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

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

#731

Post by kelnos » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:49 AM UTC

cdiamand wrote: post #60

motohagiography wrote: post #50

I suspect that those women are realizing they can't reasonably rely on men for any kind of protection, as any kind of physical protection is basically illegal, taboo, and effectively bred out of the middle class now anyway, so it makes sense more women would take responsibility themselves. Gun purchases also correlate to perceptions of changes in social order as well, where there's a "get 'em before they're gone!" cy…

Is it illegal, taboo, and bred out though? We live in a culture of glorified violence seen widely in film, print, pop culture. We've got an enormous catalog of shooter videogames going back decades that our youngster clamor to purchase and play. We've got a set of laws that allow you to take steps to defend yourself in your own home, with varying degrees of strictness and leniency. Anecdotally, I know many people in…

I dunno, I definitely feel like it's been drilled into me that in any kind of physical altercation, my duty is to escape and retreat, and that if I hurt my attacker in any way, that might be used against me in court. And even if I successfully press charges against my attacker, and they go to jail, if I hurt them in the course of their attack on me, I can probably expect to get sued.

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

#732

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:49 AM UTC

spyder wrote: post #614

comrh wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Murder rate isn't the whole story. Check out the suicide rate, how gun ownership affects a successful attempt and who is killing themselves in the US.

Yep, that's so crazy and sad: "Men who own handguns are eight times more likely to die of gun suicides than men who don’t own handguns, and women who own handguns are 35 times more likely than women who don’t." https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/06/handgun-owner... :-( Also: "Sixty percent of deaths from firearms in the U.S. are suicides." So if somebody dies from a firearm in the US it's more likely to be s…

[deleted]

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

#733

Post by ByteJockey » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:50 AM UTC

enchiridion wrote: post #405

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…

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…

Small correction. The term "assault rifle" is pretty well defined.

I think you're thinking of "assault weapon" which gets thrown about a lot and for which there isn't a clear definition.

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

#734

Post by giantg2 » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:50 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #657

gorwell wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 comm…

" the US military would crush them in a heartbeat "

I think what we've seen in prior civil wars is that portions of the military will support both sides.

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

#735

Post by Fogest » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:51 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #713

Fogest wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Go ask any black male from New York in their 20s or 30s what they think about "Stop and frisk" and the sense of being violated by over policing. I mean I just linked to a YouTube channel specifically interviewing and talking to different people from these areas you mentioned and as I already stated this is not how they feel.

It's a little weird to tell someone to ignore their lived experience and instead watch a YouTube video to learn about their own life. I don't know Santanello, his videos, or his positions, but I don't think he'd be able to get a full picture no matter how he tried. Yes, I am sure there are black people in rough neighborhoods who do appreciate some of what the police does. But I am sure there are also many who don't.…

Can you please stop replying for the parent commenters on all my comments? I'm more interested in what they have to say here rather than someone clearly biased coming in to share their opinion against me everywhere.

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

#736

Post by NoImmatureAdHom » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:51 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #422

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.

I'm not actually sure how accurate that is. France has an ethnically and religiously heterogeneous population, high levels of immigration from Africa, and open borders with the rest of the EU.

Open borders with the rest of the EU is...Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium. And adorable Andorra. Oh, and Italy. All of which are comparable to Mexico where it counts, of course. /s

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

#737

Post by smoe » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:52 AM UTC

nverno wrote: post #479

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…

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.

Switzerlands guns culture and history is very different. Quite the opposite actually. Civilians were armed, required to own guns for a long time, so local lords and later governments could send them to conflicts quicker.

The argument that you need guns for personal defense, against the government or as part of self-reliance is extremely rare. Also legally there are not many cases where their use would be considered justified self-defense by a court.

There has been some "americanization" in recent years with people copying NRA arguments but not a prevalent mindset anywhere in the country.

The reasons why there are some many guns around are simply because people often take (or had to in the past) the military service riffle home and because shooting is a fairly popular sport. Not because of a perceived need of needing it for defending oneself or family.

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

#738

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:54 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #726

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has the gun fetish because it has a perpetual racialized underclass, among other reasons. You're right the violence is tied to its history. But so are the guns. You cannot separate the two. As others have pointed out; personal firearms are pretty useless as a vehicle for resisting state oppression and tyranny. But they're useful for stopping slave revolts or, more contemporarily, guarding your McMansion. The p…

Yeah both of these points are revisionist bullshit. Go read the primary sources. The gun fetish comes from our origin story being successfully overthrowing the British with civilian firearms. As to effectiveness: the Taliban just recaptured their country from a US backed military. The point of civilian gun ownership is to force citizen soldiers to decide between defecting and killing their neighbors. That’s exactly w…

[deleted]

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

#739

Post by NoImmatureAdHom » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:55 AM UTC

mike00632 wrote: post #518

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why doesn't the data back that up then? Do you really think that toddlers blow their own heads off because America has an iherently murderous identity and it has nothing to do with reckless access to guns?

It doesn't seem like you've done the work of actually engaging with the data. Toddlers don't blow their own heads off at any appreciable rate. There are a few hundred "accidental" firearms deaths in the U.S., a nation of 330,000,000 people, in a given year (almost all of which are adults). Many of those are not really accidents (people who plan to commit suicide want insurance money, religious burial, etc.).

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

#740

Post by vlovich123 » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:55 AM UTC

OrvalWintermute wrote: post #714

stefan_ wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's doubly ironic because of course a large swath of the guns in what is bordering on civil war in Mexico are supplied by the US, made possible through the (lack of) gun ownership regulation.

> made possible through the (lack of) gun ownership regulation. The US has plenty of gun ownership regulation. Criminals choose not to follow that though.

Lackadaisical enforcement in the US