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Those numbers are, almost certainly, all within the US (or spun to include things other than gun violence in "crimes", perhaps?). Because the data globally poi

Those numbers are, almost certainly, all within the US (or spun to include things other than gun violence in "crimes", perhaps?). Because the data globally points the other direction. The overwhelmingly largest factor, across every nation we have data for, in determining how many people get shot is how many guns there are, period. More guns means more shootings. Again, I don't see how an argument that "crime change as a result of change to gun laws tend to be tiny" can be anything but laughable given data points like "Japan" or "Belgium".

hntrader 6y ago
> in determining how many people get shot The argument is that legal guns increase gun deaths but reduce other types of crime, either by substitution (e.g. reducing knife crime) or by deterrence (e.g. reducing home burglaries). That claim has its own burden of proof that it needs to meet before it can be accepted, but looking at other countries and saying "More guns means more shootings" isn't addressing the actual argument.
- newacct583 6y ago
  What is the "actual argument" then? Gun deaths are... pretty bad. Lumping them in with burglaries on a 1:1 basis seems like poor moral calculus, no? The point is that perspective matters. You want to treat "crime" as a single thing because it seems like "the actual argument" to you, and when I see that same argument it looks like senseless spin because it's trying to dilute the US's outrageous homicide rate in an analysis by comparing it to burglaries in Amsterdam or whatever.
  - hntrader 6y ago
    > Lumping them in with burglaries on a 1:1 basis seems like poor moral calculus, no Yes, and I'm not advocating for that. My only point is that "less gun deaths in countries without legal guns" isn't addressing the original claim that other crimes have decreased as a consequence of legal guns. I'm not taking a position on whether that claim is true, or what exactly they mean by that, which are both questions I also would like to be answered.
  - flyingfences 6y ago
    I think one part of the moral calculus that's missing here is who the "victim" is in each case. A substitution of somebody being shot for somebody being burled is obviously not a good outcome; on the other hand, a substitution of a burgler being shot for an innocent average joe being burgled is... still not great, but you must admit it shifts the scales.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      Effectively zero gun violence is deployed in defense, either of person or property. No "burglers" are being shot, statistically. Guns are deployed in anger, or in escalation of existing violence.
- austincheney 6y ago
  The argument that more common access to firearms more frequently results in more gun deaths is misleading when considering many of those deaths are self inflicted injuries, such as suicide attempts. Obama correctly addressed this when he pushed for gun reform near the end of his tenure. In other words if disqualifying access to firearms on the basis of mental health concerns you simultaneously increase lawful access to firearms and reduce gun deaths related to those new purchases.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    > The argument that more common access to firearms more frequently results in more gun deaths is misleading when considering many of those deaths are self inflicted injuries, such as suicide attempts. Suicides don't count? For the record: I'm 100% in favor of public policy that results in large decreases in the suicide rate.
    - austincheney 6y ago
      It’s not that suicides don’t count. The argument is misleading because suicides absolutely do count, but for many people the the subject of gun deaths incorrectly implies homicides.
    - zepto 6y ago
      They count, but they aren’t murders. They also don’t count 1 for 1. It’s much easier to substitute something else for a gun when committing suicide than when murdering someone.
      - newacct583 6y ago
        > It’s much easier to substitute something else for a gun when committing suicide than when murdering someone. That idea seems to be belied by the upthread assertion that gun deaths disproportionately represent suicides.
        LorenPechtel 6y ago
austincheney 6y ago
Yes, I was just speaking to reflections of law changes in the US. There are a couple of reasons why the data could point differently for the US compared to other locations, such as the commonality of firearms regardless of legal status and culture.
LorenPechtel 6y ago
The problem is you are mixing up "being shot" with "being a victim". The prevalence of guns changes the nature of crime far more than it changes the amount of crime.
- newacct583 6y ago
  The "problem" is that you (as I mention earlier) are insisting on treating any "crime" as morally identically to any other, which seems insane to me. Would you rather be shot or mugged? I know the answer I'd give. The prevalence of guns changes the nature of crime, on the whole, from largely survivable violence to presumptively lethal injury. And that's bad, thus the game-playing with "crime" statistics instead of shootings to try to obscure the clear truth.
  - zepto 6y ago
    True, but logic like this leads inevitably to large scale gun confiscation or prohibition. That’s a fine perspective to have, but it completely contradicts the people here who are saying no one is demanding prohibition.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      Exactly, it's a question of perspective. We had a rationalist essay on exactly this effect on the front page yesterday, in fact! It's a Trapped Prior. If your prior is "gun rights are super important and any attempt to regulate guns must be resisted", then it leads you inevitably to ridiculous arguments like "AKTUALLY guns reduce crime (for some variant definition of crime that includes non-violent stuff)" or (and you fell right into this one) "[gun regulation] leads inevitably to large scale gun confiscation or prohibition"[1]. At what point will the gun folks come back to rational compromise? You know how you end up with inevitable prohibition? When it's the only option left to the majority. [1] Which is just clearly false, look at the diversity of gun laws across the globe! CLEARLY it's true that you can regulate them better than the US without "inevitably" confiscating them. Look at Canada, for goodness sake.
soupbowl 6y ago
Canada probably has higher gun ownership per capita than the US and gun crime is very low.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Switzerland too.
- newacct583 6y ago
  It does not. The US has far more guns. But Canada has significantly more guns than other similar western democracies. And, in fact, Canada has an intermediate level of gun violence between the extremes of the US wild west and totalitarian Europe! It's almost like, as I said above, the clearly obvious determining factor in gun violence is the simple number of weapons. That this obvious hypothesis is simply disbelieved by large numbers of HN posters (many of whom like to call themselves "rationalists") continues to astound me.
  - brailsafe 6y ago
    Most of the gun owners I know here also tend to just have hunting rifles or stuff they take to the range.
  - zepto 6y ago
    > the clearly obvious determining factor in gun violence is the simple number of weapons Except that this simply is not true. Gun violence in the us is not correlated with gun ownership. It is correlated with poverty. It’s as simple as that. This is because ‘gun violence’ is just violence. Calling it ‘gun violence’ makes it seem like it’s about guns, but it really isn’t.
- milkrocks 6y ago
  Less minorities too...
MikeUt 6y ago
> Because the data globally points the other direction. Once you include multiple countries, isn't your data skewed by "countries at war import a lot of guns"? > or spun to include things other than gun violence in "crimes", perhaps? That's not spin. You want to minimize total deaths, not "gun violence". If banning guns meant instead of getting shot, the same number of people got stabbed instead, the ban would be pointless.
- brailsafe 6y ago
  If someone wants to kill you, and has a gun, not only can they do so from a distance, but it was invented for that purpose. Stabbing someone is more of an act of opportunity I'd wager, and in a lot of circumstances you'd be less likely to die, therefore reducing deaths.
  - MikeUt 6y ago
    As I said, that is why you look at homicides, not "gun deaths" or "stabbings" - so you don't have to wager or guess.
    - brailsafe 6y ago
      Well, not quite. You said that the same number of stabbings would be equivalent to the same number of people getting shot, but didn't specify that the stabbings would be fatal. I'm suggesting that if total violent crime stayed the same, but you removed guns, you'd have less fatalities.
- michaelbrave 6y ago
  more people survive stabbings than shootings, and if someone was to say start stabbing on a school campus a lot less people would be stabbed than shot in a school shooting.
  - MikeUt 6y ago
    Which is, as I said, exactly why counting homicides is not spin, and better than counting "stabbings" or "shootings" or "gun deaths". You look directly at the metric you care about (people killed), instead of intermediate metrics (people stabbed/shot) and trying to figure out how that translates to number of people killed.

hntrader 6y ago

> in determining how many people get shot The argument is that legal guns increase gun deaths but reduce other types of crime, either by substitution (e.g. reducing knife crime) or by deterrence (e.g. reducing home burglaries). That claim has its own burden of proof that it needs to meet before it can be accepted, but looking at other countries and saying "More guns means more shootings" isn't addressing the actual argument.

newacct583 6y ago
What is the "actual argument" then? Gun deaths are... pretty bad. Lumping them in with burglaries on a 1:1 basis seems like poor moral calculus, no? The point is that perspective matters. You want to treat "crime" as a single thing because it seems like "the actual argument" to you, and when I see that same argument it looks like senseless spin because it's trying to dilute the US's outrageous homicide rate in an analysis by comparing it to burglaries in Amsterdam or whatever.
- hntrader 6y ago
  > Lumping them in with burglaries on a 1:1 basis seems like poor moral calculus, no Yes, and I'm not advocating for that. My only point is that "less gun deaths in countries without legal guns" isn't addressing the original claim that other crimes have decreased as a consequence of legal guns. I'm not taking a position on whether that claim is true, or what exactly they mean by that, which are both questions I also would like to be answered.
- flyingfences 6y ago
  I think one part of the moral calculus that's missing here is who the "victim" is in each case. A substitution of somebody being shot for somebody being burled is obviously not a good outcome; on the other hand, a substitution of a burgler being shot for an innocent average joe being burgled is... still not great, but you must admit it shifts the scales.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    Effectively zero gun violence is deployed in defense, either of person or property. No "burglers" are being shot, statistically. Guns are deployed in anger, or in escalation of existing violence.
austincheney 6y ago
The argument that more common access to firearms more frequently results in more gun deaths is misleading when considering many of those deaths are self inflicted injuries, such as suicide attempts. Obama correctly addressed this when he pushed for gun reform near the end of his tenure. In other words if disqualifying access to firearms on the basis of mental health concerns you simultaneously increase lawful access to firearms and reduce gun deaths related to those new purchases.
- newacct583 6y ago
  > The argument that more common access to firearms more frequently results in more gun deaths is misleading when considering many of those deaths are self inflicted injuries, such as suicide attempts. Suicides don't count? For the record: I'm 100% in favor of public policy that results in large decreases in the suicide rate.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    It’s not that suicides don’t count. The argument is misleading because suicides absolutely do count, but for many people the the subject of gun deaths incorrectly implies homicides.
  - zepto 6y ago
    They count, but they aren’t murders. They also don’t count 1 for 1. It’s much easier to substitute something else for a gun when committing suicide than when murdering someone.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      > It’s much easier to substitute something else for a gun when committing suicide than when murdering someone. That idea seems to be belied by the upthread assertion that gun deaths disproportionately represent suicides.
      - LorenPechtel 6y ago

austincheney 6y ago

Yes, I was just speaking to reflections of law changes in the US. There are a couple of reasons why the data could point differently for the US compared to other locations, such as the commonality of firearms regardless of legal status and culture.

LorenPechtel 6y ago

The problem is you are mixing up "being shot" with "being a victim". The prevalence of guns changes the nature of crime far more than it changes the amount of crime.

newacct583 6y ago
The "problem" is that you (as I mention earlier) are insisting on treating any "crime" as morally identically to any other, which seems insane to me. Would you rather be shot or mugged? I know the answer I'd give. The prevalence of guns changes the nature of crime, on the whole, from largely survivable violence to presumptively lethal injury. And that's bad, thus the game-playing with "crime" statistics instead of shootings to try to obscure the clear truth.
- zepto 6y ago
  True, but logic like this leads inevitably to large scale gun confiscation or prohibition. That’s a fine perspective to have, but it completely contradicts the people here who are saying no one is demanding prohibition.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    Exactly, it's a question of perspective. We had a rationalist essay on exactly this effect on the front page yesterday, in fact! It's a Trapped Prior. If your prior is "gun rights are super important and any attempt to regulate guns must be resisted", then it leads you inevitably to ridiculous arguments like "AKTUALLY guns reduce crime (for some variant definition of crime that includes non-violent stuff)" or (and you fell right into this one) "[gun regulation] leads inevitably to large scale gun confiscation or prohibition"[1]. At what point will the gun folks come back to rational compromise? You know how you end up with inevitable prohibition? When it's the only option left to the majority. [1] Which is just clearly false, look at the diversity of gun laws across the globe! CLEARLY it's true that you can regulate them better than the US without "inevitably" confiscating them. Look at Canada, for goodness sake.

soupbowl 6y ago

Canada probably has higher gun ownership per capita than the US and gun crime is very low.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
Switzerland too.
newacct583 6y ago
It does not. The US has far more guns. But Canada has significantly more guns than other similar western democracies. And, in fact, Canada has an intermediate level of gun violence between the extremes of the US wild west and totalitarian Europe! It's almost like, as I said above, the clearly obvious determining factor in gun violence is the simple number of weapons. That this obvious hypothesis is simply disbelieved by large numbers of HN posters (many of whom like to call themselves "rationalists") continues to astound me.
- brailsafe 6y ago
  Most of the gun owners I know here also tend to just have hunting rifles or stuff they take to the range.
- zepto 6y ago
  > the clearly obvious determining factor in gun violence is the simple number of weapons Except that this simply is not true. Gun violence in the us is not correlated with gun ownership. It is correlated with poverty. It’s as simple as that. This is because ‘gun violence’ is just violence. Calling it ‘gun violence’ makes it seem like it’s about guns, but it really isn’t.
milkrocks 6y ago
Less minorities too...

MikeUt 6y ago

> Because the data globally points the other direction. Once you include multiple countries, isn't your data skewed by "countries at war import a lot of guns"? > or spun to include things other than gun violence in "crimes", perhaps? That's not spin. You want to minimize total deaths, not "gun violence". If banning guns meant instead of getting shot, the same number of people got stabbed instead, the ban would be pointless.

brailsafe 6y ago
If someone wants to kill you, and has a gun, not only can they do so from a distance, but it was invented for that purpose. Stabbing someone is more of an act of opportunity I'd wager, and in a lot of circumstances you'd be less likely to die, therefore reducing deaths.
- MikeUt 6y ago
  As I said, that is why you look at homicides, not "gun deaths" or "stabbings" - so you don't have to wager or guess.
  - brailsafe 6y ago
    Well, not quite. You said that the same number of stabbings would be equivalent to the same number of people getting shot, but didn't specify that the stabbings would be fatal. I'm suggesting that if total violent crime stayed the same, but you removed guns, you'd have less fatalities.
michaelbrave 6y ago
more people survive stabbings than shootings, and if someone was to say start stabbing on a school campus a lot less people would be stabbed than shot in a school shooting.
- MikeUt 6y ago
  Which is, as I said, exactly why counting homicides is not spin, and better than counting "stabbings" or "shootings" or "gun deaths". You look directly at the metric you care about (people killed), instead of intermediate metrics (people stabbed/shot) and trying to figure out how that translates to number of people killed.