
Murder by Rifle vs. Death by Meteor - ingve
http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2019/10/MurderByRifleVsDeathByMeteor.html
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cwkoss
On the opposite side, there is some questionable gun math as well. Much of the
current political discussion is centered around mass shootings and white
supremacist shootings, with the claimed remedy being "lets ban assault
weapons". In 9 of 10 gun deaths, the gun involved was a pistol, not a rifle.
"Assault" distinction means that fraction of deaths an assault rifle ban would
prevent is somewhere less than 10% of all gun deaths - assuming every death
was perfectly prevented by this ban.

You are 4x more likely to be shot by the police than a mass shooter, and 40x
more likely to be shot by police than a white supremacist.

[https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/08/06/40978688/inslees...](https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/08/06/40978688/inslees-
gun-plan-targets-white-supremacy-not-everyday-violence)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/police...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/police-
shootings-2018/)

The vast majority of gun deaths are suicides. ~4% of gun murders involve
rifles. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-
canada-41488081](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081)

I think gun control is being used by the left much like abortion is used by
the right: it is an emotionally charged topic that can rile up the base even
though legislative solutions will largely be ineffective.

~~~
istjohn
Police wouldn't be so trigger happy if guns weren't so pervasive.

~~~
RickJWagner
Thats probably true.

But it's also probably true that a lot of crooks won't hand over their guns.
They aren't afraid to hold drugs, stolen merchandise, etc. They won't worry
about hanging onto a gun, especially when it gives them such an advantage in
robbery.

I'm pretty sure a good portion of otherwise law-abiding citizens would hang
onto their guns, too.

~~~
flukus
The might still have guns, but even crooks would be less likely to use them
because they're less likely to encounter someone else with a gun, making them
less likely to have to worry about the first mover advantage in that
situation.

For robberies they probably don't even need one, just a sufficiently realistic
replica.

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jdkee
You are one and a half times as likely to be killed by someone’s bare hands or
feet in the U.S. versus a rifle per the FBI.

[https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-
the-u.s.-...](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-
the-u.s.-2017/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8.xls)

~~~
viklove
What qualifies as a rifle?

~~~
bifrost
When its classified by the ATF as a rifle.

I'm 1000% serious, their rules are byzantine (and stupid).

~~~
ScottFree
Yup. This image should make it as clear as mud.

[https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0020/5370/1690/files/ar-
pi...](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0020/5370/1690/files/ar-pistol-v-
short-barreled-rifle.jpg?8988855630892898934)

~~~
bifrost
IMHO this one is better :)

[http://emptormaven.com/img/NFA_Pistol_AOW_SBR.jpg](http://emptormaven.com/img/NFA_Pistol_AOW_SBR.jpg)

~~~
ScottFree
Haha, that's pretty good!

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geggam
Interesting.

Cosmos throwing rocks at random vs humans throwing rocks precisely.

One would hope the cosmos was significantly worse at hitting people

~~~
cwkoss
Meteors gradually becoming spookily accurate would make interesting premise
for a sci fi story.

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bifrost
This blog is somewhat absurd.

Yes, the "hit by a meteor" claim is lame but the other side of things is even
more terrible.

If we're actually worried about the things that are going to be likely to kill
us -> Drowning, Cars or even being hit by blunt instruments.

~~~
ajuc
Opportunity cost of banning cars is huge. Opportunity cost of gun control is
negligible (as showcased by the rest of the world).

Gun control is the low hanging fruit of death prevention.

~~~
cwkoss
Opportunity cost of gun control is huge for marginalized groups which cannot
count on timely police response, or in worse cases, police response may
increase chances of lethality.

See recent news on Atatiana Jefferson.

[https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/10/13/20912212/atatiana-...](https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/10/13/20912212/atatiana-
jefferson-fort-worth-police-shooting-texas-aaron-dean-murder)

Why do gun control advocates never discuss disarming the police?

~~~
istjohn
Because you can't disarm police while every criminal has a gun.

~~~
DuskStar
But, since every criminal will _still_ have a gun (or near enough for police
to claim such), that just means you can never disarm police.

~~~
ajuc
Countries disarmed criminals with introducing gun control. It's not hard.

Criminals are rational beings - if there's minimal chance that the victim has
a gun, and doing the same crime with a gun means much longer sentence, and you
don't need the gun anyway - then criminals won't take guns with them, it would
be stupid for them to continue using guns.

~~~
geggam
So if we make it easier for criminals to take the things we spent our life
working to obtain. We are better off ?

You do realize theft is essentially stealing the part of your life you spent
working for that thing ?

~~~
ajuc
They catch them later anyway. Much better if they steal your stuff and go to
the jail, than if you start a firefight and people get injured or dead?

How much you carry on you - 1000 USD? How much to fix perforated lungs? Will
they even fix it completely?

The best solution to theft is to let it happen and retrieve the stolen goods
later. Turning a theft into murder is the worst possible solution.

BTW Crime is less common in countries with gun control than in USA (admitedly
- that's probably only partially caused by gun laws, much more important is
the absurd lack of basic public services).

~~~
DuskStar
> The best solution to theft is to let it happen and retrieve the stolen goods
> later.

Just wondering - is the best solution to rape also to just "let it happen and
deal with the rapist later"?

> BTW Crime is less common in countries with gun control than in USA
> (admitedly - that's probably only partially caused by gun laws, much more
> important is the absurd lack of basic public services).

Pretty sure that's a lie, or at the very least there are countries with strict
gun control that are far worse than the US. Most of Central America, for
instance.

~~~
CompanionCuuube
> Just wondering - is the best solution to rape also to just "let it happen
> and deal with the rapist later"?

You're responding to someone who calls self-defense "murder", so I think the
answer is rather obvious here.

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hello_marmalade
I don't understand why advocates for gun ownership need always be painted as
crazy or having some kind of bizarre inadequacy that necessitates gun
ownership rather than something reasonable and logical.

The 2nd Amendment protects the rights of the people. It enables the populace
to stand up to it's government and loudly say 'you work for us.' It's
ideological.

Liberty comes at a cost. If you are free, you are free to succeed as well as
fail. If you are free to own guns, you accept that there are those out there
who will misuse this. It's part of the system. There are better ways to solve
the problem than just taking away guns. We can try to solve the root of these
problems. The people who are against so called 'assault rifles' end up
supporting measures that will be essentially ineffective at solving any of the
actual problems.

This is not unique to people who are anti-gun, but it is still foolish. Always
putting band-aids on problems rather than fixing the root causes because it's
easier to do a band-aid solution.

As a side note, firearms as self defense are an indispensable tool. For
example, I for one support The Pink Pistols, which advocates for the gun
ownership of marginalized LGBT groups.

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sushisource
I really identify with this article because I often have the feeling that if
only people were just a little bit better at basic napkin-math probability,
we'd avoid a lot of incredibly stupid discussions.

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zepto
Great, right the way up to the ‘this is why schools don’t have meteor drills’
punchline.

School shooter drills are dangerous and damaging theater, and even though Guns
are more likely to kill you than meteors, still are not justified.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Yes. What would really "demonstrate an understanding of statistics and
mathematics" would be recognizing that death by mass school shooting and death
by meteor are both extremely rare causes of death, and that spending school
time on either is likely not a productive use of that time.

I mean, some schools spend more time on that stuff than they do on earthquake,
tornado, or fire drills. On top of that, and as you seem to suggest, the
"training" is almost uniformly very, very bad.

~~~
jakeogh
The (sometimes unannounced) murder drills make more sense if one assumes they
have a different purpose.

~~~
AstralStorm
Such as what, scaring students into obedience?

If so, then where's the opposition? It's completely unethical.

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tomxor
I never see statistic for simply "being shot", it's always about death, being
shot is horrible even if you don't die... death is obviously a subset, so I
wonder how large the full set is.

~~~
jakeogh
Need to include defensive use to have any relevancy. In addition to that
number, often the knowledge that someone has effective means of self defense
will prevent a criminal from attempting action.

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Pinckney
[https://www.xkcd.com/406/](https://www.xkcd.com/406/)

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amelius
I'd rather read about hash collision versus hit by meteor.

