[cemerick]

The only thing I'm "championing" (just pointing out, really) is that certain populations seem to enjoy using anecdotal tragedy to promote their own quasi-apocalyptic worldview re: some American cities, despite all available data contradicting that worldview.

I'm sure everyone here appreciates the update on your locale, and your own stories of property crime and/or non-criminal (yet perhaps unnerving?) personal interactions. Alas, none of that appears to be relevant to either the submitted story, or homicide or any other violent crime.

[screye]

On the other hand, I feel like it takes an incredibly public tragedy for a platform for HN to tolerate any discussions around SF crime.

People want to talk about crime, drugs & homelessness all the time. It is only in high profile cases where the issues seem topical, that HN can't discourage discussion around them.

> quasi-apocalyptic worldview re: some American cities

I don't see why speaking out about lack of police enforcement is seen as 'quasi-apocalyptic'.

> despite all available data contradicting that worldview

All available data is in favor of those speaking out about crime & drugs in west coast cities. Additionally, the eye test seems to portray a situation that's more dire than even the data might suggest. (underreporting, catch & release).

[shadowgovt]

> People want to talk about crime, drugs & homelessness all the time. It is only in high profile cases where the issues seem topical, that HN can't discourage discussion around them.

Indeed, because that's not what this forum is for. There's ten thousand fora online for general, local, or city-policy political discussion; those topics are only germane in this forum when they relate to tech or the processes of tech.

[rchaud]

Because HN is a technology discussion board with a worldwide audience, not a local politics one. YCombinator isn't even based in SF.

When the CEO of YCombinator blocks people on Twitter for disagreeing with him online on SF politics[0], it tells me I don't want HN to be a haven for that.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32639125

[RC_ITR]

> platform for HN to tolerate any discussions around SF crime.

I think we all live in our own bubbles, because I see so much discussion of SF crime.

I also think it's important to note that there is a huge difference between "should we prevent random street killings?" and "how much effort should SFPD exert to protect cars when the majority of actual SF residents don't even own one?"

EDIT: Just to cite my sources: [0] shows 397k registered cars in SF [1] shows 810k residents.

[0] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv-research-reports/research-...

[1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocit...

[hindsightbias]

You must have some filter on. There are literally thousands of HN posts in the last few years about housing and crime and hundreds of which devolved into the dystopian hellhole memes endemic in the HN ideosphere.

The quickest path to karma at HN is to post anything about BA housing.

[kevingadd]

Crime - and SF crime specifically - frequently gets discussed on HN when crime-related stories make it to the front page. You're not paying attention if you think the site has a zero-tolerance policy for it.

[Rekksu]

What does "SF crime" have to do with the content that is expected on hackernews?

[idopmstuff]

Someone saying that the have a gun and are going to shoot you is very clearly assault, which is a criminal act. It would generally quality as a violent crime in statistics (if SFPD took reports of threats of violence, which they will not).

While we should use data, we should also understand where there may be issues with the data that we're using.

[ambulancechaser]

The gist of your point is 100% correct. I just want to point out that under the common law definition of assault (and i have no idea what definitions are in effect in SF), the fact that the person calmly ignored them points that this might not be assault.

> Assault is generally defined as an intentional act that puts another person in reasonable apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact. No physical injury is required, but the actor must have intended to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the victim and the victim must have thereby been put in immediate apprehension of such a contact.

Calmly ignoring the threat is evidence that the person was not "in immediate apprehension of such a contact".

I only bring this up because i think it's interesting, and the underlying point you are making is 100% correct. This kind of thing is not normal nor innocent and not to be tolerated.

[runjake]

We should also take practical steps to increase your chances of survival, which, if someone says this to you:

- Keep an eye on their hands.

- Attempt to de-escalate the person.

- If they brandish a weapon in extreme close proximity to yourself, use both your hands to firmly grab onto the hand/wrist that's holding the weapon and extend your arms fully (using your skeleton to maintain that distance and provide added strength). Your focus should be on controlling that hand so they don't stab or shoot you. Yes, you may incur injury regardless, this is what's colloquially known as a "shit sandwich".

- Increase distance and vacate the area as soon as possible. If they have a gun, run in a zig zag pattern and seek cover (blocks bullets) or concealment (hides you, but doesn't stop bullets).

- Once you are safe, then report the incident to law enforcement (if they'll do anything).

[treeman79]

And depending on the DA you’ll be thrown in jail if you defend yourself.

[sanedigital]

By "certain populations" do you mean a small selection of the worst members of almost all populations?

Jumping to conclusions and pushing narratives isn't the exclusive purview of any particular group, especially not in 2023.

[wpietri]

> certain populations seem to enjoy using anecdotal tragedy to promote their own quasi-apocalyptic worldview re: some American cities

For those interested in the topic, I recommend Loewen's "Sundown Towns". My copy's on loan, but I think it's in Ch 11, "The Effects of Sundown Towns on Whites" that he talks about the culture among descendants of white-flight suburbanites, their low-to-no-experience views on the horrors of the city, where Those People run rampant. Many are terrified of even going to cities. To people who actually live in the cities, their view is almost unrecognizable.

As an example from something in my feed reader today [1], take Theo Wold, a former Deputy Assistant to the President for Policy (under Trump) and current Idaho Solicitor General. He quote-tweeted a photo of a white woman hugging two Black men. They were the Tennessee Three, the state legislators who were under threat of expulsion for protest.

His comment: "Every Red State will have to wrestle with the fetid, urban Leftist vote sinks. That begins with asking the question: why does the GOP continue to push the annexation/development of rural land that only grows the size and power of Leftist strongholds?"

Fetid stronghold sinks! Sounds pretty bad. In our favor, at least we have taco trucks on every corner.

It reminds me of nothing so much as this bit from Chairman Mao: "It is very necessary for the educated youth to go to the countryside to be reeducated by the poor and lower-middle peasants. Cadres and other people in the cities should be persuaded to send their sons and daughters who have completed junior or senior middle school, college or university, to the countryside. Let us mobilize."

[1] https://balloon-juice.com/2023/04/13/late-night-open-thread-...

[kolinko]

Considering that a large population of sf tech is migrants, many people, myself included, compare it not to other American cities but to European and Asian ones.

I would say that the comparison is apt - since we compare the tech/science successes of SF with the rest of the world, we should also compare the crime rates with it.

[RC_ITR]

I didn't like the direction of this comment. All cities are good and bad in their own way for the people that live there.

[politician]

It might be helpful for you to take a class on gun safety to reduce the anxiety you have about seeing guns. Remember, the police also open carry because peaceful open carry is primarily about deterrence.

Brandishing a weapon is legally different from open carry, and is already a crime. Brandishing means to draw or exhibit the weapon in a threatening manner, or to use it in a fight, other than in lawful self-defense.

[bigtex88]

What an absolutely asinine thing to champion. How does that do any good to actually help with "policy" as your initial comment seems to intend? All you seem to be doing is acting like "I'm smarter than all of you!"

SF is a dangerous city. That seems to be the main point of concern here.

[emodendroket]

Well if we’re inventing types of danger out of whole cloth and proposing solutions to them they probably won’t help with anything. We also should probably quantify what “dangerous” means if, as both that post and the article say, violent crime in San Francisco is actually exceptionally low.

[quest88]

No one is denying crime is a problem. The point is that people were quick attribute this tragedy to yet another unprovoked attack, which turned out to be false. But it fit the narrative, so it was believed to be true.

[hermitdev]

It's not just this tragedy, it's any tragedy. Every time there's a mass shooting, people use it as a rallying cry for more gun control, rather than focusing on fixing the issues that actually led to the violence (usually severe mental health issues), as if people haven't used knives or vehicles to commit mass murder/violence. Never let a good tragedy go to waste, so the saying goes.

[krferriter]

A person with a few full magazines and a semiauto rifle in a crowded place, and not much concern about surviving, can kill dozens of people in a couple minutes before there's any chance of someone else with a gun being able to stop them. I'm not aware of someone doing this with a knife. Seems like it's always a gun. Probably because a gun makes it really easy to kill people quickly.

[comte7092]

> usually severe mental health issues

Do you have a citation on that?

I am not fully researched on this topic, but as a lay observer it appear that the gun rights side basically categorizes anyone who is willing to commit a mass shooting as mentally ill, and hence every mass shooting is a result of mental illness by definition. But it does not follow that mass shooters are mentally ill by any professional standards.

[ruph123]

> Every time there's a mass shooting [...]

If this is a valid premise, then you know you are doing something wrong as a society. Mass shootings are common place in the US (with currently 177 mass shootings this year so far). This is not normal.

[mhoad]

It’s actually nothing like that at all. People keep bringing it up because the US has the second highest number of gun related deaths of any country in the entire world.

[suzzer99]

And yet the US is the only place where mass shootings resulting in 5+ deaths regularly happen.