6 ms·

Acid Attacks on the Rise in the U.K

40 points by zeristor 9y ago

nolepointer 9y ago
I'm sure it has nothing to do with liberal immigration policies.
- zeristor 9y ago
  Personally I think this may be down to the inability to get hold of guns. Knife crime is up as well, and knives and acid are far easier to get than guns. I have no evidence for this, and no doubt people will correct me; but this is all very off putting.
  - kevinSuttle 9y ago
    You’re not wrong.
  - xxxdarrenxxx 9y ago
    With modern forensics knife wounds can be analyzed to give leads on which type of knife used. If the attackers are caught and or the knife is found it can contain dna/fingerprints from either party to link the crime to the suspect. Acid however by it's nature is "clean" in this regard.
    - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
      Well, investigators could find a container that had contained the type of acid used in the attack, and lift prints and/or DNA from that, couldn't they? Is there any reason why that's harder than finding the knife, and finding prints or DNA on it?
  - scrollaway 9y ago
    Adding guns to the equation just adds more weapons available to both attackers and victims. Victims don't carry around weapons to defend themselves right now, if they were able to get hold of a gun that wouldn't change. Essentially the only thing that changes is on the attacker's side; great, so now you've added guns to that equation. Well, if you do that, then I guess you also need to arm the police. Most police force in the UK is not firearmed (the UK has a strong notion that the police are civilians in uniform), but if you're giving more tools to attackers, the police will need to respond in kind. So effectively, by adding guns, you've done nothing to prevent acid attacks and you made it so that the police making a mistake can end a life. Edit: I misinterpreted the parent comment!
    - tedsuo 9y ago
      I'm not sure that the person you're responding to is advocating for guns. They are just pointing out that violent people don't stop being violent just because guns are removed from the picture. For example, handguns and other concealable weapons were almost non-existent in Australia when I was living there. As a side effect, there were a lot of fistfights; far more than I've ever seen at equivalent bars/pubs in the US. That sucked, but I still found it preferable to being shot/mugged at gunpoint. Likewise, acid attacks are terrible, and there are possibly more of them since guns and knives are less accessible. Doesn't mean that overall things are worse because of the ban.
      - zeristor 9y ago
        Indeed, grim as it may be, acid attacks are better than gun crime.
- objclxt 9y ago
  Didn't bother reading the article, did we? > Acid attacks in the U.K. actually date back to before Victorian times. > Most of the attacks in the U.K. are random > The man who attacked him, 29-year-old Michael McPherson Damn those liberal immigration policies for enabling a white man with a Scottish surname to carry out an acid attack.
- dang 9y ago
  Since you promised to use this site as intended and now have flagrantly broken the rules, we've re-banned this account. All: the rules are at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Please imbibe their spirit and stick to it when commenting here.
nielsbot 9y ago
Could people conceivably keep a package of baking soda or calcium carbonate with them? would that be an effective on-the-spot antidote? Hmm or maybe get to the nearest kiosk and get some alka seltzer...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- zzazzdsa 9y ago
  Potentially, but the neutralization of sulfuric acid releases a ton of heat (sometimes enough to crack glassware). By neutralizing the sulfuric acid without giving the heat anywhere to dissipate, you might just end up making things worse. Also, as a small unrelated note, I doubt calcium carbonate would work well for neutralizing sulfuric acid-- the calcium sulfate formed is for the most part insoluble and stops the reaction.
- parshimers 9y ago
  Best thing would probably be a lot of water. Here's a video of someone willingly pouring 98% sulfuric acid onto their hand, they just wash it off: https://youtu.be/XeVZQoJ5FdE?t=284 https://youtu.be/XeVZQoJ5FdE?t=284 . Plus, if someone pours a random liquid onto you, it's kind of hard to know if it's water, acid, lye...
  - dEnigma 9y ago
    I was about to say that adding water would be bad in the case of lye, but after some research it seems I was wrong. Probably watched/read "Fight Club" too often. Apparently using an acid like vinegar to neutralize lye is more painful than flushing with water and creates a lot of heat because of the strong reaction.[1,2] So the recommendation actually is to just flush with water for 15 minutes.[3] [1]http://itonlyadds.blogspot.co.at/2012/08/on-chemical-burns-vinegar-and-liquefied.html http://itonlyadds.blogspot.co.at/2012/08/on-chemical-burns-v... [2]https://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/back-to-basics-lye-safety-guide/ https://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-t... [3]http://www.certified-lye.com/MSDS-Lye.pdf http://www.certified-lye.com/MSDS-Lye.pdf
SamUK96 9y ago
If anyone wonders why, it is because the UK over here has a little legal loophole where carrying acid in any reasonable (non-truckload) amount is not in any way a criminal or incriminating act, where-as guns, knives, and loads of other things are. What is sad is it's taking so long for policians to wake up and realise that some non-scientist carrying a huge jug of acid in a backpack is kinda obviously incriminating...
- bronz 9y ago
  so carrying a shopping bag with domestic drain cleaner inside is obviously incriminating? and carrying a shopping bag with a new knife set is incriminating?
  - Strom 9y ago
    If you're young, in an area with frequent attacks, moving with a gang, and not on a trajectory from the store to the location of your claimed clogged drain, then yes, I'd say it's pretty incriminating. Street officers are usually pretty experienced and capable of making a judgement whether this should be looked into further. If needed, the evidence and circumstances can be reviwed in court. It's not an all or nothing situation. We're capable of nuance.
bronz 9y ago
it is interesting how this topic intersects with gun control and society at large. the solution to this acid attack problem is the same as the solution to a gun violence or knife violence problem: somehow reduce the number of violent nothing-to-lose people that are on the streets. and the number one way to do that is to structure society in a way that gives children a safe and productive environment, and in a way that makes good behaviour much more profitable than bad behaviour. with current public schools and current job prospects, it is no surprise that their society has come to the point of considering a ban on domestic drain cleaner. if you have a well structured society, then eventually it will be filled with good people. and a society full of good people has no need for bans on guns or draino. i think that we could come closer to that vision simply by reaching out to a child in your area and teaching them something.
- darawk 9y ago
  Do you think that a well structured society has no need for a ban on nuclear weapons? If not, how do you draw the conclusion that such a ban is unneeded for guns?
  - bronz 9y ago
    this is an excellent observation and it is actually the point of nucleation from which my current point of view was spawned. one can imagine a kind of scale that could be used to rate an individual person. left to their own devices, in many, many different scenarios, what kind of behaviour does that person exhibit? maybe the scale could be non-violent to violent or un-productive to productive. it is tempting to abandon the idea of "rating" people because people are complex, and their behaviour changes depending on the situation and various other factors. but there are examples that show that such a scale is useful. but we all know, anecdotally, that people can be rated on such a scale. people who benefit from great parents and mentors, who had excellent educations, had excellent nutrition and so on, reside on the more positive end of the scale. so the people are the building blocks from which a society is built. everything in that society is a function of the people. so it is possible to assess a given society on a similar scale to the people: a certain society that has a certain distribution of certain kinds of people will experience certain outcomes. let us imagine that we take a large sample of societies and subject them to this idea where everyone gets their own personal nuclear weapon. in fact, lets boil it down to its logical core: let us imagine that every single person in society is given a button. if they press the button, the entire society will be instantly destroyed. they are all aware of this when they get their button. on one extreme side of the scale or spectrum, a society filled with extremely smart, well educated, well adjusted and emotionally healthy people who all have great jobs and lives, in other words a properly structured society filled with very good people, not a single instance of button pressing would occur. you could in fact give each person the power to end the world and the world would go on unharmed. this is the goal. it can never be achieved because sometimes people go insane or have a bad break up or what have you, but its no different than an electronic device trying to use power as efficiently as possible: electronics strive for zero power consumption and societies should strive to reach the point where the aforementioned scenario is possible. now we look at the real world. we see that gun control, voting, and all kinds of other things are actually the same thing: different ways in which citizens are trusted or not trusted with power. we see that in a healthy democracy or republic, the vote is far more powerful than the gun. we see that any healthy democracy or republic requires that its citizens are up to the task of handling power responsibly. and i think that if you agree with all the previous statements, you agree that much of the western world is in a lot of trouble right now. and say that without even the smallest shred of arrogance or snobbery. so, this leads to a very interesting consideration of the limits of power that the citizens of the united states or the united kingdom might handle before something bad happened. and it is also fun to consider what the maximum amount of power the citizens are capable of handling after some kind of focused effort to make them ready. how much power could they handle if schools and jobs and everything were made better? what is the best outcome we might hope to achieve? so the answer to your questions is that no, individuals probably shouldnt have nukes but they could probably handle some really dangerous stuff like chemical weapons or heavy machine guns if you just gave them the tools they need.
driverdan 9y ago
> British retailers are now talking about licensing the purchase of sulfuric acid. Banning or controlling something that could be used as a weapon is not the solution. As has been already demonstrated by controlling firearms and knives, criminals will just find an alternative.
- artursapek 9y ago
  Really? I think making guns extremely hard to get has been pretty good for NYC.
  - zzazzdsa 9y ago
    Guns aren't a major industrial commodity chemical with hundreds if not thousands of valid non-violent civil uses, however...
  - synicalx 9y ago
    I'd be more inclined to blame the reduction in violent crime in NYC on it's staggering large and well-equipped police force. If a criminal really wanted a gun in NYC, they probably aren't going to obtain one legally so making them harder to get only creates a minor inconvenience.
- synicalx 9y ago
  "Better apply for a gun licence and do my 3 weeks of training before I hold up that petrol station." - Said no one ever.
alpsgolden 9y ago
A key question here is what has changed to make these attacks more prevalent. One possibility is it is related to immigration and changing demographics. The area with the most acid attacks by far, Newham ( http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/acid-attack-capital-britain-revealed-10008792 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/acid-attack-capital-bri... ) is also very immigrant heavy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Borough_of_Newham#Demography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Borough_of_Newham#Demog... ). In this NPR article, the example is of a guy with a white/British name attacking someone of middle eastern heritage -- but I know from experience on news coverage in my own region that NPR cannot be trusted on racial issues to select anecdotes that match the real patterns of behavior. Do any of the Brits here have any more insight on how immigration and changing demographics might be related to these attacks?
- hmmmmn 9y ago
  There really is no need to pollute HN with your alt-right dogwhistling.
  - BanMeAndWin 9y ago
    Member of open-minded community that values data, science, evidence, citations, and proof dismisses strongly correlated conclusion due to ideological insubordination, news at eleven.
    - mcrocop 9y ago
      There is a correlation between the % of Muslim population and # of acid attacks. This could be interpreted different ways (i.e. perhaps Muslims are being targeted by others?)... But to call someone's viewpoint alt-right dogwhistle because they bring up the other obvious possibility is close-minded and is what leads to these sorts of problems in the first place.
      - Latty 9y ago
        > There is a correlation between the % of Muslim population and # of acid attacks. I haven't seen that stated, let alone proven - can you back up that statement?
rdtsc 9y ago
> He says assailants use acid today for many of the same reasons as they did in Victorian times: Ok but there is a recent rise. Why the recent rise? I heard that it's because guns are banned. But that didn't happen just in the last few years. So did acid become cheaper to purchase or gun and knifes got harsher penalties recently. Wonder if there is sort of a copycat thing going on, people hear about it and some say "Oh my, how horrible" maybe the criminals are saying "Yeah, good idea, look how horrified everyone is. I know what I am using next time I am going on a rampage". What about parts of UK. Where are these attacks happening? Financial district, suburbs, drug trafficking areas, maybe that might provide a hint on the underlying reason.
Camillo 9y ago
There is a rich literature on culture-bound syndromes [0], but the same phenomenon is visible in certain criminal behaviors. To state it succinctly, crimes can be memes. In the US, for instance, the school shooting is a meme: it's just what you do when you are massively angry at society and want to take revenge on it. Previously, "going postal" [1] was a meme amongst angry postal workers. In Italy, several years ago, there was a string of incidents of rocks being thrown from highway overpasses, striking cars. The government reacted by numbering all overpasses to make reporting easier, but AFAIK what really kept it from becoming a meme was an informal agreement with the media to relegate such news to small articles in the inner pages. When this was done, the number of imitators quickly petered out, and the meme disappeared. As for acid attacks, this is a meme that came from south-east Asia (e.g. Pakistan), where it was endemic a few decades ago. It spread to the UK due to its large population of immigrants from those countries, and for a while it was mostly confined within the Asian (in the UK sense) community, but it has now spread into the general population. This is clearly an unpleasant observation, but it is quite obvious if you have paid attention to the crime news over the last few decades. I remember acid attacks in the UK making the international news when I was a child. Back then they followed what the NPR article calls the "global pattern" ("males attacking young women and girls, relating to rejected sexual advances or marriage proposals or dowry-related attacks"), and the attackers were not native Britons. But if we could look at detailed statistics for this crime, I bet we would see both an increase in prevalence, and an increase in the percentage of British perpetrators. It is very tempting to ascribe these criminal memes to purely non-cultural factors, such as the availability of firearms in the US, and their limited availability in the UK, but it does not really work. School shootings were not always as prevalent in the US as they are now [2], nor is their prevalence proportional to that of guns across countries [3]; rocks and overpasses still exist in Italy [citation needed]; and the availability of acid in the UK has not increased relative to other cheap instruments of harm (e.g. knives, hammers), nor relative to other countries. BTW, the fact that acid attacks existed in Victorian times (but how common were they?) has no bearing on any of this. A meme can die out in a place and later be reintroduced from another source, just as a living organism can (e.g. horses in America). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture-bound_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture-bound_syndrome [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_postal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_postal [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#cite_note-nyr20151019-40 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#cite_note-nyr2... [3]: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/small-arms-survey-countries-with-the-most-guns-1.3392204 http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/small-arms-survey-countries-wit...
swang 9y ago
it is really sad that the first thing that comes up with this issue is, "omg immigrants are causing this" vs, why this crime is actually happening. this article points to a case of someone who most likely isn't an immigrant yet that is the first thing people rush to. edit: according to the wikipedia page, a disproportionate number of the attacks using acid are against women. why not talk about that instead?
- Latty 9y ago
  Just like the Jews in post WW1 Germany, it's great (from a certain point of view) to have some group you can point at and blame everything on. Much easier than actually addressing problems and gives people targets to hate. The UK has been using immigrants, and by extension the EU, in that role for a long time. (To be clear, I think this is wrong, but it's definitely how it is.)
- Strom 9y ago
  Did you actually read the article? It says that two-thirds of the victims in Britain are men while, globally, most are women. It's not about women in the UK.
  - dang 9y ago
    Would you please read the site guidelines and follow them when commenting here? Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - Strom 9y ago
      I find it amusing that you didn't shorten this to "The site guidelines mention that". If I would have written Would you please read the article instead of asking if they had read it, would that be ok, or do you reserve that right to yourself only? I will try to refrain from asking people if they have read anything. I've read the guidelines several times before, but this specific prohibition just slipped my mind. Your comment does feel effectively the same though.
marojejian 9y ago
Why was this flagged?

40 points by zeristor 9y ago

nolepointer 9y ago

I'm sure it has nothing to do with liberal immigration policies.

zeristor 9y ago
Personally I think this may be down to the inability to get hold of guns. Knife crime is up as well, and knives and acid are far easier to get than guns. I have no evidence for this, and no doubt people will correct me; but this is all very off putting.
- kevinSuttle 9y ago
  You’re not wrong.
- xxxdarrenxxx 9y ago
  With modern forensics knife wounds can be analyzed to give leads on which type of knife used. If the attackers are caught and or the knife is found it can contain dna/fingerprints from either party to link the crime to the suspect. Acid however by it's nature is "clean" in this regard.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    Well, investigators could find a container that had contained the type of acid used in the attack, and lift prints and/or DNA from that, couldn't they? Is there any reason why that's harder than finding the knife, and finding prints or DNA on it?
- scrollaway 9y ago
  Adding guns to the equation just adds more weapons available to both attackers and victims. Victims don't carry around weapons to defend themselves right now, if they were able to get hold of a gun that wouldn't change. Essentially the only thing that changes is on the attacker's side; great, so now you've added guns to that equation. Well, if you do that, then I guess you also need to arm the police. Most police force in the UK is not firearmed (the UK has a strong notion that the police are civilians in uniform), but if you're giving more tools to attackers, the police will need to respond in kind. So effectively, by adding guns, you've done nothing to prevent acid attacks and you made it so that the police making a mistake can end a life. Edit: I misinterpreted the parent comment!
  - tedsuo 9y ago
    I'm not sure that the person you're responding to is advocating for guns. They are just pointing out that violent people don't stop being violent just because guns are removed from the picture. For example, handguns and other concealable weapons were almost non-existent in Australia when I was living there. As a side effect, there were a lot of fistfights; far more than I've ever seen at equivalent bars/pubs in the US. That sucked, but I still found it preferable to being shot/mugged at gunpoint. Likewise, acid attacks are terrible, and there are possibly more of them since guns and knives are less accessible. Doesn't mean that overall things are worse because of the ban.
    - zeristor 9y ago
      Indeed, grim as it may be, acid attacks are better than gun crime.
objclxt 9y ago
Didn't bother reading the article, did we? > Acid attacks in the U.K. actually date back to before Victorian times. > Most of the attacks in the U.K. are random > The man who attacked him, 29-year-old Michael McPherson Damn those liberal immigration policies for enabling a white man with a Scottish surname to carry out an acid attack.
dang 9y ago
Since you promised to use this site as intended and now have flagrantly broken the rules, we've re-banned this account. All: the rules are at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Please imbibe their spirit and stick to it when commenting here.

nielsbot 9y ago

Could people conceivably keep a package of baking soda or calcium carbonate with them? would that be an effective on-the-spot antidote? Hmm or maybe get to the nearest kiosk and get some alka seltzer...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
zzazzdsa 9y ago
Potentially, but the neutralization of sulfuric acid releases a ton of heat (sometimes enough to crack glassware). By neutralizing the sulfuric acid without giving the heat anywhere to dissipate, you might just end up making things worse. Also, as a small unrelated note, I doubt calcium carbonate would work well for neutralizing sulfuric acid-- the calcium sulfate formed is for the most part insoluble and stops the reaction.
parshimers 9y ago
Best thing would probably be a lot of water. Here's a video of someone willingly pouring 98% sulfuric acid onto their hand, they just wash it off: https://youtu.be/XeVZQoJ5FdE?t=284 https://youtu.be/XeVZQoJ5FdE?t=284 . Plus, if someone pours a random liquid onto you, it's kind of hard to know if it's water, acid, lye...
- dEnigma 9y ago
  I was about to say that adding water would be bad in the case of lye, but after some research it seems I was wrong. Probably watched/read "Fight Club" too often. Apparently using an acid like vinegar to neutralize lye is more painful than flushing with water and creates a lot of heat because of the strong reaction.[1,2] So the recommendation actually is to just flush with water for 15 minutes.[3] [1]http://itonlyadds.blogspot.co.at/2012/08/on-chemical-burns-vinegar-and-liquefied.html http://itonlyadds.blogspot.co.at/2012/08/on-chemical-burns-v... [2]https://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/back-to-basics-lye-safety-guide/ https://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-t... [3]http://www.certified-lye.com/MSDS-Lye.pdf http://www.certified-lye.com/MSDS-Lye.pdf

SamUK96 9y ago

If anyone wonders why, it is because the UK over here has a little legal loophole where carrying acid in any reasonable (non-truckload) amount is not in any way a criminal or incriminating act, where-as guns, knives, and loads of other things are. What is sad is it's taking so long for policians to wake up and realise that some non-scientist carrying a huge jug of acid in a backpack is kinda obviously incriminating...

bronz 9y ago
so carrying a shopping bag with domestic drain cleaner inside is obviously incriminating? and carrying a shopping bag with a new knife set is incriminating?
- Strom 9y ago
  If you're young, in an area with frequent attacks, moving with a gang, and not on a trajectory from the store to the location of your claimed clogged drain, then yes, I'd say it's pretty incriminating. Street officers are usually pretty experienced and capable of making a judgement whether this should be looked into further. If needed, the evidence and circumstances can be reviwed in court. It's not an all or nothing situation. We're capable of nuance.

bronz 9y ago

it is interesting how this topic intersects with gun control and society at large. the solution to this acid attack problem is the same as the solution to a gun violence or knife violence problem: somehow reduce the number of violent nothing-to-lose people that are on the streets. and the number one way to do that is to structure society in a way that gives children a safe and productive environment, and in a way that makes good behaviour much more profitable than bad behaviour. with current public schools and current job prospects, it is no surprise that their society has come to the point of considering a ban on domestic drain cleaner. if you have a well structured society, then eventually it will be filled with good people. and a society full of good people has no need for bans on guns or draino. i think that we could come closer to that vision simply by reaching out to a child in your area and teaching them something.

darawk 9y ago
Do you think that a well structured society has no need for a ban on nuclear weapons? If not, how do you draw the conclusion that such a ban is unneeded for guns?
- bronz 9y ago
  this is an excellent observation and it is actually the point of nucleation from which my current point of view was spawned. one can imagine a kind of scale that could be used to rate an individual person. left to their own devices, in many, many different scenarios, what kind of behaviour does that person exhibit? maybe the scale could be non-violent to violent or un-productive to productive. it is tempting to abandon the idea of "rating" people because people are complex, and their behaviour changes depending on the situation and various other factors. but there are examples that show that such a scale is useful. but we all know, anecdotally, that people can be rated on such a scale. people who benefit from great parents and mentors, who had excellent educations, had excellent nutrition and so on, reside on the more positive end of the scale. so the people are the building blocks from which a society is built. everything in that society is a function of the people. so it is possible to assess a given society on a similar scale to the people: a certain society that has a certain distribution of certain kinds of people will experience certain outcomes. let us imagine that we take a large sample of societies and subject them to this idea where everyone gets their own personal nuclear weapon. in fact, lets boil it down to its logical core: let us imagine that every single person in society is given a button. if they press the button, the entire society will be instantly destroyed. they are all aware of this when they get their button. on one extreme side of the scale or spectrum, a society filled with extremely smart, well educated, well adjusted and emotionally healthy people who all have great jobs and lives, in other words a properly structured society filled with very good people, not a single instance of button pressing would occur. you could in fact give each person the power to end the world and the world would go on unharmed. this is the goal. it can never be achieved because sometimes people go insane or have a bad break up or what have you, but its no different than an electronic device trying to use power as efficiently as possible: electronics strive for zero power consumption and societies should strive to reach the point where the aforementioned scenario is possible. now we look at the real world. we see that gun control, voting, and all kinds of other things are actually the same thing: different ways in which citizens are trusted or not trusted with power. we see that in a healthy democracy or republic, the vote is far more powerful than the gun. we see that any healthy democracy or republic requires that its citizens are up to the task of handling power responsibly. and i think that if you agree with all the previous statements, you agree that much of the western world is in a lot of trouble right now. and say that without even the smallest shred of arrogance or snobbery. so, this leads to a very interesting consideration of the limits of power that the citizens of the united states or the united kingdom might handle before something bad happened. and it is also fun to consider what the maximum amount of power the citizens are capable of handling after some kind of focused effort to make them ready. how much power could they handle if schools and jobs and everything were made better? what is the best outcome we might hope to achieve? so the answer to your questions is that no, individuals probably shouldnt have nukes but they could probably handle some really dangerous stuff like chemical weapons or heavy machine guns if you just gave them the tools they need.

driverdan 9y ago

> British retailers are now talking about licensing the purchase of sulfuric acid. Banning or controlling something that could be used as a weapon is not the solution. As has been already demonstrated by controlling firearms and knives, criminals will just find an alternative.

artursapek 9y ago
Really? I think making guns extremely hard to get has been pretty good for NYC.
- zzazzdsa 9y ago
  Guns aren't a major industrial commodity chemical with hundreds if not thousands of valid non-violent civil uses, however...
- synicalx 9y ago
  I'd be more inclined to blame the reduction in violent crime in NYC on it's staggering large and well-equipped police force. If a criminal really wanted a gun in NYC, they probably aren't going to obtain one legally so making them harder to get only creates a minor inconvenience.
synicalx 9y ago
"Better apply for a gun licence and do my 3 weeks of training before I hold up that petrol station." - Said no one ever.

alpsgolden 9y ago

A key question here is what has changed to make these attacks more prevalent. One possibility is it is related to immigration and changing demographics. The area with the most acid attacks by far, Newham ( http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/acid-attack-capital-britain-revealed-10008792 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/acid-attack-capital-bri... ) is also very immigrant heavy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Borough_of_Newham#Demography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Borough_of_Newham#Demog... ). In this NPR article, the example is of a guy with a white/British name attacking someone of middle eastern heritage -- but I know from experience on news coverage in my own region that NPR cannot be trusted on racial issues to select anecdotes that match the real patterns of behavior. Do any of the Brits here have any more insight on how immigration and changing demographics might be related to these attacks?

hmmmmn 9y ago
There really is no need to pollute HN with your alt-right dogwhistling.
- BanMeAndWin 9y ago
  Member of open-minded community that values data, science, evidence, citations, and proof dismisses strongly correlated conclusion due to ideological insubordination, news at eleven.
  - mcrocop 9y ago
    There is a correlation between the % of Muslim population and # of acid attacks. This could be interpreted different ways (i.e. perhaps Muslims are being targeted by others?)... But to call someone's viewpoint alt-right dogwhistle because they bring up the other obvious possibility is close-minded and is what leads to these sorts of problems in the first place.
    - Latty 9y ago
      > There is a correlation between the % of Muslim population and # of acid attacks. I haven't seen that stated, let alone proven - can you back up that statement?

rdtsc 9y ago

> He says assailants use acid today for many of the same reasons as they did in Victorian times: Ok but there is a recent rise. Why the recent rise? I heard that it's because guns are banned. But that didn't happen just in the last few years. So did acid become cheaper to purchase or gun and knifes got harsher penalties recently. Wonder if there is sort of a copycat thing going on, people hear about it and some say "Oh my, how horrible" maybe the criminals are saying "Yeah, good idea, look how horrified everyone is. I know what I am using next time I am going on a rampage". What about parts of UK. Where are these attacks happening? Financial district, suburbs, drug trafficking areas, maybe that might provide a hint on the underlying reason.

Camillo 9y ago

There is a rich literature on culture-bound syndromes [0], but the same phenomenon is visible in certain criminal behaviors. To state it succinctly, crimes can be memes. In the US, for instance, the school shooting is a meme: it's just what you do when you are massively angry at society and want to take revenge on it. Previously, "going postal" [1] was a meme amongst angry postal workers. In Italy, several years ago, there was a string of incidents of rocks being thrown from highway overpasses, striking cars. The government reacted by numbering all overpasses to make reporting easier, but AFAIK what really kept it from becoming a meme was an informal agreement with the media to relegate such news to small articles in the inner pages. When this was done, the number of imitators quickly petered out, and the meme disappeared. As for acid attacks, this is a meme that came from south-east Asia (e.g. Pakistan), where it was endemic a few decades ago. It spread to the UK due to its large population of immigrants from those countries, and for a while it was mostly confined within the Asian (in the UK sense) community, but it has now spread into the general population. This is clearly an unpleasant observation, but it is quite obvious if you have paid attention to the crime news over the last few decades. I remember acid attacks in the UK making the international news when I was a child. Back then they followed what the NPR article calls the "global pattern" ("males attacking young women and girls, relating to rejected sexual advances or marriage proposals or dowry-related attacks"), and the attackers were not native Britons. But if we could look at detailed statistics for this crime, I bet we would see both an increase in prevalence, and an increase in the percentage of British perpetrators. It is very tempting to ascribe these criminal memes to purely non-cultural factors, such as the availability of firearms in the US, and their limited availability in the UK, but it does not really work. School shootings were not always as prevalent in the US as they are now [2], nor is their prevalence proportional to that of guns across countries [3]; rocks and overpasses still exist in Italy [citation needed]; and the availability of acid in the UK has not increased relative to other cheap instruments of harm (e.g. knives, hammers), nor relative to other countries. BTW, the fact that acid attacks existed in Victorian times (but how common were they?) has no bearing on any of this. A meme can die out in a place and later be reintroduced from another source, just as a living organism can (e.g. horses in America). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture-bound_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture-bound_syndrome [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_postal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_postal [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#cite_note-nyr20151019-40 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#cite_note-nyr2... [3]: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/small-arms-survey-countries-with-the-most-guns-1.3392204 http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/small-arms-survey-countries-wit...

swang 9y ago

it is really sad that the first thing that comes up with this issue is, "omg immigrants are causing this" vs, why this crime is actually happening. this article points to a case of someone who most likely isn't an immigrant yet that is the first thing people rush to. edit: according to the wikipedia page, a disproportionate number of the attacks using acid are against women. why not talk about that instead?

Latty 9y ago
Just like the Jews in post WW1 Germany, it's great (from a certain point of view) to have some group you can point at and blame everything on. Much easier than actually addressing problems and gives people targets to hate. The UK has been using immigrants, and by extension the EU, in that role for a long time. (To be clear, I think this is wrong, but it's definitely how it is.)
Strom 9y ago
Did you actually read the article? It says that two-thirds of the victims in Britain are men while, globally, most are women. It's not about women in the UK.
- dang 9y ago
  Would you please read the site guidelines and follow them when commenting here? Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - Strom 9y ago
    I find it amusing that you didn't shorten this to "The site guidelines mention that". If I would have written Would you please read the article instead of asking if they had read it, would that be ok, or do you reserve that right to yourself only? I will try to refrain from asking people if they have read anything. I've read the guidelines several times before, but this specific prohibition just slipped my mind. Your comment does feel effectively the same though.

marojejian 9y ago

Why was this flagged?