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Comment by manicdee | Hacker News Reader

Why wouldn't they continue with the programming, and be ready to press charges against anyone who behaves violently?

Liability.

Austin is located in the American state of Texas, which prides itself on gun ownership. Also, the SXSW conference has already had an instance of violence: a driver ran into a crowd of people and killed a few of them. While not intentional, I'm sure the programmers of this conference are eager to separate their brand from the idea of danger.

"Austin is located in the American state of Texas, which prides itself on gun ownership."

That doesn't really follow from the facts as a reason to be concerned about violence. Austin's crime rate is lower than that of most other major American cities, including ones such as Chicago which have heavy gun control. (As per Wikipedia, Chicago's murder rate for 2014 was 15.1, Austin's 3.5.)

I'm not sure the crime rate statistic is relevant in the context of the flood of threats being directed at the event. We're no longer talking about 'random crime' at this point. Also, if there's going to be a threat of violence, I'd prefer that threat not to happen in a state where people have easy access to guns; I understand that many people have trust in crowd-sourced defense (ala a well-armed populace) but I like to think the police and the event security are better choice for that.

> Also, the SXSW conference has already had an instance of violence: a driver ran into a crowd of people and killed a few of them

Though I can see them being overly cautious as a result, I think context is important here: that was a drunk driver running from the cops. SXSW being there was a tragic coincidence.

Don't hold things in TX / do not support things in TX. I know I get flames for that everytime, but the state of TX holds / enforces some horrible views.

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