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The argument for gun control has never been that criminals will just obey the gun control laws. The point is, and has always been, and will always be, to reduc

The argument for gun control has never been that criminals will just obey the gun control laws. The point is, and has always been, and will always be, to reduce the number of guns available. Fewer guns === fewer shootings. Axiomatic. Of course, it's substantially easier said than done. But the mechanism by which gun control reduces gun crimes really doesn't require any criminal to spontaneously follow the law for some reason. It's a public-health measure, like vaccinating kids.

jeffdavis 8y ago
"Fewer guns === fewer shootings. Axiomatic." That's not an axiom. Left as an exercise: find a subset of guns such that, if they were destroyed, is likely to increase the number of shootings.
- abrahamepton 8y ago
  Yes, I would argue it is in fact an axiom: a statement that is regarded as being established or self-evidently true. Since basically all of the evidence we have available to us suggests that fewer guns lead to fewer shootings, and more guns lead to more shootings; since the only real objections to that logic are rather contrived "find the subset of guns such that removing them leads to more shootings" logical toys with little if any foundation in the real world; and since it's, I mean, just clearly correct - I'm curious why you think such a proposition is not obviously true. Clearly there is a debate about the effectiveness of gun control in America, the one country on the planet that has yet to make up its mind about this. However, I would suggest that such a debate is not being carried out in good faith.
  - 21 8y ago
    > more guns lead to more shootings If only it was so simple: > Switzerland hasn't had a mass shooting since 2001, when a man stormed the local parliament in Zug, killing 14 people and then himself. > The country has about 2 million privately owned guns in a nation of 8.3 million people. In 2016, the country had 47 homicides with firearms. The country's overall murder rate is near zero. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/switzerland-high-rates-gun-ownership-why-doesnt-no-mass-shootings-a8230606.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/switzerlan...
    - abrahamepton 8y ago
      Oh hey look: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-an... So: Switzerland vs "the United States and across high-income countries"; Switzerland vs "data from 26 developed countries from the early 1990s"; Switzerland vs "across 50 states over a ten-year period (1988-1997)"; Switzerland vs "across states, 2001-2003"; Switzerland vs "In high gun states, LEOs are 3 times more likely to be murdered than LEOs working in low-gun states." So. It is pretty simple: Switzerland, as in basically every other aspect of its existence, is an outlier. Social science is not the same thing as mathematical theory, I grant you, and so what is axiomatic in the world is not necessarily as tidy as what is axiomatic in the middle of proving a theorem. Nevertheless: the evidence is clear that more guns lead to more shootings. The evidence is overwhelmingly clear on this common-sense point, and there's no particularly compelling counterexample since, again, Switzerland is quite unlike the United States in many ways. So: it is an axiom that more guns lead to more shootings. Except, perhaps, for the Swiss.
  - jeffdavis 8y ago
    Calling something an axiom (when it's not) dismisses any nuance and leads to bad policies, even if it's "mostly true". "More cars === more global warming" is mostly true, but might lead to really bad policies if taken too strictly. For instance, someone might make new cars illegal, which would prevent us from taking advantage of more efficient or more electric cars thta actually help the situation.
    - abrahamepton 8y ago
      I grant you that oversimplification can be a problem. However, I would argue that we're not particularly oversimplifying here. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-an... sums up the overwhelming amount of literature demonstrating the obvious point I'm making quite nicely. Social science is not the same thing as a pure mathematical theorem, so in that sense, an axiom in the social sciences is not as tidy as an axiom in a mathematical context. Nevertheless, I think the weight of evidence makes pretty clear that more guns === more shootings. I'm willing to compromise and say that it is not technically an axiom, but instead a well-established fact, if that makes you feel any better. But I think the far greater danger we face is people obfuscating simple truths because their political agendas require it. Rather than just letting "more guns === more shootings" slide, we're getting into an extended back and forth here, that kiiiinda obscures the fact that the overwhelming amount of evidence is on my side. And the consequences of this, as opposed to your odd hypothetical where we take gun control TOO seriously in the US, are clear: more people will die. I'm sorry to be blunt, but, there you have it.
    - abrahamepton 8y ago
      By the way, the initial point I was (perhaps inartfully) trying to make was that "more guns === more shootings" in part because there are lots of types of shootings. Accidents and suicides, mainly. Those are incredibly common, and simply reducing the availability of guns is a fabulous way of decreasing both.
- CompanionCuuube 8y ago
  { x is all firearms in the custody of law enforcement } Done in one.
benjohnson 8y ago
>>Fewer guns === fewer shootings. Axiomatic. No way is that axiomatic: What room would you rather be in: 100 people in a room, each with a gun. One person is Hitler. 100 people in a room, only one person has a gun and it's Hitler. What your theory is missing is that often the intent of the person with a gun matters much more than the gun itself.
- abrahamepton 8y ago
  Oh my god. This is so dumb that I'm almost compelled to frame it and put it on a wall. Let me know when you decide to join us in the real world, with real problems, where the statement "fewer guns === fewer shootings" is in fact axiomatic. I am confident that it is, if for no other reason than the way you choose to "disprove" it is by asking me to imagine a room with 100 people and Hitler in it. Like, if that's the best you got...it's a fucking axiom, my dude. Be better.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    > Let me know when you decide to join us in the real world, with real problems, where the statement "fewer guns === fewer shootings" is in fact axiomatic. That may not be the real world. In fact, all you've supplied so far is your repeated assertion that it is. Maybe you should be better - like, supply something that looks like evidence rather than just assertion. > I am confident that it is, if for no other reason than the way you choose to "disprove" it is by asking me to imagine a room with 100 people and Hitler in it. Like, if that's the best you got...it's a fucking axiom, my dude. No. That's one person's one counterargument is something that you consider to be way out there. That does not make your assertion an axiom. It makes it an assertion with a counter-argument that you consider to be bogus, and that's all. And: "my dude"? Really? Being smug and condescending doesn't make you more convincing; it just means you're acting like a jerk.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 8y ago
    Please don't break the site guidelines just because someone else did. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jeffdavis 8y ago

"Fewer guns === fewer shootings. Axiomatic." That's not an axiom. Left as an exercise: find a subset of guns such that, if they were destroyed, is likely to increase the number of shootings.

abrahamepton 8y ago
Yes, I would argue it is in fact an axiom: a statement that is regarded as being established or self-evidently true. Since basically all of the evidence we have available to us suggests that fewer guns lead to fewer shootings, and more guns lead to more shootings; since the only real objections to that logic are rather contrived "find the subset of guns such that removing them leads to more shootings" logical toys with little if any foundation in the real world; and since it's, I mean, just clearly correct - I'm curious why you think such a proposition is not obviously true. Clearly there is a debate about the effectiveness of gun control in America, the one country on the planet that has yet to make up its mind about this. However, I would suggest that such a debate is not being carried out in good faith.
- 21 8y ago
  > more guns lead to more shootings If only it was so simple: > Switzerland hasn't had a mass shooting since 2001, when a man stormed the local parliament in Zug, killing 14 people and then himself. > The country has about 2 million privately owned guns in a nation of 8.3 million people. In 2016, the country had 47 homicides with firearms. The country's overall murder rate is near zero. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/switzerland-high-rates-gun-ownership-why-doesnt-no-mass-shootings-a8230606.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/switzerlan...
  - abrahamepton 8y ago
    Oh hey look: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-an... So: Switzerland vs "the United States and across high-income countries"; Switzerland vs "data from 26 developed countries from the early 1990s"; Switzerland vs "across 50 states over a ten-year period (1988-1997)"; Switzerland vs "across states, 2001-2003"; Switzerland vs "In high gun states, LEOs are 3 times more likely to be murdered than LEOs working in low-gun states." So. It is pretty simple: Switzerland, as in basically every other aspect of its existence, is an outlier. Social science is not the same thing as mathematical theory, I grant you, and so what is axiomatic in the world is not necessarily as tidy as what is axiomatic in the middle of proving a theorem. Nevertheless: the evidence is clear that more guns lead to more shootings. The evidence is overwhelmingly clear on this common-sense point, and there's no particularly compelling counterexample since, again, Switzerland is quite unlike the United States in many ways. So: it is an axiom that more guns lead to more shootings. Except, perhaps, for the Swiss.
- jeffdavis 8y ago
  Calling something an axiom (when it's not) dismisses any nuance and leads to bad policies, even if it's "mostly true". "More cars === more global warming" is mostly true, but might lead to really bad policies if taken too strictly. For instance, someone might make new cars illegal, which would prevent us from taking advantage of more efficient or more electric cars thta actually help the situation.
  - abrahamepton 8y ago
    I grant you that oversimplification can be a problem. However, I would argue that we're not particularly oversimplifying here. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-an... sums up the overwhelming amount of literature demonstrating the obvious point I'm making quite nicely. Social science is not the same thing as a pure mathematical theorem, so in that sense, an axiom in the social sciences is not as tidy as an axiom in a mathematical context. Nevertheless, I think the weight of evidence makes pretty clear that more guns === more shootings. I'm willing to compromise and say that it is not technically an axiom, but instead a well-established fact, if that makes you feel any better. But I think the far greater danger we face is people obfuscating simple truths because their political agendas require it. Rather than just letting "more guns === more shootings" slide, we're getting into an extended back and forth here, that kiiiinda obscures the fact that the overwhelming amount of evidence is on my side. And the consequences of this, as opposed to your odd hypothetical where we take gun control TOO seriously in the US, are clear: more people will die. I'm sorry to be blunt, but, there you have it.
  - abrahamepton 8y ago
    By the way, the initial point I was (perhaps inartfully) trying to make was that "more guns === more shootings" in part because there are lots of types of shootings. Accidents and suicides, mainly. Those are incredibly common, and simply reducing the availability of guns is a fabulous way of decreasing both.
CompanionCuuube 8y ago
{ x is all firearms in the custody of law enforcement } Done in one.

benjohnson 8y ago

>>Fewer guns === fewer shootings. Axiomatic. No way is that axiomatic: What room would you rather be in: 100 people in a room, each with a gun. One person is Hitler. 100 people in a room, only one person has a gun and it's Hitler. What your theory is missing is that often the intent of the person with a gun matters much more than the gun itself.

abrahamepton 8y ago
Oh my god. This is so dumb that I'm almost compelled to frame it and put it on a wall. Let me know when you decide to join us in the real world, with real problems, where the statement "fewer guns === fewer shootings" is in fact axiomatic. I am confident that it is, if for no other reason than the way you choose to "disprove" it is by asking me to imagine a room with 100 people and Hitler in it. Like, if that's the best you got...it's a fucking axiom, my dude. Be better.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  > Let me know when you decide to join us in the real world, with real problems, where the statement "fewer guns === fewer shootings" is in fact axiomatic. That may not be the real world. In fact, all you've supplied so far is your repeated assertion that it is. Maybe you should be better - like, supply something that looks like evidence rather than just assertion. > I am confident that it is, if for no other reason than the way you choose to "disprove" it is by asking me to imagine a room with 100 people and Hitler in it. Like, if that's the best you got...it's a fucking axiom, my dude. No. That's one person's one counterargument is something that you consider to be way out there. That does not make your assertion an axiom. It makes it an assertion with a counter-argument that you consider to be bogus, and that's all. And: "my dude"? Really? Being smug and condescending doesn't make you more convincing; it just means you're acting like a jerk.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't break the site guidelines just because someone else did. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html