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Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

wsj.com

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

#931

Post by splintercell »

klyrs wrote: post #748
agensaequivocum wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! > In December, a jury in Corpus Christi, Tex., acquitted a 48-year-old man who spent 664 days in jail after being charged with attempted capital murder for wounding three SWAT officers during a no-knock raid that targeted his nephew. The jury concluded that the man, Ray Rosas, did not know whom he was firing at through a blinded window. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/18/us/forced-ent...

So, he served a two-year sentence. Now do Breonna Taylor.

Breonna Taylor wasn’t charged in court and persecuted (technically it was her bf who was shooting back). Irrespective of whether her death was legal or not, The question was simply about the legality. Kenneth Walker, boyfriend of Breonna Taylor, was never prosecuted.

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

#932

Post by Frondo »

yesenadam wrote: post #585
teakettle42 wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand the pride bit. I can't speak to the parent, but I take pride in self-reliance, and taking responsibility for securing and defending the well-being of myself, my family, neighbors, and community. I also am a volunteer, state-certified structure firefighter, and take pride in that for the exact same reason. You might find it interesting that, as part of our classroom instruction, my structure firef…

> the tragedy isn't the gun, but the necessity for one, and it's a tragedy inherent in our mortal existence. Well, they're sure not necessary here in Australia. I don't think I've ever met someone who owns one, certainly no-one has ever mentioned owning a gun to me. It's just not a thing. Seems to be just "a tragedy inherent" in the USA. I was watching every day, and supporting, the George Floyd protests, and after a…

> Like it does hearing people from the US on HN talking about guns. It just sounds crazy. I read on HN someone from the US saying Australians wouldn't be under lockdown if only we had guns etc. It just sounds insane, disturbing even reading that. What am I gonna do with a gun?!

As an American, the gun discourse especially on tech forums like HN sounds insane to me too.

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

#933

Post by Levitz »

GiorgioG wrote: post #251
Clubber wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>terrorist attack on January 6th Are you seriously comparing what happened on January 6th to 9/11? How about the Oklahoma City bombing? Lockerbie bombing? Get some perspective dude.

Yes, whenever people storm the Capital, calling for the VP's head - that's totally not a big deal. Maybe in the 3rd world that's just another Wednesday, but in the U.S. it was a very big fucking deal.

In the US it was made into a very big deal,

A coup is not as simple as getting a bunch of armed people into a building, you need widespread support from powerful agents to have any chance at all and I frankly find it funny that anyone in the US loses his head over this since the US has promoted coups through the world as if it was a sport, you would expect for people to at least understand how it works.

It provided an excellent opportunity to display Trump supporters as awful and it was used as such, but to call it an act of terrorism is absurd.

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

#934

Post by analog31 »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #873
analog31 wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What rights of mine have gun owners protected? The 2nd amendment has protected the 2nd amendment, through compliant courts that have turned gun ownership into an entitlement.

I think "no taxation without representation" was a major one (unless you live in Washington DC, sorry)

Over the years, taxation has gone up and down. Representation has gone up and down (universal suffrage, countered by gerrymandering and voter suppression). I don't see a relationship.

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

#935

Post by giantg2 »

DanBC wrote: post #912
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #895

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument has to be the worst out of all the anti gun arguments. We going to ban rope next? Ban trains, since it's a bit too easy to step in front of one? Knives? If someone wants to kill their self, there are innumerable easy ways to do so. It's even likely in most households you could hang yourself quicker than you could get to your gun, if that's really what you wanted. Giving up the right to own a gun so that…

Removing access to means and method is an important suicide prevention measure. Method substitution doesn't work like you think it does. Your answer is anti-science. You don't have any evidence to support it.

While this argument does seem to follow the science (I'd have to dig into a few studies to see the details), it doesn't address the policy question of if people should give up their right (US) to own a firearm to protect themselves on the off-chance they become suicidal. And an even deeper discussion about if we should allow some suicides. Two of three people I know who killed themselves with guns were older men slipping into dementia who didn't want to endure that and put their families through that. Seems both rational and reasonable to me, but others may differ. This is also a pretty well-known scenario - killing oneself when facing a prolonged terminal illness, and would be interesting to see how the research treats these cases.

To be fair, the third was a tragic case of a young man who's life was ruined by the justice system's enormous penalties for supplying alcohol to a minor (20 yo at college). Although, theoretically this suicide should not have been with a gun since that offense is a prohibiting felony.

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

#936

Post by raxxorrax »

sofixa wrote: post #96
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…

> 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…

> with their theoretical ability to fight their government with small arms adorable and misguided

I think your ideas are adorable. An armed populace is extremely effective in curbing government crackdown on people and yes, that is even true for small arms weapons aside from the fact that US soldiers would probably defect en masse. You think they would roll out the tanks? Even if they did, that is a fight no army could ever win. The Taliban started with sticks and stones and ended with attack helicopters.

I am not from the US and I don't think there is a more successful democracy or nation for that matter, so maybe other can learn a bit. The French Revolution was armed and an armed populace is a classical fear of rulers and the motivation for weapon laws.

There are advantages for policing of course. Policemen in Europe can be relatively sure they aren't fired upon in many cases and that results in completely different form of conduct with state executive forces. But there are other arguments for the US to allow arms, for topological and geographical reasons alone.

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

#937

Post by giantg2 »

SnowProblem wrote: post #246

A wonderful book that covers the history of the 2nd amendment along with its modern interpretations is The Second Amendment Primer: https://www.amazon.com/Second-Amendment-Primer-Authorities-C... . It has useful and interesting information regardless of where you stand.

I've heard that American Homicide is a good book on the history of homicide in the US too.

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

#938

Post by raxxorrax »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #843
abrokenpipe wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's bad in general considering the size of the country and especially considering the fact that we have hundreds of millions of civilian owned guns (23 million sold last year, and even more sold this year already). When you compare guns to other stuff like drunk driving it shows how blown out of proportion the problem is. - CDC stats (2018) - US Firearm Homicides: 14,414 US deaths caused by drunk drive…

I would expect drunk-driving deaths to far exceed firearm homicides, and it's honestly shocking that firearm homicides are that high. I think the stats show that it's not blown out of propertion.

It is estimated that 250,000 people die per year from medical errors. That doesn't mean that people should shoot their doctors...

The problem is an underfunded systems and huge workload and a bit of funding would instantly safe more lives than restricting gun ownership.

Calling for restriction is a transparent political move or is born out of ignorance in my opinion (I am not from the US).

People that would profit the most from restrictions are policemen, which are probably underpaid in the US considering their risk.

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

#939

Post by micromacrofoot »

hunter21athrow wrote: post #329
micromacrofoot wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Have there been any documented cases of BLM indiscriminately attacking women or children? This seems weird to me. Well, there was widespread rioting across more or less the entire nation. Also, while not direct violence by BLM agents, many metropolitan police forces have either introduced "reform" in direct support of BLM policy or have otherwise changed tactics to avoid getting bad press and riots in their own tow…

Do you know what reform has happened in your city specifically? I sense a lot of bias here and I'm wondering what the actual changes are.

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

#940

Post by jfengel »

qball wrote: post #453
jfengel wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Murders aren't the only issue, though. Just the possibility of a gun being present changes a lot of interactions in the US. Every police encounter has to assume you have a gun. A lot of innocent deaths at the hands of police are treated as "I thought he had a gun", which makes everybody scared of the police -- especially minorities. School children go through metal detectors every single day, never turning up any gun…

>And despite the low murder rate, many are still convinced that they're about to be killed by one of those many, many guns I suspect the reason is because a higher than average proportion of people who post here tend to live in cities (and be in their 20s), where crime is both naturally higher and vastly more visible than it is when not in a city; this is why city people tend to be a lot more authoritarian and risk-a…

The transparent backpack packs are, like the metal detectors, not limited to inner cities. They show up in every district where they're afraid of mass shootings, where they also hold mass shooting drills and other precautions.

These precautions are probably not statistically necessary, since the school shootings are rare, and exaggerated by their awfulness. But the fact is that they do happen, and the response from gun manufacturers of "Oh, your kid probably won't be shot so let's do nothing at all" is equally irrational. And then you get the even more psychotic ones claiming that every instance is in fact fake.

That's my point: the guns create a persistent, low-level paranoia, because of the very low risk of a very bad thing. It is not just in the inner cities. The school shootings, when they do take place, are most often in suburbs, and no suburb is sure they won't be next. So children are confronted every day with preparing for it.

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