Finally found a decent online version of this:
Jeff Lang, Too Easy to Kill
No, itâs not, which is why we constantly improve the safety of cars. They keep revising what a â5-startâ safety rating is, so that cars keep getting safer. Theyâre adding features like back-up cameras and obstacle warnings to warn about hitting things you canât see. Every effort is taken to make that number lower every year.
So people change the zoning laws so that pools need to be behind a locked fence. They conduct awareness campaigns to tell people that your kid can drown given even one minute out of sight, with an inch of water nearby. They make a concerted effort to lower the number of fatal accidents.
And the gun lobby does⌠what? What do they do to reduce the number of kids killed by their parentsâ guns?
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Meanwhile Parents are investigated for allowing their 10 year old to walk to school.
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Hyenas are more likely to fight each other over an already-dead corpseâŚoh, wait, never mind.
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But Trump will make an exception for that cute little prince George, like he wants to do for Khan.
Which could be a mistake, the Royal Family is hot stuff with firearms. And artillery.
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I chose quantifiable harms because they are specific to firearms and provable. You could brandish a replica, or another non-firearm object with the same outcome until a shot is fired. Millions could be leaving firearms unsecured, but there is no way to prove that.
Should you want to make a similar argument that includes these actions, feel free to gather data and present it. If you want to argue that the harms from guns outweigh their benefits, Iâve provided a framework that says just that, with the data Iâve provided. Because positive outcomes cannot be quantified or proven.
What about the 30 000 fatal deliberates?
From H&S training we learn that there are very, very few accidents in this world. The number of fatal lightning strikes, freak waves, and asteroid strikes is very low. For most other things, what we call an accident is almost always human error/stupidity.
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Firearms owners, manufacturers, sellers, and lobbyists all promote safe storage and following of safety rules. It is all over every firearmsâ manual, at every gun store Iâve been to, in every gun magazine it is at least mentioned.
Specifically there is the Eddie the Eagle program which teaches the 4 rules of childrenâs gun safety,
Stop, donât touch, leave the area, tell an adult. This program was mentioned on BB before, it was roundly derided because the NRA started it.
There is project childsafe, which distributed free gun locks and advocated their use.
The âgun lobbyâ generally does not want laws where it thinks self-regulation can work. Personally, in fine with the safe storage law in my state (CA). I donât mind background checks on every sale and transfer, as CA has. Iâd even be OK with the dreaded registration, if I had some assurance that itmere ownership of firearms wouldnât be criminalized in the future.
Iâve personally stopped supporting the NRA after they failed to offer any compromise at the federal level after Sandy Hook. I see a strong argument that guns do more harm then good, and I offer that argument to the public.
Edit: clarity
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For those, I have offered the argument of number needed to harm vs number needs to treat. The number needed to harm is clear. Divide guns (or gun owners) by injuries and deaths. The number needed to treat is essentially impossible to prove, but positive outcomes could be estimated as high as 2 million (from an old, poor survey) to 0.
Thus a scientific argument that guns are too dangerous to allow.
And what happens when they answer, âI donât know, I guess a dozen or twoâ?
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âWow, youâre murderously devout. I guess being religious is more important to you than being a good person.â
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I was thinking something more like, âHey, itâs been great talking to you, but I have some errands to run, have a great day,â while slowly backing away.
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Thatâs why weâre putting touch screens on every dashboard! For safety.
I think the interesting thing is that although auto vendors fight as hard as they can to keep cars as unsafe as possible, government regulation and market forces (both of which frequently go absurdly wrong, but tend over time to self-correct) constantly push towards greater safety. The situation with guns is very different!
There are many people that would like guns to be much safer, but they are opposed by the State of Texas (and as everyone should know, Texas is the proving ground for national policy - whatever painfully doesnât work there will most likely become federal law) and by powerful lobbying groups representing a subset of gun owners and vendors, and by people who are obsessed with agendas that do not include merely modifying gun technology.
It might be useful to figure out why these situations are so different; I donât think itâs just because cars are so much more dangerous than guns.
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Statistics seem irrelevant here. There are two myths involved - the Western myth of scientific, economic and material progress, which no matter how much we may take leave of our senses in the process is ultimately founded on reason and hope, and the uniquely American myth of rugged individualism and despotic government and the absolute right of personal defence by any means technologically feasible which is founded on fear and despair.
Youâre gonna have a lot of pissed of pregnant women, ya know. Should we arm them?
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Not ALL children!
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Donât tempt me⌠There are a lot of times around my house that the child in the safe option seems like it would be the safer of the two options. Iâm pretty sure that itâs not airtight (until exposed to heat and the fireseal activates)âŚ
Things actually said around my house recently:
âIâm pretty sure that the dog doesnât want her tail bittenâ
âWhy did putting glue on that seem like a good ideaâ
âyes, you have to wear some sort of pants or something to preschoolââŚ
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No amount of money could convince me to parent a 1-3 year old ever again. Itâs like theyâre actively trying to kill themselves at every moment!
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The laws that the NRA is suing over arenât like the CA law in that you must control access to your firearm, they are often laws which mandate and require certain storage methods which are antithetical to quick access for the self defense scenario. These access control laws have also been used to separate gun owners from their firearms to the point that owning one is too much of a pain in the ass to deal, which is like a de facto ban of sorts.
I canât remember how much brouhaha there was when CA passed and then updated its storage laws as to what the NRA stances were on them at the time but it would be interesting to know.
Not all âcommon senseâ âstorage lawsâ are equivalent.
