Yes - makes me think of the assassination of Shinzo Abe.

The gunman made his own gun, in a country with ultra-strict gun laws. The Unabomber made his own bombs. The Seattle mall Islamist knife attacker refused to stay down after being shot multiple times.

My takeaway: political terrorists are particularly motivated. Secondly, gun laws slow them down but don't stop them.

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xnx 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

4 people were killed after being shot in Japan in 2022. More people were killed by gunshots in the US today.

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zdw 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You might want to look into what happened in Japanese politics after the Abe assassination. Public opinion was not unfavorable to the plight and motivations of the attacker.

	▲	oskarkk 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I just wanted to mention that. Recently I was wondering what was that even about, and I was surprised to read this on Wikipedia: > Yamagami told investigators that he had shot Abe in relation to a grudge he held against the Unification Church (UC), a new religious movement to which Abe and his family had political ties, over his mother's bankruptcy in 2002. > The assassination brought scrutiny from Japanese society and media against the UC's alleged practice of pressuring believers into making exorbitant donations. Japanese dignitaries and legislators were forced to disclose their relationship with the UC, (...) the LDP announced that it would no longer have any relationship with the UC and its associated organisations, and would expel members who did not break ties with the group. (...) [The parliament] passed two bills to restrict the activities of religious organisations such as the UC and provide relief to victims. > Abe's killing has been described as one of the most effective and successful political assassinations in recent history due to the backlash against the UC that it provoked. The Economist remarked that "... Yamagami's political violence has proved stunningly effective ... Political violence seldom fulfills so many of its perpetrator's aims." Writing for The Atlantic, Robert F. Worth described Yamagami as "among the most successful assassins in history".

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brookst 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Risk mitigation; statistics and funnels. It's all just trying to reduce the likelihood and severity of bad outcomes, not preventing them altogether. Same story as seatbelts and stoplights.

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gretch 5 days ago | parent [-]

> Same story as seatbelts and stoplights

I don't believe this is the same thing.

One is an adversarial problem where a living thinking being is evil and trying to attack you.

In traffic, most people are just trying to get somewhere, and then accidents happen.

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brookst 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

No, they're the same thing from a risk management perspective. As a defender, you do not (or at least should not) care about motivations. Seatbelts protect against genuine mistakes (by you or others), mechanical failures, road rage, etc.

There's a long funnel of all the things that could happen, probability of each, and total resulting probability. That's no different for being in a car wreck or being shot at.

Now, on a moral level, sure, malice is different from negligence is different from coincidence.

	▲	gretch 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		> As a defender, you do not (or at least should not) care about motivations The motivation is not the important part. Sentience is. This person is playing a chess match trying to defeat you. Consider biology. Cancer is a hard problem to solve, but it's not scheming against you with an intelligence. What about someone in a lab engineering bioweapons?

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bmicraft 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's only an accident when taken out of the bigger picture. There is a reason it's often called car collision (or similar nowadays): Because it's a statistical inevitability when taken in aggregate.

	▲	gretch 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		You focused on the word "accident" but the emphasis is on the concept of being "adversarial". Do you think traffic lights help if someone goes out with the explicit intent to kill others via their car?

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therouwboat 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's kinda nice to live in a country where that the evil being doesn't have easy access to guns.

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Braxton1980 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why does a law have to be 100% to be considered worth having?

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josephcsible 5 days ago | parent [-]

It doesn't need to be 100% effective, but it needs to be effective enough to make up for the downsides.

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panarchy 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

How many gun deaths per capita does Japan have compared to the USA?

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ajuc 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are whole continents of countries showing how effective gun control is. At this point you've got to be ignoring it on purpose.

It's not some statistical difference between almost no violence and no violence. It's night and day. Orders of magnitude. Teens walking back from parties through the middle of the city at 1 am with their parents permission vs clan wars.

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Braxton1980 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Define effective

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pjc50 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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christophilus 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I don’t doubt you’ve heard someone argue that, but I never have. I’ve always heard it as a right to defense, generally as in a right to defend yourself from oppressive authorities. I never took that to mean assassinations as much as militia actions against militaries.

You can argue whether or not that is an effective approach to securing freedom, but that’s the argument I’m most familiar with.

	▲	delecti 5 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The 2A people couch it in metaphor and implication, but "we need guns to stop tyranny" is fundamentally saying that tyrants ought be shot. We can argue whether the semantics of whether death in battle counts as murder, but I think that's just quibbling over the definition of "assassination".
	▲	pjc50 5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		More of a distinction without a difference. Once you get to that situation, you've legitimized murder; now we see what that looks like. "Militia" action against "military"? Neither side will bother with the scruples of waiting for the enemy to put on a uniform and pick up a weapon. It will be death squads vs car bombs.

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yostrovs 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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anon-3988 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Secondly, gun laws slow them down but don't stop them.

This is so tiring. No shit, sherlock. Medicine doesn't prevent death or sickness either so maybe just give up.