If the NRA successfully prosecutes a state, where is the state incarcerated?
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If I had to double down Iâd go maybe Florida?
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âAcceptableâ? No. But understandable in the statistical sense? Yes.
Guns are inherently dangerous. There are roughly 300 million of them under the control of 70+million people. Less then 600 total fatal accidents per year is a pretty strong safety record.
481 children under 4 were unintentionally killed in transportation accidents in 2014, is that an acceptable cost for driving cars?
417 children in the same age group drowned, is that an acceptable rate for bathtubs and pools?
Each if these deaths is a tragedy. But just like terrorism is statically much less likely to hurt people, accidental gun deaths are also pretty unlikely.
Iâm not going to say there isnât an argument against ownership of firearms. In fact I outlined a scientific argument to use. My objection is to the emotionally charged arguments without context of statistics and the number of people who are harming none.
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Good thing the MUH GUNZ!!1! people never deploy âemotionally charged argumentsâ âŚ
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⌠really?
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Noticed that too⌠Itâs one of my biggest bugbears.
The aggregate of anti gun posts based on pleas to emotion. The constant negative characterisation of gun owners. The damning with faint praise.
My point is the vast majority of gun owners are storing and using their guns responsibly. But instead, the less than 0.02% that are not responsible get held up as the norm and obviously âsomething has to be doneâ without any consideration for the vast majority who are already doing the right thing.
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When are some good toddlers with guns gonna stop these bad toddlers with guns? #armthechildren
Hope youâre enjoying your âfreedom,â America. I have zero sympathy for you freakshows at this point. There is clearly nothing more you can do to yourselves, no higher, crazier level of gun violence that you can reach that will teach you the very simple lesson that the entire world learned without youâŚless guns = less gun violence. You can twist that any way you want, but thatâs the bottom line. It has nothing to do with âresponsible ownershipâ or any other horseshit argument you can bring up. Just look around you (I know thatâs hard) and notice every other country. Have fun at your kid funerals!
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Unfortunately, the point youâre missing is the vast majority of gun owners are so paranoid of a possible dystopic future, theyâre preventing us from addressing our actual dystopic present.
(paraphrasing Jon Stewart)
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Donât go blaming gun manufacturers.
The fault is squarely with makers of Pull-Ups with reinforced waistbands strong enough to hold a glock.
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Not from where Iâm sitting. Where Iâm sitting, the understandable statistic is 0% (hint: thereâs no rounding going on there). And, amazingly enough, it is completely achievable, as long as your priorities are just a little more civilised than a hyena.
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That conclusion cannot be reached by the numbers you have presented. You are equating âno one deadâ with âstoring and using responsiblyâ.
For example, someone brandishing a firearm is certainly not âusing responsiblyâ and is not captured by the numbers you presented.
For example, someone who leaves a loaded gun within easy grasp of a child is not âstoring responsiblyâ. If that child happens to not take an interest in the gun then your numbers exclude that event.
Is that somehow worse than making false claims?
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As a friend of mine pointed out the other day, people are at their most violent as toddlers. Young kids will run up and hit you as hard as they possibly can, itâs not until they can actually do some damage that they calm down a bit.
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Weâre not called the Climbing Fithp for nothing. Its in our ancestry.
Hard to do so lethally: accidental knife injuries are crazy common; but most just arenât very serious. Guns do more of the work for you.
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The laws exist but prosecutors seem reluctant to bring charges and add to the distress of parents. If there needs to be a change of policy, and I think there does, surely this can be preceded by a public information campaign and the police stating they will now be looking to arrest and prosecute offenders where there is any suspicion of negligence. The function of the law is to deter and set an example when necessary not only to punish.
Historically there have been campaigns in the UK around accidental child poisonings which have obviously been successful because they are no longer repeated.
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I do appreciate the appeal of using statistics and actual cost-benefit analysis when addressing issues. Part of the problem is that on the one hand you get ONE GUY who TRIES to put a bomb in his shoes and forever after everybody has to take their shoes off when they board an airplane. You get one group of people fantasizing about assembling binary liquid explosives mid-flight to take down a plane, and forever after no one can bring more than a few sips of water on a plane. Yet when in incident after incident of gun violence in the U.S. the PowersThatBe essentially say, âwhelp, nothinâ we can do about it.â Many people see that as a double standard.
There are also differences I see in using products that are explicitely designed to kill people versus products like cars which are designed for other purposes but can kill when used improperly.
And while this particular article is about (presumably) accidental deaths, after Sandy Hook I did a little data mining and curve fitting⌠If you look at the history of mass killings only (FBI definition of 4 or more deaths, I believe) and extrapolate the data, by the year 2160 (which ainât in OUR lifetimes, but also isnât that far away), mass shootings will surpass heart disease as the leading cause of death in the U.S. Thatâs a statistic I would like to see nipped in the bud. (Yes, I realize extrapolating data can be a fraught endeavor, but when you see a century worth of data merrily climbing the exponential growth curve, it may give one pause.)
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Thatâs why safe storage is so important!
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Dear NRA. What does x need to be?
For the equation:
t*x=c
where:
t = Toddler shooting someone dead
c= Number of deaths required for change in regulations for gun ownership and storage
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