What exactly are you arguing here? Seat belts save lives. Education saves lives. Making it a law… maybe helps? Per the CDC PDF you linked to:
“Seat belt use is on the rise. Laws, education, and technology have increased seat belt use from 11% in 1981 to nearly 85% in 2010, saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Yet, about 1 in 7 people still don’t buckle up.”
So right there, it mentions the education and technology portion (better belts, more comfortable belts, annoying bings when you don’t buckle, etc.) Yet despite all that 1 in 7 are ignoring the laws/safety benefits. You can lead a horse to water sort of thing. How do you get it to 100% Double the law penalty? Seat belt laws are rarely enforced as is. It is usually tacked on when someone is caught speeding. What is the motivation most people have for seat belts? Fine avoidance or safety?
Your CDC shows the state with primary, secondary, and no seat belt laws. Below I will link to seat belt use per state. I can’t tell looking at it if there is a direct correlation, but like Nevada has only a 2ndary law and has a very high usage rate, 94.8%, Arkansas has a primary law but only 76.7% usage rate, and New Hampshire (assuming it still has no law) is low, but still has 73% usage rate. Redirect Notice
My point is you can promote safety and education with out making it a law. We do it with all sorts of things.
Are you saying you read the linked journal documents and concluded that the laws weren’t a useful factor??
Please answer this, because if your answer is ‘the laws weren’t beneficial’ then you’re not even trying. You’re cherry picking, which completely defeats the point of data.
I’ve more than met you halfway here. I’ve agreed that firearm deaths aren’t statistically a major cause of deaths in the US and pointed out the same. I’ve pointed out that they are simply a low hanging fruit. I’ve even agreed that training and such are positive things. However you seem to be putting up a big stop sign and that’s just not useful this sort of conversationl
No - sorry, I don’t have time to read something so large and intense right now. But fair enough, I will try to this weekend. I am sure it is a factor, but, and maybe I am an optimist, I just think education and awareness doesn’t require laws.
Though I don’t know how this relates to gun safety per se. IIRC the new NY SAFE act requires safe storage of fire arms. So maybe we can see a dip in accidents in the next few years.
[quote=“William_Holz, post:343, topic:71595, full:true”]Another approach: one could NOT deliberately limit our options and acknowledge the possibility that maybe also having lots of lying around might be somehow related to a solveable problem? Have you forgotten this so quickly? The R-squared is strong here and you can’t just ignore it
.[/quote]
That’s one of the favorite misleading charts used by people who start from the assumption that the problem is “gun deaths”, and who want to conflate suicides with murders and make it seem like states with high rates of legal gun ownership have high rates of gun violence.
But look what happens when you chart “gun murders” against “gun ownership”:
Strange, the correlation disappears when suicide is removed? That doesn’t stop Vox, Mother Jones et al from deliberately conflating “gun violence” with self-harm in order to give the perception that people in states with high rates of legal firearms ownership are more likely to unlawfully shoot others.
As always, the “more gun restrictions now!” argument is never about actual rates of violent crime, rather it’s all about perception.
Are you arguing that suicide is not relevant and an increased rate of death by suicide is not worth preventing?
I wouldn’t go there if I were you. That one’s a little personal and while I’m a professional and can overcome such things, it will raise the stakes somewhat.
Also: It’s a bullshit argument. Those deaths matter too, and there’s a strong correlation with firearm availability and suicide success rate.
I’m arguing against advocacy journalists with a predetermined political agenda intentionally using misleading charts with terminology like “gun violence” (mostly suicides) to mislead readers into a false perception of risk.
Yes, suicide prevention is relevant, but it also complicates the discussion, in part because the degree and type of firearms restrictions that would effectively eliminate gun suicides come pretty darn close to the “take all your guns” position that so many here are quick to claim is not on the agenda.
To clarify, as mentioned above I’m aware that firearm deaths are far less significant statistically than a number of other preventable causes of death (transport, poisoning, etc.) and I am not one of those journalists. I’m fully aware of the nature of what I am discussing and as somebody who analyzes data professionally I’m also capable of being wrong and learning from such things. I am, however, less prone to such things than your average citizen because I spent most of that time working in healthcare. So human-life-specific stuff I’m pretty solid with.
Is that fair as well?
This is some truth to that argument for a subset of the suicides in question, however part of our ‘ramp’ has been traced to ready availability and ease-of-acquisition. I can at least demonstrate how anomalous our own numbers here in the U.S. are and how they also correlate with firearm availability if you’re interested. It’s a pretty commonly studied issue and one of the few where we have sufficient data to make epidemiological analyses despite the laws restricting collecting firearm data.
Would it also help if I observed that I think certain things are conflated in ways that are detrimental to those of us who think guns can actually be kind of cool? For example I think that our current gun ranges are absurdly lame and I’d prefer if we had the opportunity to shoot dead trees with miniguns until they caught fire?
I personally think that option should be included in any real solutions. Guns are kind of fun sometimes.
I’m not ‘anti-gun’, I’m ‘anti-stupid-death-and-needlessly-ruined-lives’, and that covers all the bases (cars, poisonings, it’s a huge list). I acknowledge that I, like all humans, am a walking Darwin award waiting to happen and we’d be better off if it was easier to do more fun safer things and harder to do things that ruined lives.
Yes, actually. Seat belts existed long before there were laws requiring their usage. The laws significantly improved usage, with improved survival rates to show for it.
I think the biggest reason against mandatory insurance is that it’ll effectively never pay out. Essentially all insurance disclaims payout if the insured party intentionally commits the act that would cause the payout. This is why insurance doesn’t pay out for suicides.
You only get a payout if someone is injuried by accident, which is a very small proportion of firearm injuries.
Up thread, several of us were explicitly discussing the situation where someone other than the official gun buyer did wrong with the bought gun.
Perhaps I’ve wrongly incanted the word “insurance.” Perhaps it’s a Tax, as CJ Roberts has modeled. Perhaps it’s a criminal liability, as hungryjoe has offered.
Clearly, the correct framing is tricky. And possibly unfeasible as law at this time. But I’ve not yet heard a convincing argument that there is a major blocker to create some sort of scheme to allocate the cost for the most at-risk firearms in the hands of those who have the firearms in their hands.
@Chipsa Ultimately those taxes or insurance policies would fail because the vast majority of buyers are not causing the harm. Just as a similar policy for alcohol purchases would fail. Guns are more at risk as they do not enjoy the same widespread popularity as booze, but I’m fairly confident such a policy generally wouldn’t be acceptable to the general public as you are placing a large cost from individual choices on to everyone.
Who wants to starta new thread branching off this thread before its closed so the beatings can continue?
Guns are kind of fun sometimes.
