11 ms·

Gun laws where guns take the most lives

128 points by egusa 8y ago

ouid 8y ago
> Small Arms Survey reported that in 2017, Mexico had 12.9 guns per 100 civilians, although of the 16,809,000 guns estimated in circulation in that year, only 3,118,592 were legally registered. >This high level of unregistered firearms has been attributed to Mexico’s proximity with the United States, as thousands of gun retailers sit just over the border. A report on gun trafficking between the US and Mexico revealed that almost 90% of the guns recovered and identified from Mexican crime scenes can be traced back to firearm dealers in the neighbouring country.
- crowdpleaser 8y ago
  Mexico has a firearm homicide rate of ~6.3 murders / 100k people / yr. The United States has a lower rate, 4.62 murders / 100k people /yr [0]. If American guns are the problem, why aren't the gun homicide rates higher in the United States than Mexico? But at the very least, it sounds like Mexico could benefit from stronger border security, too many guns are flowing across its porous border with the US. How many Mexican lives would a wall save from gun violence? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
  - pat2man 8y ago
    Mexico would also benefit if we solved our drug problem. We’ve created a huge economic opportunity for the black market in Mexico. If we really focused on drug rehab instead of just throwing people in jail I bet a lot of the violence in Mexico would go away.
    - beatgammit 8y ago
      I've heard (but I don't have a link right now) that legalization of marijuana has already drastically reduced the amount of marijuana being brought into the country, so I expect further legalization to increase this effect. Marijuana is one of, if not the most lucrative drugs for traffickers. I don't think rehab will have nearly as big of an effect as legalization/regulation. We should be looking for safer alternatives to more dangerous, often abused drugs. For examine, "magic mushrooms" are generally safer than other psychedelics, and LSD can be relatively safely used under supervision (and has potential for medical uses as well), so we should be considering those for legalization as well once marijuana is legalized. It's far easier to control a problem if you control distribution than if you don't. Attacking it from a rehab angle doesn't solve the biggest problem with drugs: trafficking. Legalization solves that aspect, and taxes on drugs could fund rehab, so it's a win win situation. Therefore, I want drug legalization as the primary focus for curbing drug-related violence specifically, and violent crime generally, since I believe it will have the largest positive effect for zero cost (in fact, it should be a net win).
    - crowdpleaser 8y ago
      Why can't Mexico perform the basic state function of protecting its citizens from organized violence? Drug rehab may sound like a panacea, but as it's practiced and administered in America, rehab centers seem to respond to their perverse incentive to treat addicts enough to get them out the door and relapsed back into treatment. I think we're doing a lot to treat addiction, but Mexico can't count on us to solve the hard problem of addiction. Mexico would be much better served by doing the comparatively easy task of reducing corruption and violence rates to something that reflects its status as a middle-income country with European institutions. Simply making it harder for cartels to thrive and for Mexican politicians/police to profit off of drugs would reduce the amount of drug pushing here in America.
      - joecool1029 8y ago
        > Why can't Mexico perform the basic state function of protecting its citizens from organized violence? The drug cartel has better funding. This is why you see El Chapo housed in the US and not Mexico anymore.
        crowdpleaser 8y ago
        Do the drug cartels have better funding? Mexico's Federal Budget was $314 billion dollars last year, estimates put America's illegal drug expenditures in the region of $100 billion [0], I imagine a lot of that money stays within the country. But I don't see how it's possible for Mexican cartels have even 25% of the budget of the government. Why do you think the Mexican drug cartels have better funding than a government with a budget of $300 billion/yr? IIRC, El Chapo is in America because Mexican prisons couldn't contain him. All his prison breaks involved corrupt guards, in fact, during his trial it was claimed that El Chapo paid a $100 million dollar bribe to the sitting President of Mexico. I think it's more plausible that Mexicans would rather join in the festival of corruption, saying that the Government is outclassed by the resources of the cartels seems false. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade_in_the_Unit...
        8y ago
  - FeepingCreature 8y ago
    Has literally anybody said that American guns are "the whole problem"? This seems like a strawman that's simplistic to the point of parody. It's not that people think that guns magically cause murders, it's that people think American guns cause Mexican murders. That doesn't mean American guns cause American murders at the same rate, because (ready for a shock here) America is not Mexico.
    - DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
      FYI, I downvoted the parent because of the tone of the first sentence.
  - jdavis703 8y ago
    Both countries could benefit from an EU-style NAFTA that allows for truly free movement of people and goods (no passports, no tariffs, no customs inspections, etc) between borders. Today that proposal would probably be problematic, but the U.S. Mexico and Canada should be pursuing "ever closer union" to borrow the EU's phrase.
    - fromthestart 8y ago
      Mexico is a crime ridden third world country. What do you think it's citizens are going to do if you open up the border? How many millions of people do you think the US can suddenly take on? And you don't think they'll bring crime with them?
      - jfoutz 8y ago
        1) Come work. 2) 1 seems pretty doable. 3 is probably pushing it. Still less than 1% increase, but would be a stretch. 3) yes? We aren’t exactly crime free today. More labor, bigger economy, police and courts and jails would scale up >1%, just as if a bunch of people moved here. We currently run at just shy of 1% in prison. If we admit a million, 10k criminals wouldn’t even be noticed.
        briandear 8y ago
        10k criminals won’t commit 10k crimes. It will likely be hundreds of thousands of crimes. Not insignificant. Most criminals aren’t one-time offenders.
  - mynegation 8y ago
    > If American guns are the problem, why aren't the gun homicide rates higher in the United States than Mexico? One of the answers is money. USA has more of it - for policing, for prisons, for making sure corruption and taking bribes from crime is less of an attractive choice. More poverty and profits of drug trafficking push the homicide numbers up in Mexico. Of course American guns are not the whole problem but they are the problem alright. Here in Canada from 50 to 75% of illegal guns come from south of border.
    - crowdpleaser 8y ago
      >One of the answers is money. It would be convenient if it were true, but I don't think money is a great explanation. I come from a rural area in the Midwest, the people are very poor (even poorer than the urban poor) but have a lot of guns. Despite being poor and armed, the gun homicide rates are very low (the suicide rates are unfortunately not that low). Can you help me understand why poor farmers in the midwest don't commit as many murders as similarly poor and armed Mexicans?
      - Green_man 8y ago
        I understand you are helping to differentiate between political and social stability and the easy metric "money", however, poor means something very different in Mexico and central America than it does in the Midwest. I agree with you- there's more going on than just money. But your example isn't convincing to me, because there is a huge difference in the financial capability and stability of the very poor in america, and the very poor of our southern neighbors. Also, just because someone in america is very poor doesn't mean they don't benefit from the wealth of our country in other ways- stronger prisons, often better schools and police, though that does vary a bit by community.
      - Cyph0n 8y ago
        The answer to your question was in the comment: > for policing, for prisons, for making sure corruption and taking bribes from crime is less of an attractive choice Does this rural Midwest area have an active police presence? How well policed do you think a rural area in Mexico is?
  - lvs 8y ago
    You're clearly looking to veer this into a traditional debate along traditional lines. I don't think you'll find anyone in sociology who believes that any civic problems are monocausal. People who make these kinds of arguments are usually trying to ensure that, on a list of correlation coefficients, your favored cause is not considered highly correlative or "the sole problem," in your words. Inevitably, your next argument will be whataboutism for various other correlations you'd prefer we all look at. Actually, you'll find that the correlation coefficient between gun availability and homicides/suicides involving a firearm are quite high across countries (0.7 - 0.9) [1,2]. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1485564/pdf/cmaj00266-0071.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1485564/pdf/cma... [2] https://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/Abstract/2000/12000/Firearm_Availability_and_Homicide_Rates_across_26.1.aspx https://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/Abstract/2000/12000/Firearm...
    - barry-cotter 8y ago
      The article that sparked this discussion was about murders. In that context suicide is a red herring.
      - lvs 8y ago
        No, then you didn't even click the article links. From the first study, for example, the correlation with homicide rates is 0.746.
  - smileysteve 8y ago
    This conveniently ignores that in many ways, the U.S. is actively supplying guns to South America. And child comments ignore CIA effects on the drug trade. Choose your program, "Fast and the Furious", "Iran Contra", activity in Chile and Panama, the early 90s.
  - peterwwillis 8y ago
    > If American guns are the problem, why aren't the gun homicide rates higher in the United States than Mexico? Guns don't kill people, a corrupt political and judicial system held at bay by a massive influx of cash and illegal smuggling from gigantic narco trafficing empires at war with each other over the right to make the most money off the US Drug War kills people. Once the US has the same problems, then gun homicides will be higher here. (however, we are #1 in gun homicides among developed western nations, so we're on our way!)
  - sjg007 8y ago
    Mexico has a violent crime problem driven by drug trafficking. That’s why.
  - alacombe 8y ago
    > The United States has a lower [homicide] rate No it has not, the wikipedia article mentions "death rate". "homicide" != "death". About 2/3 of America's death rate is suicide. Canadians statistics show that gun control has no effect on suicide.
- testrun 8y ago
  If that is true, then Canada should have exactly the same problem.
  - ramchip 8y ago
    I would assume Canada has much stronger border control than Mexico.
    - jbarham 8y ago
      The border between Vancouver and Washington is literally a ditch.
    - dleslie 8y ago
      Why would you assume that of the longest undefended border on Earth?
      - ramchip 8y ago
        I've heard various stories of people being caught shortly after crossing the border (by accident or otherwise), via cameras and so on. Granted, these might be isolated anecdotes.
    - gpm 8y ago
      I highly doubt it. Our border is really too big to guard effectively, and frankly no one really cares to. There is a border crossing that literally just consists of some cameras and phones: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/northwest-angle https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/northwest-angle (admittedly to smuggle things through this you would have to take a boat to get there, and if you did this regularly someone would probably notice) There are towns (and houses, and at least one library, also a restaurant) split down the middle with no barrier: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-incredible-complications-of-living-atop-the-us-canada-border https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-incredible-complic... And there are ridiculously many miles of basically uninhabited border. It's probably "stronger" at the well traveled crossings, but only because you're not likely to be able to bribe our border guards.
- kakarot 8y ago
  That's a pretty good tactic. Our government is entirely responsible for the rise of organized crime and corrupt officials in Mexico with respect to the War on Drugs, just as we were responsible for: * the rise of organized crime and crack cocaine in California in the 80's when we were also caught proliferating drugs and firearms into Los Angeles to fund radical terrorist groups * the rise of organized crime and corrupt officials in New York and Chicago after the Prohibition movement * the rise of organized crime and terrorist cells in the Middle East after repeated meddling in foreign affairs in the pursuance of economic dominance and control of resources * the rise of organized crime and corrupt officials in parts of South America where both the War on Drugs and staging of coups and election meddling have wreaked havoc on the population But instead, we can use this as a way to convince people that American citizens have too much easy access to firearms. Because it's really in our best economic interest that only police, criminals and criminal organizations have guns. I would be surprised if the CIA wasn't in some level behind this report, with their sterling track record.
- leereeves 8y ago
  Mexico actually has one of the lower homicide rates in Latin America (17th in LA, 20th worldwide). Proximity to the US isn't correlated with a high homicide rate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
  - i_am_proteus 8y ago
    What you're pointing out is exactly what the article misses: firearms are not the only tool used in homicides. Negative effects on society from homicide are because of the violent death, not because of the mechanism.
    - arduanika 8y ago
      That's a bingo! You can't really draw very much from the poorly framed data in this article. They selected these 6 countries by absolute number of deaths / guns, rather than per capita; mix suicides with homicides; and don't include the overall number of homicides, which (as I think you're suggesting) could be used to tease out direction of causality. Moreover, n=6 lies in the realm of anecdote, not data. There are ~200 countries in the UN. If you want to know anything significant, throw all their gun ownership rates, homicide rotes, Gini coefficients, etc into a regression and maybe you'll be able to say something interesting.
      - i_am_proteus 8y ago
        You just say bingo.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  >>A report on gun trafficking between the US and Mexico revealed that almost 90% of the guns recovered and identified from Mexican crime scenes can be traced back to firearm dealers in the neighbouring country. Do you really think that cartels would be gunless if USA outlaws guns tomorrow? They need guns to win and protect their tens of billion dollar business. They can't sue in court if you don't pay for the 1450 kilos so they use guns. They'd get them, and the dollar difference would not even raise the coke price.
  - cheerlessbog 8y ago
    Drugs are smuggled all over the world yet Mexico seems particularly prone to gun violence. I agree with you in one sense though: there is no hope of eliminating illegal firearms in a continent already awash with them.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    The cartels will easily get their guns from wherever they need, surely. Highly organized, powerful crime outfits will always have access. That said - with Supply and Demand - it may be that their front line guys are weakened. Instead of the mock-AK or high powered rifle, they just have a pistol or a revolver. It makes a difference.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  "why aren't the gun homicide rates higher in the United States than Mexico?" Mexico has vast lawless areas where there is nary any law enforcement, and cartels fight with other cartels for power. For reference: + Canada has many fewer guns than the US, and many fewer gun crimes + European countries have vastly fewer guns, vastly less gun crime + Japan has almost no guns, and almost no gun crime. When looking at civilized states where laws are actually enforced then there's a correlation between guns and gun crime. While most legal gun owners are not more likely to be criminal, the preponderance of available guns just gives the statistical chance that someone in a bad mood can get one much higher. In other words: loose gun laws mean low level bad guys can get a hold of guns in a much more easy way. Every car you pass on the highway in the US, there's a half decent chance there's a gun in there. In Canada, there's very little chance. The 'odd man out' is Switzerland: they have a lot of guns. Their guns are however for civil defence: rifles, not hand guns, and they definitely do not have 'self defence culture' whereby people actually carry weapons. They are locked up in the basement or at the armoury. Also, they are amazingly civilized with low social strife etc.. It would be nice to see America have much stricter gun laws while not so much infringing on the essential right to own a gun. I think it's possible.
- Scramblejams 8y ago
  A subtlety in that quote: most guns were not submitted for tracing in the first place. Of those that were, ~90% led to the US. The whole 90-percent-of-Mexican-gun-crimes-happened-with-US-sourced-guns argument never passed the smell test with me. Guns are expensive at retail. And wholesale prices aren’t low, either. Who wants to spend truckloads of cash on brand new guns from licensed dealers when all manner of ex-military AKs and FNs are available on the Latin American black market? Much cheaper and less risky to get guns from the south than the north. Anyway, what’s the proportion made up by US-sourced firearms? Nobody’s sure, but probably nowhere near the bulk of it: https://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/counting-mexicos-guns/ https://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/counting-mexicos-guns/
  - arduanika 8y ago
    > most guns were not submitted for tracing in the first place Kind of like claiming that fewer than 10% of accusations for a given crime are false, based on the fact that, out of the cases that prosecutors decide to bring to trial, over 90% result in convictions.
- arduanika 8y ago
  This article suggests the main externality from the USA contributing to violence and instability in Mexico (not to mention Colombia before the current peace process) is guns. That's laughable. The first rule of clickbait is that it has to make me feel something, anything, whether it's anger, fear, warm fuzzy, or here, moral superiority. I can easily read this and think, oh, it's those hick gun nuts who are causing Mexican children to die and mayors to be shot. Doesn't have anything to do with all those drugs that I and all my friends have tried at least once, or with our puritanical legislators who think that protecting their constituents from temptation is more important than the lives of Mexican civilians. Carry on, as you were.
- ASalazarMX 8y ago
  "Operations" like the ones listed here [1] were one of the reasons thousands of illegal guns flooded Mexico while the cartels were at their worst. It was as if destabilization was a goal, just as George Bush Junior insistently called Mexico a failed state, while pressuring our government to buy American weapons or be outgunned. Everyone knows the huge mess that did, I'm surprised we didn't end with guerrillas like Colombia, but it was likely because the next president wasn't Republican. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal
solarsavior 8y ago
Gun control works!
nkkollaw 8y ago
I guess Trump does have a point...
peterwwillis 8y ago
Nobody seems to point out the obvious fallacy of the "right to protect yourself". If having that right actually results in being more likely to be harmed, or harm someone else, having that right is an unacceptable public safety risk. A common argument against gun control ("should we ban hammers next?") is obviously fallacious when you compare it to an even more extreme comparison ("should we ban private ownership of nuclear weapons?"). It's obvious that some "weapons" are ok because they aren't a big public safety risk, whereas other "weapons" are a gigantic public safety risk. Guns are quite obviously a significant risk to public safety, as the murder statistics demonstrate.
- mk89 8y ago
  I don't know why you got downvoted, because what you said makes sense. Unfortunately, it seems that when you touch people's belief, facts become fake news. No weapons mean no idiots able to kill dozens of people for no reason at all. It's insane to even have to explain that weapons just have the potential to kill and don't serve any other purpose.
  - updateYourMind 8y ago
    Lots of people owning guns are downvoting anything that is not pro-gun.
    - dang 8y ago
      Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News, and follow the site guidelines? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - peterwwillis 8y ago
        Are they wrong, though? I got slammed with a bunch of downvotes all at once, and later a bunch of upvotes, and other comments on the page seem to track similarly. You don't think that's maybe caused by a surge of bias?
delhanty 8y ago
>However, there is a loophole. In a country of nearly 132 million people, there is only one shop that sells firearms, which is located in Mexico City. ... This high level of unregistered firearms has been attributed to Mexico’s proximity with the United States, as thousands of gun retailers sit just over the border. It sounds like it's the Mexicans that need a wall to protect themselves from U.S. firearms!
- cascom 8y ago
  Drugs and illegal aliens go north - cash and guns/ammunition go south
  - beatgammit 8y ago
    And the former funds the latter. If we legalize popular drugs and make legal immigration easier, we end much of the flow of guns, as well as the reasons to use them.
zyztem 8y ago
Reported murders. We mostly do not know what happens in Africa
Sophistifunk 8y ago
These are US murders, they've just been outsourced to make the war on drugs look good.
- Insanity 8y ago
  Care to explain?
  - Sophistifunk 8y ago
    They're almost entirely caused by prohibition of, and demand for, coke and weed in the US, and the fact that these prohibitions have been forced on its neighbours basically at gunpoint in wasted efforts to stop citizens from being able to feel good by taking something instead of being productive.
sergiotapia 8y ago
Yeah central american in general is a shithole. In Bolivia we are having trouble with colombians bringing in a ton of violence to the streets. To the point where hitmen tried to gun down people leaving their apartment complexes and being killed themselves, left on the sidewalk for everyone to see. Evo certainly didn't help with narcos coming up big league since his illegitimate presidency. These degenerates come to Bolivia and cause mayhem on a scale the people of my country and the police are not used to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSFQQzV24CE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSFQQzV24CE
- empath75 8y ago
  I spent three months traveling through Central America and it’s beautiful and the people are mostly lovely. The violence is concentrated in a few parts of the country. It’s not like you walk out of your house and get shot at every day.
  - shitgoose 8y ago
    That is pretty much the case everywhere. We better focus our attention on those parts of our countries and see what is wrong with them, rather than generalizing over the whole country.
fouc 8y ago
> Topped by Brazil with 42,000 deaths, the macabre list is followed by the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Guatemala. All the countries mentioned aside from United States seem to suffer from gang warfare, or even civil war. That it is so high for Latin America is perhaps not surprising. Unfortunately, the US doesn't seem to have that excuse. Also, are we undercounting murders by other countries by differentiating between civilian vs non-civilian? That could be affecting the statistics.
- bluedino 8y ago
  The gun homicides in the USA are from smaller-scale gang war fare as well
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
zzzzzzz123 8y ago
Thanks imperialism. Things would probably be better if right wing dictatorships weren't supported with arms and money for decades. Maybe economic conditions for their people would be better leading to less crime. Don't tell that to US mining, agricultural, or oil concerns or the anti-communists in the Pentagon. Let's just stay asleep and dream dreams of Venezuelan oil. https://www.kcet.org/shows/democracy-now/bolton-pushes-privatization-of-venezuelas-oil https://www.kcet.org/shows/democracy-now/bolton-pushes-priva...
whiddershins 8y ago
This article mixes and matches statistical types and conclusions in a confusing manner. For example, if most United States firearm deaths are suicides, it is misleading to then follow with a quote saying “where there are more guns there is more homicide.”
- patmcc 8y ago
  Why? Both things can be true. Firearms could cause an increase in both homicides and suicides.
  - entropie 8y ago
    https://xkcd.com/552/ https://xkcd.com/552/
  - seppin 8y ago
    And a country can be leading in both statistics
  - zepto 8y ago
    They could, but that isn’t a conclusion that the statistics show.
- updateYourMind 8y ago
  Yet the US has the highest numbers of mass shootings.
  - Tyrannosaur 8y ago
    That's not an undisputed fact. https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-the-us-leads-the-world-in-mass-shootings/ https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-the-us-leads-the-worl...
    - updateYourMind 8y ago
      From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_S... > The United States has had more mass shootings than any other country.
redsummer 8y ago
Let them in
mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
I never understood how anyone can take another life. To take away the memories, the experiences, the future potential of another spirit - all for the sake of what? Hate? Money? Power? How can anything be worth more than the only thing that allows one to experience this world? Sad.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  Seriously, you downvote this? Huh. The hate runs deep.
  - dang 8y ago
    Please follow the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- AngryData 8y ago
  Starvation, poverty, vengeance. Would you willingly let yourself starve to death? Would you willingly watch your kids starve to death? Most crime is done out of desperation, and if you and enough other people around you are desperate enough it becomes normalized behavior in order to survive. You get robbed, so instead of dieing a hobo, you rob somebody else, the problem perpetuates itself because there are so few alternatives available.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    "Most crime is done out of desperation" This is just wrong. The vast majority of Mexicans don't commit murder, and they are definitely not starving. Greed, egoism, pettiness, rage, psychopathy, nihilism are more likely reasons.
  - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
    Starvation need not provoke murder. If I had to choose between watching my child die and murdering another human so he could survive I’d choose the former. There is no life for a life. You only get one, and robbing someone of their life is the greatest injustice that can ever be carried out. I understand that if you grow up in that culture it feels normalized, but that doesn’t make it ok.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
"We look at them individually to see if there is a correlation between loose gun laws " Laws are irrelevant if they are not consistently enforced.
yubiox 8y ago
>This high level of unregistered firearms has been attributed to Mexico’s proximity with the United States, as thousands of gun retailers sit just over the border. A report on gun trafficking between the US and Mexico revealed that almost 90% of the guns recovered and identified from Mexican crime scenes can be traced back to firearm dealers in the neighbouring country. Obama's ATF forced dealers to sell guns to straw purchasers who took them to Mexico.
jostmey 8y ago
The debate here has focused on guns as the problem. Guns are not the problem, they are an expression of the problem. To quote the article: "The Economist stated that rapid urbanisation and inequalities in wealth distribution were some of the largest factors in violent crime, and as one of the most unequal countries on the planet, Brazil backs up this claim." I think this statement applies to Mexico and other Latin American countries, to varying extents. Removing guns from the streets may reduce gun deaths, but the violence will probably remain as long as the underlying social injustices are not addressed.
- baroffoos 8y ago
  Guns are like a megaphone for violence. Violent people will still exist but their reach is far less with a knife
  - flattone 8y ago
    lets have a serious discussion... knife is like number 5000 on a crazy persons shopping list. gun is probably 300 but also easier than 1-299
    - hyperbovine 8y ago
      GP is making a serious point.
    - jostmey 8y ago
      I'm not saying that guns should be legal (I'm also not saying they should be illegal). What is important is to focus on the root issues, and I don't believe that the root issues are "guns".
      - hellllllllooo 8y ago
        This is a false dichotomy. Why do you have to focus on the "root issue"? What's wrong with dealing with a part of the problem? No complex problems get dealt with as a whole. They get broken in to pieces and dealt with using the tools available. Guns are clearly a part of the problem so let's do something about them while also doing something about other social issues.
AngryData 8y ago
That is what happens when a global superpower starts funneling guns and money to rebel groups to overthrown democratic governments and replace them with easily bribed authoritarians. This is what happens when you bomb a peaceful civilian populous so they give into a foreign fruit companies exploitative demands. Things would be a lot better if we didn't spend the last 60+ years doing everything possible to destabilize established and successful political institutions in the name of corporate profits.
updateYourMind 8y ago
I recommend the subreddit r/gunsAreCool
dang 8y ago
The submitted title broke the site guidelines by editorializing. Please don't! The relevant guideline says "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." (Submitted title was "Latin America has 8% of world’s population and 38% of murders".)
jxramos 8y ago
There's a YouTube channel called Active Self Protection where the subscribers have this running joke almost about the next video being from Brazil. Even the commentator says stuff like "...you guessed it, from Brazil", because there's just so much content coming out of these Latin American countries for his show's focus which is analysis and review of crimes captured from surveillance camera footage, badge cams, and bystander journalism and what not. It's interesting the ubiquity of these video feeds that we can get a glimpse into another part of the world and see the problems people have to deal with. The commentator for the channel often informs his audience about how certain things pose entirely different risks in other parts of the world. This includes things like not boxing yourself in with your car in Latin America where car jackings often play out where you gave yourself no exit by stopping so close to the car in front, or being oblivious to two men on a motorcycle, the so called "motochorros", etc.
abacate 8y ago
Please stop talking about Brazil as a single reality. Murder rate is completely different across state lines. And guns play zero role into the causes, as others have already pointed out. Any serious analysis on USA is done in a per-state basis, and the same applies to Brazil.

128 points by egusa 8y ago

ouid 8y ago

> Small Arms Survey reported that in 2017, Mexico had 12.9 guns per 100 civilians, although of the 16,809,000 guns estimated in circulation in that year, only 3,118,592 were legally registered. >This high level of unregistered firearms has been attributed to Mexico’s proximity with the United States, as thousands of gun retailers sit just over the border. A report on gun trafficking between the US and Mexico revealed that almost 90% of the guns recovered and identified from Mexican crime scenes can be traced back to firearm dealers in the neighbouring country.

crowdpleaser 8y ago
Mexico has a firearm homicide rate of ~6.3 murders / 100k people / yr. The United States has a lower rate, 4.62 murders / 100k people /yr [0]. If American guns are the problem, why aren't the gun homicide rates higher in the United States than Mexico? But at the very least, it sounds like Mexico could benefit from stronger border security, too many guns are flowing across its porous border with the US. How many Mexican lives would a wall save from gun violence? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
- pat2man 8y ago
  Mexico would also benefit if we solved our drug problem. We’ve created a huge economic opportunity for the black market in Mexico. If we really focused on drug rehab instead of just throwing people in jail I bet a lot of the violence in Mexico would go away.
  - beatgammit 8y ago
    I've heard (but I don't have a link right now) that legalization of marijuana has already drastically reduced the amount of marijuana being brought into the country, so I expect further legalization to increase this effect. Marijuana is one of, if not the most lucrative drugs for traffickers. I don't think rehab will have nearly as big of an effect as legalization/regulation. We should be looking for safer alternatives to more dangerous, often abused drugs. For examine, "magic mushrooms" are generally safer than other psychedelics, and LSD can be relatively safely used under supervision (and has potential for medical uses as well), so we should be considering those for legalization as well once marijuana is legalized. It's far easier to control a problem if you control distribution than if you don't. Attacking it from a rehab angle doesn't solve the biggest problem with drugs: trafficking. Legalization solves that aspect, and taxes on drugs could fund rehab, so it's a win win situation. Therefore, I want drug legalization as the primary focus for curbing drug-related violence specifically, and violent crime generally, since I believe it will have the largest positive effect for zero cost (in fact, it should be a net win).
  - crowdpleaser 8y ago
    Why can't Mexico perform the basic state function of protecting its citizens from organized violence? Drug rehab may sound like a panacea, but as it's practiced and administered in America, rehab centers seem to respond to their perverse incentive to treat addicts enough to get them out the door and relapsed back into treatment. I think we're doing a lot to treat addiction, but Mexico can't count on us to solve the hard problem of addiction. Mexico would be much better served by doing the comparatively easy task of reducing corruption and violence rates to something that reflects its status as a middle-income country with European institutions. Simply making it harder for cartels to thrive and for Mexican politicians/police to profit off of drugs would reduce the amount of drug pushing here in America.
    - joecool1029 8y ago
      > Why can't Mexico perform the basic state function of protecting its citizens from organized violence? The drug cartel has better funding. This is why you see El Chapo housed in the US and not Mexico anymore.
      - crowdpleaser 8y ago
        Do the drug cartels have better funding? Mexico's Federal Budget was $314 billion dollars last year, estimates put America's illegal drug expenditures in the region of $100 billion [0], I imagine a lot of that money stays within the country. But I don't see how it's possible for Mexican cartels have even 25% of the budget of the government. Why do you think the Mexican drug cartels have better funding than a government with a budget of $300 billion/yr? IIRC, El Chapo is in America because Mexican prisons couldn't contain him. All his prison breaks involved corrupt guards, in fact, during his trial it was claimed that El Chapo paid a $100 million dollar bribe to the sitting President of Mexico. I think it's more plausible that Mexicans would rather join in the festival of corruption, saying that the Government is outclassed by the resources of the cartels seems false. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade_in_the_Unit...
        8y ago
- FeepingCreature 8y ago
  Has literally anybody said that American guns are "the whole problem"? This seems like a strawman that's simplistic to the point of parody. It's not that people think that guns magically cause murders, it's that people think American guns cause Mexican murders. That doesn't mean American guns cause American murders at the same rate, because (ready for a shock here) America is not Mexico.
  - DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
    FYI, I downvoted the parent because of the tone of the first sentence.
- jdavis703 8y ago
  Both countries could benefit from an EU-style NAFTA that allows for truly free movement of people and goods (no passports, no tariffs, no customs inspections, etc) between borders. Today that proposal would probably be problematic, but the U.S. Mexico and Canada should be pursuing "ever closer union" to borrow the EU's phrase.
  - fromthestart 8y ago
    Mexico is a crime ridden third world country. What do you think it's citizens are going to do if you open up the border? How many millions of people do you think the US can suddenly take on? And you don't think they'll bring crime with them?
    - jfoutz 8y ago
      1) Come work. 2) 1 seems pretty doable. 3 is probably pushing it. Still less than 1% increase, but would be a stretch. 3) yes? We aren’t exactly crime free today. More labor, bigger economy, police and courts and jails would scale up >1%, just as if a bunch of people moved here. We currently run at just shy of 1% in prison. If we admit a million, 10k criminals wouldn’t even be noticed.
      - briandear 8y ago
        10k criminals won’t commit 10k crimes. It will likely be hundreds of thousands of crimes. Not insignificant. Most criminals aren’t one-time offenders.
- mynegation 8y ago
  > If American guns are the problem, why aren't the gun homicide rates higher in the United States than Mexico? One of the answers is money. USA has more of it - for policing, for prisons, for making sure corruption and taking bribes from crime is less of an attractive choice. More poverty and profits of drug trafficking push the homicide numbers up in Mexico. Of course American guns are not the whole problem but they are the problem alright. Here in Canada from 50 to 75% of illegal guns come from south of border.
  - crowdpleaser 8y ago
    >One of the answers is money. It would be convenient if it were true, but I don't think money is a great explanation. I come from a rural area in the Midwest, the people are very poor (even poorer than the urban poor) but have a lot of guns. Despite being poor and armed, the gun homicide rates are very low (the suicide rates are unfortunately not that low). Can you help me understand why poor farmers in the midwest don't commit as many murders as similarly poor and armed Mexicans?
    - Green_man 8y ago
      I understand you are helping to differentiate between political and social stability and the easy metric "money", however, poor means something very different in Mexico and central America than it does in the Midwest. I agree with you- there's more going on than just money. But your example isn't convincing to me, because there is a huge difference in the financial capability and stability of the very poor in america, and the very poor of our southern neighbors. Also, just because someone in america is very poor doesn't mean they don't benefit from the wealth of our country in other ways- stronger prisons, often better schools and police, though that does vary a bit by community.
    - Cyph0n 8y ago
      The answer to your question was in the comment: > for policing, for prisons, for making sure corruption and taking bribes from crime is less of an attractive choice Does this rural Midwest area have an active police presence? How well policed do you think a rural area in Mexico is?
- lvs 8y ago
  You're clearly looking to veer this into a traditional debate along traditional lines. I don't think you'll find anyone in sociology who believes that any civic problems are monocausal. People who make these kinds of arguments are usually trying to ensure that, on a list of correlation coefficients, your favored cause is not considered highly correlative or "the sole problem," in your words. Inevitably, your next argument will be whataboutism for various other correlations you'd prefer we all look at. Actually, you'll find that the correlation coefficient between gun availability and homicides/suicides involving a firearm are quite high across countries (0.7 - 0.9) [1,2]. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1485564/pdf/cmaj00266-0071.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1485564/pdf/cma... [2] https://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/Abstract/2000/12000/Firearm_Availability_and_Homicide_Rates_across_26.1.aspx https://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/Abstract/2000/12000/Firearm...
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    The article that sparked this discussion was about murders. In that context suicide is a red herring.
    - lvs 8y ago
      No, then you didn't even click the article links. From the first study, for example, the correlation with homicide rates is 0.746.
- smileysteve 8y ago
  This conveniently ignores that in many ways, the U.S. is actively supplying guns to South America. And child comments ignore CIA effects on the drug trade. Choose your program, "Fast and the Furious", "Iran Contra", activity in Chile and Panama, the early 90s.
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  > If American guns are the problem, why aren't the gun homicide rates higher in the United States than Mexico? Guns don't kill people, a corrupt political and judicial system held at bay by a massive influx of cash and illegal smuggling from gigantic narco trafficing empires at war with each other over the right to make the most money off the US Drug War kills people. Once the US has the same problems, then gun homicides will be higher here. (however, we are #1 in gun homicides among developed western nations, so we're on our way!)
- sjg007 8y ago
  Mexico has a violent crime problem driven by drug trafficking. That’s why.
- alacombe 8y ago
  > The United States has a lower [homicide] rate No it has not, the wikipedia article mentions "death rate". "homicide" != "death". About 2/3 of America's death rate is suicide. Canadians statistics show that gun control has no effect on suicide.
testrun 8y ago
If that is true, then Canada should have exactly the same problem.
- ramchip 8y ago
  I would assume Canada has much stronger border control than Mexico.
  - jbarham 8y ago
    The border between Vancouver and Washington is literally a ditch.
  - dleslie 8y ago
    Why would you assume that of the longest undefended border on Earth?
    - ramchip 8y ago
      I've heard various stories of people being caught shortly after crossing the border (by accident or otherwise), via cameras and so on. Granted, these might be isolated anecdotes.
  - gpm 8y ago
    I highly doubt it. Our border is really too big to guard effectively, and frankly no one really cares to. There is a border crossing that literally just consists of some cameras and phones: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/northwest-angle https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/northwest-angle (admittedly to smuggle things through this you would have to take a boat to get there, and if you did this regularly someone would probably notice) There are towns (and houses, and at least one library, also a restaurant) split down the middle with no barrier: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-incredible-complications-of-living-atop-the-us-canada-border https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-incredible-complic... And there are ridiculously many miles of basically uninhabited border. It's probably "stronger" at the well traveled crossings, but only because you're not likely to be able to bribe our border guards.
kakarot 8y ago
That's a pretty good tactic. Our government is entirely responsible for the rise of organized crime and corrupt officials in Mexico with respect to the War on Drugs, just as we were responsible for: * the rise of organized crime and crack cocaine in California in the 80's when we were also caught proliferating drugs and firearms into Los Angeles to fund radical terrorist groups * the rise of organized crime and corrupt officials in New York and Chicago after the Prohibition movement * the rise of organized crime and terrorist cells in the Middle East after repeated meddling in foreign affairs in the pursuance of economic dominance and control of resources * the rise of organized crime and corrupt officials in parts of South America where both the War on Drugs and staging of coups and election meddling have wreaked havoc on the population But instead, we can use this as a way to convince people that American citizens have too much easy access to firearms. Because it's really in our best economic interest that only police, criminals and criminal organizations have guns. I would be surprised if the CIA wasn't in some level behind this report, with their sterling track record.
leereeves 8y ago
Mexico actually has one of the lower homicide rates in Latin America (17th in LA, 20th worldwide). Proximity to the US isn't correlated with a high homicide rate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
- i_am_proteus 8y ago
  What you're pointing out is exactly what the article misses: firearms are not the only tool used in homicides. Negative effects on society from homicide are because of the violent death, not because of the mechanism.
  - arduanika 8y ago
    That's a bingo! You can't really draw very much from the poorly framed data in this article. They selected these 6 countries by absolute number of deaths / guns, rather than per capita; mix suicides with homicides; and don't include the overall number of homicides, which (as I think you're suggesting) could be used to tease out direction of causality. Moreover, n=6 lies in the realm of anecdote, not data. There are ~200 countries in the UN. If you want to know anything significant, throw all their gun ownership rates, homicide rotes, Gini coefficients, etc into a regression and maybe you'll be able to say something interesting.
    - i_am_proteus 8y ago
      You just say bingo.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
>>A report on gun trafficking between the US and Mexico revealed that almost 90% of the guns recovered and identified from Mexican crime scenes can be traced back to firearm dealers in the neighbouring country. Do you really think that cartels would be gunless if USA outlaws guns tomorrow? They need guns to win and protect their tens of billion dollar business. They can't sue in court if you don't pay for the 1450 kilos so they use guns. They'd get them, and the dollar difference would not even raise the coke price.
- cheerlessbog 8y ago
  Drugs are smuggled all over the world yet Mexico seems particularly prone to gun violence. I agree with you in one sense though: there is no hope of eliminating illegal firearms in a continent already awash with them.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  The cartels will easily get their guns from wherever they need, surely. Highly organized, powerful crime outfits will always have access. That said - with Supply and Demand - it may be that their front line guys are weakened. Instead of the mock-AK or high powered rifle, they just have a pistol or a revolver. It makes a difference.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
"why aren't the gun homicide rates higher in the United States than Mexico?" Mexico has vast lawless areas where there is nary any law enforcement, and cartels fight with other cartels for power. For reference: + Canada has many fewer guns than the US, and many fewer gun crimes + European countries have vastly fewer guns, vastly less gun crime + Japan has almost no guns, and almost no gun crime. When looking at civilized states where laws are actually enforced then there's a correlation between guns and gun crime. While most legal gun owners are not more likely to be criminal, the preponderance of available guns just gives the statistical chance that someone in a bad mood can get one much higher. In other words: loose gun laws mean low level bad guys can get a hold of guns in a much more easy way. Every car you pass on the highway in the US, there's a half decent chance there's a gun in there. In Canada, there's very little chance. The 'odd man out' is Switzerland: they have a lot of guns. Their guns are however for civil defence: rifles, not hand guns, and they definitely do not have 'self defence culture' whereby people actually carry weapons. They are locked up in the basement or at the armoury. Also, they are amazingly civilized with low social strife etc.. It would be nice to see America have much stricter gun laws while not so much infringing on the essential right to own a gun. I think it's possible.
Scramblejams 8y ago
A subtlety in that quote: most guns were not submitted for tracing in the first place. Of those that were, ~90% led to the US. The whole 90-percent-of-Mexican-gun-crimes-happened-with-US-sourced-guns argument never passed the smell test with me. Guns are expensive at retail. And wholesale prices aren’t low, either. Who wants to spend truckloads of cash on brand new guns from licensed dealers when all manner of ex-military AKs and FNs are available on the Latin American black market? Much cheaper and less risky to get guns from the south than the north. Anyway, what’s the proportion made up by US-sourced firearms? Nobody’s sure, but probably nowhere near the bulk of it: https://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/counting-mexicos-guns/ https://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/counting-mexicos-guns/
- arduanika 8y ago
  > most guns were not submitted for tracing in the first place Kind of like claiming that fewer than 10% of accusations for a given crime are false, based on the fact that, out of the cases that prosecutors decide to bring to trial, over 90% result in convictions.
arduanika 8y ago
This article suggests the main externality from the USA contributing to violence and instability in Mexico (not to mention Colombia before the current peace process) is guns. That's laughable. The first rule of clickbait is that it has to make me feel something, anything, whether it's anger, fear, warm fuzzy, or here, moral superiority. I can easily read this and think, oh, it's those hick gun nuts who are causing Mexican children to die and mayors to be shot. Doesn't have anything to do with all those drugs that I and all my friends have tried at least once, or with our puritanical legislators who think that protecting their constituents from temptation is more important than the lives of Mexican civilians. Carry on, as you were.
ASalazarMX 8y ago
"Operations" like the ones listed here [1] were one of the reasons thousands of illegal guns flooded Mexico while the cartels were at their worst. It was as if destabilization was a goal, just as George Bush Junior insistently called Mexico a failed state, while pressuring our government to buy American weapons or be outgunned. Everyone knows the huge mess that did, I'm surprised we didn't end with guerrillas like Colombia, but it was likely because the next president wasn't Republican. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal

solarsavior 8y ago

Gun control works!

nkkollaw 8y ago

I guess Trump does have a point...

peterwwillis 8y ago

Nobody seems to point out the obvious fallacy of the "right to protect yourself". If having that right actually results in being more likely to be harmed, or harm someone else, having that right is an unacceptable public safety risk. A common argument against gun control ("should we ban hammers next?") is obviously fallacious when you compare it to an even more extreme comparison ("should we ban private ownership of nuclear weapons?"). It's obvious that some "weapons" are ok because they aren't a big public safety risk, whereas other "weapons" are a gigantic public safety risk. Guns are quite obviously a significant risk to public safety, as the murder statistics demonstrate.

mk89 8y ago
I don't know why you got downvoted, because what you said makes sense. Unfortunately, it seems that when you touch people's belief, facts become fake news. No weapons mean no idiots able to kill dozens of people for no reason at all. It's insane to even have to explain that weapons just have the potential to kill and don't serve any other purpose.
- updateYourMind 8y ago
  Lots of people owning guns are downvoting anything that is not pro-gun.
  - dang 8y ago
    Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News, and follow the site guidelines? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - peterwwillis 8y ago
      Are they wrong, though? I got slammed with a bunch of downvotes all at once, and later a bunch of upvotes, and other comments on the page seem to track similarly. You don't think that's maybe caused by a surge of bias?

delhanty 8y ago

>However, there is a loophole. In a country of nearly 132 million people, there is only one shop that sells firearms, which is located in Mexico City. ... This high level of unregistered firearms has been attributed to Mexico’s proximity with the United States, as thousands of gun retailers sit just over the border. It sounds like it's the Mexicans that need a wall to protect themselves from U.S. firearms!

cascom 8y ago
Drugs and illegal aliens go north - cash and guns/ammunition go south
- beatgammit 8y ago
  And the former funds the latter. If we legalize popular drugs and make legal immigration easier, we end much of the flow of guns, as well as the reasons to use them.

zyztem 8y ago

Reported murders. We mostly do not know what happens in Africa

Sophistifunk 8y ago

These are US murders, they've just been outsourced to make the war on drugs look good.

Insanity 8y ago
Care to explain?
- Sophistifunk 8y ago
  They're almost entirely caused by prohibition of, and demand for, coke and weed in the US, and the fact that these prohibitions have been forced on its neighbours basically at gunpoint in wasted efforts to stop citizens from being able to feel good by taking something instead of being productive.

sergiotapia 8y ago

Yeah central american in general is a shithole. In Bolivia we are having trouble with colombians bringing in a ton of violence to the streets. To the point where hitmen tried to gun down people leaving their apartment complexes and being killed themselves, left on the sidewalk for everyone to see. Evo certainly didn't help with narcos coming up big league since his illegitimate presidency. These degenerates come to Bolivia and cause mayhem on a scale the people of my country and the police are not used to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSFQQzV24CE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSFQQzV24CE

empath75 8y ago
I spent three months traveling through Central America and it’s beautiful and the people are mostly lovely. The violence is concentrated in a few parts of the country. It’s not like you walk out of your house and get shot at every day.
- shitgoose 8y ago
  That is pretty much the case everywhere. We better focus our attention on those parts of our countries and see what is wrong with them, rather than generalizing over the whole country.

fouc 8y ago

> Topped by Brazil with 42,000 deaths, the macabre list is followed by the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Guatemala. All the countries mentioned aside from United States seem to suffer from gang warfare, or even civil war. That it is so high for Latin America is perhaps not surprising. Unfortunately, the US doesn't seem to have that excuse. Also, are we undercounting murders by other countries by differentiating between civilian vs non-civilian? That could be affecting the statistics.

bluedino 8y ago
The gun homicides in the USA are from smaller-scale gang war fare as well
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

zzzzzzz123 8y ago

Thanks imperialism. Things would probably be better if right wing dictatorships weren't supported with arms and money for decades. Maybe economic conditions for their people would be better leading to less crime. Don't tell that to US mining, agricultural, or oil concerns or the anti-communists in the Pentagon. Let's just stay asleep and dream dreams of Venezuelan oil. https://www.kcet.org/shows/democracy-now/bolton-pushes-privatization-of-venezuelas-oil https://www.kcet.org/shows/democracy-now/bolton-pushes-priva...

whiddershins 8y ago

This article mixes and matches statistical types and conclusions in a confusing manner. For example, if most United States firearm deaths are suicides, it is misleading to then follow with a quote saying “where there are more guns there is more homicide.”

patmcc 8y ago
Why? Both things can be true. Firearms could cause an increase in both homicides and suicides.
- entropie 8y ago
  https://xkcd.com/552/ https://xkcd.com/552/
- seppin 8y ago
  And a country can be leading in both statistics
- zepto 8y ago
  They could, but that isn’t a conclusion that the statistics show.
updateYourMind 8y ago
Yet the US has the highest numbers of mass shootings.
- Tyrannosaur 8y ago
  That's not an undisputed fact. https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-the-us-leads-the-world-in-mass-shootings/ https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-the-us-leads-the-worl...
  - updateYourMind 8y ago
    From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_S... > The United States has had more mass shootings than any other country.

redsummer 8y ago

Let them in

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago

I never understood how anyone can take another life. To take away the memories, the experiences, the future potential of another spirit - all for the sake of what? Hate? Money? Power? How can anything be worth more than the only thing that allows one to experience this world? Sad.

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
Seriously, you downvote this? Huh. The hate runs deep.
- dang 8y ago
  Please follow the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
AngryData 8y ago
Starvation, poverty, vengeance. Would you willingly let yourself starve to death? Would you willingly watch your kids starve to death? Most crime is done out of desperation, and if you and enough other people around you are desperate enough it becomes normalized behavior in order to survive. You get robbed, so instead of dieing a hobo, you rob somebody else, the problem perpetuates itself because there are so few alternatives available.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  "Most crime is done out of desperation" This is just wrong. The vast majority of Mexicans don't commit murder, and they are definitely not starving. Greed, egoism, pettiness, rage, psychopathy, nihilism are more likely reasons.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  Starvation need not provoke murder. If I had to choose between watching my child die and murdering another human so he could survive I’d choose the former. There is no life for a life. You only get one, and robbing someone of their life is the greatest injustice that can ever be carried out. I understand that if you grow up in that culture it feels normalized, but that doesn’t make it ok.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

"We look at them individually to see if there is a correlation between loose gun laws " Laws are irrelevant if they are not consistently enforced.

yubiox 8y ago

>This high level of unregistered firearms has been attributed to Mexico’s proximity with the United States, as thousands of gun retailers sit just over the border. A report on gun trafficking between the US and Mexico revealed that almost 90% of the guns recovered and identified from Mexican crime scenes can be traced back to firearm dealers in the neighbouring country. Obama's ATF forced dealers to sell guns to straw purchasers who took them to Mexico.

jostmey 8y ago

The debate here has focused on guns as the problem. Guns are not the problem, they are an expression of the problem. To quote the article: "The Economist stated that rapid urbanisation and inequalities in wealth distribution were some of the largest factors in violent crime, and as one of the most unequal countries on the planet, Brazil backs up this claim." I think this statement applies to Mexico and other Latin American countries, to varying extents. Removing guns from the streets may reduce gun deaths, but the violence will probably remain as long as the underlying social injustices are not addressed.

baroffoos 8y ago
Guns are like a megaphone for violence. Violent people will still exist but their reach is far less with a knife
- flattone 8y ago
  lets have a serious discussion... knife is like number 5000 on a crazy persons shopping list. gun is probably 300 but also easier than 1-299
  - hyperbovine 8y ago
    GP is making a serious point.
  - jostmey 8y ago
    I'm not saying that guns should be legal (I'm also not saying they should be illegal). What is important is to focus on the root issues, and I don't believe that the root issues are "guns".
    - hellllllllooo 8y ago
      This is a false dichotomy. Why do you have to focus on the "root issue"? What's wrong with dealing with a part of the problem? No complex problems get dealt with as a whole. They get broken in to pieces and dealt with using the tools available. Guns are clearly a part of the problem so let's do something about them while also doing something about other social issues.

AngryData 8y ago

That is what happens when a global superpower starts funneling guns and money to rebel groups to overthrown democratic governments and replace them with easily bribed authoritarians. This is what happens when you bomb a peaceful civilian populous so they give into a foreign fruit companies exploitative demands. Things would be a lot better if we didn't spend the last 60+ years doing everything possible to destabilize established and successful political institutions in the name of corporate profits.

updateYourMind 8y ago

I recommend the subreddit r/gunsAreCool

dang 8y ago

The submitted title broke the site guidelines by editorializing. Please don't! The relevant guideline says "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." (Submitted title was "Latin America has 8% of world’s population and 38% of murders".)

jxramos 8y ago

There's a YouTube channel called Active Self Protection where the subscribers have this running joke almost about the next video being from Brazil. Even the commentator says stuff like "...you guessed it, from Brazil", because there's just so much content coming out of these Latin American countries for his show's focus which is analysis and review of crimes captured from surveillance camera footage, badge cams, and bystander journalism and what not. It's interesting the ubiquity of these video feeds that we can get a glimpse into another part of the world and see the problems people have to deal with. The commentator for the channel often informs his audience about how certain things pose entirely different risks in other parts of the world. This includes things like not boxing yourself in with your car in Latin America where car jackings often play out where you gave yourself no exit by stopping so close to the car in front, or being oblivious to two men on a motorcycle, the so called "motochorros", etc.

abacate 8y ago

Please stop talking about Brazil as a single reality. Murder rate is completely different across state lines. And guns play zero role into the causes, as others have already pointed out. Any serious analysis on USA is done in a per-state basis, and the same applies to Brazil.