[Bernard_sha_256]

Can someone say "Security Theater"?

In cases like these I like to take the Freakonomics formula for risk, that outrage factors more into observed risk than actual danger.

We're more worried about Terrorism than Heart Disease, even as we have far more control over the latter.

[frozenesper]

It's precisely because we have far more control over heart disease that we do not fear it.

I can accept getting heart disease—maybe it was my fault?—much more readily that being actively, senselessly, killed by someone else. Terrorists know this too, which is why definitionally terrorism is meant to induce fear by way of its unpredictability.

You wrote "security theater" to imply that we shouldn't attempt to address terrorism and school shootings because they don't kill enough people. I think that we ought to fund research into good, effective, ways to reduce gun violence _because_ it's something that we don't control ourselves.

[manjushri]

Logically, it seems more practical to worry about things you can control, than those that you can't.

"There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will."

-Epictetus

[frozenesper]

I think you're underestimating yourself.

I can control my own actions, so my worry about heart disease can inform my dietary choices.

We can control gun violence by influencing culture or changing laws, so gun control is an appropriate subject of worry.

We cannot control the sun going supernova. We shouldn't worry about that.

[manjushri]

Good point. Judging from history though, law has been quite unsuccessful at preventing the problem of murder.

[socalnate1]

This is undoubtedly true on an individual level, but not necessarily true on a societal level.

(i.e. Things I can't control as an individual, we as a society might still be able to control or influence.)

[yanslookup]

Terrorism and gun violence is and has always been about economic impact. 9/11 had more concentrated economic impact than heart disease ever will.

If you think people are being overly emotional over these issues try to imagine a plausible reason why.

[manjushri]

>9/11 had more concentrated economic impact than heart disease ever will.

And that was because of the misguided emotional response (i.e. invading countries which had nothing to do with it), not because of the event itself.

[mieseratte]

I like to ask my "ban the AR-15" friends how they feel about the TSA.

[frozenesper]

I agree that much of what the TSA does is security theater, but... at least we got that? It shows that we as a society cared enough to "put on a show" of protecting ourselves from terrorism.

I welcome more research on effective ways to reduce gun violence, but unfortunately ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment_(1996) ) researchers have been prevented from doing so.

The clear, most effective way to reduce gun violence is to reduce the number of guns. (cf. every other developed nation.) However, the current interpretation of the 2nd amendment seems to make that difficult.

[news_to_me]

Why?

[craftyguy]

I would argue heart disease being the leading cause of death in many 'developed' countries strongly indicates that we, as a society, do not have control over it.

[CompanionCuuube]

We don't, or we can't? As a country, we can do things to force people to avoid the risk factors and take mitigating actions.

[craftyguy]

> we can do things to force people to avoid the risk factors and take mitigating actions.

Just like we forced people to stop drinking during prohibition, and we force petty criminals all the time to stop doing bad stuff once caught?

We'd like to think it's the former ("we can, but we don't"), but the reality is we can't.

[CompanionCuuube]

What you're saying is that we should be giving up many human lives every year to maintain the status quo?

[always_good]

I think the fact that you can bloat up to any weight you want just like how you can have as many kids as you want represent how primitive our civilization really is.

We are incredibly ineffective at doling out scarce resources or pricing in externalities.

I just don't expect humanity to get a handle on it for another 100 years at least. I'd say that, right now, we can't.