Hacker News Reader

Comment by reader5000 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure the theory that violence is caused by "people being asshats to each other" is accepted by anybody other than Wayne LaPierre.

Gun violence is caused, first and foremost, by the presence of a gun. A sufficient cause? Often yes, given appropriate context.

There are plenty of very successful ways to "hold back" this technology. It's called law.

Anyway I don't think anybody is worried about this 3d printed deal other than the press trying to get page views. The scrawny middle class kid who made it is an uninteresting attention whore, and the gun itself is a massive piece of shit. As others have pointed out, self-made ballistic weapons have been possible for years. This doesn't lower the convenience factor.

View on HN

>Gun violence is caused, first and foremost, by the presence of a gun.

But violence is caused, first and foremost, by people being asshats to each other. A gun is just a tool a violent person may use to be violent. In the absence of a gun, they may use a knife, a baseball bat, a crowbar, a fist, a pencil, a screwdriver, a laptop, a bucket full of sardines, etc.

> But violence is caused, first and foremost, by people being asshats to each other.

No. Violence is caused, first and foremost, by people being violent. Give them means or tools to be more violent and they'll use them. Thus guns existence are a factor in the violence scale.

Guns aren't tools like the other ones just like the nuclear bomb isn't like any V2.

Moreover many quiet people who aren't asshats have been the victims of asshats, and sometimes only because they precisely aren't asshats.

Right but violence with, say, a pencil, all that happens is that I get a hole in my hand[1], the teacher goes a bit pale, but the rest of the class get to go home without being riddled with bullet holes.

[1] True story.

Violence is 100% caused by "people being asshats to each other" though.

There may be complicated motivations or factors involved, but without at least one person being an "asshat" in any interaction between multiple human beings, you don't get violence.

> Gun violence is caused, first and foremost, by the presence of a gun.

Gun violence is caused by people.

Gun violence is caused by people with guns.

Surely?

Gun violence is caused by people with fingers.

"Gun violence is caused, first and foremost, by the presence of a gun."

"Gun violence" isn't "caused" by guns any more than "knife violence" is caused by knives or "fist violence" is caused by hands.

Nice, go straight to calling names.

Here, let me restate your main theme: Violence is caused first and foremost by the presence of two or more people. As Disney says, it's a "song as old as time".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com