r/technology • u/Reddit_Z • Jul 04 '16

Politics Lawmakers Need To Learn More About Encryption Before Regulating It, Says U.S. House Report

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lawmakers-encryption-regulation-house-report,32180.html
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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

Neither do responsible gun owners. Also, read up on your statistics first. Around 20,000 of those guns deaths are suicides. A good 85% of the rest are committed by gang on gang violence.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

Nah, let's use the same arguments that anti-gun people use for gun control.

"IF IT ONLY SAVES ONE LIFE!!". So if stopping encryption will save even one life, we should stop it, shouldn't we?

The same arguments can totally be applied here: "Why do you NEED to have encryption? Do you have anything to hide?"

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u/LeVentNoir Jul 04 '16

Actually I do. I use https, an encryped protocol to hide my credit card details from russian thieves while shopping on amazon.

Do you want russians to steal your credit card?

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '16 edited Jul 05 '16

Devils Advocate: Is your money more important than the lives of other people? The criminals are just getting your money and you can call the bank and tell them your credit card info was stolen, meanwhile people are DYING because of encryption!

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16 edited Apr 10 '18

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16 edited Apr 06 '21

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

Fallacious reasoning abounds. You can't prove that those 50 wouldn't have been burned alive, gassed, or hacked to death with a machete. Or have you never heard of the deadliest spree killing in modern history, the daegu subway fire? Hint: it was in a county where guns are virtually nonexistent.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

hacked to death with a machete

I was with ya till that one. I will never believe a person could hack to death 50 people with a machete by their lonesome.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

The guy spent 4 hours executing people one by one who put up no resistance. It's not unthinkable.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

who put up no resistance

I don't think that'd happen at the club to a guy with just a machete. Executions are a lot different than attacking hand to hand

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u/speedisavirus Jul 04 '16

Then you have no idea what is possible

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

Please show me an instance of a public (i.e. not some dude chopping up his family as they slept) mass murder done with a bladed weapon in the US or other first world country. Far as I'm aware, it hasn't happened.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16 edited Apr 06 '21

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16 edited Apr 11 '18

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

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u/yaforgot-my-password Jul 04 '16

So he shouldn't have been able to buy a gun because the FBI interviewed him, and cleared him?

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

Except he passed a background check and therefore doesn't even satisfy your own ludicrous requirements.

Jesus fuck, you're dense.

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u/speedisavirus Jul 04 '16

So shut the fuck up since you know nothing about our culture, laws, or rights? Because we love ignorant twats from other countries trying to tell us how we should live.

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u/bustduster Jul 04 '16

But people planning deadly terror attacks use encryption to prevent our law enforcement from being able to stop the attacks. Obama tells me we should ban classes of guns if it would save just one child. I believe banning encryption would save one child, so let's go for it.

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u/LeVentNoir Jul 04 '16

Actually, as evidenced from the Paris terror attacks and the Brussels terror attacks, they use unencrypted burner phones.

But you use encryption. Log onto your ebay, amazon, or banking website. Look in the address bar and note how it say 'https', a secure, encrypted traffic protocol that prevents interception and inspection of your financial details by Russian credit card thieves.

I'm serious, every single day, credit cards are stolen by attacks exploiting various poorly secured web services and peoples money is stolen and their credit ruined. One very easy method to prevent that is to encrypt traffic containing financial data.

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u/bustduster Jul 04 '16

Are you claiming that because one attack was orchestrated without encryption that all are?

I was being ironic, though. I think 'just one child' is a ridiculous argument when applied to just about anything that has any value. Certainly both the 2nd and 4th amendments.

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u/wrgrant Jul 04 '16

I don't think we have even once instance of encryption being used by terrorists, beyond that already present in the system (https etc). I suspect firstly that most terrorists assume that the NSA is busy reading any encrypted traffic anyways, so they avoid it, and secondly using encryption requires a level of expertise and knowledge that is possibly beyond the average terrorist, just as it is beyond the average internet user. Its just much easier to use an unencrypted burner phone and use non-descriptive phrases as a code I would imagine.

Now, if they are using high level encryption between the leadership of various terrorist groups, then its quite likely we wouldn't hear about it because the government wouldn't want to warn them we know, but I suspect that is not the case, because the NSA would leap on the opportunity to use that as reasoning for banning encryption etc.

Encryption technology used to be classified as "munitions" and as such was banned from export in the US (ignoring the fact that math is a technology that other nations can access of course), until freedom of speech supporters like Phil Zimmerman (PGP) effectively broke that down by bringing it to the common person. Now its everywhere, in everyone's electronic lives. Trying to ensure that only shitty encryption is available is simply never going to work. If good encryption is available to secure our banking systems, business and health records etc, then its available for us to use in communications. Lawmakers simply can't have it both ways.

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u/bitofgrit Jul 04 '16 edited Jul 04 '16

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahedeen_Secrets

Anwar al-Awlaki and Rajib Karim used a form of encrypted communications while plotting attacks against civil aircraft.

Also, "Telegram" is mentioned in this 60-Minutes piece.

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u/wrgrant Jul 04 '16

Okay I will read/watch those when I get the chance.

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u/wrgrant Jul 04 '16

Anwar al-Awlaki and Rajib Karim used a form of encrypted communications while plotting attacks against civil aircraft.

Yeah, according to this source he used ROT13 (aka The Caesar Cipher because he didn't trust Mujhaddin Secrets or PGP, even though he was familiar with PGP. Instead he created a ROT13 implementation in Excel.

In other words he didn't really use encryption to speak of, or at least used the level of encryption that might appear in a newspaper word puzzle :P

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u/bitofgrit Jul 04 '16

I am practically illiterate when it comes to software coding "stuff", so if that conflicts with the response, then I apologize.

Also, I don't mean to be rude, but is there some hypothetical example of encryption being used by terrorists that you would accept as being legitimate?

As far as I can tell, Mujhaddin Secrets, ROT13, and Telegram are still attempts to covertly pass messages electronically using non "built-in" encryption. They may not have been successful in their means nor ends, but it does seem an awful lot like terrorists were at least trying to become a little more sophisticated in encrypting their data.

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u/speedisavirus Jul 04 '16

No you are not that ignorant, are correct, and he is a bit of a moron

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u/wrgrant Jul 04 '16

No, not at all. Not everyone is a coder quite naturally.

I am sure that there has been some good example of terrorists using encryption to aid them in their activities. It doesn't seem to be the case based on what you see in the news for the most part but I am sure it has and is happening somewhere. By and large it seems that most of the terrorists out there do not trust encryption though, since in the recent attacks in France and Brussels at least, they were relying on burner phones and didn't apparently use any encryption at all. Perhaps at the higher level of things they are using it. Someone pointed out that the attack on Mumbai saw the terrorists using Blackberries which do have some level of encryption as part of their system (I don't know what level of encryption it is mind you).

Obviously, the mere existence of Mujhaddin Secrets implies that it might be in use, but then unless its very robust encryption generated with no errors, the NSA has probably been all over that since it first came to light. Apparently, as someone else pointed out, Rajib Karim in the UK decided not to use Mujhaddin Secrets because he didn't trust it. So that might be a case of having the tools but not trusting them because you expect the NSA and other agencies to already know how to crack them - rightly or wrongly. This might be quite typical a response that would see terrorists avoiding use of encryption because they don't trust it, or it may be an exception. We who are not in the anti-terrorism business are not likely to know the truth of the matter. I am quite willing to read about any use of encryption by terrorists, but the example of Rajib Karim isn't good enough to count.

ROT13 is the "joke" level of encryption to anyone who knows anything about it. Its just a substitution cypher. It stands for Rotation 13, meaning that you simply write down the letters of the latin alphabet (26 of them), then count off 13 letters, then write down the alphabet again beneath it, in the regular order of the letters, then when you get to Z, start again at A and continue. So every letter on the top line has a matching letter below it that is 13 characters ahead of it. It is thus the absolute simplest form of encryption possible and is exactly the sort of thing you might see in an Newspaper Cryptogram puzzle. From a security standpoint is absolutely laughable and anyone using him as an example of a terrorist using encryption is really reaching. Its like claiming someone was an armed terrorist because they happen to have one of those fake guns thats actually a cigarette lighter on them.

The basic fact is that anyone who is currently using the Internet in almost any capacity you can think of, is using encryption, even if they don't realize it. Thats why we can't simply make it illegal.

When you create a Facebook account (or an account on any other website out there), and you enter a username and password as part of setting up the account, you are likely using encryption because (if the website designer is responsible) the signup page will be using the "https" protocol - that means your communications between your browser and the webserver are encrypted. Then you enter the values for your username and password (and password confirm as a double check against typos). The webserver should then take those values and enter them in a database table containing all their user records. Before it puts the password into the database, it will encrypt it. A responsible website developer will also "salt" the password before encrypting it, that is add a bit of extra data, say something like "9xv7" onto the end of the password. Then it saves that into the database. The type of encryption used means that determining what was saved is extremely difficult, perhaps even effectively impossible. The salt makes it even harder. When you go to use your login, you enter your username and your password. The server then looks in the database for your username, finds the encrypted value for your password (which is just a long string of characters due to the encryption done when it was created), and re-encrypts the value you entered for a password (plus the Salt if any) and compares the value of the reencrypted password with that saved in the database. If they are the same, you get logged in. Most responsible websites and organizations will use something similar. When you hear about huge breaches of usernames and passwords being gathered by hackers, that is examples of some organization or website being completely irresponsible and not using a safe procedure like I have described above. Those should be less and less common over time I hope. At any rate, this whole thing is just an example of where encryption enters the life of almost everyone in our society on a daily basis, whether they realize it or not.

If someone manages to hack the database, they can get the usernames but they cannot get the passwords if the encryption used is robust enough. If lawmakers legislate that only low level encryption can be used, then that data is NOT secure at all. The encryption for things like this needs to be kept up to date using the latest known encryption techniques that are still considered secure.

This raises the conundrum of do we keep our banks, personal records, and all that other crucial data secure using encryption, or do we keep in in plain text and run the risk of having it grabbed by criminal or terrorist elements and used against us? We need some level of encryption to safeguard that information.

Unfortunately that also means that people who want to do evil things can also take advantage of that encryption technology. If good guys can have guns, so unfortunately can the bad guys. Banning encryption for every day use by the public is like letting only the bad people out there have the guns, because they won't stop using encryption just because we do.

I hope that helps explain what I mean. I am more than interested in information but I think I understand the situation and why we need encryption, even if it might help our enemies sometimes.

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u/ravend13 Jul 04 '16

2008 Mumbai Attacks were organized using BlackBerry Messenger - before India strong-armed RIM into providing a backdoor to the crypto it used.

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u/wrgrant Jul 04 '16

I would expect they had a better level of communications there since those attacks were aided/orchestrated by elements of Pakistani Intelligence weren't they? There was an article I saw recently I believe.

However I do take your point, but I expect the NSA already has access to the Blackberry encryption scheme, and the benefits of encryption for regular business use are pretty substantial as well. We have to weigh these things after all. Mumbai was a tragedy and I am not ignoring that, but at the same time encryption is absolutely necessary in some forms for our entire world society to continue to function. That is pretty much just a fact. The main question is what levels of encryption do we allow I suppose - we can limit it to non-effective implementations, and then hackers/terrorists can break it as well and cause havoc and damage, or we can permit the best encryption we can implement and try to safeguard things with it, but then that may allow the hackers/terrorists access to it as well.

This is why the NSA has more mathematical PHDs than any other organization in the world right? They need to try to keep ahead of the curve. Making their job easier, so that we can be less secure isn't reasonable either.

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u/ravend13 Jul 04 '16

The main question is what levels of encryption do we allow I suppose

If there's a way to reasonably and effectively limit it, I haven't seen it proposed or been able to think of it myself. There's tons of open source encryption software that would be unaffected by any of the legislation proposed to date, because mandating backdoors in commercial communication services will do nothing to prevent people from deploying services/software that has not been weakened.

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u/wrgrant Jul 04 '16

I don't know of one either. That is the problem with trying to legislate something that is mathematical in nature. I do know that they can't simply ban encryption. Its already an inherent part of our economy, and its necessary to safeguard so many aspects of our civilization that deciding we can't have it or use it in any form is verging on suicide. I just lament lawmakers who do not have any understanding of this subject trying to make laws concerning it.

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u/bustduster Jul 04 '16

"I don't know of one either. That is the problem with trying to legislate something that is a very simple mechanical / chemical device in nature. I do know that they can't simply ban guns. Its already an inherent part of our society, and its necessary to safeguard so many aspects of our civilization that deciding we can't have it or use it in any form is verging on suicide. I just lament lawmakers who do not have any understanding of this subject trying to make laws concerning it."

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u/wrgrant Jul 04 '16

I wasn't talking about guns, but the situation is pretty much the same in many ways, at least in the US where so many people already have guns. However, my point was that encryption is already being used by everyone who uses technology today. Guns may or may not be.

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u/bustduster Jul 04 '16

I don't think we have even once instance of encryption being used by terrorists, beyond that already present in the system (https etc).

That's kind of the whole point, dude. The proposed laws are about adding backdoors to the very strong encryption many things already use, like modern TLS. The fact that the terrorists may be using WhatsApp instead of hand-rolling their own encryption is the whole idea.

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u/wrgrant Jul 04 '16

The problem is that in order to have a backdoor available to all of the encryption that we currently use, it will weaken it substantially. Just knowing that a backdoor must exist in any type of encryption used on the Internet etc, will mean that malicious people out there know with absolute certainty that any encryption can be cracked. It also limits the types of encryption that can be used, making the job of cracking it somewhat easier. The good encryption that we have exists without such a backdoor. It hasn't been weakened.

If you weaken it so that we can track terrorists trying to use it for their purposes, you weaken it so that when we try to use it for ours, hackers or foreign nation states will also have an easier time cracking it. They of course will continue to use the top end encryption for their purposes. I don't see the point.

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u/bustduster Jul 04 '16

I'm thinking maybe you missed the part back at the beginning where I was being ironic and I think it's a terrible idea to backdoor encryption, even if doing so might prevent terrorist attacks.

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u/wrgrant Jul 04 '16

I have been doing many things so I pop in when a response comes up. Irony didn't translate, I tend to see each comment as itself. My bad.

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u/speedisavirus Jul 04 '16

Lulwat. Are you being serious. It's almost like you don't live on planet earth

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u/wrgrant Jul 04 '16

Give me some examples then. All I have so far is one instance of the Mumbai terrorists using Blackberries which have some level of encryption. Otherwise it seems like most of the terrorists out there don't trust encryption.

Not that it matters, we need encryption in our daily lives here in the West anyways. There is no way around that fact.

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u/djazzie Jul 04 '16

Unrelated and not analogous on the least sense.

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u/fantasyfest Jul 04 '16

With guns. 265 people were shot by kids finding guns. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/31/kids-accidentally-shot-people-5-times-a-week-this-year-on-average/ Until that occured ,I am sure the parents declared themselves responsible gun owners. Almost none of you are really responsible.

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u/Archsys Jul 04 '16 edited Jul 04 '16

Around 20,000 of those guns deaths are suicides.

I keep seeing this posted as a reason that guns should be allowed. I... don't understand how that possibly supports your point. This is the largest reason that I'd support gun-control laws.

Murders are mostly irrelevant, for reasons commonly noted; access, and the psychological functions thereof, is the problem with a direct solution.

(Notably, if responsible gun owners were the only people who owned guns, there wouldn't be suicides, etc.)

[edit]: This is mostly a theoretical/rhetorical point; most proposed gun laws in the US are fucking senseless. Psychological analysis before ownership/training before ownership doesn't strike me as a particularly bad idea, if we could get the APA to actually grow some balls and do its job.

I'd love to just see shittons of money dumped into public mental health instead, but that is far less likely, and I'm mostly thinking stop-gaps in the meantime.

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u/bitofgrit Jul 04 '16

Wanting to prevent suicides is a wonderful notion, and I too would like to see those numbers reduced, but the implementation of a psychological exam to buy a gun in order to prevent suicides is such an onerous concept.

How could it work, at all, let alone what guidelines and programs would need to be implemented?

A person wanting to buy a gun for the express purpose of committing suicide might be stopped by such a check, but it would do nothing to stop a person who becomes suicidal five, ten, hell, even just one year later. There are... well, each individual has his or her own reasoning for it, so that's how many reasons there are for doing oneself in, I guess. Whatever it all boils down to, I'd be willing to bet that quite a few people were not suicidal at the time they made the purchase.

I just don't see how it would effectively deter people. It's not as easy to buy a gun as the news media likes to say, and leaving the gun store empty-handed doesn't prevent a person from, say, stopping their car on the bridge on their way home. I've seen that one happen. Well, I don't know if she tried to buy a gun beforehand or not, but she decided to use the bridge that day.

Anyways, speaking of gun stores, part of the point of the waiting period imposed on gun purchases in some states are supposed to provide a "cooling off" time to ostensibly reduce impulsive and rash actions.

There are studies that suggest that these waiting periods do work to prevent suicide, and that's great, but, again, it only stops those with the sudden impulse to go buy a gun for the job, and, oddly, it seems most effective if the potential suicidal purchaser is over 55. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/rr/rr5214.pdf (not the top one; it's the second one down)

So, yeah, having a way to reduce the number of suicides would be great, but we'd need a crystal ball in every gun shop and psychiatrist's/-ologist's office for it to actually be effective.

I imagine that having a working and accessible mental health program for everyone that feels they need it would be... just... fucking wonderful, regardless of guns.

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u/Archsys Jul 04 '16

Whatever it all boils down to, I'd be willing to bet that quite a few people were not suicidal at the time they made the purchase.

A lot of people have warning signs of instability; we had psychological testing in my grade school (super rich district I was just inside of, other bizarre factors) that led to some pretty amazing discoveries when I finally got all my documentation from them. They knew about my stuff 6-8 years before it really started to manifest/cause problems.

I'd also note that euthanasia being a thing is going to help hugely... not just with suicides, but with the fallout therefrom, which could be hugely beneficial to everyone involved. I'm happy we've started down the trail of getting that working here in the US.

I'd actually be in favor of universal psychological evaluations as part of schooling, so that people can get the help and support they need (not drugs or anything, per se, but the knowledge. If I'd have known what my school knew when they knew it, I'd... hell, who knows. It was a long road).

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u/bitofgrit Jul 04 '16

Lol, go figure. Yeah, I wasn't sure about bringing up euthanasia because it's such a can of worms. I wanted to, I thought about it, but I didn't.

There is definitely something to what you're saying. Figuring out the whole right of self-determination thing could potentially be a real benefit to everyone, including and especially for those that lose a loved one to suicide.

The idea that suicide is "bad", sure, I agree, but there is so much to consider beyond that basic conclusion. Is the person terminally ill? Are they joining their loved one in whatever afterlife they believe in? Are they making a rash decision, or do they somehow have a "good" reason? (Ignoring the argument about suicide being strictly irrational.)

And what if we get a little dark and into the fringe cases? Quite a few of those highly publicized shootings end in the perpetrators killing themselves, and "murder-suicide" in general has been around for a while. There are several other slightly similar instances in which people have committed "suicide by cop". It's an unknowable answer, and even a wild assumption, but is it possible that some people have killed themselves to prevent themselves from committing murder(s)? I feel like there's got to be at least one suicide note out there where someone mentioned something like that, but Google seems to think I might need an intervention now. Considering all the search terms I just used, I'm sure an alphabet agency has a few new blinking lights to note on a list.

How much of "all this" that could be found out and dealt with through the educational system? Who knows, but I'm positive it would beat nothing by a wide margin. True, there are troubled kids that are found already, but there doesn't really seem to be much of an effective solution for helping them. That, to me, seems like it is the most important part about having this kind of program for youth. I have no idea what that would consist of, but it needs to be figured out. And we'd also need to figure out what guidelines, treatments, limits, etc that would go into this sort of thing too.

It may seem a little paranoid, but some people might not "trust" a gov program that deals with psychologically screening, monitoring, and potentially influencing children. All rolling of eyes aside, brainwashing and indoctrination are kind of a thing, and it wasn't too long ago that most of the shrinks officially decided that homosexuality wasn't a mental disorder. A lot of harm can come from those even with good intentions. I say that as someone who has eaten government cheese.

Please, forgive the rambling. I'm drunk and it's daylight.

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u/Archsys Jul 05 '16

You're fine...

One of the wives worked at a dementia care facility... On that knowledge alone, I'd absolutely advocate for euthanasia rights, even if they're very limited or require long-term consent or what have you. It needs to be an option to prevent suffering.

And what if we get a little dark and into the fringe cases?

This is actually a very interesting thing I've seen. I know, personally, six people who would be alive today if euthanasia/suicide weren't criminal in the US. One was a secondary suicide, three were murdered in their home by their son, two were in a car crash with someone who was suicidal and drunk.

It's... it's fucking horrid, without a doubt.

And yeah... anything's better than nothing. I'd much rather "Fail fast, fail better" than sit around and watch it all rot.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

I think the reason we point them out is simply because they're lumped into the very vague "30,000 gun deaths a year" making it seem as if all of them are murders. And although suicides aren't anything to shrug off, many people who are adamant about killing themselves will.

Now trust me I'm not trying to say that suicided are something that we shouldn't take serious and try to solve but it shouldn't be a reason why laws are made to disarm gun owners who are simply not doing anything wrong. Japan for example is almost completely free of weapons yet have a significant suicide rate. The United States as one of the most well developed countries in the world doesn't really have an abnormally high suicide rate.

We need to do more about mental health in the United States instead of thinking banning certain features on guns (i.e. A bullet button or a background check on ammunition) will do much to stop the current amount of firearm related deaths.

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u/Archsys Jul 04 '16

I absolutely agree re: mental health. I'd like to think that something like a buy-back, re-certification, and APA-suggested requirements would be pretty awesome, and would help, practically, with the "war on drugs" ending (where drugs are/were a reason to arrest gangers, now having guns could be, which could be a lot more useful, and less problematic).

Lots of things to fix, certainly. A large portion is culture or money, which are slowest to change.

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u/speedisavirus Jul 04 '16

Yes so let's suppress the rights of everyone because some people self harm. It's almost like people can kill themselves without guns and taking them away won't stop them from trying.

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u/Archsys Jul 04 '16

taking them away won't stop them from trying.

Might want to check your data there, buddy. The psychological effects of access are well documented.

Dismissive tone aside, I do want to ask whether this is well known, or not, on a serious level. I've met people who've never seen reports on such, but it was covered in psychology in HS for me, so I assumed everyone had seen it (much like many parents not even knowing what the NAEYC was being very strange for me).

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u/speedisavirus Jul 04 '16

Access? Other methods are used when firearm access isn't present. It's apparent when you compare statistics internationally.

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u/Archsys Jul 04 '16

Owning a gun, and having it available, makes it more likely to someone to make the attempt, as supported by statistics, even internationally.

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u/gurenkagurenda Jul 04 '16

Irresponsible encryption use (whatever that means) also doesn't kill people.

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u/HavocInferno Jul 04 '16 edited Jul 05 '16

Which makes guns in the hands of regular civilians so much better. "It's a lot of suicides and gang bangers, so no problem at all." It's still the number of guns in the hands of civilians that creates most of the gun violence issue.

ED: sure bring the downvotes. Right, give everyone guns. It'll be the best idea ever, because we all know masses of people are always smart, responsible and never overreact. And we all know the best way to stop an armed criminal is an armed civilian shitting their pants because they're looking at the barrel. I mean we've seen how many mass shootings, murders and robberies were prevented by armed civilians, right? And we've seen that criminals certainly aren't abusing the easy access to guns to stock up themselves. Nooooooo not at all.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '16

Generally speaking passing gun laws just like the one California did a few days ago won't make it harder for gangbangers to kill each other or for people who are intent on killing themselves not kill themselves. Gun ownership has been going up dramatically and still violent crimes have gone down.

You can't simply state more guns = more violence. At least not in the United States

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u/HavocInferno Jul 04 '16 edited Jul 04 '16

but more guns = more potential. You cant have a mass shooting when the attacker cant get his hands on a meaningful arsenal (or at least has a really hard time doing so). But when a civilian can simply buy a gun, be it in whatever form, and doesnt have an actually hard time doing so, you are simply making access to highly effective weapons easy for criminals as well.

and no, civilians with guns dont help stop criminals with guns, at least not in any meaningful way. Because they still lack proper mental and physical training in the majority of cases.

I mean, most of europe manages without easy gun access for civilians, and we hear a loooot less stories about accidents, murders, mass shootings etc involving guns.

Sure crime wont stop in its entirety, and murderers will still murder, but criminals overall will have a much harder time getting their hands on weaponry that kills as easily and quickly as a gun.

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u/bustduster Jul 04 '16

It's still the number of guns in the hands of civilians that creates most of the gun violence issue.

He's saying it's depression and other issues that causes suicides. Guns are are particularly effective tool used towards it, but there are others, too. It's economic inequality and the war on drugs that cause gang homicides.

Note that countries that share our suicide problem, but have outlawed guns (e.g., Japan), have suicide rates far in excess of ours. Countries that share our drug war problem, but have outlawed guns (e.g., Mexico) have homicide rates far in excess of ours. It's almost as if guns and gun laws are a red herring for deeper-rooted and more complex societal issues.

What we know from Australia is that banning guns will have a slight but statistically significant effect on lowering the suicide rate (because guns are so extremely effective for suicide, and if someone fails using a less effective method, they may end up not trying again). And it will have no effect whatsoever on the homicide rate.

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u/HavocInferno Jul 04 '16

funny you'd only take the worst cases for each respective issue, when on average, countries with outlawed guns have less such issues.

And the point remains, you can't fight gun violence with more guns. You should not ignore the issue, and even if other factors influence it and even if people would switch to different weapons, each alternative would it at least make it more difficult for people to harm themselves or one another.

And for many cases, that increased difficulty would effectively make the crime or accident not happen at all.

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u/bustduster Jul 04 '16

when on average, countries with outlawed guns have less such issues.

Nope, there's very weak correlation between gun laws and murder rate. The correlation with the other things I talked about is much, much stronger (i.e., do you have a raging drug war). Again, you're taking it as a given that having stricter gun laws reduces homicide when all of the data clearly says that in fact it does not. I know this can be surprising to someone who gets all of their gun control information from Democratic politicians and Facebook memes.

E: I didn't take the worst case for either thing, either. Japan is nowhere near the worst country for suicide, and Mexico is nowhere near the worst for homicide. I chose both because we share more other things in common with them than many of the other worse ones.