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Guns aren't that scary. We are good at identifying and arresting/shooting gunmen, they can rarely kill more than a handful of us. Look forward enough in time a

Guns aren't that scary. We are good at identifying and arresting/shooting gunmen, they can rarely kill more than a handful of us. Look forward enough in time and be afraid of the time when it's easy to download and print virulent pathogens or other WMDs. As technology amplifies individuals power, it will only take one unhinged person to cause massive damage. I don't think law enforcement/military/intelligence/censorship approaches will work when massive destructive power is in the hands of individuals. Possible if incomplete solutions I can foresee are in the realm of genetically engineering increased empathy in humanity and eliminating psychopathic/anti-social tendencies from the gene pool. Eugenics is unpalatable and too slow, we will need an intelligent and targeted handover from evolution to engineering our DNA. One day our civilization may wake up and realize exploiting entire classes and nations is untenable in the face of asymmetrical revenge. This isn't at hand today, but my mind can't help but follow this trend to its inevitable eventuality. On spaceship earth we are all in this together. EDIT: My choice of language was poor. Guns are scary, what I should have said is they are not an existential threat. EDIT 2, this time for clarity and with feeling: When I say we are good at stopping gunmen and they rarely kill more than handful of us, I did not mean in the aggregate. I meant an individual gunmen rarely kills more than a handful of us. A great example that underlines my point here is the North Hollywood shootout. From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout): "Both robbers were killed, eleven police officers and seven civilians were injured, and numerous vehicles and other property were damaged or destroyed by the nearly 2,000 rounds of ammunition fired by the robbers and police." No one but the gunmen were killed. Of course the counterpoint to this anecdote are mass shootings like Columbine. These shootings terrorize us emotionally and destroy families, but when thought of statistically they are an extremely minor threat.

TomGullen 13y ago
> Guns aren't that scary. We are good at identifying and arresting/shooting gunmen, they can rarely kill more than a handful of us Guessing you're from the US - where there were 14,078 firearm related homicide deaths in 2010? I don't think that's an indicator you're any good at identifying gunmen at all. 14,000 deaths is also considerably more than "a handful". Gun deaths in UK in 2007 totalled 51. So yes, I do feel less scared in the UK than I do in USA. In 2010, 499 service personnel were killed in Afghanistan. I wonder what public sentiment would be if that total was closer to the 14,000 back at home. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Stat... http://icasualties.org/oef/ http://icasualties.org/oef/
- pessimizer 13y ago
  >closer to the gun death rate back at home You haven't mentioned one rate, just totals.
  - TomGullen 13y ago
    Yes you're right, edited.
    - pessimizer 13y ago
      In the wrong direction, though; I think for your point, it's important to cite rates. If we only sent 500 soldiers to Afghanistan, but the US population was 5 billion, thoughtful people would think that the US was remarkably safe when it came to gun violence according to your totals.
- betterunix 13y ago
  "14,000 deaths is also considerably more than "a handful"." It is also considerably less than the number of automobile deaths per year -- less than half, in fact. "Gun deaths in UK in 2007 totalled 51. So yes, I do feel less scared in the UK than I do in USA." The murder rate is lower in the UK for all weapons, so you are right to feel safer there.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Eh, if you are not a common criminal or associate with common criminals, then the chances that you will be shot by anyone but yourself are not really worth considering, even with the dramatically higher gun death rate in the US. While I would be safer in the UK I wouldn't say that I would feel more safe because that would imply that I could feel more safe about my prospects of being killed by a gun than I do right now. That meter is already pegged to zero.
  - wtallis 13y ago
    Comparing gun deaths with automobile deaths to show that gun deaths aren't that big of a problem is silly. Automobile deaths are caused by and counterbalanced by the extreme usefulness of cars, where guns are mostly just for sport. So gun deaths can be easily reduced by reducing the number of guns, and the side-effects would be very minor compared to taking the naive way of reducing automobile deaths. If your goal is to reduce death rates, you have to take into account not just the death rate, but how easy it is to change that death rate.
lifeguard 13y ago
In American, guns are toys to make men feel strong. They are worse than useless in the hands of the untrained and unpracticed. example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QjZY3WiO9s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QjZY3WiO9s
- hga 13y ago
  In the US around 2.25 million times a year a gun is used in self-defense. In way over 90% of those incidents the gun is never fired, just a display of it and the willingness to use it are sufficient. Anecdotally I'm personally amazed at how well many untrained people successfully use shoot guns in self-defense situations. I would guess that after centuries of incremental ergonomic improvements they turn out to be not so hard to use, and use safely (in terms of accidents they're lots safer than automobiles).
  - lifeguard 13y ago
    In USA 90+ people (including children) die EVERY DAY due to firearm accidents. Again, these are toys to make some men feel powerful.
    - hga 13y ago
      Not even close. The number of fatal accidents per year is ~600. To get your 90+ number you're including suicides, which outnumber other illegal uses of guns; seeing that internationally suicide rates have no correlation whatsoever with gun ownership rates, and many developed countries have way higher suicide rates than ours, one would hope you could see gun mediated suicides don't belong in the same category. Ah, while we're doing math, I get 6200 defense uses of guns every day.
      - lifeguard 13y ago
        I was wrong, that stat is for ALL firearm deaths. Only 60 Americans were accidentally killed by guns today. And yesterday. And the day before that. http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/dataRestriction_inj.html http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/dataRestriction_inj.html http://smartgunlaws.org/gun-deaths-and-injuries-statistics/ http://smartgunlaws.org/gun-deaths-and-injuries-statistics/
lifeguard 13y ago
"One day our civilization may wake up and realize exploiting entire classes and nations is untenable in the face of asymmetrical revenge." Good luck with that.

TomGullen 13y ago

> Guns aren't that scary. We are good at identifying and arresting/shooting gunmen, they can rarely kill more than a handful of us Guessing you're from the US - where there were 14,078 firearm related homicide deaths in 2010? I don't think that's an indicator you're any good at identifying gunmen at all. 14,000 deaths is also considerably more than "a handful". Gun deaths in UK in 2007 totalled 51. So yes, I do feel less scared in the UK than I do in USA. In 2010, 499 service personnel were killed in Afghanistan. I wonder what public sentiment would be if that total was closer to the 14,000 back at home. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Stat... http://icasualties.org/oef/ http://icasualties.org/oef/

pessimizer 13y ago
>closer to the gun death rate back at home You haven't mentioned one rate, just totals.
- TomGullen 13y ago
  Yes you're right, edited.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    In the wrong direction, though; I think for your point, it's important to cite rates. If we only sent 500 soldiers to Afghanistan, but the US population was 5 billion, thoughtful people would think that the US was remarkably safe when it came to gun violence according to your totals.
betterunix 13y ago
"14,000 deaths is also considerably more than "a handful"." It is also considerably less than the number of automobile deaths per year -- less than half, in fact. "Gun deaths in UK in 2007 totalled 51. So yes, I do feel less scared in the UK than I do in USA." The murder rate is lower in the UK for all weapons, so you are right to feel safer there.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Eh, if you are not a common criminal or associate with common criminals, then the chances that you will be shot by anyone but yourself are not really worth considering, even with the dramatically higher gun death rate in the US. While I would be safer in the UK I wouldn't say that I would feel more safe because that would imply that I could feel more safe about my prospects of being killed by a gun than I do right now. That meter is already pegged to zero.
- wtallis 13y ago
  Comparing gun deaths with automobile deaths to show that gun deaths aren't that big of a problem is silly. Automobile deaths are caused by and counterbalanced by the extreme usefulness of cars, where guns are mostly just for sport. So gun deaths can be easily reduced by reducing the number of guns, and the side-effects would be very minor compared to taking the naive way of reducing automobile deaths. If your goal is to reduce death rates, you have to take into account not just the death rate, but how easy it is to change that death rate.

lifeguard 13y ago

In American, guns are toys to make men feel strong. They are worse than useless in the hands of the untrained and unpracticed. example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QjZY3WiO9s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QjZY3WiO9s

hga 13y ago
In the US around 2.25 million times a year a gun is used in self-defense. In way over 90% of those incidents the gun is never fired, just a display of it and the willingness to use it are sufficient. Anecdotally I'm personally amazed at how well many untrained people successfully use shoot guns in self-defense situations. I would guess that after centuries of incremental ergonomic improvements they turn out to be not so hard to use, and use safely (in terms of accidents they're lots safer than automobiles).
- lifeguard 13y ago
  In USA 90+ people (including children) die EVERY DAY due to firearm accidents. Again, these are toys to make some men feel powerful.
  - hga 13y ago
    Not even close. The number of fatal accidents per year is ~600. To get your 90+ number you're including suicides, which outnumber other illegal uses of guns; seeing that internationally suicide rates have no correlation whatsoever with gun ownership rates, and many developed countries have way higher suicide rates than ours, one would hope you could see gun mediated suicides don't belong in the same category. Ah, while we're doing math, I get 6200 defense uses of guns every day.
    - lifeguard 13y ago
      I was wrong, that stat is for ALL firearm deaths. Only 60 Americans were accidentally killed by guns today. And yesterday. And the day before that. http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/dataRestriction_inj.html http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/dataRestriction_inj.html http://smartgunlaws.org/gun-deaths-and-injuries-statistics/ http://smartgunlaws.org/gun-deaths-and-injuries-statistics/

lifeguard 13y ago

"One day our civilization may wake up and realize exploiting entire classes and nations is untenable in the face of asymmetrical revenge." Good luck with that.