I'm curious about what arguments are brought by those resisting the gun laws. When one of these things happens of course there's a call for laws to be restricted, but it doesn't seem to happen. There must be a parliamentary majority against it I guess, but what reasons do they give?
One argument I rarely see mentioned: there are basically two Nash equilibria in the problem, one where gun ownership is sparse and one where it is very common.
If I live in a country with very few guns around, say most of Europe, I'm probably better off not having one - it's common for gun owners to be killed with their own gun in a melee, for example. If, on the other hand, any burglar or opportunistic petty criminal has a handgun, I guess I may need one too.
Now, jumping from the "lots of guns" equilibrium to the "few guns" equilibrium, even if you have societal buy-in, is hard - how do you collect all the guns from bad actors who don't want to relinquish them, when there are so many? Maybe it's so hard that it's infeasible (steel man alert) and so you're better off perpetuating and strengthening your gun ownership laws.
You don't have to ban them outright. You could just ban the sale of guns or require a license, that would make it so much harder for a troubled teenager to obtain a gun. You know, like in Europe. You can buy guns there, even assault rifles, just not at 18 without a license.
I was shocked at how easy it was for me to buy a gun. I knew long guns were fairly simple, but when I bought my first handgun I expected a more thorough background check, waiting period, anything. Instead I was able to walk out of the store within an hour with a handgun.
I'm not sure what the answer for disarming America is. Bad actors won't willingly relinquish their guns. Cops won't willingly relinquish their guns. If my threat model is armed I feel as though I should be too.
I definitely agree that raising the bar for ownership is a step in the right direction though.
I remember reading an interesting historical perspective on why Americans were not willing to disarm themselves. Pre civil-war, it was because the settlers needed guns to protect themselves as they were few in numbers in a really large country that also saw territorial disputes in the exploitation of resources. The gun made the early Americans feel secure in hostile territories. Post civil-war, some historians claim that many on both sides of the war weren't willing to give up their arms because they weren't confident that the peace would be lasting. Many others were also afraid that the former negro slaves might organise and revolt now that many among them had some military experience. Thus, for the sake of peace, the compromise was made to make disarming a low priority, and a "right to bear arms" was emphasised to reassure the critics.
You are right that when such incidents happen, there are protests by activists to bring tighter regulations and / or even calls to disarm citizens. Some US states have listened and increased regulations in response to such demands - like not making it easy to buy arms without a background check, or limiting what kind of guns can be bought and owned by civilians, limiting convicted criminals from buying arms etc.
An interesting political perspective to emerge in the debate on gun control in the US is that the US politicians on both side are not in favour of disarming private citizens. The theory is that it gives them a ready excuse to militarise and arm the police with even more deadly weapons. And to allow excess use of force by the police against the citizen without inviting much criticism. This fear can be used to dampen democratic political protests, and many do say that the size and scale of protests in US have reduced over the decades, and claim this is a "chilling effect" of militarising the police. (Another interesting tidbit I found really mind-boggling is that the police / FBI can and do actually buy old armaments from the US military!).
Don't forget that in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War some of the first gun control laws were passed. Specifically, the laws restricted ownership of firearms to particular models that the newly freed Black population would be unlikely to be able to afford. The effect was essentially disarmament of the Black population in the South.
>The Army and Navy Law prohibited the sale of "belt or pocket pistols, or revolvers, or any other kind of pistols, except army or navy pistols", which were prohibitively expensive for black freedmen and poor whites to purchase.
I feel they dont work, countries with much harsher gun laws often have more illegal gun violence like brazil and mexico. Semi automatic weapons have been around and reasonably available for almost 120 years but these mass shootings are a new thing. It sounds like a cultural problem, not a gun problem. I live in Israel and almost 18-21 year olds has access to machine guns, many taking them home with them from the base and this type of thing never happens. And even if you do pass them there is still so many guns out there its redundant
Comparing 3rd world countries to a 1st world country is ridiculous.
Look at Australia or Israel. Australia had shootings. Passed a gun control law and... No shootings.
In Israel we have draft law. Everyone knows how to use a gun. In the 90's with the Oslo peace accord gun legislation was reduced. Buying a gun became easy for "self defense".
Suddenly gun violence skyrocketed. Israel quickly changed direction and now even when a soldier goes back home from the army he often leaves his gun behind. Licenses are harder to get and are for a shorter period of time. There are many people with guns and a valid license but strict regulation when applied to the entire country worked.
The one exception is Arab cities which are riddled with crime. This is due to police incompetence and years of neglect. But that's a different subject altogether.
Now I agree that it's not a simple bit of regulation and the USA is a VERY different country. But when done right good legislation saves lives. In the USA you can't even have a computerized database of the gun licenses. You let people sell guns to one another. So many problems that I think most NRA members would agree need fixing. This is pretty toxic.
>Comparing 3rd world countries to a 1st world country is ridiculous.
Maybe 40 years ago, but I think '1st world and 3rd world' countries are more blurry than they used to be. I felt a lot safer in CDMX and Guadalajara than in parts of the Bay Area, and I lived in Mixcuac and Edomex too. Every country has problems.
20 years ago you could consider Israel a 'developing country', and the guns were flowing even more, even jobniks would take their guns home, and mass shootings in israeli society was not an issue. I remember coming back from the base and as a ritual my gf's father checked my gun when i came in his house and put it under his bed til I left on sunday.
In USA there are 120.5 guns/100 people AND 3.4 gun murders/100000 people
In Canada there are 34.7 guns/100 people AND 0.6 gun murders/100000 people
In France there are 19.6 guns/100 people AND 0.4 gun murders/100000 people
In Germany there are 19.6 guns/100 people AND 0.1 gun murders/100000 people
In Italy there are 14.4 guns/100 people AND 0.3 gun murders/100000 people
In England+Wales there are 4.6 guns/100 people AND 0 gun murders/100000 people
Sources: Small Arms Survey, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.·Ownership rates are for 2017. Murder rates for the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia and Spain are from 2016; otherwise, the latest available rates are used.
Because these countries are cherrypicked. If your list included places like Mexico, Brazil, Finland and Switzerland you would have a very different idea of the relation between gun ownership and gun homicide rates.
Also, I personally do not care one whit about gun homicide rates. I care about overall homicide rates, and I think most everyone else does too.
Its my old music producer name, just thought those two words sound cool together. Personal attack but no explanation? Maybe you would like a website called reddit?
Ok, I'll say the quiet part out loud [0], you have no basis to criticize anyone in the World about abject violence and about firearm discipline much less critiquing any Culture when your entire Society and Government is based on Crimes Against Humanity, and this isn't me saying it: it's one of your own pilots. He goes so far as to call you terrorists. Which is not entirely far from my view either, but I will defer to people who actually fought those battles muh more than my own on such matters.
The joke is ultimately on us in the US since we pay for it all in the end.
1. Self protection. When the police are minutes away, what can you do for yourself in seconds.
2. Force projection. When someone who is stronger is trying to rape you, how can you stop them.
3. Overthrowing the yoke. If you do not think it can be done, you are NGMI. How many people in drug cartel countries are powerless because of a lack of weapons.
4. The government is providing the guns to everyone else. Fast & Furious gave guns to criminals and the California Representative or Senator who was pushing for gun control while working to smuggle in weapons. The Christchurch massacre was done by an officer of the government.
We have a mental health crisis whenever someone thinks it is a good idea to commit these acts. Every time it is about taking away guns and not looking at root causes, why did the government bury information about concerns with an individual: look at the Miami incident, the Texas Air Force base, and countless other incidents. We look the other way when people are doing things that seem bad, until they pick up a gun, then we blame the gun for the outcome, not the fact that government agencies looked the other way instead of intervention.
> 2. Force projection. When someone who is stronger is trying to rape you, how can you stop them.
I understand the point your trying to make, but this is a bad example. Most rapes are committed by someone the victim knows. By the time the victim knows they are in danger of being raped, the perpetrator is already too close, and the gun is much more likely to be used to gain compliance than in a successful self defense.
> We look the other way when people are doing things that seem bad, until they pick up a gun, then we blame the gun for the outcome, not the fact that government agencies looked the other way instead of intervention.
This always struck me as silly excuse. The gun nuts are pretty obsessed with personal liberty. Taking their guns is already beyond the pale, so I have a hard time believing they're going to accept being thrown in a sanitarium whenever they do something antisocial like show up at a school board meeting foaming at the mouth about vaccines...
Precisely. How do you keep crazy people from having guns when the only suitable definition of crazy is somebody that has done something terrible (which obviously is too late).
There are ways to intervene short of throwing someone in a sanitarium, and better causes for intervention than holding a fringe opinion.
> The Secret Service found that when youth plan targeted violence, they often tell at least one person about their plans [and] offer specifics before the event
> most attackers engaged in some behavior prior to the incident that caused concern or indicated a need for help
> I'm curious about what arguments are brought by those resisting the gun laws.
I think it's said quite commonly that they never works as intended, those who will procure guns for illegal use will always have access, and it will only hinder those who do so via legal means.
It makes sense, there are more firearms in the US than their are citizens, which grows every quarter as it's one of the things the US manufactures at scale and often better than most developed nations.
But Switzerland also has the same ratio, the thing is their citizens enjoy some of the best prospects as a Society and have the highest standards of living in all of Europe. And yet... suicide amongst the youth remains high.
Furthermore, things like Ghostguns are over blown in terms of over all numbers, but it further enforces that you cannot stop technology from outpacing Laws: 3d printing AR lower receivers ensures that you will never be able solve it and will only over-regulate for those who wish to do so by legal means and likely make the black market grow.
I agree that gangs and criminals will find ways to illegally acquire guns. However, a large majority of the mass shootings have happened with legally purchased guns.
In the Uvalde shooting today, everything was purchased completely legally.
In the Buffalo shooting, the gun was purchased legally. The high capacity magazine was illegal to possess in New York, but it is legal to purchase and possess in Pennsylvania. All you have to do is drive an hour south and you can buy one with no checks of any kind, and no one would ever know you had it.
In both cases, the police response was hindered by the shooter wearing body armor that could not be penetrated by the police officers' pistols. The body armor is completely legal to purchase with no checks whatsoever.
> In both cases, the police response was hindered by the shooter wearing body armor that could not be penetrated by the police officers' pistols. The body armor is completely legal to purchase with no checks whatsoever.
So, you're making my point for me: it's already too late to curtail the supply of these things in the Market, legal or otherwise, what is needed is to address the overwhelming obvious fact that these people need mental health help.
It's easy to point at Laws and say they're not doing enough, and that is a slippery slope, but even when we do attempt to legislate morality it never ends well since Life is messy and things outside the modeling always occur.
I'm an advocate for stronger checks in the system, but that doesn't necessarily yield the desired result we are all looking for which is a decrease in gun related crimes by what are clearly mentally disturbed people.
The same thing happened in the Boulder King Soopers shooting shortly after I left which is the same thing that happened almost 21 years before in Columbine: they can be procured legally but fall into the wrong hands all the same.
Hell, there is a joke in Germany that if you want a gun all you have to do is sneak into Swiss persons home since there are so many guns there, too.
My point is you cannot legislate morality, all you an do is educate your populace and ensure that people who need help have access to it as long-term that pays off more than any Law ever could.
Just because it’s possible to buy a gun on the black market doesn’t mean a potential mass shooter would go there. They may not know who to contact or have the social skills to negotiate the transaction, or they may not have the money.
Just as an illustrative example, it’s possible to buy fully automatic weapons on the black market but I don’t think i’ve seen a single case of a mass shooter doing this.
A large majority of firearm deaths are gang related and not mass shootings in public schools or otherwise. The cases you point out are statistic outliers.
> those who will procure guns for illegal use will always have access
That's true for criminals, but what about distressed students? I could imagine that increasing friction would at least result in less deadly weapons being used. School massacres in Europe tend to be less deadly because the attackers are using knifes or self-made explosives that seldom work.
> That's true for criminals, but what about distressed students? I could imagine that increasing friction would at least result in less deadly weapons being used.
See the Columbine massacre, that quite frankly put school shootings into the American psyche. Its not that easy, making firearms more difficult to get is something that should occur: closing loops on fire arm sells at conventions with no screening etc... but this alone won't stop the bigger issue, which I still remain convinced is a mental health issue.
People forget that even before school shootings, 'going postal' was a thing that referred to same thing occurring.
Every time an incident like this happens, Hacker News squares off into its pro and anti-gun camps and has the same futile charade of a "discussion." At some point we have to concede these threads are mostly only useful for catharsis and political sniping, nothing we say or do here is going to have any real effect.
While you're perfectly right, the same argument can be made about just any discussion, be it Java code formatting or enterprise agile implementation... Discussions are useful for those who can get something from them, and can be ignored by the rest.
Unfortunately the arguman.org site appears to be defunct, and the JavaScript from the archived pages doesn't appear to load correctly when using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine at the moment, but I would refer you to these argument maps:
(if you're really, really dedicated you may be able to use 'view source' to dig into some of the arguments provided, although it could be tricky to get a sense for the tree structure of the debate and the vote weightings)
Not a gun owner and I live in the UK, I imagine regular people are more likely to be victims of violent crime (outside a school setting) if they're restricted from owning a gun.
Bans don't work: drugs, abortion, guns, books. It's the most childish reaction to things we don't like.
In a world where you can go to a new city and get a drug grown only in South America within an hour, you'll always be able to get something I can make in my garage in 4 hours.
I’m not from the US and I was a teenager in Australia when the Port Arthur Massacre took place and the post-massacre gun buyback was put in place. I now live in France where there seems to be about 1 civilian firearm for every 5 people. [1]
I became aware of school shootings in the US after Columbine and since then it seems to be a depressingly regular occurrence, as the linked list attests.
What was it like before Columbine? Were school shootings just as common, or less common? Did the rates of gun ownership shift since the 1990s? Has something changed to make school shootings more prevelant, or is it just more in the media?
teen gang related violence and violence in schools were pretty regular occurrences throughout the 90s but they were confined almost entirely to low income nonwhite communities and tended to be the result of ulterior conflicts. tragically that kind of violence was so routine that it wasn't even considered newsworthy.
The US electoral system is uniquely designed to stop change. Gun control is a difficult issue, because whilst you can create rules at state and local level it's incredibly difficult for those laws to be effective because "Drive to somewhere that doesn't have those rules" is often the trivial work-around.
So instead you need national action. Which means you need to win the Presidency, Congress, 60 seats in the Senate and control of the Supreme Court (since whatever law you create has to withstand a constitutional challenge). Then remember that the House of representatives uses gerrymandered districts, and the Senate is apportioned by state, not population, and the Senate only has 1/3rd of the seats up for election every 2 years. The last time any party had this majority was in 1977. In order to get to that level in the Senate you would need to elect democrats in states like Iowa - which in 2016 voted for the Republican with 60% of the vote vs the Democratic challenger who garnered 35% of the vote.
So let's assume that the entire population of the US suddenly decides to vote for gun control and an unprecedented landslide happens (despite the pro gun control party currently presiding over a massive economic catastrophe). And let's assume that that party doesn't have any candidates who actually oppose gun control. They'll pass a gun control law, and the US Supreme Court will strike it down as unconstitutional. And they serve lifetime terms. And they have a 6:3 majority. So you better really hope that 2 of the republican justices die whilst you have a majority in the Senate and you have the presidency. Which seems unlikely because the second oldest republican justice is 72 and last justice to die died at the age of 87. So it could easily be 15 years before you even have the chance to change the composition of the Supreme court.
Oh and bipartisan legislation has basically entirely stopped happening on normal issues. So to actually legislate to prevent this you would need a pro gun control party to win an election by an unheard of landslide.
So yeah, it's not about whether people want gun control. It's whether an overwhelming number of people are willing to be single issue voters on the topic.
I might be mistaken, but every time there's this discussion, the pro gun control voices are few and far between. Just read most of the comments in this thread. Most have a ready justification that guns are not the problem, the gun laws in the US are perfectly fine, yadda yadda.
> These things are so frequent I wonder if American people are just desensitised to this senseless and abominable violence.
There has been roughly one school shooting per week somewhere in the US in 2022 so far. Yes, most Americans are at this point desensitized. That's why I don't think there can be a shooting big enough to want gun restrictions en-masse. School shootings like these don't do it; Mass shootings like the recent Buffalo one, or the Vegas shooting a few years back, don't do it.
> What kind of tragedy will be enough for the majority to want gun restrictions, instead of repeating the same idiotic and brainwashed idea that guns keep people safe?
We're given freedoms and liberties that cannot be found in other countries, and we will fight to defend them at all costs. In your case, if a tyrannical government takes place, you have no option to resist. In the US, we have the freedom to take control of our own destiny.
> In your case, if a tyrannical government takes place, you have no option to resist. In the US, we have the freedom to take control of our own destiny.
This is a pipedream. A tyrannical government would have to appease and maintain the armed forces to stay in power, do you really believe that an uprising against a tyrannical government using small arms would have any impact against the US Army and other armed forces?
It's such a fantasy that's hard to believe anyone seriously take that argument as a valid choice for keeping things as is, being shown by reality that how things are isn't really sustainable for a society.
But whatever, you have all the freedoms to go choose and pay for your own healthcare and guns, I prefer to live in a society that has a bit more of what humans need: collectivism. Extreme individualism is a major mistake.
> In the US, we have the freedom to take control of our own destiny.
So I guess that means this is the destiny you've chosen? I have a very hard time taking anyone spouting such obvious, anti-intellectual propaganda seriously. Poe's law and all.
I see, so your destiny is keeping homeless and veterans on the streets, bankrupting people when they're ill, plus casual mass killing of schoolers. Or if it's not this one, how about you finally use said freedom and take control of your own destiny? Because a freedom if not used is not really a freedom, is it.
I’m non-US and am sadly desensitised. When things like this appear in the news, I think “What is ‘new’ about this?” Of course, if I actually pay attention it is heartbreaking, but I suppose not paying (much) attention a self-defence mechanism on my part not to let the long-term decisions of a frankly weird group of people break my heart.
> And then I always get in debates on here why as a European I would not want to live in the US for any amount of money in the world. What the hell are you doing over there? What kind of tragedy will be enough for the majority to want gun restrictions, instead of repeating the same idiotic and brainwashed idea that guns keep people safe?
This isn't an argument, but as a person from the US living in the EU specifically because I got tired of senseless violence I realized that on scale Europe is more volatile and prone to senseless violence. I was in Ukraine in the Fall of '21 during the Belarusian and Poland proxy war where hapless refugees were used for political aims and as cannon fodder while Russia was preparing for invasion. Then the invasion sparked a conflict not seen since WW2 with full out kinetic warfare with drones, tanks, and anti-ballistic missiles and warships broke out on this continent.
And depending on where you are in the EU it is happening in your backyard--personally speaking I'm like 700Km from Ukraine. And the fact that Russians were occupying Chernobyl without a clue of what the hell they were doing and they were shooting in Zaporizhzhia and people just went about their day sent me into a state depression for weeks if not months.
Most Europeans seem to just be going about their life like it doesn't matter either and that is a much bigger worry to me since this seriously has the potential of ending in Nuclear warfare and people seem equally as desensitized to something that was thought to be impossible since Hiroshima/Nagasaki. School shootings are horrible, but the insane level of violence that my friends in Ukraine have been subjected to due to Russian invasion is order of magnitudes worse than all the school shootings combined by far.
But I also have some observations: while going and coming back to Ukraine I stopped in Hungary and crossed through Slovenia and the thought never crossed my mind that it was a lack of guns that made things seem calm in the EU.
It was access to medical resources, and counseling for most, especially those in dire need; relatively speaking most EU citizens will always have lower standards of living relative to the the outliers in the US (those here on HN for example), but it's the growing bottom percentile that I think commit most of these crimes to begin with and not always in impoverished places either.
While gun restrictions may appear on paper to be the answer, and I think it should be more difficult to acquire a firearm in the US and that training be mandatory the same way a drivers license is required, I think what is really at odds is a Society with horrible mental health issues and no real way to treat it due to a broken medial system that seems to concerned with price gouging than it is with treating patients.
Moreover, media sensationalism plays a large part in this: it's bad, but the media has helped push the narrative that any kid being bullied at school is likely to shoot everyone at school, when in reality everyone was bullied in school to some degree and had to learn coping mechanisms to deal with these realities of Life. But that doesn't sell ads, so it is never focused on, and educators are paid nothing and demoralized and forced into apathy.
Guns are just like hammers, an amoral tool that can be used for whatever ends the user intends to use it for. What I fear has happened is that most will always play the 2nd Amendment card rather than look at the lack of a well regulated Militia part and see that a permanent standing itself is also in direct violation of the Constitution (Article 1 Section 8) and only has provision for a Navy to deter piracy.
I have a firearm, and I have taken the training to use it for hunting purposes, which I still intend to make use of when I return as the cost of meat continues to rise. But I bought it primarily for self-defense as the rate of soldiers with PTSD coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan were shooting their families, communities and ultimately themselves.
And by all standards most veterans would be the last to ever be denied firearms since they are the most well trained by the State to use and own them so regulation wouldn't solve this alone. I think addressing the large amount of mental health issues is a bigger component to the equation.
And here's lies the problem with the American view of the matter. No, guns are not amoral. Guns are tools _literally_ designed for killing people. In what world is a killing instrument amoral?
Also, I don't get the whole spiel of having more senseless violence (is that a competition? how would you measure that?) or a war "in your backyard", to quote you, as if to suggest it's a European culture problem that we have a war, or that it would not happen anywhere else. Yes, there's a war close by, it doesn't invalidate any of my point nor bring any justification to citizens in a country at peace to be able to buy an assault rifle in a store.
Let's try not to move goalposts and playing the ostrich to justify that what's going on in the United States is fine. It is not, and we should talk about that, not "what about Europe?"
> And here's lies the problem with the American view of the matter. No, guns are not amoral. Guns are tools _literally_ designed for killing people. In what world is a killing instrument amoral?
It's not an American-centric view, because it's also held in Switzerland where you see Military walking around in full fatigues and fully loaded automatic weapons on a daily basis and no one cares; the issue is your conclusions are lazy at best, firearms may have been designed for that purpose, I agree, but they can also be used to hunt, ward off predators in the wild or on your land, or protect your from a would-be assailants just the same.
And that is not what is taken into account in your very biased assessment, firearms were/are required in the frontier that the US is/was for all those reasons, and more. Much of the US is vast and still mainly uninhabited and very far from what you'd call civilization.
As I said, I'm likely the closest thing to the ideal fire arm owner: I own only one and I know how to use it, I have been screened by the DoJ and and have had that firearm since I was in my 20s. I've gone to hunting training safety courses, too.
As for the War part, no this is exactly a byproduct of nations like Germany and Italy and most of the EU building their entire economies around Russian energy knowing full well what the consequences were and enabling despots to commit crimes against Humanity to maintain the status quo; the invasion may have taken place in '22 but war has been ongoing since '14 in Ukraine and still Nordstream 2 was well under way. This one single aspect on the European continent has led to lots of deaths, too. Just because it didn't affect YOU directly doesn't mean that it doesn't count and THAT is most certainly cultural in Europe--just for context I've been involved since the Maidan Revolution in 2013 and most Europeans are entirely oblivious to have has been happening in order for them to live their lives as-is to the determent of Ukrainians in the Donbas and Crimea regions all these years.
My point is that just because you outsource your violence to those 'other Europeans over there' in order to live your cushy lives in EU then there is no point in having this conversation because you willfully have blinders on that make you incapable to see what the real issue is that my entire argument is based on.
The totality of the issue needs to be taken into account, and the only one here moving goals posts is you.
You don't need to convince me about how life is the US including the violence, I lived in it for most of my Life (I'm from SoCal and grew up when LA was ground zero for some of the worst gang violence in the US in the 80s with the crack epidemic) and I chose to move back to EU after COVID because I was concerned with the growing violence from that time was coming back and I was tired of fighting after nearly 20 years of activism, but the truth is I feel way more threatened here than I did back in the US.
And it had nothing to do with the fact that I do not own a firearm in the EU.
Steelman version please.