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

Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

961–970 of 1001 posts

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#961

Post by scotty79 »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #894
scotty79 wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no evidence to suggest that gun ownership causes higher levels of suicide. Literally 5 seconds to google: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/06/handgun-owner... > Additionally, suicide isn't a crime. Why would that matter? Restricting access to guns is not aimed at reducing crime, but tragedies.

> men who owned handguns were eight times more likely to die of self-inflicted gunshot wounds , and women who owned handguns were more than 35 times more likely to kill themselves with a gun Emphasis mine. This says nothing about suicide rates, just suicide by gun rates. Yes, people who own guns are more likely to kill themselves with a gun. This is obvious. People who own stairs are more likely to fall down the stai…

Fair point. Here you go: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/handgun-ownersh...

Literally the second link in google search "gun ownership suicide" after that previous one.

"four-fold increase overall in the risk of suicide"

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#962

Post by scotty79 »

lliamander wrote: post #936
scotty79 wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no evidence to suggest that gun ownership causes higher levels of suicide. Literally 5 seconds to google: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/06/handgun-owner... > Additionally, suicide isn't a crime. Why would that matter? Restricting access to guns is not aimed at reducing crime, but tragedies.

The suicide rate in South Korea is quite high, yet the rate of gun ownership is low, and guns are typically not the method of choice. There is more going on in US suicide statistics than merely the presence of guns.

You can't compare suicide rates between countries. Too many confounding factors.

But you can compare suicide rates between people in the same state who are gun owners and not. They did and it turned out that gun owners have 4 times higher risk of suicide (by any method) than others.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/handgun-ownersh...

"four-fold increase overall in the risk of suicide"

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#963

Post by noirchen »

From the viewpoint of people outside the US, Americans probably believe that gun violence is just a mild condition, and decide to live with it. Just like the covid, sure it kills some people, like 10 in 100000, but for the rest 99990, at least half of them do not think something should be done.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#964

Post by pombrand »

Not a problem unique to America.

Average (Mean) Annual Death Rate per Million People from Mass Public Shootings (U.S., Canada, and Europe, 2009-2015):

Norway — 1.888

Serbia — 0.381

France — 0.347

Macedonia — 0.337

Albania — 0.206

Slovakia — 0.185

Switzerland — 0.142

Finland — 0.132

Belgium — 0.128

Czech Republic — 0.123

United States — 0.089

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/mass-shoo...

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#965

Post by Broken_Hippo »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #646
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see no mechanism by which those laws would reduce mass shootings. A mass shooter would simply ignore them. If the guns are illegal, they aren't as easy to get. They aren't in everyone's home. If you break in somewhere to steal a gun, you'll not get a handgun. You know, because most folks aren't willing to hold onto an illegal gun. You aren't going to go to a gun show and buy an illegal gun because those folks don't…

Doesn't track for many places in the US. Chicago has some of the strictest gun control in the country, yet also has a mass shooting every other week in the summer.

Sure, in no small part because of the different policies between states and between cities. Chicago, in particular, has strict laws that are almost worthless because of lax gun laws in Indiana. Gary, Indiana might as well be included in part of the Chicago metro area - in other words, you barely need to leave the city to get to easy gun access. It is very much similar to Canada having issues with guns because despite laws, it is fairly easy to smuggle legally bought guns from the US into Canada.

In other words, it should be obvious that regulations in one city do not hamper interstate trade - or heck, they likely don't hamper intrastate trade either, but I don't have any examples in my head about that specifically.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#966

Post by netizen-936824 »

dgfitz wrote: post #677
bko wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> empirical evidence instead of lofty ideals The problem with a lot of anti-gun measures is that the proponents readily admit that they would not have stopped any particular shooter. For instance, people talk about background checks, but this shooter and many others did not have a history and were not known to police. They would have passes a background check. Often times the person acquiring the gun already broke a…

I was talking to my wife about this the other night and we came to the same conclusions as the points you made. What we posit at this point is: what didn’t exist in 1969? Social media. The internet. Legislation won’t change anything. Proponents of stricter gun control are being idealistic. Having kids in school right now, we are both quite concerned about the current state of affairs when it comes to school shootings…

How big was the population in 1969 compared to now

With bigger population you'll see a greater number of rare events

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#967

Post by 1Y3 »

pombrand wrote: post #964

Not a problem unique to America. Average (Mean) Annual Death Rate per Million People from Mass Public Shootings (U.S., Canada, and Europe, 2009-2015): Norway — 1.888 Serbia — 0.381 France — 0.347 Macedonia — 0.337 Albania — 0.206 Slovakia — 0.185 Switzerland — 0.142 Finland — 0.132 Belgium — 0.128 Czech Republic — 0.123 United States — 0.089 https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/mass-shoo...

I think posting the excerpt you choose after reading the link you provided is rather disingenuous. Your source itself criticizes the way the data is presented and provides alternative ways to display the data.

Of course the problem is not uniquely US-American, but I believe the way the US deals with this problem largely is.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#969

Post by UnpossibleJim »

DeathArrow wrote: post #548
UnpossibleJim wrote: post #60

OK, I'm hoping for a nuanced and civil discussion, but here goes... America (where I live and was raised) does not like to parse numbers, when it comes to these things. Both "mass shootings" and "mental illness" are dividable into smaller chunks than their current definitions and need to be handled in different ways than a "winner take all" approach. "Mental Illness" is a broad spectrum and cannot be lumped into a gi…

>But, if you are looking at it from a preventative stand point, it's a completely different equation. These aren't going to be legally obtained, randomized violence, caused by mental illness. These are generally crimes of poverty, means and lack of opportunity. So someone is killing people because he is poor and needs money? Why doesn't he work instead?

I apologize for being late to reply. @THjr responded very well to this, but there is one more point I would like to lay out. When everyone has talked about these numbers, they've been referring to deaths and that isn't how gun violence numbers work. I understand it sounds like semantics, but when we look at statistics semantics are important. In the modern news cycle, media outlets leave you with the term "shot" and of course we think killed... and in this latest tragedy, it is an unfortunate truth. Any wound suffered is an injustice, but it doesn't mean a death and murder... though, being shot does increase the chance, I understand. Modern weaponry is very efficient (though I'd have to look up the numbers).

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#970

Post by morbicer »

axiomsEnd wrote: post #688
bspammer wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every other developed country on the planet not having this problem is a pretty big hint.

The problem is that USA is already full of unlicensed guns and very specific gun ownership culture. In countries with relatively easy access to guns and low number of similar (Czech Republic comes to mind), gun ownership and it's culture were build on diffrent foundation, so you can't just copy this solutions to USA.

In Czech Republic you need an exception to buy something like AR-15, however the exception is quite easy to get. Long weapons magazines are limited to 10 rounds.

But most importantly, in order to buy a gun you need to get a license. This means medical check, passing a theory test, passing a psychological test and passing a practical test at the shooting range. It's not trivial at all.

The culture is completely different to US. Everyone is keeping their weapons in a safe. No bedside tables, car glove boxes or other nonsense. I've never heard of a child taking their parents' gun.

Post reply on HN