Well you are mistaken, kids do die and get incredibly sick from Detergent pods and other household poisons. If you have young kids you might want to be more vigilant in their storage. http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/10/health/laundry-pod-poisonings/
And statistically you are more likely to have an accidental drowning in your home if you have a pool than an accidental shooting in your home if you have a gun. Bathtub drownings are much rarer, but still happen.
At any rate, it is incredibly easy to keep your firearms safe. I dare say people are usually more vigilant about their guns than other more likely dangers that cause injury and some times death.
Ahhh yes. âDeaths by firearmsâ as if that is the only thing that matters. Russia has almost NO private firearms, so their firearm deaths are MUCH lower than here. Too bad their overall homicide rate is five times higher. Still, a great choice for people who donât want to be shot, and yet donât mind being beaten or stabbed to death.
It is also interesting that you chose âdeathsâ and not homicides â this would presumably include suicide and legitimate shootings (self-defense and most police shootings). But, hey, why let facts get in the way of a good rant?
Now, you ARE right about income disparity. Something does need to be done about that. However, robbing the people who are successful is probably not the way to do it. Raising the minimum wage might also cost jobs in the long run. To be honest, income inequality is a very complex issue, and I am pretty sure that there is no simple solution that will not cause a lot of collateral damage to the economy in the process. Still, I congratulate you on figuring out that focusing on economics might just be a better way to combat crime than a knee-jerk gun ban.
And as to safety nets, I have no problem with that either. But safety nets need to be short-term things. Living a decade on a âsafety netâ just seems like an excuse to not work to me (assuming that you are not disabled).
Are you serious? Your article mentions ONE death from ingestion of detergents. And now you invoke swimming pools because bathtubs obviously donât pose the same danger as guns?
Iâve acknowledge that guns have a use in defense and hunting. But some people seem to think thatâs all they are for. My point is most people have no clue how guns are REALLY used, safely, by millions of people. While certainly some guns are bought with defense in mind, most are bought for other reasons. Millions of people use shooting sports where the guns are tweaked for competition and wouldnât make the best defense guns.
So if I can acknowledge that some guns are used for killing, why canât I get anyone reluctantly acknowledge:
Nearly all guns in the US arenât used to harm people.
While some are used to hunting, there are a huge numbers used for sports and recreation.
That many, many guns are made geared for sports and recreation, not explicitly killing things.
That is the reality - a grey world with many uses. Itâs not black and white.
Thatâs one example, but do I need to go dig up the numbers for poisonings per year? Or Drowning stats? Both remember both are higher than accidental shootings. Falling is way worse. I invoke swimming pools because no one is calling for their banning or regulation, even though they accidentally kill more people per year. The perception of the horrible dangers of firearms doesnât align with the reality of the data.
Nah I left it to total deaths to be square & simple, the homicide rate in the US is higher by about x5.5, not a terrible diff from x5. We have fewer suicides by firearm, US is about x4 Canadaâs rate, so not much diff from x5. Accidental deaths by firearm are x7 in the US compared to Canada but only makeup a small number of the total. Undetermined is x5 in the US compared to Canada.
But the US only has x3 as many firearms per capita, itâs just that most all of that diff is handguns.
Legitimate shootings are vanishingly rare, canât be kept in there, pointless. Like, accidental in the US is .30 per 100,000, in Canada it is .04 per 100,000.
Ainât nobody going to go to 4 decimal places to include legitimate killings, ainât no one got time for all that.
I should also like to point out that people want to ban evil âassault rifles.â Stabbing deaths, beating deaths, accidental falls, and even drownings ALL dwarf the number of homicides from ANY type of rifle.
Knives are not made for killing. Some are - usually the ones with âspecial forcesâ in the name. Most are tools for cutting. Bats are sporting equipment. Swords and clubs (clubs not improvised from bats) are not particularly widespread, but like guns they are weapons -distinct from other tools in that they are specifically developed to kill or destroy.
Although many people use guns only for target shooting, most guns are not developed purely for this purpose and those that are can be immediately distinguished. It is also not clear how many shooters of targets do this only for sporting purposes and how many are actually practising against the eventuality that they may need to shoot adversaries.
Well, including suicides implies that, denied a gun, that people are not smart enough to find a rope, a bottle of pills, or a knife and a warm bathtub. That is why I point it out. Also, if 1000 people are shot to death, or if 1000 people are stabbed to death, then 1000 people are dead either way.
Actually, I think that America, either with or without guns, is a more violent place. Some music glorifies violence, along with a lot of movies.Violence tends to be a LOT more prevalent in places with more poverty. It just seems common sense that if you give an honest person a gun, he will not go out and kill people. If you take a gun away from a criminal, he will use a knife, sword, or club to do his damage. The thing is, there are a LOT more honest people than criminals out there, to any gun control will disproportionately affect the honest people. Criminals, if they can get a gun, will happily walk by âgun free zoneâ signs all day long.
I should also like to point out that the homicide rate in America has dropped by about 50% in the last few decades, and is still dropping.
hunting is nearly irrelevant to a discussion of handguns, which brings me to the reason people are hesitant to acknowledge your points. they all seem like misdirections and non sequiturs. people donât like those for some reason.
that done, can you honestly say that handguns have an effective purpose (*) outside of defense (or, letâs be honest, offense) and the sort of recreation which is practicing defense? i canât come up with one, and i really doubt that âmostâ handguns are bought purely for sporting purposes. many, sure, but most?
*: i say this to rule out collecting for aesthetics or engineering purposes.
Nah, suicide by firearm, esp handguns makes suicide considerably easier & study after study shows that if you make a task easier it is done with less forethought & if it can have an immediate effect that puts afterthought out of the picture itâs even easier.
Push of a button/pull of a trigger in the comfort of home in the grip of a few seconds drunken suicidal impulse bravado vs travel to a bridge/building, running a bath & slicing, tying that rope, getting that chair, kicking that chair, even swallowing a bunch of pills then deliberately not calling for an ambulance for however long it takes to pass out, itâs all some pretty significant difference that says death by suicidal -impulse- would be greater with a greater number of persons with sidearms than without.
On other threads you argued that a firearm is sufficiently threatening that anyone even appearing to have one, and not instantly complying with police, can justifiably be killed by them. If thatâs your position, then now arguing they present a threat of the same sort as swimming pools looks incredibly specious.
They are dangerous in different ways. Iâm talking about general use and accidents. Not maliciously using something to hurt someone on purpose. Certainly itâs easier to kill someone with a gun vs drowning them a in pool. You canât wield and threaten someone with a pool.
Victoria Rutledge had a concealed weapons permit, and guns were a big part of Rutledgeâs life, her father-in-law said.âShe was not the least bit irresponsible,â Terry Rutledge said in a brief interview with The Associated Press.
Yes. So much for all of the arguments made here ad nauseam that the easy availability of guns isnât the problem exemplified by this accident, itâs careless gun owners. :-/
The article also says,
Terry Rutledge, Veronicaâs father-in-law, told The Spokesman-Review that the boy unzipped the special gun compartment in the womanâs purse where the weapon was kept while she was looking at clothing. Terry Rutledge said his daughter-in-law did not put the weapon âloosely into her purse.â
I have had enough arguments with people like those above me in this thread to experience extremely pleasant schadenfreude when I see two of them going at it endlessly against each other.
