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Comment by zxcvcxz | Hacker News Reader

I have an unpopular opinion: Every citizen of the US should be trained in public school on how to use a gun and basic gun safety/cleaning. Upon completion of the course the citizen shall be given a firearm. It's amazing how the leftists are so sure sex ed prevents unwanted pregnancies and STD's, but when it comes to guns they take the abstinence only approach.

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While I believe you've made quite a logical leap, I think the best retort would be to just look at the data.

In areas where teens are given proper sex education, unwanted pregnancies are lower than areas that teach abstinence only.

Likewise, countries with stricter gun laws certainly have fewer mass shootings than the US. Unless you can say for sure that proper gun education would reduce outbreaks of violence, then I'm left to believe your solution is poor.

Leftists are sure sex education reduces unwanted pregnancies and STDs because that is what most of the bazillion peer reviewed studies on the matter have found.

There aren't enough studies on guns to draw any reliable conclusions, largely because the gun lobby has done a very good job of blocking Federal funding for such research.

The key difference between those two issues though is that the goal of sex education (and "abstinence") is to prevent unsafe sex/unwanted pregnancy. When it comes to guns, however, the goal should be to prevent gun usage in general, not to encourage "safe gun usage".

Why would you want to prevent gun usage in general?

Huh? Sex is a positive thing for society, it's how we reproduce, it's a big part of relationships, and it's fun. We want people to have sex, but to do so safely.

Shooting people is bad, it's something we don't want people to do. You can argue that guns are for hunting, but that applies mostly to people in the countryside buying hunting rifles - handguns are for shooting people.

I don't really see the contradiction in "sex is good, but do it safely. Shooting people is bad, we should do everything we can to prevent this."

Guns can be positive and sex can be negative. For example, sex can lead to rape, but that's not a good reason to outlaw sex.

You're mischaracterizing gun ownership to support your view point.

Humans have a natural drive to procreate. In the absence of education of any sort, humans will have sex. Given that, you probably want to teach kids about STDs and condoms. Guns work the opposite way. Without any education, humans wouldn't even know what guns are, much less want to shoot people with them. I can understand why you would disagree with either of the things I just said, but I don't understand how you could find these positions to be amazing.

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