
American gun use: Shouldn't the world intervene? - tlocke
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/21/american-gun-out-control-porter
======
d4nt
The fundamental issue here is: who's responsibility is it to keep people safe?
The author, without really acknowledging it, makes the assumption that it is
up to someone in authority to keep us safe. If you accept that premise, then
yes, American gun control policy doesn't make sense.

Governments across the world have been steadily extending their remit into our
personal lives and behaviour with the introduction of the welfare state,
socialised healthcare and nationalised industries, always in the name of
keeping us safe/well/employed. The assumption that "someone should do
something about this" is so pervasive these days that it's hard to mentally
snap out of it and say, why?

I'm no fan of guns[1] but in recent months I've come to understand the
thinking behind the 2nd amendment, that government has to be kept in its place
and that society must not give complete power to a small group at the centre.
When you look at it that way, the hot coffee and the driving regulations are
the things that don't make sense.

Whichever side of the gun control debate you're on, denouncing the other for
not getting gets you nowhere. This is a debate about the proper role of
government, not about guns or hot coffee per say.

[1] I'm British and so have no involvement in the whole US gun control debate,
but am virtually genetically predisposed to thinking guns are strange and
scary!

~~~
alexeisadeski3
Whislt I do agree with your position, what bugs me most about the whole
argument put forward by this Guardian article is the assumption that America's
elevated murder rate is due to it's firearms laws. The evidence simply doesn't
bare this out.

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room271
The article is slightly tongue-in-cheek (I'm pretty sure Henry Porter does not
want the UN to intervene militarily in the US!).

But it does express, quite forcefully, the simple point that if the US is
concerned about the safety of its citizens it might do better to focus on gun
safety and ownership than on the so-called war on terrorism.

~~~
staunch
No, it's just a laughably bad argument all around. Including suicides in gun
deaths is always done like this because otherwise the numbers are not
impressive enough, I guess. No mention is made of things that might add
perspective, like the number of people who die from smoking, alcohol, drug
overdoses, drunk driving, or swimming pools. That would soften the point too
much.

And the terrorism angle is just ridiculous. The reason it makes sense to worry
about terrorism to the tune of billions of dollars is that a WMD attack on
American soil would cost potentially trillions of dollars. Certainly 9/11's
impact was massively expensive both financially and psychologically.

For some reason these issues always bring out the most intellectually
dishonest and transparent arguments. Really smart people disagree about this
topic and have much better arguments than this author's.

~~~
glenra
>The reason it makes sense to worry about terrorism to the tune of billions of
dollars is that a WMD attack on American soil would cost potentially trillions
of dollars.

Nope. The truth is that it simply doesn't make sense to worry about terrorism
to anywhere near the degree we do. We'd have done far better to chalk the
whole thing up to "act of God" and move on.

Regarding the risk of a "WMD attack", you're making the same mistake you just
accused the other guy of doing. He conflated suicide with homicide; the term
"WMD" is intentionally vague so as to conflate actual nuclear weapons, "dirty
bombs", and every variety of chemical weapon. The bad guys don't HAVE nukes or
chemical weapons and 9/11 did nothing to suggest that sort of attack had
become more likely than before. The risk of damage from a "dirty bomb" would
be largely self-inflicted - we'd harm ourselves due to our own paranoia. The
risk of damage from chemical weapons is pretty small even if our enemies had
them, which they don't. If you correctly separate the threats you'll see each
individual one is really really small.

> Certainly 9/11's impact was massively expensive both financially and
> psychologically.

9/ll's impact as massively expensive because we chose to LET it be massively
expensive. If we had shrugged it off, it wouldn't have been.

~~~
staunch
Yes, of course it would be mostly self-inflicted. That doesn't make it any
less real.

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bloodorange
I think the world should intervene in american gun use _outside_ of their
nation's borders.

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tlocke
Though not American myself, I'm an admirer of the US in many ways. One thing I
don't get is Americans' attitude to guns. Surely the freedom to walk down the
street without getting shot is more important than the freedom to carry a gun?

~~~
od2m
Do you trust our government? Because we don't.

~~~
ant512
You trust the NSA with your private communications, though. Or is there
another explanation for the apathetic response by the American public to
widespread government surveillance?

~~~
__--__
On the scale of things to worry about, most Americans are more worried about
the flesh and blood swat team down the street serving search warrants than
internet surveillance. When the police are armed with military grade weapons
and sees the community it's policing as the enemy, people are getting more
hesitant to get the police involved in even seemingly minor things. This is
where the 2nd amendment comes in to play. If the police can't protect you, you
have to protect yourself.

The guardian article was right about one thing: America is in the middle of a
civil war of sorts.

------
antr
_" That 212,994 more Americans lost their lives from firearms in the last 45
years than in all wars involving the US is a staggering fact"_

The world should stay out of this problem. It's a US-only ideology issue,
primarily driven by the second amendment, and the twisted interpretation of
"freedom".

If I were in Government in another country (Canada, U.K., Germany, Australia,
etc) I would use this in the country's favour. This U.S. gun issue is
extremely scary for many, and would use it (among other points) to attract
talent from the U.S. or divert quality immigrants from the U.S. to my country.
It sounds harsh, but quality of life and life expectancy are top priorities
for almost anyone. If you can market this the right way, these countries with
less gun-death risk can really benefit.

    
    
      Country   Guns per 100   Total Firearm-related deaths per 100,000
      US        88.8           10.2
      Canada    30.8            2.44
      Germany   30.3            1.1
      Australia 15.0            1.04
      UK         6.2            0.25

~~~
alexeisadeski3
The fact that both of this weeks' shootings occurred in jurisdictions with
stricter gun control laws than Canada's is evidently irrelevant.

~~~
NateDad
Correlation does not imply causation.

~~~
__--__
He's not implying causation. The idea that stricter gun control laws _cause_
shootings is ridiculous. He's disproving the causation that stricter gun
control laws stop violent shootings.

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kubiiii
I won't get into an argument about figures but is there a solid reason to
defend loose gun control?

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Sandman
Off topic: This is strange. This story was posted an hour ago, it has, at the
moment, 24 points, yet I can only see it on /newest. It was briefly on the
front page, but now I can't find it there. There's also no sign of it on the
second, third, fourth or fifth page. I didn't look further. Weird. Does
anybody have an explanation?

~~~
room271
I found this too. Not sure why. Perhaps it just fell off the front page?

~~~
mkr-hn
Posts on politically charged issues get flagged off the front page quickly.

~~~
Sandman
True, but I couldn't find it on the next five pages either. If it had received
so many flags, it would have been autokilled. But it wasn't (and still isn't)
[dead]. The first thing I thought of was that there may be a bug in HN code...
perhaps there are other posts that aren't visible even though they aren't
dead. Maybe PG should look into this.

