Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do • Hacker News Board

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

#431

Post by rsync » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 3:45 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #422

FireBeyond wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar in Australia, farmers are allowed to own rifles.

"Similar in Australia, farmers are allowed to own rifles." Not really. Farm workers in Australia are allowed to own "class C" firearms which are "Pump-action or self-loading shotguns having a magazine capacity of 5 or fewer rounds and semi automatic rimfire rifles" ... I wouldn't really characterize a rimfire weapon as a real rifle and I am not really sure how useful that is, other than the raccoon work that I mentio…

Actually, a re-reading of the wiki page[1] suggests that I misunderstood - it looks like bolt action rifles are "class B" and, although it's hard to tell, are available to regular folks in some shape or form.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

#432

Post by mizchief2 » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 4:22 PM UTC

salgernon wrote: post #318

LyndsySimon wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, what right do you have to determine my needs? From a more practical perspective, what are you going to do about it? Are you proposing to take arms from the American people by force? How many deaths are acceptable to make that happen? To be clear, I don't mean the above as a threat or anything of the sort. I'm merely pointing out the certain result of a policy of disarmament, and the hypocrisy of using f…

> Are you proposing to take arms from the American people by force To the extent that libertarians believe that taxes are extracted by force (I usually see this written as "violence") then yes. If each gun carried a tax sufficient to mitigate it's societal cost, and if each cartridge were an order of magnitude more expensive, we would be done with this issue in 100 years. It will take a long time, but it won't get do…

Which is exactly why the gun community is unwilling to enact ANY type of new gun restrictions no matter how "common sense" they are. People on the left constantly boast about how they want to take all of the guns away and will use a baby-step approach to do so. While Obama uses crocodile tears after a tragedy and tries to convince the people that "nobody wants to take your guns away"

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

#433

Post by giardini » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 5:47 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #401

giardini wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earthquake, flood, hurricane, severe blizzard, fire, riots, political unrest, lynching, epidemic disease, while all unlikely, happen with regularity in the USA. We are lucky we don't need to deal with famine here, but in the rest of the world it is a real threat. 1. Do you know police shot and killed unarmed people at Danziger Bridge during Hurricane Katrina? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danziger_Bridge_shootings 2.…

Don't you have armed police/military who, while a blessing in some instances, are in others a curse? Occasionally. This is why I keep bringing up Northern Ireland. However that is a situation in which armed civilians fought back against having their civil rights violated by the state, resulting in a >30 year civil war and bombing campaign. I don't even understand what you're saying should have happened instead in New…

"I don't even understand what you're saying should have happened instead in New Orleans - should people have been shooting back? Surely the right answer is everyone being less trigger happy?"

The police, federal officers and National Guard should not have confiscated weapons. Then people could have protected themselves as was their right. Note that there was no evidence of "everyone being trigger happy".

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

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Post by ascagnel_ » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 6:35 PM UTC

saiya-jin wrote: post #104

ascagnel_ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moon landing was a tool to create a different emotion, though. It was to stir up some national pride and put a happy face on the rocket tech that nearly led to a total nuclear annihilation during the cold war.

what I meant that we can achieve amazing stuff as mankind (especially with 60's tech), but still be completely irrational redneck-style when emotions kick in

We're kind of arguing past each other -- you're saying emotions can lead to irrational behavior, while I'm saying emotions can be manipulated for many ends.

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

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Post by greenisland » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 6:54 PM UTC

Loque wrote: post #304

th0waway wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh, the fallacy of not learning from history - as soon as a populace is disarmed they are helpless before their lord and master... I mean government. The battle for freedom began in Lexington and Concord when a group of British soldiers attempted to disarm a group of Colonists. You (and many people) are under the bad assumption that as we learn more our basic human nature changes, but it does not.

We live in different times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Lexington_and_Conco...

But human nature does NOT change.

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

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Post by nadezhda18 » Thu, Mar 17, 2016, 1:49 PM UTC

TallGuyShort wrote: post #328

piyush_soni wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outsider, I've always wondered about this: Since a lot of people in America are so much hell bent on keeping a gun for a hypothetical future situation of government turning hostile (completely ignoring the 'real, actual' killings that are happening very frequently because some psycho got access to what they obtained for their own safety) - will all these people be personally willing to take responsibility and g…

I think it's irresponsible to not take reasonable precautions with guns. I keep mine in a GunVault. But mandating that by law and assigning liability to the owner is a slippery slope. I agree it makes sense with guns, but if someone breaks into my house looking for prescription medicines and I failed to adequately label poison, am I liable? If they ban guns and an armed robber breaks into my house, are the politician…

If this person poisons a dozen or ppl with your poison - yes the hell you are responsible!

edit: if you were a business that works with poisons and you did not provide adequate security measures, you would be so fined if someone steals the poisons. Then why you as individual wouldn't be responsible for the same thing.

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

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Post by djrogers » Sat, Mar 19, 2016, 3:22 PM UTC

hfsktr wrote: post #402

djrogers wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you need a gun to defend yourself against? An escaped inmate holding your family hostage? http://www.vicksburgpost.com/2016/03/10/man-killed-following... A crazy man on a hatchet rampage? http://www.vicksburgpost.com/2016/03/10/man-killed-following... A violent criminal attacking you in an elevator? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3481507/Woman-leaves... Of course defensive gun use doesn't fit the a…

Your first two links are the same but your description for each is a bit different.

Thanks for pointing that out - clipboard fail on my part. The hatchet wielding guy story is here (although this version says machete:

http://q13fox.com/2016/03/13/machete-swinging-attacker-shot-...

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

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Post by jahewson » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 11:29 PM UTC

knz wrote: post #366

jahewson wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who spent most of their life in the UK, allow me to explain why you are utterly wrong . > There are likely a greater portion of unarmed criminals in the UK. Since their potential victims are also unarmed, that means that they are at the mercy of physically dominating criminals. It's certainly true that most criminals in the UK are unarmed, but the "physically dominating" bit is way off the mark because mos…

> The per-capita homicide rate in the US is 5x higher than the UK and that difference is almost entirely composed of gun crime. Is this because of the accessibility of firearms or other factors (specifically inequality and poverty)? While it's true that the US has a higher per capita rate of homicide, the impacts are not evenly distributed across society. Most Americans live in safe communities with crimes rates simi…

That's a good question. The US is only marginally more unequal than the UK, and has a considerably higher GDP per capita. Much like the US, cities in the UK are a mix of wealth and grittier post-industrial areas, and poverty is often rural and multi-generational. So, it would look like the answer is a fairly strong "no". The US has more money than Britain, and it's distributed in almost the same manner.