Hacker News Reader

Comment by rurp | Hacker News Reader

There is research showing that suicide rates increase with greater access to easy methods(ie. guns). My guess would be that murders work much the same way. Planning and executing a murder is difficult, signing up for a website and sending bitcoin is easy. I suspect that murder appearing more accessible encourages more people to pursue it. Obviously a scammer won't pull off an actual hit, but I worry that the person paying might be more willing to pursue other methods after months of thinking about it and being led on by the scammer.

View on HN

A small argument here... where it seems you are misusing causality.

>There is research showing that suicide rates increase with greater access to easy methods(ie. guns).

Saying that "access to guns" increases suicide is a very misleading statement often used intentionally. As there is no concern for the opposite effect of ownership nor any reasoning of cause vs effect. There are more defensive uses of guns than misuses, including suicides according to the CDC. BUT...

To tie it to your argument... Does having access to internet CAUSE an increase in murder for hire?

If we want to limit murder for hire - Should we ban Tor or encryption, should be allow our civil rights to be removed because some people will misuse them? By your wording especially-yes because these things are 'easy', it's just signing up for a website and making a bitcoin transfer after all.

I question any line of thought that leads with "this is bad because people might misuse it" or that "we should stop people thinking about something".

> "this is bad because people might misuse it"

Well, that's the reason you can't buy a nuclear gun even if you have the money it costs; because you "might misuse it" or maybe you just want it for a collection, doesn't matter you can't have one; so its not as black as white as some might believe.

That's a disingenuous argument. We're talking about guns and in a broader sense encryption access as it pertains to the article. Which are two things that have legitimate and defensive purposes.

Something like a "nuclear gun" or DDoS attack has no defensive purpose. In the terms of firearms, you jumped to ordinance when the topic is about arms. I hope you didn't do so intentionally.

Ok you want to get really specific about guns, let's do that. The reason guns are so popular for suicide is because it is immediate, unlike filling your car with carbone dioxide (gas) or figuring out how to hang yourself. The immediateness give suicidal people a lot less minutes to further consider their decision, an minutes are very important in the case of these people, specially when the decision hasn't been in their heads for years but only for days meaning a emotional response to an traumatic event, for example that's what happened to Katie Stubblefield, broke with his boyfriend then took his brother's rifle and shot herself in the head at her parent's house, you see... when you fail to kill yourself by hanging there is not pretty much any lasting damages due such failed attempt, unfortunately for Katie the same cannot be said for rifle shots, she was found by her mother with pretty much nothing left of her face but lots of blood and exposed bone and still breathing; so yeah, guns make the suicide issue a lot more complex for multiple reasons while there is no upside for society, America would be pretty much the same if after 1900 guns had been banned, of course you think otherwise, you give it some emotional weight or some false protection purpose, given countries without guns on their streets don't seem to be doing any worse.

People select effective tools, shocker.

>America would be pretty much the same if after 1900 guns had been banned

That’s a pretty massive leap. Maybe you can ignore the 500k-3M defensive gun uses per year, maybe you can ignore the civil rights movement that was furthered by blacks arming themselves - coincidentaly this is the roots of modern gun control in the USA (a plan to keep “the wrong people” from owning guns, still rooted in racism today), ignore the “rooftop Koreans”, ignore that unlike Mexico to the tip of Chile that razor wire and bars on Windows isn’t common in USA because the penalty for property crime can be death, ignore that our military is the best in the world because of country boys that grew up with positive gun culture, ignore all you like. You’re clearly not presenting a factual argument with such a broad hypothetical.

Edit: I’ve already been sucked in to a silly line of thinking too much. The point here isn’t that you’re scared or upset about the existence of guns. It’s that we don’t get rid of things or stop people from thinking things because someone might be bad. That’s not how a free society works.

I can see where the problem is, "best military in the world" if by "best" you mean the creators of ISIS for destabilizing a middle-east country or violating every human right on Vietnam, or torturing people in guanmo. The blacks arming themselves was a response of whites already being armed for centuries, bla bla you can say that everybody you dislike has not a factual argument, it means nothing as well.

Your definition of "free society" is probably the problem here. In mine the tools of violence play a non-existing role; for exactly the same reason they don't get atomic bombs.

> In mine the tools of violence play a non-existing role;

Lol. When you have a problem, you’re going to call police, to bring a “tool of violence”. You’re just being naive about who is ‘allowed’ to have a means of defense.

If police are the only ones that can defend themselves from people like you - you aren’t free, you are subservient. Aren’t the same people a threat to them, a threat to you? Classes of nobility don’t seem very free to me.

But... you jumped to “nuclear gun”, so how much of a serious argument could I expect from you?

Ad hominem much. Bla bla you believe what you want in a civilized country the only gun needed by the police may be a taser gun.

You’re right, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were literally a child, mattigames.

>only gun needed by the police may be a taser gun

:D please tell me more about your experience with police and police training! Then I’ll tell you mine where I’ve traveled around the country training and training with police. Can’t wait.

EDIT: Nice job using a throwaway account to downvote my posts! Though you should know that’s against the TOS here.

Please don't do flamewars on HN, and especially don't cross into incivility like you did here. That's a way to get banned on HN, but we'd much rather that you take the spirit of this site to heart. Please see the links at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18787962.

Absolutely my bad. I got sucked into it somehow despite it being clear the topic was lost nearly right away.

It happens to nearly all of us.

HN is no place for tedious flamewar, and we ban accounts that post like this repeatedly. Please use HN in the intended spirit. It's described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and in addition you might find these other links helpful for getting a clearer idea:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html

> our military is the best

More troops kill themselves than die in field. Of those who come back murder more people home than enemies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com