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Comment by sojournerc | Hacker News Reader

First of all, making something illegal does not make it disappear, and you're also grossly overestimating the occurrence (as are the people calling for clear backpacks) of school shootings. The vast majority of shootings are between criminal gangs - making the guns illegal will not magically make criminals into upstanding citizens.

Consider that the news cycle and FUD have created a terrible availability bias in our country that increasingly leads to draconian actions like those mentioned in the article.

https://quillette.com/2019/11/29/the-availability-heuristic-...

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> you're also grossly overestimating the occurrence

The bodycount might not be "spectacular" but the rate of school shootings in the U.S. dwarfs other developed countries. Fatalities 200+ so far. At any rate, you don't know what they were 'estimating' exactly.

> The vast majority of shootings are between criminal gangs - making the guns illegal will not magically make criminals into upstanding citizens.

Criminals retrieve their weapons through underground networks. School shooters do not. They're just students. They've either grabbed what was lying around at home or bought them. Such that, accessibility to school shooters is hampered were it the case that legal distribution were more restricted.

Add to the fact, circulation of guns in the underground is only possible and bloated because of the sheet number of legal guns.

So the vast majority of gun death happens because of illegal guns and yet the problem is that guns are legal. The wretched cesspools that we call public schools are creating a bullying environment that makes kids suicidal and in this way kills lots of kids (some of which translate their despair into murder-suicide) and yet it’s our 2A right that we should dismantle, not the public schools? Our kids are an international embarrassment and cannot even point to Tunisia on a map. And the most famous school shooting of all time, the one that started it all, columbine, sources it’s guns from an illegal gun dealer, not the home and yet it’s my right to defend my home that needs to be infringed?

> it’s our 2A right that we should dismantle, not the public schools?

Didn't say that, nor do I believe that. Just correcting the above.

> So the vast majority of gun death happens because of illegal guns

Well the majority are suicide, with legal guns. As for homicide, yes. But people don't care about that, really. They care about mass shootings, or school shootings.

> The wretched cesspools that we call public schools are creating a bullying environment that makes kids suicidal and in this way kills lots of kids

We don't know to what extent it's about bullying in the school system (kids haven't gotten meaner), or exacerbation of issues as a function of modern living (e.g. more isolation), or neither. What's clear is that guns are easily accessible to angsty homicidal loners.

I don't think schools in and of themselves are so different than those in every other developed country as to be responsible for shootings.

> And the most famous school shooting of all time, the one that started it all, columbine, sources it’s guns from an illegal gun dealer,

Yeah, they did, from unlicensed sellers. Not most.

I agree with none of that. You’re flat out wrong about schools. People from Russia for example who transfer often make note of how amazingly viscous American high schools are. There is a massive difference. Massive.

Lot of good it does to compare anecdotes. You believe it because you want to.

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