[drenvuk]

this is heart breaking. just a while ago there was a child shot while being driven down 880 in the bay area when some people were shooting at each other while driving. he wasn't even on the same side of the highway.

these kinds of incidents shouldn't be possible.

[babyshake]

You can say guns don't kill people, people kill people. But people without guns cannot knife the passenger of another vehicle on the highway or stab 15 people to death within a couple minutes.

[amscanne]

I’m not making a commentary on guns, but there are lots of ways that people can be insanely stupid and reckless and end innocent bystanders lives. Talking about highways made me think of this one immediately: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Interstate_75_rock-thro...

[ceejayoz]

That's really missing the point.

[amscanne]

Is it? I always felt that whole argument was reductive. It seems obvious that for the most part people kill people, and that guns make that easier/worse. Why belabor that point?

[yason]

The gun factor makes it so much easier to wound and kill multiple people with outcomes that are order(s) of magnitude worse that just that alone overshadows any "people kill people" fundaments in the equation.

If you're not allowed (or it's made legally risky enough) to shoot lethal projectiles around, near instantly, and to targets who are merely within a line of sight or just close by then your ability to harm and kill multiple people are heavily bounded by your ability to physically chase and catch individuals. It takes time to exert violence so even if you manage to attack one person the others will use the time for fleeing away. You really have to be busy if you try to implement even a fraction of a mass shooting with a knife.

Similarly, knives, fists, batons, and axes keep the damage very local. Even if the astrophysicist's neighbour had stabbed some poor soul thirty times in an adjacent apartment the tragedy would have been mostly contained in the crime scene. Bullets fly far and they fly through, expanding the potential crime scene like what just happened there.

Guns turn any situation into a whole another level of danger which is the reason most sane countries have regulated gun accessibility, penalised gun usage, and implemented emergency and judicial response to the point where most criminals don't want to use or carry guns because doing so turns minor risks into show-stopping ones. It could be argued that criminals might often be stupid but even criminals aren't that stupid.

[amscanne]

> If you're not allowed (or it's made legally risky enough) to shoot lethal projectiles around…

I’m quite certain that you’re not allowed to do this, so you’re setting up a straw man here.

> Guns turn any situation into a whole another level of danger which is the reason most sane countries have regulated gun accessibility, penalised gun usage, and implemented emergency and judicial response to the point where most criminals don't want to use or carry guns because doing so turns minor risks into show-stopping ones. It could be argued that criminals might often be stupid but even criminals aren't that stupid.

It’s possible that the guns in this case were illegal, and I’m quite sure there are steep penalties for being caught with such weapons. Many criminals are that stupid (case in point: firing guns randomly).

The reason this is reductive is because the argument you are making seems to be “more gun control would have solved this”. I’m not at all opposed to gun control, I just think this is probably more complicated and I’d like to understand exactly why it helps. E.g. why is the problem 10x what it is in Canada, but gun ownership is nowhere near 10x?

[dpark]

> It seems obvious that for the most part people kill people, and that guns make that easier/worse. Why belabor that point?

Because it’s disingenuous to say “guns don’t kill people” if they increase death rate by a factor of 100x. Your rock throwing example killed two people over a span of months. Guns sadly kill dozens in minutes pretty regularly.

Interestingly very few of the people claiming “guns don’t kill people” think we should allow private ownership of atomic weapons, even though the same logic applies.

[amscanne]

I didn’t say the things that are reading into my words and quoting. No sane person would dispute that guns kill people in pure mechanical terms, I just don’t think reinforcing or debating that point is helpful in diagnosing the root causes of gun violence or the right policies, just as debating “cars kill people” would provide any meaningful advancement in traffic safety.

[ceejayoz]

> Is it?

Yes.

> Why belabor that point?

Why appear to not understand it?

[threatofrain]

Also we probably wouldn't have like 60 people killed and an additional 411 people wounded such as with Las Vegas. Or the Pulse Nightclub with 49 people dead and 53 wounded. Each by 1 person.

[ceejayoz]

There were an additional 456 wounded in Las Vegas in the stampede, too.

The guy hit ~470 people with actual gunfire. On his own.

[spaceflunky]

Innocent bystanders can be stabbed in knife attacks. Can and does happen

[ceejayoz]

When's the last time a single knife attacker killed 60 and stabbed another 411? In a span of ten minutes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting

[spaceflunky]

Never said knives were less dangerous than guns just that an assailant swinging a knife can do damage, but if your argument is that if get rid of guns we can get rid of mass killings, then may I direct your attention to the 86 people who were killed by a truck.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack

[ceejayoz]

We regulate trucks more heavily than we regulate guns in the US, and the cost/benefit analysis is substantially different.

Truck driving has a minimum age, a licensing requirement, registration of the vehicle, often annual inspections of it, etc., in part because we recognize their potential for danger in the wrong hands. Very much not the case for gun use.

[rasengan]

The pain the parents must be feeling is unimaginable and will never heal. This is an example of failure of society -- you give up freedoms to gain securities, but then these securities aren't delivered and you are left upset why the system has failed you, but you have not the freedom to do anything about it.

[Game_Ender]

The funny thing is, that in the United States we give up the day to day security of living in a society with fewer guns and much less gun violence because of the freedom citizens have to own guns.

I am not saying it really feasible to change the approach in the United States, but it's not really honest to claim that widespread firearms ownership does not have costs. The simple way to think about it is that it decreases the marginal cost, and increases the impact, of many things like suicides, and senseless rampages.