
I almost died in a mass shooting - electic
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-allworth/the-us-has-lost-its-damn-mind_b_9308482.html
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danso
Er...this is a strange title. The closest the author comes to saying that he
almost died in a mass shooting is this:

> _Do you know how a properly functioning society would react to an event like
> San Bernardino? I do — because I’ve had the misfortune of living through
> such an event. On the 28th of April, 1996, a gunman equipped with an AR-15
> assault rifle — the same kind that the San Bernardino shooters used — opened
> fire in Port Arthur, in Australia. 35 people were killed and 23 were
> wounded. It remains one of the world’s deadliest shootings by a single
> person._

Uh, maybe he was actually present during the shooting? But "I’ve had the
misfortune of living through such an event" is a pretty vague and passively-
constructed statement. It could mean that he was in Australia during the time
of the shooting and subsequent change to gun rights. Which, OK, is fine -- a
constructive, convincing argument need not be rooted in emotional
authority...but my particular problem is that this piece is mostly invective
and ad hominem...while the author's recounting of the mass shooting is brief
and antiseptic.

I mean, technically, I can say I "lived through 9/11" even though it happened
while I was halfway across the country...

~~~
kelvin0
Really, is that all you take away from the article?

~~~
danso
What else should I take away from it? The Port Arthur tragedy is something
that is cited many times in this debate -- if I had never heard of it before,
sure, I'd find it enlightening.

But not in the way this essay simplifies things. I haven't read much deep
background into Port Arthur, but I'm going to guess that it was a lot more
complicated than just "Australia collectively got its shit together" in the
way that the civil rights movement, or even just the successful Montgomery bus
boycott was a lot more complicated and drawn-out than just, "Rosa Parks got
arrested and people got mad."

When meaningful change happens, it's because people get mad _and_ focused
collective action and political strategy work together to break the status
quo. The author's weak rhetorical logic undermines this concept. It doesn't
even make any sense when you get past the bare surface: gun rights and privacy
-- as they manifest themselves in this incident -- are orthogonal issues. By
going for this angle, the author's argument for data privacy is completely
undermined in a case where the attackers use a bomb to perform mass murder.
Whereas I would argue: data privacy is important whether or not a massacre is
committed by guns or bombs.

Of course the biggest flaw in the author's argument is that the FBI and
Justice Department are currently under the oversight of President Obama -- I
know Trump has gotten a lot of coverage lately, but he is not the president
yet. President Obama has made no secret of his personal sentiment against
personal firearm ownership and it was something that was a big issue in his
2008 election.

Emotions are important. But if you truly want to effect change, you have to
accept that things are complicated and thus, require more intellectual and
personal commitment than the self-righteous sentiment "WHY ISN'T EVERYONE ELSE
SEEING HOW CRAZY THIS IS?"

That said, I'd be fine with the submission if it contained what the submitted
title implies, "I almost died in a mass shooting". Not because I think that
one survivor's experience should dominate all others based on that one
personal experience (recently, an actual survivor of Columbine made news for
advocating that guns should be allowed in school) but because I'm interested
in hearing experiences that I have never personally experienced, and how
they've led the person to think what they think

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madaxe_again
To me, the statistic that 316,545 people have been shot to death in the US in
the last decade is staggering. I'm sure that includes things like police
shootings as well, but that's still an _enormous_ number. In the UK, the
figure for the same period appears to be about 3600 (going by a few parliament
reports over that decade - haven't added them all up but it averages 300 a
year or so and I'm being pessimistic).

64M in the UK, 320M in the US, 316,545/5 = 63,309. 63,309/3600 = 17.6. So -
you're 17.6 times more likely to be shot in the US than in the UK, where
firearms are banned for most purposes, and gun deaths actually seem to have
risen proportionally over the last few years - perhaps as police are more
frequently armed in supposed response to the supposed ongoing terror threat,
criminals more frequently feel the need to be armed in response...

I haven't considered things like knife crime etc., but the US approach to gun
ownership is anachronistic at the very best, and is out of step with what is
viewed as civilised elsewhere in the world. I suppose there's a sort of
duality of mind in the US, where people wish it were still frontier times, a
brave young nation, the wild west, where you need to personally defend your
self and property, but also want to live in a modern civilised society where
the function of gun ownership and law enforcement is carried out by, well, law
enforcement, and can't quite resolve their dichotomy. Would US law enforcement
be as hostile and trigger happy as it is if they weren't so worried about
getting shot, as seems to be their principle justification for "shoot first"
tactics?

Sorry, this has ended up a bit of a ramble, but I can't understand how it can
be viewed as sane to allow gun ownership as it stands to go on. It's a
pandemic.

~~~
anExcitedBeast
For the sake of dealing with better numbers, about a third of that figure is
suicide. And very, very, very few gun deaths are by rifle. Last year ~9k
people were shot in the US - ~8450 by handgun, ~300 by shotgun, and many of
those killed by rifles were shot by police.

I know this doesn't change the calculus for most people. Just trying to get
more realistic figures into the conversation.

~~~
madaxe_again
The suicide rate in the US is twice that of the UK - take from that what you
will, but brits are as a whole a pretty depressed bunch, and I dare say gun
availability is a factor in suicide prevalence - the professions with the
highest rates of suicide tend to be those that easily provide the tools to
definitely painlessly kill yourself - doctors, dentists, veterinarians,
farmers.

I'm hypothesising, but I honestly think reducing availability of firearms
would cause more people to not be able to kill themselves with facility, and
therefore more likely to have the time to reconsider or seek help.

~~~
pigpaws
Thankfully, it isn't someone else's choice when, how or where a person makes
the decision. People will find a way.

I was in EMS for 15 years. There are worse ways to go... Bleach for example...
really, any other way is worse if you think about it. everything else drags
out the pain and suffering.

...but guns are louwd and scawy..

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bjt2n3904
Every time someone writes an article about gun control, you can rewrite it to
be an attack on encryption. If you're going to be holding "amoral objects"
responsible, why not encryption?

> Do you know how a properly functioning society would react to an event like
> <The Silk Road / misc darkweb crime>? [...] Within months, the country's
> governing party led a bipartisan effort to prevent such a tragedy from ever
> happening again (by banning TOR).

> The <technology> used in <misc crime ring> that resulted in all those
> <abused children> were legally <downloaded>

> The logic is outrageous: "<Children> got <abused>. So we need a backdoor
> into your phone."

And you could go on and on. The First and Second Amendments are related, now
more than ever.

One last point. The author cites gun control as the solution to mass
shootings, but there's a bit of a hole in his logic. France's gun control laws
did nothing to prevent the Bataclan shooting from happening. All it did was
make a room full of people that couldn't defend themselves.

~~~
coldpie
Don't think encryption has ever killed someone.

~~~
bjt2n3904
The FBI would like to disagree with you on that. Why do you think they're
trying to hack the iPhone? (Or at least, their claimed motive.)

~~~
coldpie
To get more information about what caused the shooters to kill people using
guns.

Edit: I mean, nobody walks into a bank and says "Everybody get down! I've got
encryption!"

~~~
bjt2n3904
Understandably, but does it matter how directly encryption is involved? You
could come up with contrived examples if you want.

Jigsaw the serial killer (of Saw infamy) has been captured by the police.
However, he's got his final victim in a booby trapped room where he'll drown
in an hour. The location and instructions to disable the traps are encrypted
on a thumb drive, which he'll decrypt if the police set him free.

Edit: What should be evident is that no matter what means are used, the person
behind it is responsible. Focusing on tools that are used by good people to
protect themselves doesn't follow.

~~~
gargravarr
Oh, I know this one. You use some fancy suspending gear and enter Jigsaw's
dreams to retrieve the clue![1]

[1][http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209958/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209958/)

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pigpaws
I wonder why the fact that 61-64% of all 'gun-related' deaths are suicides,
was not mentioned... Most people here (from what I've seen) support 'death
with dignity' (suicide), but just not with a gun...

~~~
locopati
ain't nothin' dignified about leaving a mess behind for someone else to clean
up

~~~
pigpaws
so that's effectively saying 'suicide is fine, but only if "you" approve of
the method'.

~~~
locopati
i'm saying find a way that doesn't leave so much mess behind for someone else
to clean up

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dsfyu404ed
The author needs to get his head out of his ass, or at least move it a little
in that direction.

As others have said, if reducing overall violence is the goal then rifles
shouldn't be a major focus, reducing handgun ownership among people who engage
in crime as a large part or all of their income should be a focus.

Extremists and lunatics with rifles have nothing on organized crime in terms
of overall body count (which is allegedly what everyone wants to reduce).

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pluma
The original Medium article[0] appeared on HN earlier. Can't find the link
tho.

[0]: [https://medium.com/@jamesallworth/the-u-s-has-gone-f-ing-
mad...](https://medium.com/@jamesallworth/the-u-s-has-gone-f-ing-
mad-52e525f76447#.1yrda2qra)

------
Grue3
>Which of the following would you attribute responsibility for what happened

Neither of these appears to be the person who committed the crime. How can an
inanimate object bear responsibility for anything? The mind boggles.

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kelvin0
Yeah, Australia does not have the almighty sacred 'right to bear arms' dogma
which the NRA (and it's supporters/lobbyists) says is it's 'god given right'
(or something to that effect) . Never mind that the government has access to
my whole life and can track me and direct my life, and has me misinformed
through propaganda. At least I have a gun.

~~~
ssharp
While the government can actively access and track most of your life, the one
thing they can't track is whether or not you own a gun. Attempts to create a
national gun registry are routinely attacked by the same politicians who want
access to your phone.

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hltt
Main points are:

\- People shot dead by terrorists are way less than by some gangs or
psychopaths

\- Privacy protects us from foreign surveillance

\- To reduce number of people shot dead by gun (not by polices, not suicides),
it is more reasonable to restrict gun access than to create backdoors for mass
surveillance

Agree/Disagree?

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mabbo
In America, it's important that everyone have a gun in case the government
starts doing things that the people disagree with. This way, the people can
rise up and dismantle the tyranny.

Just like those fellows in Oregon, fighting the important fight of not wanting
to pay to use government land for ranching.

Or all the people rising up against the rapidly growing police state the US
government is building. I'm sure they'll rise any day now.

I'll be honest, there is a touch of sarcasm in this comment.

~~~
gargravarr
Those unfortunate victims of police shootings last year would have been
perfectly fine if they'd had an AK-47 in their hands when the cops arrived
instead of being unarmed.

