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

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

#941

Post by raxxorrax » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:12 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #408

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…

> After 2nd ammendment you will be seeing "commons sense rules for free speech" like we have seen in UK, Canada and Australia. This is extremely shaky reasoning. You've done nothing to prove that the 2nd amendment is actually protecting these rights, only mentioned the existence of two facts and asserted a causative relationship between them. Have there been attempts to introduce censorship in the US that have been d…

There is a lot of historical evidence that rulers were afraid of an armed population and fear alone is enough in most cases. What are you expecting here?

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

#942

Post by dudul » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:12 PM UTC

Bhilai wrote: post #279

A friend of our family recently bought a gun and that made me ask them why. Their response was of course personal safety at which point I asked them some more questions and turns out they keep the gun in a gun safe and bullets in another location so as to not cause any accidents as they have kids. But this practice seemed utterly useless if their home was being actively being robbed/attacked since they wont have the…

It depends - there are gun safes that open instantly by scanning your finger prints. I think I read somewhere that ideally, in the case of a robbery, you should be able to reach a loaded gun in 30seconds. That seems a tad excessive to me, but overall I agree. It is hard to balance safety and practicality.

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

#943

Post by giantg2 » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

igetspam wrote: post #204

a_conservative wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making people feel like targets will persuade them to give up self-defense?

No, which is an interesting take. No major political party is trying to abolish the 2nd amendment. None. Reasonable limits on firearms and access to firearms is not going to take away your right to self defense. It could keep more guns out of the hands of felons by requiring federal background checks on private sales. Buy that's crazy, right? I should be able to sell my Super Redhawk to the drunk across the street wi…

"Reasonable limits on firearms and access to firearms is not going to take away your right to self defense."

It depends on what one sees as reasonable. One might reasonably believe that the requirements for private sale background checks might not make an impact because there's no monitoring or effective enforcement mechanisms in the suggested system.

When we use qualifiers like reasonable or common sense, it's an attack on the other side and creates a divide between the debating parties. People should be debating the the proposed solutions and the objections to them.

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

#944

Post by a_conservative » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:20 PM UTC

igetspam wrote: post #204

a_conservative wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making people feel like targets will persuade them to give up self-defense?

No, which is an interesting take. No major political party is trying to abolish the 2nd amendment. None. Reasonable limits on firearms and access to firearms is not going to take away your right to self defense. It could keep more guns out of the hands of felons by requiring federal background checks on private sales. Buy that's crazy, right? I should be able to sell my Super Redhawk to the drunk across the street wi…

I didn't say you wanted to abolish the 2nd amendment. Your now flagged post stated making people feel vulnerable will lead to more regulation. Or that's what you hoped would happen.

People make choices about how they will respond to feeling vulnerable. Some people rely more on authority, for example, wanting more gun regulations. Some people will opt to go get a carry permit or purchase a weapon to protect themselves.

My point is that you are hoping that people who have already chosen the self-protection strategy will switch to the authority strategy for dealing with vulnerability. This might happen in a few rare cases, but it seems like you don't understand gun culture or conservatives in general.

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

#945

Post by InitialLastName » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

Zababa wrote: post #601

InitialLastName wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Afghanistan thing is an easy narrative, but it isn't really an accurate one. More accurate: > Two superpowers found that Afghanistan, a fractious nation mostly comprised of illiterate peasants and devoid of exploitable industrial or natural resources, wasn't worth the price of occupying indefinitely.

> and devoid of exploitable industrial or natural resources Isn't there massive amounts of lithium there?

AIUI, the key word is "exploitable". Natural resources are worthless without the infrastructure to mine them and transport them to somewhere they can be used. Afghanistan, being landlocked, covered in VERY rugged terrain, and with relatively west-hostile neighbors (with lots of their own problems that make "develop port access for Afghanistan" a low priority) is a very difficult geographic place for resource extraction.

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

#946

Post by optymizer » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:44 PM UTC

grogenaut wrote: post #860

optymizer wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ability to fight but not to win. You realize how ridiculous it sounds to go against the US government with rifles? It's worse than bringing a knife to a gun fight. Sometimes I can't help but feel like most of you gun loving folks are dreaming that you're in a Hollywood movie, where you're the hero and you die in glorious battle protecting your freedoms and family. But it's ok, because at least you put up a fight an…

Did I miss something, did America NOT just pull out of Afghanistan?

That's such a bad example. Let's just look at a few differences from Taliban:

* the government controls your money and can freeze all your accounts.

* the government controls all the imports and exports. You're not going to get massive shipments of reinforcements.

* the government has all your information, where you live, where your parents live, how many kids you have, and who your friends are

* the government controls all the roads, toll booths and CC cameras. Where you're going to hide? At Yosemite? Are you going to burrow yourself in the ground and dig networks of tunnels?

You've been spoon fed this story of a militia since you were little. It's not the 1800s anymore. You can't take a gun and multiply it by 10000, and then walk into DC from Nebraska to take your freedoms back. That's a dream.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, there's school shootings, mass murders at a scale that's not found in any other country... but it's a small price to pay, because one day you'll get to play out that militia fantasy of yours, right?

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

#947

Post by jollybean » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:50 PM 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…

While it's a bit much to suggest 'guns are because racism', I think it's a reasonable point to consider.

Also, though there is some legitimacy with the 'Guns Stop Tyranny' issue ... it's unlikely to happen.

The US will not be invaded by anyone, and the US government with all it's flaws is considerably more legitimate than most of the people with guns and has been for more than a century.

If the US falls, it will be due to crumbling from within, and given what has happened in the last few years, I'm afraid gun owners, however responsible and conscientious, are as likely to 'Rise Up' against a pack of falsehoods and populism than they are any kind of legitimate reality.

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

#948

Post by blacktriangle » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

caymanjim wrote: post #213

blacktriangle wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bill of Rights cannot be. This is the fundamental difference between the US and other Western democracies. Consent to be governed rests upon said government respecting those inalienable rights that we have. Those rights are not granted us by the government, they are the rights that we created a government to preserve. Any government violating those rights no longer has the consent of the governed and should be ab…

There are no inalienable rights. It's a marketing slogan.

So slavery is okay then? Good to know.

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

#949

Post by jollybean » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #768

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…

It's common knowledge that a lot of early gun control legislation was passed to prevent ethnic groups like the black panthers from gaining equal footing with groups who would harass them. Much safer to lynch an unarmed man after all. Claiming to be motivated by the plight of poor minorities given that history seems in remarkably poor taste.

It's 'poor taste' to misrepresent history as much as you have in your statement. There were no groups running around 'lynching' Black people during the Black Panther era, moreover, the Black Panther era saw an explosion in gun crime across the US that was acute among the African American community. As much as gun laws are a part of the problem, the vast disparity in gun crime among different groups can't be avoided either.

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

#950

Post by Throwawayaerlei » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:59 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #874

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you don't land a disabling blow, could well be lethal, and they step outside your extended reach and use their handgun, then...?

If they have a handgun chances are I'm dead before I can draw my own and train one on them anyway. I'm not Clint Eastwood and this isn't a hollywood western. Whoever has the drop wins and by definition that's the intruder since I'm not going to spend every second of my life with a gun in my hand.

Projecting your claimed inadequacies, which I don't believe for a minute especially before you moved the goalposts from home defense ("I have [a baseball bat] in my closet") to a Spaghetti Western, says nothing about actual gun owners.