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Comment by jsperson | Hacker News Reader

Weapons, including small arms, are best viewed as a deterrence. Evidence 1: Many videos of rabidly anti-gun folks who refuse to put a "This home is proudly gun free" sign in their front yard. Evidence 2: The US has thought twice (definitely still not enough) before invading other countries after Iraq and Afghanistan. Why? Small and improvised arms have been a real headache. Evidence 3: Hong Kong. Someone asked below if the situation in Hong Kong would be better if there were lots of guns available. That's not really a relevant question. The situation would be entirely different. The government would have been much more limited in its response. Evidence 4: Historically one of the first things a want-to-be totalitarian government does is confiscate weapons held by the populace.

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All it does is raise the stakes. Thats why police forces in America are heavily militarised. I can guarantee that if Hong Kong citizens had guns the police would have a disproportionate answer that included more deadly weaponry than they already do.

> Thats why police forces in America are heavily militarised.

Police forces are heavily militarized because of the bonkers amount of money thrown at them in the name of the "War on Drugs" and more recent "War on Terror". Note the connection between "war" and an increasingly militarized police force.

"rabidly anti-gun folks who refuse to put a "This home is proudly gun free" sign in their front yard"

Do you have to list all the things you aren't protecting your home with?

How do you reconcile the amount of deaths by firearms and the rise of mass shootings? Talking historically and hypothetical's about where guns come in handy is really simple. It get's really difficult when you wake up to news of another mass shooting - sometimes it is the second or third one to occur that month (or week).

Admittedly that is a problem. Interestingly, it's a relatively recent one. Believe it or not there was a time in US history when you could mail-order full auto weapons.

Homicide is on a secular downward trend (despite the ever-increasing proliferation of firearms in the US). Mass shootings, while tragic, are black swan events and it does not make sense to dismantle a political foundation with long-term benefits to deter a marginal crime that could be done with a van.

A better response to mass shootings would be to desensationalize the media coverage, which since Columbine has been indulging the shooters' motives to shock society.

Incidentally though this whole thread is grossly off-topic and I expect it will be collapsed or detached.

The “rise of mass shootings” is mostly a media phenomenon. They are still extremely rare events.

Gun laws haven’t gotten laxer in the last couple decades either - many states have strengthened them. There isn’t a clear connection between weak gun laws and mass shootings.

(That said, a total and effective ban on guns would of course stop mass shootings and other gun violence - if it could be implemented successfully)

First you would have to remove weapons from law-abiding citizens and criminals. The first one might be easier (with occasional resistance). The second might be much harder since criminals don't really care about laws in the first place.

>a total and effective ban on guns would of course stop mass shootings and other gun violence

But then, the cherrypicked, tautological nature of this goal is elided by gun control advocates--reducing gun violence without addressing the root social causes of violence is just a shell game.

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