[zrail]

There's a monumental difference between a person working for years to secure a job that they know will barely ever pay a living wage so they can help educate kids and a person applying for a license to own a tool the express purpose of which is to end lives.

[salawat]

The express purpose pf a firearm is to contain a rapidly produced gas charge from a chemical explosive to acceperate a projectile out the barrel at high speed.

This high speed projectile happens to have mamy uses. Sporting, launch of flares or bean bags, propulsion of maritime ropes across gaps...

I really wish hoplophobes would actually put some effort into researching the history and uses of that which they fear. It can be quite therapeutic.

[legostormtroopr]

I'd claim that a single bad teacher can impact the lives of many more people than a single bad gun owner.

[car_analogy]

You've now switched to a different argument, but okay. You think the state doesn't have just as great an interest in vetting who is allowed to educate and look after children, as in who may own a gun? Do I have to link to the many stories of teachers found abusing students before you will stop pretending to not understand?

[dang]

Please don't cross into personal attack. We ban accounts that do that, and you can make your substantive points without it.

Please also don't use HN primarily for political/ideological battle. That's another line at which we ban accounts—it's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[anigbrowl]

Your link on background checks is kinda shallow, and while they may not be statutorily mandated it's a fair bet that they are checked informally. Also, teachers are effectively subject to constant ongoing supervisions via school boards, which are statutorily mandated, ubiquitous, and have high levels of parental participation.

Your abuse argument seems self-defeating. After all, there are no statutory requirements whatsoever to start a religious ministry, and most religious denominations seem to struggle with abuse and accountability issues.

Maybe you should reread the HN guidelines before accusing others of posting in bad faith, and try approaching discussion as conversation instead of combat.

[zrail]

I agree with you that the state has just as much right to vet teachers as it does gun permit seekers.

It's a massive difference of scale, however. There have been 135 teachers convicted of sexual misconduct in 2022 to date.

https://go2tutors.com/135-teachers-child-sex-crimes/

There have been 246 mass shootings in 2022 to date. More than 18,000 people have died from gun violence. To date. That data is from a month ago. Of course you might say that few of those were directly caused be people with concealed carry permits, but how many of them involved guns stolen from people who legally purchased?

https://www.insider.com/number-of-mass-shootingsin-america-t...

Your entire comparison is facetious. You seek to draw a parallel between educators teaching things you don't like and the deaths of eighteen thousand people. It's dishonest and unworthy of further debate.

[dang]

Your recent comments seem to be using HN for political/ideological battle. That's not in keeping with the intended spirit of the site, so can you please not do that?

It's inevitable and fine to comment occasionally on divisive topics, but the primary use of the site should be for intellectual curiosity. That's a very different thing from battle, and incompatible with it.

Your last paragraph stoops into name-calling and personal attack, which is definitely against the HN guidelines and not cool, regardless of how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit more to heart, we'd be grateful.

[zrail]

That's fair. My apologies.

[car_analogy]

> There have been 135 teachers convicted of sexual misconduct [..] More than 18,000 people have died from gun violence. To date. [..] you might say that few of those were directly caused be people with concealed carry permits

> It's a massive difference of scale, however.

If we're going to compare scale by looking at all gun homicides, shouldn't we also look at all rape?

There were 14,000 gun homicides in 2018 [1], and 431,000 rapes in 2015 [2]. 15% of rape victims are children (ages 12-17) [3], meaning 64,000 rapes/year of children alone, i.e. 4.6 child rapes for every homicide.

There's also [4], giving it was found that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee between 1991 and 2000. That's 29,000/year by public school teachers alone - equivalent to licensed, background-checked gun owners. Though it is not limited to rape, but all "physical sexual abuse".

Granted murder is worse than rape (and even more so for the vague "sexual abuse"), but I think the scale is comparable.

Speaking of scale, the scale of the countermeasure must also be taken into account. There are fewer teachers than gun owners in the US, so a requirement that only affects teachers is less imposing than one that affects all gun owners.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta... - Opening paragraph, deaths minus suicides

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States#Prev... - The 2016 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which measures sexual assaults and rapes that may not have been reported to the police, estimated that there were 431,840 incidents of rape or sexual assault in 2015.

[3] https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment_in_education...