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Comment by fixermark | Hacker News Reader

I think you're reversing causality. Wouldn't higher rates of gun-related homicide induce a locale to enact stricter gun laws? And if those gun laws are only partially effective because the problem they're trying to control is systemic and national, you'd end up with the situation you're observing: places with few gun crimes have few laws because they've not been induced to enact them, and places with more gun crime have more laws (but continue to have more gun crime because places with fewer gun laws facilitate unregulated gun markets and transportation costs within the US are extremely low).

The rest of your comments are basically an angry anti-leftist rant that I'm not interested in engaging in. I have Facebook for dealing with political rants, thank you. ;)

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I'm not implying causality at all; in fact, my entire point has been to show the exact opposite, that rights (or objects, like guns, the acquisition of which stems from a right) don't cause behaviors. I have the right to eat dirt and drink toilet water, but I don't do either, because neither would be quite right.

So, in Chicago and London, where the crime has been on the rise, a reasonable person cannot blame the increase in crime on guns (esp in London's case, where it would be easier to get your hands on the Ark of the Covenant than a gun).

So, if not guns, what about other policies (welfare, immigration, maybe even other, less controversial etc.)?

(re: rant) Leftists have good ideas (protect the environment, take care of helpless people, etc.), but most leftist ideas require a bigger government and more taxation, as a means to implement them. As a result, government grows, and, because government is itself not governed by the markets, it is by nature inefficient[1], which means it eventually becomes a bloated mess (which can also lead to rising crime, etc.). Acquisition of power eventually becomes the end (see Stalin's Soviet Union, Moa's China, Castro's Cuba).

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis

Chicago's murder rate has been falling. https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/chicago-murder-rate-nation...

/lol @ “murder is down” when it comes slightly down off epic highs for a brief moment.

I recommend this as a starting place: https://www.mathsisfun.com/algebra/functions-maxima-minima.h...

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