Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

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> Basically all of my tech friends are passionately against guns despite never having been victims of guns

Because the statistics are against you for the vast majority of people who don't live in crime prone areas.

For people in relatively low crime areas, the mere presence of a handgun has increased their extremely low probability of death by an inordinate amount because of gun accidents. The probability is still low, but is vastly higher than if a gun wasn't present at all.

You can argue that this is due to stupid gun owners. Perhaps, but as technology folks, we also understand that you set up systems so incidents don't occur in the first place.

Every single person I know who has a handgun has at least one "accident" over 20-30 years. I know of zero who actually used a handgun against a criminal.

I will also point out, that I know a lot of people with rifles and shotguns, and those almost never have "accidents". I think I know of one over the last 30 years. Draw your own conclusions.

Obviously, if I lived in a high crime area or in a profession where it mattered, that's different.

> You can argue that this is due to stupid gun owners. Perhaps, but as technology folks, we also understand that you set up systems so incidents don't occur in the first place.

You set up technologies for this, yes. In this particular case, you design handguns that are much harder to have accidents with.

You do not set up legal systems to restrict everyone's liberty because some people have accidents.

Sure you do. See speed limits, driving licenses, etc. They were not in existence until people started getting hurt by cars. Before that anyone could drive.

(source: https://itstillruns.com/history-drivers-license-5552087.html )

> Sure you do. See speed limits, driving licenses, etc.

Speed limits are revenue sources and bear little if any relation to actual road safety. The extremely low level of enforcement of them is proof enough of that.

Driving licenses don't stop people from driving, so they are not a good analogy to what anti-gun people want to do with legal restrictions on guns. Driving licenses are analogous to permissive gun licenses in "shall issue" states, where the government can't deny you a license unless it has abundant evidence that you are simply incapable of properly handling the relevant technology (cars or guns). Considering how easy it is to pass a driving test, that's a pretty low bar. And roughly the same number of people in the US are killed each year by cars and by guns (although a much higher percentage of gun deaths are suicides, so if we just consider people killing others, cars are worse).

> You do not set up legal systems to restrict everyone's liberty because some people have accidents.

We have building codes for this reason. You can't just throw up a house wherever and however you want.

We have driver's licenses for this reason. You will wear your glasses if you need them, for example, or you will get a ticket.

We have food safety inspectors and food laws (including those around food trucks that blew up) for this reason.

And not surprisingly, we also have firearm permits too.

But I can do all sorts of dangerous stuff already and it isn't illegal.

Guns are like vaccines, I think. If only some people own guns for self-defense, as you say, they will not have too much use for them. But if some double-digit fraction of the population are packing heat at any given time, there is a sort of "herd immunity" effect. While the individual chance any single individual will get to use them is still low, it will put powerful incentives against robbery and free up our prisons.

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