MAGA supporter denies child gun death stats in cringe-worthy interview

boing
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Especially when the numbers shouldn’t even be close. The average American city-dweller might come in close contact with thousands of people actively using their cars every single day. The fact that guns, which most people encounter only rarely, are killing people in roughly equal numbers means that they are orders of magnitude more dangerous.

Also automobile fatality rates have been gradually dropping for generations while gun death rates have been rising. This is largely due to a broad social consensus that automobile deaths are bad and it’s worth taking some basic steps to reduce them.

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But, of course, not those teens! Yeah, no thanks, not interested in this twisted data interpretation thingy.

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People do make much of 18-yr-olds’ being adults, yet there are many things only those 21 and over may access.

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You felt strongly enough about it to create a new user account just to point out that someone made a technically incorrect statement about gun deaths.

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I disagree. The important part was this one, emphasis mine

Jason Selvig: And if there could be more gun control that could save children’s lives, would you want to pass that gun control?

Trump Supporter: How would that save children’s lives? [Scratches his arm and looks a bit queasy]

It doesn’t matter if he was correct about the leading cause of death for children under 18. A fact he is absolutely not aware of.
What matters is that he willfully refuses to admit that that guns are a rapidly rising cause of death for children. He loves the ability to own guns more than he values the lives of our nation’s children.

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Your cookie for Being Right on the Internet will be posted shortly.

It will be stale, because, well, so what?

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I would argue it is not even technically incorrect. Had the statement been “children” perhaps, but “children and teens” explicitly includes teens. 18- and 19-year-olds are teens. We can argue if they are children, but not if they are teens. It’s pretty much in the name. This is attempting desperately to defang a legitimate attack on gun fetishists. And does not deserve the “technically correct” label.

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And to defend an obvious idiot. Always a good use of one’s time!

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I reread the article, I do not see him saying “children and teens”.

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Merely quoting you, man. If you are OK with the massacre of our youth since they are not “children” in your bookkeeping, you be you.

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Would you prefer we order corpses by the number of bullet holes?

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Sometimes being technically correct is the worst kind of correct.

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That sounds an awful lot like it means that if they weren’t broadly defined guns would have passed them. Hooray for semantics! I’m glad you’ve said that your feelings don’t matter, because it sounds like you are missing some important ones.

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So now that you’ve shared your considered opinion on the appropriate age of young people to be shot, what is your position on age of consent?

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I was curious, so I looked up this article. (Here’s a “gift” link that shouldn’t be paywalled.)

As long as we’re splitting hairs, let’s scroll on down that article to this part:

Excluding children under the age of 1. The Johns Hopkins study cited by the White House, which was updated in 2023, and another often-cited study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2022 and updating a previous study, do not include children under 1 because they have perinatal deaths and congenital anomalies — unique, age-specific death risks. This decision marginally reduces the number of children killed by firearms — amounting to less than 1 percent. But it greatly reduces the number of motor vehicle deaths — by as much as 4 percent.

Using a broader or narrower definition of vehicle deaths. The CDC lists both deaths just from traffic-related crashes and an overall motor vehicle category that would include pedestrian and other deaths, such as death while in a stationary car. Using only traffic-related crashes further reduces the motor vehicle number by as much as 11 percent, depending on the year. The New England Journal of Medicine article uses the broader definition, but Johns Hopkins reports rely just on traffic crashes.
[…]
Here’s how these decisions affect the numbers.

By including 18- and 19-year-olds, excluding infants under age 1 and comparing firearm deaths with only vehicle crashes, Johns Hopkins reports that in 2021, there were 4,733 firearm deaths of “children and teens” compared with 4,048 deaths from motor vehicle crashes.

But by counting only children 17 and under, including infants under the age of 1, and comparing with all motor vehicle deaths, the CDC data shows that in 2021, there were 2,590 firearm deaths of children, compared with 2,687 motor vehicle deaths.

Excluding infants under 1 from the data narrows the gap to a near tie — 2,580 deaths from motor vehicles compared with 2,571 from firearms. If one focuses just on vehicle crashes, as Johns Hopkins does, then starting in 2020, firearm deaths exceeded motor vehicle deaths of children ages 1 to 17.

In any case, the CDC shows that firearm deaths have climbed rapidly since 2019, so unless current trends reverse, very soon firearm deaths of children will exceed motor vehicles deaths — no matter how you slice the numbers. [my emphasis added]

But by all means, please continue to cherry-pick your numbers to give the ammosexuals the benefit of the doubt.

Spot on.

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I was discussing this with my family over dinner. My wife asked what the no.1 cause of child death in the UK is. Obviously there has to be one. She thought car accidents, but the UK actually has very safe roads.

We then thought perhaps it was knife crime, so I looked it up on my smartphone.

Turns out it’s hereditary and congenital diseases.

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Deaths of children should be rare and unavoidable, as in the cases you bring up. Every avoidable death, as in shootings and most MVAs, is an unspeakable crime against our own future. And the “right” to own and use as big and dangerous a gun as you want should be treated like the “right” to be as drunk as you want when you drive.

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It’s a race between the ammosexuals and the rapidly inflating American large truck market. It’s like a competition to see who can see children the least.

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Don’t forget the gun companies and SUV/truck manufacturers. They are in a race to see who can profit the most from the deaths of children.

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All great info, thanks for compiling that.

But I’m feeling contrary today, so let’s take the argument at face value: motor vehicle deaths are the #1 cause of death in children in the US, with guns just behind at #2, separated by about 5%. Clearly, then, guns are almost exactly as dangerous to children as motor vehicles, so we should probably regulate them the same way.

As such, we should immediately:

  • require anyone who wants to use a gun to pass minimum operator safety tests, and issue a license only to those who pass those tests. Licenses must be renewed periodically and bear a photo, address, and other personally identifying details. Licenses must have minimum age requirements, since it’s obvious that allowing a child to carry a gun, even briefly, is too dangerous to be allowed
  • require that each person keep their gun license on them whenever they are carrying a gun, make it a crime to fail to do so, and allow police to check if someone carrying a gun has their license
  • require gun owners to register each gun they own with the government, renew their registration annually at a cost, and fill out paperwork during a private sale to another individual
  • require each gun to bear a government issued identifying label, which uniquely identifies the owner in a government database and shows when the registration was renewed, for inspection by police whenever the gun is carried in public
  • require anyone who owns a gun to carry liability insurance for each gun they want to carry
  • require insurance providers to notify the government if a gun owner’s liability insurance on any individual gun lapses
  • require anyone carrying a gun to keep the insurance card for the specific gun they are carrying on their person
  • require that failing to carry liability insurance on any gun you carry to result in suspension of your license to carry any gun
  • require that carrying a gun means you may be subjected to a field sobriety test and/or breathalyzer test, with immediate suspension of your license to carry any gun if you do not comply
  • require that operating a gun while at a 0.08 BAC or higher results in fines, suspension of your license, and jail time for repeat offenses
  • require similar penalties if you appear to be impaired by any other substance while carrying a gun.
  • while carrying a gun, if you perform certain actions which can potentially put yourself or others in danger, this is grounds for suspension of your license
  • those whose gun licenses are suspended frequently enough may have their licenses permanently revoked
  • require gun manufacturers to add mechanisms that specifically reduce the gun’s ability to injure a child
  • create a government agency specifically tasked with tracking and researching the cause of injuries and deaths by guns and identifying methods of reducing those injuries and deaths, including the ability to force a recall of a gun that fails to meet minimum safety standards, or whose safety mechanisms are noted to be ineffective.
  • particular types of guns that are shown to be associated with an usually high number of injuries and deaths will be subject to higher scrutiny and may require additional safety systems. For example, AR-15 style guns may be required to detect if a child is in the firing line and either refuse to fire or automatically move the gun so that it is not pointing at a child
  • carrying a gun equipped with safety systems beyond the minimum may allow your insurance premiums to be lowered, encouraging manufacturers to innovate new safety systems

Did I miss anything?

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