Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#551

Post by MrMoenty » Thu, May 26, 2022, 7:02 AM UTC

cypress66 wrote: post #504

la6472 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now it is hard to look at our kids faces and not feel the impact of this tragedy. I don’t know about everyone but for most people their kids lives are way more important than their right to bear military grade guns. If there is no perfect solution we have to live with a less than perfect solution. If the solution is to legally make it harder for people to access such guns then so be it.

As tragic as these events may be, the probability of your kids dying to a school shooting is still incredibly low, and a few orders of magnitude less than car accidents. Doing some quick math, it seems like it's around 100 to 1000 times more likely that some kid dies to some accident than a mass shooting. But people don't seem to worry 1000 times more about these accidents than school shootings. And it would actually…

Perhaps this is approximately true if you focus exclusively on mass shootings at schools. But shootings overall are one of the leading causes of deaths for children in the US.

See for instance the CDC's visualizations on causes of death per age group [1]. In 2020, 476 children aged 10-14 died in traffic accidents involving motor vehicles. 218 children aged 10-14 were killed in homicides by firearms.

Those two numbers are very much in the same order of magnitude. This is also the case in prior, non-Covid years.

[1] https://wisqars.cdc.gov/data/lcd/home

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#552

Post by watwut » Thu, May 26, 2022, 7:04 AM UTC

bifrost wrote: post #80

condercet wrote: post #68

It is not fair to place the blame for this epidemic of violence squarely on those suffering from mental health issues. Mental health issues are distributed globally, but the gun violence problem is not. People who suffer from mental health issues are tremendously more likely to be victims of violence, rather than the perpetrators. These individuals already suffer from tremendous discrimination and hardships in their…

If we're going to talk numbers - most gun deaths involve gang/drug activities. The real numbers once you remove suicide and gangs all point to mental illness and DV/Violent individuals.

You cant remove gangs, because half of what is called gang is a bunch of young guys living in low socioeconomic area. When then hang around together and some of them is suspect of crime, they are fairly often classified as gang. It does not take much to be classified as gang. And then, any shooting involving them is gang shooting. Similar with drug related shooting, if one of them shoots because he is jealous of girlfriend and there are drugs in his pocket, it is drug related shooting.

Gang membership as traced by law enforcement is not something super formal.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#553

Post by ausbah » Thu, May 26, 2022, 7:04 AM UTC

the problem is easy access to guns. sure you can dance around the issue with mental health and gun ownership, but simply the high volume of guns means getting one is pretty damn easy for most people even without a license

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#554

Post by lelanthran » Thu, May 26, 2022, 7:07 AM UTC

elementalest wrote: post #319

beloch wrote: post #83

Canada is the U.S.'s neighbour and is probably closer, culturally, than any other nation. Gun ownership is also high in Canada. In terms of guns per capita, the U.S. is #1 by a long shot, but Canada is #7 [1]. In Canada, guns owned per capita is one third of what it is in the U.S.. Canada also has mass shootings. The annual deaths from mass shootings per capita in Canada is 0.032, which is about one third that of the…

Interesting. When compared to places like Australia, where guns are highly regulated and barely anyone owns a gun, such that there have been no mass shootings for 35 years, the solution really is obvious.

> Interesting. When compared to places like Australia, where guns are highly regulated and barely anyone owns a gun, such that there have been no mass shootings for 35 years, the solution really is obvious.

Is it that simple? The is little correlation between stricter gun laws and fewer number of dead people: https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/27-years-recorded-crime-vict...

That same link shows a slight negative correlation between stricter gun laws and sexual assault.

Looking at the numbers it's really hard to call any solution "obvious".

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#555

Post by YATA2 » Thu, May 26, 2022, 7:10 AM UTC

daniel-cussen wrote: post #227

Quoted post unavailable.

No post body was provided.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#556

Post by eyelidlessness » Thu, May 26, 2022, 7:12 AM UTC

teakettle42 wrote: post #486

eyelidlessness wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former gun rights advocate who is now in favor of basically eliminating guns except for hunting… > I think gun owners would be much more receptive to regulation if they felt people were genuinely trying to separate narrow and effective laws from broad infringements that annoy many and accomplish little. From both positions, I’d favor regulation that explicitly aims to limit gun possession as much as legally poss…

Simply: no. Take a cold hard look at the institutions that fail children so spectacularly that they create mass murderers at a historically unprecedented rate.

I did, that’s why I changed my mind about guns.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#557

Post by mrpopo » Thu, May 26, 2022, 7:12 AM UTC

shepherdjerred wrote: post #407

krnlpnc wrote: post #79

What if guns were treated similarly to cars? Mandatory training, License w/ renewals, registration w/ renewals, insurance mandatory, yearly inspection mandatory, etc. Personally I feel people should be able to defend themselves while at the same time deterred from stockpiling and accessing mass casualty capable arms.

Why are you comparing something made for transportation with one made to harm living things (humans or otherwise)?

They can both harm living things and are the 2 leading causes for young people deaths in the US. Some US cars are obviously built to look threatening.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#558

Post by hikingsimulator » Thu, May 26, 2022, 7:12 AM UTC

ekam wrote: post #510

hikingsimulator wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Quoted post unavailable.

Your retort is just an obfuscated what-aboutism.

A cursory glance at incarceration rates, deficit in access to healthcare, education, etc. enforced by supposedly colorblind legislation, the whole defended by a police that has roots in labor repression and racial policing does not help your position.

If the USofA really are one of the least racist countries on earth, it is more a damning condemnation of the world than a glowing review of this country.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#559

Post by null0pointer » Thu, May 26, 2022, 7:19 AM UTC

guerrilla wrote: post #502

null0pointer wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. Most, approximately 60% of the total, gun deaths in the United States are suicide.

They said after you remove suicude.

That is a separate point to the first sentence. In the second sentence they also say to remove gangs which they claim in the first sentence is the leading cause of gun deaths so applying your logic doesn’t make any sense.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#560

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, May 26, 2022, 7:23 AM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #322

jonp888 wrote: post #40

As a foreigner, I do not see it as productive to seek any explanation or expect any reaction when yet another news story like this comes along. It's clear that this is the way Americans wish to live, and it is their perogative to do so.

> It's clear that this is the way Americans wish to live That’s not clear at all. The US has more anti-gun-violence activists than anywhere else in the world. There is some amount of friction, different in each country but not zero anywhere, between “what people want” and “what is the law”. Do you think North Koreans prefer living under a corrupt dictatorship? Why don’t they just make the dictatorship illegal? That’s…

The US has more anti-gun-violence activists than anywhere else in the world.

Because other people don't have this problem. And when you get right down to it, they have megaphones and placards, while their opponents have guns. Amazingly, the gun owners have more political power.

My views on gun ownership are complex and don't fit neatly into existing pigeonholes - I'm very much in favor of the right to own weapons, but also in additional social responsibilities that ought to accompany that. I have a lot of sympathy with the gun control crowd even though I disagree with many of their arguments, but the fact is their tactics are simply not working. Unfortunately they don't want to change their approach because they're so locked into the moral dimension of their argument that they're unwilling to consider any other approach. Likewise the 2nd amendment absolutists are so intransigent that they keep retreating to a hardline position of 'shall not be infringed! shall not be infringed!' and then complaining about how unreasonable their opponents are.