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

81–90 of 1001 posts

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

#81

Post by blacktriangle »

merpnderp wrote: post #52
Balero wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to have the big "I consider America the world" disclaimer at the top. A world where a regular person in their everyday life do not need firearms exists all over the world. Are you the police? are you the military? and if so are you currently working? If not then you do not need a gun. The police all over the world do show up when needed, and the don't shoot people unless it is a complete last resort. In the…

Whenever I hear about how the rest of the world doesn't need guns I always think of the Mexican avacado farmers who used (highly illegal) guns to protect their farms from cartels because the government can't protect them. Always funny when a European corrects an American that the rest of the world is not America, as it is obviously Paris.

Kinda surprised Parisians weren't busy arming themselves to the teeth after the Bataclan.

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

#82

Post by motohagiography »

danielrpa wrote: post #63
cdiamand wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe the comment refers to the changes in gender roles over the past decades. Our society no longer widely accepts the idea that women are fragile and men have the responsibility to protect them.

A bit of both. First, men aren't responsible for women, but also, the legal consequences for violence are aimed at punishing it for its own sake instead of recognizing that it is a necessary social deterrant, and removing it rewards certain kinds of predators.

The bred-out part is that administrative institutional jobs that make up the middle class select for traits that disadvantage the skills and traits of traditionally masculine roles like soldiers, builders etc, and so the odds of your partner in a middle class job relationship having the physical presence to fend off a safety threat are less than they once may have been. The best these guys can do is threaten to sue. Hence, this story about women taking on responsibility for their own protection themselves.

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

#83

Post by Throwawayaerlei »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #68
smoldesu wrote: post #21

I wonder if part of the driving force behind this is simply that men have purchased more guns in the past. Firearms are heirlooms in most families, and a hunting father is always want to expose their son to the craft. Men simply have more avenues to get guns from, with the strange way our social structure is organized. It will be interesting to watch the concept of weapon ownership be emasculated over the next few ye…

>Firearms are heirlooms in most families, I assume that cheap stuff outnumbers nice stuff by a few orders of magnitude, just like every other consumer facing industry.

Less that you'd think so, there's strict limits to how cheap you can make guns while their still being safe. Heirloom grade guns, though, not so much, nobody is going to treat a Glock as one unless it acquired that through its importance to a family over the years. Like one inexpensive and very worn 1930s .22LR I have that was first owned by my grandfather; still works very well though and doesn't look really bad or anything.

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

#84

Post by nradov »

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.

The vast majority of firearm use is 100% lawful for target shooting, hunting, and self defense.

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

#85

Post by sinyug »

This is a good thing. No matter what the lunatic fringe on the left might believe, sexual dimorphism among humans is real and is visible in our physical characteristics. Guns help narrow that physical gap between men and women.

The sanest view on this topic I ever saw out of Hollywood was in Season 2 of True Detective.

Ray: What's with all the knives?

Antigone: Could you do this job if everyone you encountered could physically overpower you? I mean, forget police work. No man could walk around like that without going nuts.

Ray: So, they're equalizers. Makes sense.

Antigone: No, I'd still wear them even if I wasn't on the job. Fundamental difference between the sexes is that one of them can kill the other with their bare hands. Man of any size lays hands on me, he's gonna bleed out in under a minute.

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

#86

Post by AustinDev »

seneca wrote: post #79
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 agree with most of your post. One small quibble though: > There's something admirable about the idea that a government would not take away all the guns. The whole point is that the government Can Not take away guns, not that they "would not". Inalienable rights preceed government, they are not granted by it. In fact, the government is supposed to exist to safe guard them. I think that's an important philosophical p…

>The whole point is that the government Can Not take away guns, not that they "would not". Inalienable rights preceed government, they are not granted by it. In fact, the government is supposed to exist to safe guard them.

The National Firearms Act would like to have a word it is unconstitutional on it's face despite what the Supreme Court says. 'Shall not be infringed' hasn't been the law of the land since the 1930's.

Maybe we'll get lucky and this conservative supreme court will do one big thing right and declare all federal firearms regulations null and void thus ending this culture war and forcing the politicians to fix actual problems. However, that is highly unlikely.

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

#87

Post by sharklazer »

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.

1. Most people don’t even understand how a gun mechanically functions. It lives in the realm of magic for most people, despite being mechanically very simple. This base ignorance of the function of a firearm is one of the biggest reasons why firearm-related accidents happen. You might not want a gun, and fine—that’s your stance—but you should know how it works and how to use it.

2. We don’t nuke each other all the time either. But “God made man and Colt made ‘em equal”—the gun is an equalizer.

I think people in America think we’re some united hegemony, believing all the same thing. No. We don’t. We all have different views and are pursuing happiness differently. Sometimes this pursuit leads to injury of someone else’s pursuit of happiness. Guns, along with education, give people the means of preventing and give meaningful deterrence to those who would disrupt their rightful pursuit of happiness.

Also, guns in the US are used nearly a million times a year to prevent violence (CDC, https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.htm...)

Finally, regarding unintentional killings: that’s why I said education on guns in necessary. Regarding unlawfulness: you must have your head in the sand to think a criminal isn’t already committed to breaking the law.

Guns for everyone.

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

#88

Post by sharklazer »

nradov wrote: post #84
ryandvm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The vast majority of firearm use is 100% lawful for target shooting, hunting, and self defense.

Lawful use: 600k-2.5m per year. Gun deaths per year: ~40k. A lot of those being suicide.

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

#89

Post by Throwawayaerlei »

motohagiography wrote: post #82
danielrpa wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the comment refers to the changes in gender roles over the past decades. Our society no longer widely accepts the idea that women are fragile and men have the responsibility to protect them.

A bit of both. First, men aren't responsible for women, but also, the legal consequences for violence are aimed at punishing it for its own sake instead of recognizing that it is a necessary social deterrant, and removing it rewards certain kinds of predators. The bred-out part is that administrative institutional jobs that make up the middle class select for traits that disadvantage the skills and traits of traditio…

the legal consequences for violence are aimed at punishing it for its own sake instead of recognizing that it is a necessary social deterrant

Depends on where you live in the US; I don't think this is true for most of the country, but that's not clear to most people because the MSM is very anti-gun and very rarely reports on self-defense cases unless they're twisted into claimed crimes. Since there are millions of these every year, that statistic first gleaned from data collected by an anti-gun group....

Post reply on HN