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

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

#471

Post by throwaway0a5e » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 10:12 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.

We don't perpetually feel like we're in danger or feel paranoid.

>Where children just go to school without security checks, amok drills and bulletproof safe rooms.

You are describing most of the US.

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

#472

Post by rpmisms » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 10:12 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #303

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In unequal power situations, guns are mighty useful. A world where no one needs firearms is a nice ideal, but unfortunately we don't live in that world. The police cannot be trusted to show up anywhere in time to defend you, and in fact might shoot you instead of whoever is attacking you anyway. Are many firearm proponents ideologically crazy and/or reckless? Unfortunately Yes. Does this have negative societal conseq…

Women have been fighting for representation in government, pay equality, education equality. None of those are helped by owning a gun. How many women have had their access to personal development opportunities restricted by their inability to apply deadly force? I'm guessing it's a trivially small number.

> How many women have had their access to personal development opportunities restricted by their inability to apply deadly force?

The dead ones.

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

#473

Post by macrowhat » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

Also, what the fuck does this have to do with tech?

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

#474

Post by pasabagi » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

KorematsuFredt wrote: post #421

Maarten88 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> From my EU perspective lobbying in the US is corruption, as the lobbying comes with money and paid-for political promotion. People with money and influence will always try to impact law. In EU it happens through actual bribes which is far worse. (Pretty much like India). In USA an immigrant like me can join hands with 10K immigrants and find enough support in congress openly by hiring lobbiest to advocate for the c…

> shoe string budget

> Revenue (2018) $412,233,508[0]

I don't know what shoestrings you're buying, but I suggest shopping around.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rifle_Association

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

#475

Post by bm3719 » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

Zababa wrote: post #365

xdennis wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never touched a gun, but as far as a know hunting weapons are not optimal for self defense. When you hunt a deer you try to hit from far away and if you miss, well, you'll find another. When someone is trying to harm you (even with a knife), you want to shoot multiple times and as fast as possible. If you shoot once and miss, by the time you manually reload, the attacker can get to you. If you do hit, but with a…

Sure, but if I had to choose between a hunting rifle and a knife I would still take the hunting rifle.

Between the two, I might go with the knife in most situations. I can't carry my hunting rifle around with me all day. Mine also has a huge scope on it that makes it useless at the distances you would typically encounter a hostile human attacker. The rifle is also overpowered for the job, and introduces concern for damage to unintended targets.

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

#476

Post by Throwawayaerlei » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #303

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In unequal power situations, guns are mighty useful. A world where no one needs firearms is a nice ideal, but unfortunately we don't live in that world. The police cannot be trusted to show up anywhere in time to defend you, and in fact might shoot you instead of whoever is attacking you anyway. Are many firearm proponents ideologically crazy and/or reckless? Unfortunately Yes. Does this have negative societal conseq…

Women have been fighting for representation in government, pay equality, education equality. None of those are helped by owning a gun. How many women have had their access to personal development opportunities restricted by their inability to apply deadly force? I'm guessing it's a trivially small number.

It makes it a lot more expensive, shall I say, for the opposing side to rid themselves of such turbulent agitators.

There's memorials to people who were killed during the Civil Rights era; there's not very many names on them, around 33 for the first I heard of, 41 for the SPLC's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Memorial and it includes a number that aren't relevant to my point. One reason for this is because a lot of them including Eleanor Roosevelt were armed.

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

#477

Post by throwaway0a5e » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

adamrezich wrote: post #404

philwelch wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

This is what you get when everyone at every level feels compelled to "do something".

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

#478

Post by qball » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #276

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…

"I wish Americans could get a feeling of how different a society without a perpetual feeling of danger and paranoia feels like." I don't feel paranoia. Maybe most people are fine except people who consume too much fear-driven media? I mean, it's not like paranoid people are only paranoid about guns. They are paranoid about everything.

>They are paranoid about everything.

And once you (start paying the Dane-geld) give into that paranoia, that paranoia never goes away (get rid of the Dane); it just gets larger and larger.

The end state for the nations that sacrifice themselves to paranoia is that other nations that have managed to control their paranoid impulses take over the ones that can't, but that takes a while and generally leaves those conquered worse off than before. That said, inactions have consequences.

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

#479

Post by nverno » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 10:14 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…

Yes, personally I would much rather put my trust in my neighboring citizens than the government. I trust myself and other citizens to stand up for our rights more than I trust the government to protect them. So, I'd rather citizens be armed than the government. IIRC Switzerland has an interesting citizen militia/gun ownership situation as well.

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

#480

Post by throw0101a » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

Fogest wrote: post #387

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 sounds like lower estimates indicate about 55 000 - 80 000 uses of self defense with a gun per year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use But it sounds like it really varies source to source. The problem is that a lot of the time it is just an estimate. Not all self-defense uses of a gun are reported as often someone doing a criminal action is not going to self-report it. And the person with the gun may…

> Either way that low-end estimate still seems to be quite a large number. It does make you think how many violent crimes may have been avoided because of brandishing a firearm in self-defense. It's unfortunate that it is hard to get accurate data on this.

What are the trade offs though?

> 5. Firearms are used far more often to intimidate than in self-defense

> Using data from a national random-digit-dial telephone survey conducted under the direction of the Harvard Injury Control Center, we examined the extent and nature of offensive gun use. We found that firearms are used far more often to frighten and intimidate than they are used in self-defense. All reported cases of criminal gun use, as well as many of the so-called self-defense gun uses, appear to be socially undesirable.

> Hemenway, David; Azrael, Deborah. The relative frequency of offensive and defensive gun use: Results of a national survey. Violence and Victims. 2000; 15:257-272.

* https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-thr...