Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 1001 posts

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

#651

Post by GaryTang »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #157
seneca wrote: post #58

This mirrors what I've seen personally. I shoot quite a bit, and had a lot of friends reach out about advice on buying a first gun. Fears were largely around the general civil unrest and BLM rioting last summer. I've heard several women say they don't feel safe being out alone anymore, and felt the need to protect themselves. I've heard a few mothers voice concerns about protecting children as well. I always coach pe…

I'm not quite following, but are you saying that women are afraid for their children because of Black Lives Matter? Have there been any documented cases of BLM indiscriminately attacking women or children? This seems weird to me. I've taken gun safety courses run by local police, and every time they told us that it's ideal to not have a gun in your house at all because they see more accidental shootings than thwarted…

Wasn’t a woman shot in Indiana for saying all lives matter to BLM protestors?

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

#652

Post by nradov »

belorn wrote: post #631
nradov wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most US counties animal control responds late or not at all. Obviously you can't seriously expect farmers to just wait around while feral dogs kill their livestock.

The cost of gun education in public education would be pretty higher than simply increasing funding to animal control in order to improve response times.

You've got to be kidding. Have you ever done any farming? Ever even lived in a rural area?

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

#653

Post by beerandt »

throw0101a wrote: post #485
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…

> And the idea that physically weaker people (often women) can defend themselves against the strong. > Does this idea work? Surprisingly well. Does it? > 11. Self-defense gun use is rare and not more effective at preventing injury than other protective actions > Victims use guns in less than 1% of contact crimes, and women never use guns to protect themselves against sexual assault (in more than 300 cases). Victims u…

This is like claiming people get in car accidents during every single driving trip, because accident reports fail to ever mention drivers reaching their destination safely and without incident.

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

#654

Post by stackedinserter »

ryandvm wrote: post #69
sharklazer wrote: post #53

Everyone should own a gun, and most more than 1. If we were to maintain public education (which... just no, please) gun education should be standard.

Strange take. In 40+ years, I've never needed a gun to defend myself. Nor do I even _know anyone_ that needed to use a gun to lawfully defend themselves. So why should we all have something that A) the lawful uses of such are exceedingly rare, and B) ends up involved in a lot of unlawful or unintentional killings.

In 40+ years I have never been raped and I don't know anyone who was raped. Rape doesn't exist?

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

#655

Post by Throwawayaerlei »

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 Silent Generation father grew up in a city, which quickly turned rural at its edges, and it was routine to keep your hunting long gun in your locker to save a trip back home for hunting before or after school. Antonin Scalia mentioned carrying his .22 target rifle on the NYC city subways to and from practice.

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

#656

Post by betwixthewires »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #486
philwelch wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is not that bad compared to other New World countries. From your link we see Brazil at 27, Mexico at 29, Argentina at 5, Uruguay at 12, Greenland at 5, Panama at 9, and Costa Rica at 11. Canada is the biggest outlier, but the US still has less homicide than even relatively nice New World countries. If you’re going to tout France’s low homicide rate of 1.2, I’d invite you to observe that Japan’s homicide rate i…

I winced when you started the comparison with Brazil and Mexico. Those countries may be New World, but anybody who's visited Mexico knows not to go random places alone. In other words, if Brazil and Mexico are our points of comparison, we're... not in a situation I'd want to be in, to put it diplomatically. Reddit's running joke is that every gunfight happened in Brazil. In fact, I often wonder if most of the gunfigh…

> I winced when you started the comparison with Brazil and Mexico.

What about Greenland?

> ...anybody who's visited Mexico knows not to go random places alone.

It's the same in the US, and basically every country in the world. Some places are dangerous, others aren't.

> ...if Brazil and Mexico are our points of comparison, we're... not in a situation I'd want to be in, to put it diplomatically.

Put it undiplomatically. What exactly do you mean by that? Draw me a picture with crayons, I want to understand clearly what this means.

An important point in the comment you replied to was that maybe demand for firearms is the result of the crime rate and not the cause. Care to address that?

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

#657

Post by kelnos »

gorwell wrote: post #358
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…

"they're definitely not about to take up arms against the state, and if they think they would do that, then they're certainly LARPing and live in a fantasy world." Didn't the Taliban prove otherwise? That would suggest an armed citizenship can be a counter to tyranny.

I think these are two pretty different situations.

If civilian gun owners in the US tried to overthrow the US government, the US military would crush them in a heartbeat. Hell, with the level of militarization of many local police departments in the US, it might not even take the US military.

You can't really compare that to a reluctant, unpopular war fought in someone else's territory. The US was never going to commit the entirety of its military might to defeat the Taliban. And at any rate, it's probably more accurate to say that the Taliban defeated the poorly-trained, poorly-prepared (US's fault) Afghan Army, not the US military. I expect the US could have occupied Afghanistan indefinitely, holding back the Taliban, if we chose to.

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

#658

Post by bobthechef »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #556
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The US is not that bad compared to other New World countries. Yeah, I'd add that France doesn't have a long, porous border with the developing world. Nor nearly as much heterogeneity in its population.

France is quite heterogenous. The "homogeneous = less crime" argument is a bit xenophobic/racist at best, and not quite true. Societies with an impoverished underclass is what causes higher crime rates, regardless of whether or not the underclass is mainly comprised of ethnic minorities. France (heterogenous) and Japan (homogenous) take better care of their poor than the US (heterogenous) and Guatemala (homogenous),…

> The "homogeneous = less crime" argument is a bit xenophobic/racist at best, and not quite true.

Why the ad hominem? It stifles conversation. I think it is entirely legitimate to make the claim that ethnic, and actually more so religious/worldview heterogeneity can cause conflict. Heterogeneity is inversely correlated with trust because trust is formed through understanding and appropriate agreement and these differences often mean misunderstanding and disagreement. You can talk about dialoging as a way to reduce conflict, but even when understanding exists, when one norm must prevail and two groups are in conflict, this will leads to problems. The more fundamental the conflict, the worse it gets.

Look at Yugoslavia. Are Croats, Serbs, and Bosnians "racially" different? No. Language? Not really. So the source of conflict is religious.

The political conflict in the US today is mostly religious in nature, where "religious" is broadly understood.

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

#659

Post by panopticon »

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #99
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…

Furthermore, i find US fascination with their theoretical ability to fight their government with small arms adorable and misguided. So did our Deep State as they lost a twenty year fight against the Taliban. Who immediately started seizing the people's guns upon capturing Kabul. not even counting accidents and suicides which are also made worse by the high availability of guns for everyone The suicide statistics from…

> So did our Deep State as they lost a twenty year fight against the Taliban.

It takes a lot more than a Glock and a few boxes of ammunition from the sporting goods store to befuddle the US military. It takes fuel, food, medicine, training camps, and other infrastructure necessary to survive and fight back. You’re not going to get that in appreciable quantities in the middle of the US without Uncle Sam and several three letter agencies noticing. You would need the help of a foreign power and/or seizing land to tax... at which point the Second Amendment is moot. Might save you a few bucks to have all these small arms laying around, but it’s only a small piece of the puzzle.

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

#660

Post by amanaplanacanal »

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…

I’m not a gun owner, and not interested in being a gun owner. I have shot guns, and it was fun, but I already have more hobbies than I have time. I’m a city kid, so I don’t really have a need for guns as tools the way country people do.

Guns as a political issue are great for getting the base riled up. But they really aren’t that important in the big picture, either for the liberals that want to get rid of them or for the conservatives that want to keep them. We all have a lot bigger fish to fry.

Post reply on HN