Worse, they’re pointing out guns aren’t actually the number one cause of death for children yet.
“When you focus only on children - 17 and younger - motor vehicle deaths still rank no.1… though the gap is rapidly closing…”
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Yeah, I made a knee-jerk reaction post doing the same thing I was accusing someone else of. Double-checked and realised that, then tried to delete my post only for it to not go away because the thread went into slow-posting mode.
I’m currently curling up into a ball of cringing embarrassment.
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It doesn’t skew the output. It is simply excluded because perinatal deaths and congenital anomalies cover a wide range of causes of death that are unique to newborns and irrelevant to any other age group.
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This part still holds:
He’s trying to ascribe bad faith to the researchers for placing what serious people would consider a pretty uncontroversial constraint on the study (as described just above by @Jesse13927 ). They certainly weren’t rolling out one fallacious method of argument after another to make their points, as those trying to protect America’s toxic gun culture are wont to do.
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All for the sake of claiming that gun deaths might be very slightly behind instead of very slightly ahead of motor vehicle deaths, as if that makes a difference. Plainly if things like that can tip it then they’re essentially tied for first, even though guns are a specialist hobby. It’s not a good faith argument at all.
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Even if it were hands-down the #1 cause of death for children no matter which way you slice the numbers, the next hurdle would be that it’s only been the #1 cause of death for children for a year. Or two. Or ten. When you look at the history of civilization, there are way worse things.
2A stans don’t care about the lives of children. Not when doing something might limit the enjoyment of their little hobby.
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I have no way of verifying this (nor do I particularly want to google child death statistics) but I would be surprised if it was even in the top 50.
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Someone should introduce Flint to Keanu
The weird thing is how little it is likely to limit it. People in other countries still enjoy shooting and hunting. This is the only hobby I know where people demand it being accepted as completely mainstream and all society be set up to expedite it, the costs be damned.
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And you can thank the NRA for decades of fear-mongering on that subject. Gun nuts that I’ve talked to really seem to believe that any gun control will lead to the Democalypse where liberals try to take all of everyone’s guns.
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Since people (not you) are quibbling about whether it’s 10th place or 5th or 50th, I thought I’d throw in some context without replying directly to anyone impersonating aquatic mammals.
Stats below, if anyone needs convincing. Short version: In most other comparable countries, child mortality can be divided into “cars”, and "everything else. In the comparable countries, car deaths outnumber gun deaths by at least 10-to-1. Surprisingly, childhood gun deaths can rank as high as 5th place, but in such cases they’re part of a “long tail” of lesser-numbered causes.
ETA: Note that all graphs (except the final table) are per 100 000. They’re scaled to population.
Arguing about “10th vs 5th” when it doesn’t have to be close to first is just ghoulish. (again, not you).
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Worth noting the rates of gun ownerships per household.
The US is on top with about 40%, then comes Finland with about 37%, followed by various European nations ranging down through the 20s to under 10%. In other words, it’s not that hard to get a legally licensed gun in Europe, but the gun death rates are far lower than the US.
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Note that the guns in Finland are almost entirely hunting weapons.
Most of them are bolt-action rifles, .30 caliber for hunting moose (and other big game, including wild boars, bears and deer) or .22 caliber for small game.
The rest are mostly shotguns for shooting hares, waterfowl and other gamebirds. There are some semi-automatic rifles and similar around, but they aren’t common.
And handguns are rare, and pretty much limited to serious shooting sports enthusiasts and gun collectors.
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