Comment by virmundi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by virmundi | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

First, realize that science is not just a partisan issue. The liberals in the United States hate science just as much when it's not on their side. They don't reason things through.

I can't find it but there was an NPR story about a teach whose black students performed worse than the white students. The school's response, "Racist test!" The teacher reviewed the test, found nothing racist and looked further. The school was a bit peevish, but couldn't stop him since he was doing it on his own dime. The end result? The black students were all lead poisoned from their homes. The teacher worked with local clinics for free treatment and local rehabs to mitigate the lead in the houses. At the end of the year, the black students dramatically improved. That is science. Test a hypothesis with data.

You need to look for people in ALL parties that will listen to you. I could be such a person in the Republican party. I haven't been an official member since I ran a campaign for Coroner in South Bend at 18. I agree with them far more the Democrats. I also think that the party has left its core tenant of "Do what you want, but not on my lawn or public."

Publicly attacking half of the voting populace by explicitly excluding them from any consideration is a) impolite and b) un-fucking-scientific.

>The liberals

It's highly unscientific to make such a sweeping generalization. There are plenty of liberals and leftists who will accept science and data that doesn't match their political agenda, just as there are still some conservatives who will. However the GOP has official policies opposing such nefarious plots as 'critical thinking.'

Sure, it's a generalization. This, within the English language, means anything over 60% of the population in question. I've had multiple conversations with well over 120 self described liberals from multiple parts of the US. Most of their reason for hating guns fall on "they're scary". That's not scientific. The reason I bring this up is the scientists in question are backing the Democrats. This party, to use another generalization (an abstraction if you will), houses the majority of liberals in the country. Therefore, the Dems are not the paragons of rational thought.

Many of the Democrats are as much sheep as the Republicans. I've had fewer conversations with them about food. I eat eggs. I eat a high fat diet. They all tell me I'm going to get high cholesterol and be in worse shape. I try to explain the science of diet. They point me to old research that says eggs are bad.

The gun debate isn't a scientific debate though. We're talking about things like climate change when we talk about how the Republican party is anti-science. I can flipflop your entire paragraph and it's just as meaningless because the whole "2nd Amendment" issue is more of a feelings/Constitution/rights debate. Most gun owners I know don't own guns because statistically guns aren't that bad. It's because they think they are fun, or they want to defend themselves, or because it's their right as an American.

> Most of their reason for hating guns fall on "they're scary". That's not scientific.

Well, only if the fear was unfounded. Your analysis seems a little shallow there.

There fear is unfounded. None of them have been attacked, accidentally shot or harmed by guns directly. Their fear goes so far as to them becoming hostile at the thought of them or myself carrying. They don't want anyone own this tool.

Guns, like all other power tools, should be respected. I carry daily. I respect the responsibility I bring on myself in doing so. I respect what the tool can do. Many weekend I use 1-5 power cutting tools. I respect those too. As a child I feared both. I then because an adult and put away childish things. I respect and use the tools properly.

Guns should be respected, and thank you for respecting yours.

Now, can you guarantee that every person I pass on the street respects their gun as much as you do, and they won't misuse this "power tool" they have the right to own? If you cannot guarantee that, I don't think you can say anybodies fear is unfounded.

What you just said is like saying a fear of airplanes is unfounded because all pilots respect their aircraft, what it can do, and use their tool properly.

I can't guarantee you that. I can't promise every person you pass on the street won't kill you by stabbing you in the eye with a pencil. I can't promise that no one will throw you into an oncoming bus.

As to fear about planes or fear in general, the foundation of fear, especially such that motivates policy, should be based on odds. I am terrified when I fly. I still fly. I know, deep down, that I have a higher chance of dying by driving. The fear is real in an abstract sense: this could kill me. It is not something that I should put much emotional/physical response in because it is so unlikely as to not be a problem. To put it another way, I should not let my fear of flying affect my personal travel policy.

Every day millions of Americans have guns and don't kill anyone. To try to ban guns because of the few bad actors is like trying to ban all Muslims. Statistically there are about 700k Muslims that lean with ISIS (at least wanting to establish a caliphate). I apply the same heuristic as above to the question, "should I fear Muslims?" My answer is that statically, no. Should I respect the possibility of one of those 700k going nuts glib? Sure. But I don't worry about Muslim co-workers or Muslims walking down the street.

"the foundation of fear, especially such that motivates policy, should be based on odds."

That is a fair point and a rational reason. However, it's convenient to say "We've always had guns, the chance of randomly getting shot in the street is low, therefore we should keep them."

What is the chance of randomly getting shot if guns were never legal in the first place (e.g. an American in which no 2nd amendment was present)? What will the chance be of randomly getting shot if guns are made illegal tomorrow? Lower? Higher? Maybe we could look at other countries and see how they compare. If your logic is policy should be related to odds, I think you may have just argued that guns should in fact be illegal based on homicide rates in other developed countries, for example - http://www.humanosphere.org/science/2016/06/visualizing-gun-...

Why have this conversation though? Even if you were right, you'd save a hundred times more people by advocating for better road safety.

I'm not even against gun control. I'm merely against useless legislation and fear-based politics. The movement consistently fails to show interest in the results they're supposedly fighting for (less deaths) and just the means they propose (less guns).

> Even if you were right, you'd save a hundred times more people by advocating for better road safety.

Just curious, what's that assertion based on?

That gun deaths cluster around guns, and ongoing violence. If you can avoid those you've chopped your risk greatly.

Traffic fatalities do cluster around roads, yes, but those are harder to avoid for the average person.

While the base numbers are roughly the same, for the tragic death of someone who could be you or me (ie not robbing a drug dealer, etc) traffic accidents are the more likely cause of death.

Also, a lot of the low-hanging fruit is taken care of with guns. My colleagues who keep guns have locking holsters(?) that mount under the dash, gun-safes at home, etc. To reduce the deaths by much you've got to approach the hard area of intentional shootings, and you need to realize that those are people trying to kill another - many of those deaths will be replaced with stabbings, etc.

Whereas every day I'm on the roads I see drivers setup to kill those around them while they blithely text away. (Guy in intersection waiting to turn right through the crosswalk, wheels cranked hard over pointing to the pedestrians, and on his cell-phone.) Further, if and when he kills someone, he'll get some pathetically low punishment and probably remain a driver.

Many traffic fatalities happen "near home" and to anyone, pedestrian, driver, passengers in the other car. There's a ton of actionable things we could do, such as just make driver's license renewal require a retest.

We remember the unique, so a gun death stands out. We stoically ignore the everyday, so V2 bombings and traffic fatalities quickly just become a thing that happens.

Eye-balling the chart, I think the answer is that the EU vs USA is pretty even (maybe the EU being more) and they have stricter gun laws. I did that by guessing percentages for all the EU countries in the first graph. So based on my interpretation of your statistics, the an answer is it legality does not appear to make a difference.

I do believe that splitting the EU into constituent parts for the purposes of statistics comparing the US is disingenuous. The EU has the same issues that the US has. It has multiple countries with different policy just as the US has different states.

What chart were you looking at? It seems like you might have been interpreting the statistics presented incorrectly. The first chart shows the US having ~3.5 deaths per 100k people from firearms.

Each other EU country has somewhere in the range of .5 deaths per 100k people. An eyeball average would be .5 deaths per 100k people throughout Europe. Are you trying to add the bars up? Because if that's the case, your interpretation of the statistics presented is wrong.

> I don't think you can say anybodies fear is unfounded.

I also can't guarantee they won't get diabetes or heart disease, or fall off a ladder, or be hit by one of the passing cars. All of which are vastly more likely to happen than being shot, which itself is an order of magnitude more likely than an innocent person being shot. (ie, not robbing a drug dealer, etc)

Dead is dead, and a car gets you there just as quickly. Focusing on one is silly. (Unless you're a crossing-guard, for instance.)

I normally see the irrational fear (crypto-racism) argument from people who want to limit refugees. You've got a higher chance of dying from someone falling off a ladder onto you than being killed by a terrorist hiding as a refugee. I'm not saying you're a crypto-racist, I'm saying this sloppy thinking is used to support other nonsense arguments because it's so empty you can use it to support anything.

> I normally see the irrational fear (crypto-racism) argument from people who want to limit refugees

I question your probability argument that concerns around guns are irrational.

Just because heart disease is the most common cause of death doesn't mean concern about anything else is irrational.

I think being afraid of something that can kill you is absolutely rational.

> All of which are vastly more likely to happen than being shot, which itself is an order of magnitude more likely than an innocent person being shot.

If fear of guns is irrational then why do licence-holders need them?

> If fear of guns is irrational then why do licence-holders need them?

Often for non-gun related threats. And also because they're probably in riskier demographics.

Or maybe because they just enjoy shooting.

> Just because heart disease is the most common cause of death doesn't mean concern about anything else is irrational.

Worry is zero-sum. The time you spend worrying about being shot is time you aren't spending worrying about your trans-fat intake, or simply enjoying life.

> I think being afraid of something that can kill you is absolutely rational.

Afraid of, or worried about in general? If a bad guy is swinging a gun around, yes you're right to be afraid. There's a direct action that will make you safer - leaving - and you should take that if possible.

But in general to worry about a bad guy with a gun is stealing attention from real problems with actual solutions.

> Often for non-gun related threats.

People carry guns because they're afraid of all the dangerous people out there not carrying guns? Uh huh

Considering police, security workers, private investigators, etc, are a majority of gun carriers, yes, many of them are rightly afraid of people with knives or improvised weapons.

For the record, I personally am 100% fine with gun laws as they stand now. I am more likely to get hit by a car walking to work.

Now, for the sake of this debate I started: I was arguing that the OP couldn't just claim his friends fears of guns were unfounded. Your counter claim is that it is an irrational fear founded in "crypto-racism". If racism is the reason, it would mean the fear is irrational but founded. So I'm not sure what you're arguing.

> If racism is the reason, it would mean the fear is irrational but founded. So I'm not sure what you're arguing.

I'm not sure how something can be irrational without also being unfounded.

Whatever validity there is to say "I hate X people" is lost when lies are used as the supposed justification. These people are already racist and are grasping at any straws (currently the fake rape-epidemic stories) as if that caused their racism, but next week it'll be back to mis-interpreted IQ tests, etc.

> None of them have been attacked...

Calling people's fear of guns "unscientific" based on them not having been personally a victim of gun violence is nonsense.

I'm pretty sure you cannot find that story about the lead poisoning because it predates the public internet. I recall reading it in the late 80's or early '90s in either a newspaper or a magazine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com