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Comment by kyrra | Hacker News Reader

Removing suicides from the stats, a large amount of gun violence is done around gang activity. Looking at the stats for Chicago should sadden anyone.

Finding and fixing the causes of these is a much harder problem. NYC did a lot under Giuliani in Bloomberg to lower their crime in murder rate, but those have started rising again. Chicago hasn't done anything to fix their crime problem in the last 30+ years.

Dealing with gangs and mental health should be topics we are looking at.

Btw: getting rid of guns doesn't stop mass casualty events. The number one mass casualty event in the United States was done with box cutters. The number three was a van full of fertilizer. (The number 2 was a collection of many different weapons and methods)

Edit: if you want to read a good study about mass shootings in the US and their potential causes and statistics around them, check out this: https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/public-mass-shootings-da...

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Box cutters for airplane hijacking was a once-off event that would simply never be repeated even if cockpit doors hadn't been hardened against hostile takeover. Now, passengers simply would fight. The expectation was, I believe, that they would be taken as hostages, not killed in a suicide attack.

Agreed, that vector won't happen again. The #2 hopefully will never happen again (Tulsa race massacre). But the #3 (Oklahoma City bombing) could happen again with a sufficiently dedicated person.

But people are creative, and some other method could be used in the future. The Boston Marathon bombing was only 3 deaths, but 264 injured, and that was just a pressure cooker. The Trollhättan school attack was 3 killed with a sword.

Guns are a tool, a very deadly tool, but a tool none the less. Removing them from the US would be near impossible at this point (with the 2nd and 4th amendments getting in the way). It's also not all that popular in this country. Stricter gun laws don't seem to help (see the Buffalo shooting, in a state with red-flag laws).

One interesting point I heard raised is that the phrase "going postal" was born from an era where workplace shootings became common, but have since near disappeared (with background checks being a large part of the reason). Figuring out why our younger population is doing down the route they have the last 25'ish years is something that has yet to be corrected.

I think the thing with guns is that they tip the power balance too far in favor of the shooter. They are hard to defend against. They can do damage at range. Not a lot of skill is required to cause a lot of damage. You don't need a lot of creativity or even the ability to think clearly enough to execute a plan. You just have a gun laying around, decide "today's the day", and go live stream the next national tragedy. Not great.

You're right that we'll never ban guns in the US, but if we did, I think we'd see a lot less mass casualty events. People will still kill each other, of course, but it moves that breakpoint farther away from the average person's means, and moving that breakpoint means less innocent dead people. Seems fair to me.

Basically, I agree that people are creative, and a person who wants to kill someone (or many people) will find a way to do it. But if you make it harder, people will give up. Doing stuff is hard! Let's make it harder.

I don't know how I sound saying this but I think airsoft is a great hobby. It's basically guns with every scary features, except it can't cause physical harm. I think it could be employed to create a gradient of lethality proportional to population density.

The weapons used in these shootings are inevitably AR15 variants. That's a rifle that is designed to put lethal rounds in targets as quickly as you can hit the trigger, with a 30 round magazine (and with a modicum of practice you can reload almost without interruption).

Even the the ubiquitous glock can sustain similar rates of fire, although the survivability may be greater.

If the average person is facing someone with any intent to do harm with a modern firearm then there is no power balance.

>>>The weapons used in these shootings are inevitably AR15 variants.

False. The Virginia Tech shooter killed 32 people with a pair of pistols. It remains the deadliest school shooting in the US, and surpassed as deadliest mass shooting only by Orlando (49 dead, 2016) and Las Vegas (60 dead, 2017).

2015's second-deadliest: pistols and a revolver. He had a rifle but didn't use it (Umpqua College)

2014's deadliest: knives, pistol, car (Isla Vista)

2013's deadliest: shotgun (DC Naval Yard)

Review the list for yourself below, sort by death toll, then go to each shooting's page, which lists the weapons used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...

AR-15s are also effective for self-defense purposes.

You can also build an AR-15 with a block of metal, a CNC machine, and plans that are freely available on the Internet. There is no effective means by which you could prevent an AR-15 from ending up in peoples' hands.

>There is no effective means by which you could prevent an AR-15 from ending up in peoples' hands.

>a block of metal, a CNC machine

Try not to argue in bad faith as a gun owner challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)

Half of your arguments are "regular men need to defend their houses" and "but black people shoot eachother in the ghetto too". Hint: these are in complete opposition to "Having enough time, money and access to a CNC Machine to make a homemade shitty AR15". Making guns less accessible means less shootings, period.

> Hint: these are in complete opposition

They are not. Black people have a right to self-defense the same as everyone else. The point is that gun violence in the United States is not uniform or random, but rather connected with specific set of social conditions. Ameliorating those specific social problems would reduce violent crime rates without the need to disarm peaceful civilians.

I'm guessing you need a 4 or 5 axis machine to make a gun. These cost more than the buildings that you need to contain them. (OK, there's this guy, but probably not big enough: https://pocketnc.com/.)

I don't think it's unreasonable to say that if you need to own and know how to operate a CNC mill in order to do a mass shooting, mass shootings are going to decrease. CNC is not "hit print", it's a skill that requires training and development. (Looking at /r/3DPrinting, I can tell you that many people manage to screw that up. CNC is like 3D printing, but about 10x harder. Some may argue that you need some more zeroes on there, actually.)

The technology is improving all the time. The "0% receiver" from Ghost Gunner only came out within the past year.

It is also not necessary for a every person wanting to build a rifle to own a CNC machine.

As it is, it would be both legally and practically infeasible outlaw and confiscate AR-15s.

A golf club is also effective for self defence purposes. In any case, those same tools are available globally and AR15s simply aren't ending up in people's hands, or the hands of school shooters.

> A golf club is also effective for self defence purposes

I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about.

Point me to any other country in the western world where the concept of self defence is predicated on the possession of an AR15 capable of discharging 30 high-velocity rifle rounds in fifteen seconds.

Presumably, as your idea of self defence is overwhelming firepower, you spend your days campaigning against the ban on automatic weapons?

> Point me to any other country in the western world where the concept of self defence is predicated on the possession of an AR15 capable of discharging 30 high-velocity rifle rounds in fifteen seconds.

Prohibitions on such weapons do not reduce the overall violent crime rate, so I don't see why it matters.

> Presumably, as your idea of self defence is overwhelming firepower, you spend your days campaigning against the ban on automatic weapons?

What you imagine I think or do has no bearing on the arguments at hand.

Most mass shootings reported in the past few years have been committed with guns that were legally purchased by either the shooter or a family member. Surely illegally manufacturing your own gun (or finding someone willing to illegally do it for you) is a barrier to most would be school shooters.

How many mentally ill school shooters would actually build an AR-15 out of a block of metal? 1%? 0.1%?

Guns are a tool, a very deadly tool, but a tool none the less.

Really tired of seeing this argument. They're made for killing, period. Fertilizer, box cutter, automobiles all have other uses. Killing is not one of them. For guns, it's in the top 3. And I say this as a gun owner.

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