Hacker News Reader

Comment by Curvature5868 | Hacker News Reader

At least 42% of Americans live in a household with a gun so it isn't particularly useful to write off the anecdote.

This percentage is much smaller in other countries, so actually it is... if you don't live in the USA, which is a large majority of the world's population.

Many countries in Europe have tons of older hunting guns, on top of newish guns for... personal protection? Sport? Or whatever reason people feel the need to have them.

Tens of millions as per wikipedia [1]. Also check other countries and continents. A very valid argument.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...

In most European countries you have to store the firearm in a locked safe, often with the bolt removed or the weapon disassembled and - quite often - with the ammunition stored separately in another locked container/safe.

It’s a lot more “steps to take” to commit suicide than “take the weapon from your nightstand and shoot yourself”, given you have to unlock usually more than one safe/lockbox.

I assume that's not any of the concealed carry countries as that would completely defeat the point of having the gun. Definitely not the case where I live.

The countries allowing CC are - unfortunately - in the minority in Europe.

Among the ones that do allow CC, most of them that’s a special permit that seems to have an exception to the storage requirements for personal protection.

Personally I wish more of Europe would emulate the Czech Republic in this matter…

And that's the problem. It's not particularly useful to write it off, particularly absurd that you do so on the grounds that it's an extremely prevalent problem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com