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"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.)

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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.

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