also everyone around them [2] Or, as th…

Of course a country with more firearms is going to have more firearm-related deaths. The same is true for automobiles or bridges or baseball bats. The relevant question is what the overall death rate is. For instance, Japan, per capita, has fewer firearms-related suicides than the US, but it has more suicides. I’d be willing to bet it has more train-related suicides than the US. Does this mean Japan’s suicide rate wo…

>It used to be that if you were an American teenager in a rural area, you could even drive to school with your hunting rifle still in your pickup and nobody would care.

my mom (born 1961) described her high school parking lot as exactly this. she described it as sort of a "clique"/social strata thing, like, guys I associate with wearing heavy Carhartt work coats to school every day and jeans with a clear indentation of a chew can (despite being under 18), would've been the kinds of guys who would proudly leave their sometimes multiple hunting firearms in gun racks in their pickup trucks in the high school parking lot, which nobody had any issue with at all.

1991, the year I was born, someone held up a class at the same high school with a sawed-off shotgun. nobody was hurt but he discharged a few shells into a wall. last I checked you could still see how rough the buckshot-riddled concrete wall still is, despite having been painted over. (interestingly, this story never made national news...)

I went on to attend the same high school and sometime around 2008 we had a complete school lockdown one Monday because a kid had left a paintball gun in his car from over the weekend... in the parking lot of the other high school across town. pretty sure he was tried for a felony.

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

#405

Post by enchiridion » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

Maarten88 wrote: post #340

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 my experience USA lot less corrupt than most other countries. Lobbying overall is a net good thing for a democratic society. You rightly mention lobbying and corruption together. But somehow you miss that they are on the same continuum. From my EU perspective lobbying in the US is corruption, as the lobbying comes with money and paid-for political promotion. The situation around guns itself is a clear example: a…

With regard to your gun control points, there is a bit of nuance you missed that people (like me, if I wasn’t trying to help you steelman your argument) will criticize.

Specifically, there are already heavy restrictions on automatic weapons, which are basically never used in criminal acts. Every automatically gun in the US has to be registered with the federal government for $200 and a lot of paperwork. In effect it means if you’re wealthy you can own automatic guns, which is a violation of the 2nd in a lot of people’s opinion.

What I think you meant when you said automatic is “assault “, which is what most of the gun debate is currently center on, so called “assault rifles”. The issue is that the term is not clearly defined, and under most proposed bans would include many rifles which were traditionally considered hunting tools. Even that is a bit of moot point, because the 2nd was not written with hunting in mind.

Another hot point recently is “ghost guns”, which like “assault rifle”, sounds scary enough on the evening news to grab eyeballs. “Ghost guns” are being used to justify government overreach by banning the sharing of gun plans for DIY construction. The issue is that again, almost no DIY guns are used in crimes. What are used are stolen handguns that have had the serial number scratched off. The stolen guns are grouped in with DIY guns as “ghost guns”.

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

#406

Post by philwelch » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

xadhominemx wrote: post #350

philwelch wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an oversimplification to some degree, but even if we take this for the sake of argument, isn’t the obvious solution to stop treating gun ownership as a right wing issue?

Who should stop treating gun ownership as a right wing issue? Left wing people? Most left wing people think there should be fewer guns.

Right; I don’t think the center-left should voluntarily disarm itself. (Socialists are surprisingly pro-gun; they have a saying that if you go far enough to the left, you get your guns back.)

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

#407

Post by clipradiowallet » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #376

phendrenad2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your comment is 100% spot on. It's not the unhinged criminals with handguns and a couple rifles I am worried about. It's the single pissed off vet who drives a moving truck to a federal building packed to the brim with fertilizer.

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

#408

Post by klyrs » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

KorematsuFredt wrote: post #239

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…

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…

> After 2nd ammendment you will be seeing "commons sense rules for free speech" like we have seen in UK, Canada and Australia.

This is extremely shaky reasoning. You've done nothing to prove that the 2nd amendment is actually protecting these rights, only mentioned the existence of two facts and asserted a causative relationship between them. Have there been attempts to introduce censorship in the US that have been defeated by armed activists? Were there violent uprisings against censorship in the UK, Canada, or Australia that failed due to a lack of access to arms? The 4th amendment was gutted into oblivion in pursuit of the War on Terror -- why didn't the armed citizenry protect our rights?

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

#409

Post by michaelrpeskin » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #296

endymi0n wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note this is just murder, but murder is merely a small fraction of gun deaths. The multiplier for all firearm-related deaths between the US and EU average for example is around 12X, more than an order of magnitude [1]. The elephant in the room however is that the main argument simply doesn't hold up. Owning a gun doesn't just make the owner slightly more likely to get shot, but also everyone around them [2] Or, as th…

Of course a country with more firearms is going to have more firearm-related deaths. The same is true for automobiles or bridges or baseball bats. The relevant question is what the overall death rate is. For instance, Japan, per capita, has fewer firearms-related suicides than the US, but it has more suicides. I’d be willing to bet it has more train-related suicides than the US. Does this mean Japan’s suicide rate wo…

Yeah, when I was in highschool (mid 90’s) the principal told us to bring our guns to the office and he’d hold on to them rather than leaving them in the truck. Then we’d pick them up at the end of the day and go hunting. No one even thought that was strange. Now I have to make sure I don’t drive on school property when I have a gun in my car when I go pick my kids up. Park off campus and walk.

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

#410

Post by Fogest » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

thisiscorrect wrote: post #359

01100011 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a way to feel masculine, or to feel potent This smacks of the modern left's derision for self defense tools. It's a nicer way of saying someone has a gun to compensate for their genital insecurities. Guns are largely a tool to the people purchasing them. They are also mechanical objects which give pleasure to people who appreciate craftsmanship. I generally agree with your post, but I think it would be better witho…

"[M]arginalized groups have often armed themselves when they feel the state is unwilling or unable to protect them." An example of this is calling to reduce policing, which probably would have the biggest (and very negative) impact in high crime areas. I believe gun sales increased rapidly starting last summer.

I have watched a lot of videos from Peter Santenello [1] on YouTube. He takes a somewhat deep dive into a lot of communities that the traditional media typically fails to highlight or fails to do it properly. He has quite a few videos where he speaks with people in the "hood" or the "projects" in various places across America.

In many of these videos he asks some of the people in these communities what they think about police. The response is often something along the lines of there being a "F the police" mentality, but at the same time they respect the good ones and still need their presence. So even the people living in the communities that are apparently most impacted by the police still are able to say positive things about them. Especially when they talk to any of the "elders" of these communities, they always preach the importance of the police in keeping their communities safe.

So it begs the question, why do so many white people on the left constantly speak for these black communities? These communities never seem to actually say they want less policing in them. Yet it's something you hear all the time from the traditional media and from activist groups.

Personally I am getting pretty sick of the white saviour complexes it seems like a lot of activist people have. They don't live in these communities and maybe have talked to a couple people, but that is enough for them to speak on behalf of a whole community. It's enough for them to go out in protest and riots on their "behalf". And the sad thing is that when black people in these communities speak out about this, they are usually attacked by the activist's and berated. I've seen seem people yelling racist slurs at black people at protests who oppose what is being protested. It's insane.

The virtue signalling is insanely present these days and is super unproductive and harmful.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/c/PeterSantenello/videos