I'm all for gun control

[Lothian]

Hi
Watch the same news, and you'll see car wrecks, drownings, poisonings... oh - wait - no - you don't see those, do you!

So... maybe you can explain to me why the shootings get several days worth of headlines and weeks of analysis, while the others may get a bolded title on page two? Why, exactly, are gun casualties so much more tragic than, say, car casualties?

I don’t think a story gets on the news unless there is a story.

Violence offers a story, that people unfortunately seem to want. Accidents, while tragic are not as newsworthy as deliberate acts of violence. An axe welding nutter is more newsworthy than a car wrapping itself round a tree after a tyre blowout.

The figures you posted show that 85% of violent murders are with a firearm.
As I said, I suspect that it is because they are violent they are on the news not just because a firearm was involved.

I dare say that if there were less guns you would be in a situation similar to here (UK) where the voilent crimes are knife crimes and they get plastered over the front page.

Also deaths are more newsworthy than injuries.

That could explain why 35% of firearm attacks find the front page compared to a mere 1% of violent knife attacks.

 

[Yjacket]

The figures you posted show that 85% of violent murders are with a firearm. As I said, I suspect that it is because they are violent they are on the news not just because a firearm was involved.

The chart that is available is a bit misleading when you look at it and note the number of violent death attributed to firearm incidents, 29,905. This number does exclude accidents but it does not exclude suicides. More than half of the incidents involving death with a firearm are suicide.

 

[Lothian]

The chart that is available is a bit misleading when you look at it and note the number of violent death attributed to firearm incidents, 29,905. This number does exclude accidents but it does not exclude suicides. More than half of the incidents involving death with a firearm are suicide.

OK the figures posted show that 74% of violent murders are with a firearm

 

[Drewbot]

OK the figures posted show that 74% of violent murders are with a firearm

Right, it left out murders by strangulation and beating, but of murders, the level stays around 65% are by guns.

http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/333_murder_victims_circumstances_and_weapons_used.html

 

[Crowlogic]

Hi




So... it's not the guns you mind so much as the NEWS about guns.

Watch the same news, and you'll see car wrecks, drownings, poisonings... oh - wait - no - you don't see those, do you!

From WISQARS^TM

All Intents |||||
Cause| Injuries| Deaths| Total Casualties| Population| Percentage
Firearms| 69,825| 30,694| 100,519| 44,492,876| 0.226%
Overall Motor Vehicle| 4,384,738| 45,520| 4,430,258 |222,464,382| 1.991%
Fall| 7,974,865| 20,426| 7,995,291| 295,895,897| 2.702%
Cut/Pierce| 2,435,025| 2,795| 2,437,820| 295,895,897| 0.824%
Poisoning| 828,899| 23,618| 852,517| 295,895,897| 0.288%
| | | | |
Accidental |||||
Firearm| 15,388| 789| 16,177| 44,492,876| 0.036%
Overall Motor Vehicle| 4,369,745| 43,667| 4,413,412| 222,464,382| 1.984%
Fall| 7,938,467| 19,656| 7,958,123| 295,895,897| 2.690%
Cut/Pierce| 2,236,861| 90| 2,236,951| 295,895,897| 0.756%
Poisoning| 617,617| 23,618| 641,235| 295,895,897| 0.217%
| | | | |
Violence-related
Firearm| 54,437| 29,905| 84,342| 295,895,897| 0.029%
Overall Motor Vehicle| 14,993| 1,853| 16,846| 222,464,382| 0.008%
Fall| 36,398| 770| 37,168| 295,895,897| 0.013%
Cut/Pierce| 198,164| 2,705| 200,869| 295,895,897| 0.068%
Poisoning| 211,282| 0| 211,282| 295,895,897| 0.071%

So... maybe you can explain to me why the shootings get several days worth of headlines and weeks of analysis, while the others may get a bolded title on page two? Why, exactly, are gun casualties so much more tragic than, say, car casualties?

While you're at it, why do successful uses of firearms get titles like, "Pistol Packin' Granny Shoots Intruder," and wind up on them "feel good pages," for one issue?

Mark twain said, once, "if you don't read the news, you're uninformed. If you do read the news, you're misinformed."

Same goes for TV, pretty much.

Nice charts. However comparing car deaths to gun deaths is apples to oranges. Cars are a neccessity and in most areas we can't live without them. Guns are a nearly unessessary. We don't need to fend off Indian attacks anymore, or take pot shots at the Redcoats. As for the grannys with a gun there are far far more grannys armed or unarmed that have been killed robbed or injured at gunpoint than any that have shot thier way out of trouble.

 

[Crowlogic]

A number of people who have been victims of crime have gone from gun control proponents to gun control opponents. Perhaps being a victim of a crime isn't the best basis for making decisions about gun control. Seems to me to be appealing to emotion.

Name 5

 

[Lonewulf]

Nice charts. However comparing car deaths to gun deaths is apples to oranges. Cars are a neccessity and in most areas we can't live without them. Guns are a nearly unessessary. We don't need to fend off Indian attacks anymore, or take pot shots at the Redcoats. As for the grannys with a gun there are far far more grannys armed or unarmed that have been killed robbed or injured at gunpoint than any that have shot thier way out of trouble.

And harsher legislation will change that how?

Someone who would rob a grandmother at gunpoint is more susceptible to the law than the grandmother how? Remember, this guy is willing to commit a crime.

 

[Gagglegnash]

Hi

Nice charts. However comparing car deaths to gun deaths is apples to oranges. Cars are a neccessity and in most areas we can't live without them. Guns are a nearly unessessary. We don't need to fend off Indian attacks anymore, or take pot shots at the Redcoats. As for the grannys with a gun there are far far more grannys armed or unarmed that have been killed robbed or injured at gunpoint than any that have shot thier way out of trouble.

So, in your opinion, gun deaths actually are more tragic than automotive, fall, cut/pierce, and poisoning deaths?

Why is that? Is it just because, "we don't need guns?"

Every freedom we have has a price. If you have stairs, you pay with almost 8 million deaths a year, mostly of the elderly. If you drive a car, part of the price is 4 million deaths a year.

I own guns. The freedom to have guns is 800 deaths a year. The firearms I own aren't doing any... not ONE... of the violence-related deaths, just like your car isn't responsible for the approximately 18 hundred violence related automotive deaths.

The problem isn't guns... it's the criminals!

Criminality, however, has complex causality, while guns are an easy to hit, high-profile target. "Everything will be all better if we just get rid of the guns," is easy to say and, apparently, easy to sell.

It's easy to sell because the people they're selling it to are inundated, daily, by images of bad people doing bad things with guns, and since they are ignorant of anything else about guns, the news builds it up.

Again: A kid shoots his dad and we get three days on national front-page stories. Did you even hear about the recent steak-knife/chainsaw murder in Indianapolis?

Why do you suppose that is?

Back in the day, when I was writing computer programs, we used to say, " 'Easy to Use' is easy to say." By that, we meant that... I'm trying to do this without using the word, "idiots..." it's harder than you'd suspect... SIMPLISTIC ('ere we go) solutions are rarely adequate solutions, and giving it its own blurb doesn't make it any more effective.

"Easy to use," is a sales gimmick to get you to buy bad software. "Gun Control," is a sales gimmick, too.

Aren't you at lease curious about what it is they're selling?

 

[gumboot]

Every freedom we have has a price. If you have stairs, you pay with almost 8 million deaths a year, mostly of the elderly. If you drive a car, part of the price is 4 million deaths a year.

Er... those are the number of injuries, not deaths.

I suspect if you were to compare the use:death ratios, cars would come out substantially safer than firearms...

 

[Yjacket]

I suspect if you were to compare the use:death ratios, cars would come out substantially safer than firearms...

To do that we need to define use. Does it count one use each time I get in my car and leave home? Does it count as another use when I leave the store to return home? Is my firearm being used when I go to the range once for each cartridge fired or just once because I took it to the range and expended 50 cartridges?

Also in your comparison please remember that it needs to be made on the same grounds, accident to accident. No fair including the deliberate misconduct of those who commit a crime or suidice. So that makes the fatal accident comparison something like 800 for firearms to about 40,000 for motor vehicles.

 

[Smiledriver]

Here's the thing Americans. You have a right to keep and bear arms. Reasonable constraints are a background check to ensure your not a violent criminal or insane. That's it. If your fellow citizens are made to feel uncomfortable by you exercising your right then they should be invited to stay indoors...they're the ones with the problem.

I live in Canada, my gov't has legislated me out of my right to go armed under english common law and denies me redress of this criminal abridgment of my liberties by closing most every access to my representitives.

If you'd like to see where attitudes like the OP's lead check out...

www.brucemontague.com

...I figure you all did the right thing by electing Mr. Obama, notwithstanding his long record of crapping on your 2nd ammendment rights, now step two is to join the NRA and see that what happpened in my country and the UK doesn't happen to you.

 

[Smiledriver]

Incidently I love my country and would never live anywhere else, I just wish I could carry a gun like every freeman should be able to do.

 

[Gagglegnash]

Hi

Er... those are the number of injuries, not deaths.

I suspect if you were to compare the use:death ratios, cars would come out substantially safer than firearms...

WOOPS! I should know better than to try to post before going out to dinner. Sorry.

Still....

Actually, the US DOT uses 1.3 deaths per 100,000 miles driven us automotive use, and traffic accidents still come out above firearms, and they use the full 60,000... mmm... let me check... this may take a bit.

Back after some Googlage in teh Interwebz....

[ETA]

Oops again - just the 800 or so accidental deaths....

Accidental deaths - A COMPARISON OF RISK: Accidental Deaths - United States - 1999-2003, US Dept. of Transportation Office of Hazardous Materials Safety, in which accidental gun deaths occurred an average of 779 times in a population of between 60 and 91 million persons, placing it 10th in risk of accidental death:

Type | 5 Yr. Average | General Population |Risk Based on Exposure
| | Risk Per Year | or Other Measures
Motor Vehicle | 36,676 | 1 out of 7,700 | 1.3 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles
Poisoning | 15,206 | 1 out of 18,700 |
Work Related | 5,800 | 1 out of 49,000 | 4.3 deaths per 100,000 workers
Large Trucks | 5,150 | 1 out of 55,000 | 2.5 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles
Pedestrian | 4,846 | 1 out of 58,000 |
Drowning | 3,409 | 1 out of 83,500 |
Fires |9 3,312 | 1 out of 86,000
Motorcycles |3,112 |1 out of 91,500 | 31.3 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles
Railroads | 931 | 1 out of 306,000 |1.3 deaths per million train miles
Firearms | 779 | 1 out of 366,000 |

Oops AGAIN again... 1.3 deaths per 100 MILLION miles driven...

However, if you take the death by criminal activity into consideration, firearms deaths jumps right to the top, as I demonstrated above, so, again, we don't have a gun problem: We have a criminal problem.

[/ETA]

 

[Crowlogic]

I just felt that I should point out the innate prejudice that came with this statement. Uh, not to mention the typos, but I'm no grammar nazi.

When you talk about guns, you mention "Uncle Bubba"; I can just imagine what you see. What comes to mind to mind is a buck-toothed redneck with a straw hat that's worn too low over his eyes, with a grin plastered on his face, holding the coon huntin' gun!

He's Uncle Bubba, the Hillbilly, and he loves his guns! This is what a gun owner is -- the uneducated, bucktoothed hillbilly, the god-lovin', fundamentalist, creationist hillbilly! Loves God and Country, yessir, and loves huntin' those coons!

QUOTE]

Wait just a second cowboy you saw Uncle Bubba that way. However for nearly 3 decades I lived and worked in one of the better educated regions of the country. I had for neighbors professional people, doctors, teachers, engineers, writers etc. Not one of them owned a gun or were interested in firearms. Why do you suppose that educated professional people seem to lack interest in guns? I live in the sticks now and them hicks love thier guns and thier bibles.

 

[Crowlogic]

Here's the thing Americans. You have a right to keep and bear arms. Reasonable constraints are a background check to ensure your not a violent criminal or insane. That's it. If your fellow citizens are made to feel uncomfortable by you exercising your right then they should be invited to stay indoors...they're the ones with the problem.

I live in Canada, my gov't has legislated me out of my right to go armed under english common law and denies me redress of this criminal abridgment of my liberties by closing most every access to my representitives.

If you'd like to see where attitudes like the OP's lead check out...

www.brucemontague.com

...I figure you all did the right thing by electing Mr. Obama, notwithstanding his long record of crapping on your 2nd ammendment rights, now step two is to join the NRA and see that what happpened in my country and the UK doesn't happen to you.

And what is the level of gun violence in Canada these days? Do you feel safe walking down the street? I can assure you in Phildelphia PA USA you better be prepared to duck. I think we're the gun death capital of the country right now.

 

[Yjacket]

I had for neighbors professional people, doctors, teachers, engineers, writers etc. Not one of them owned a gun or were interested in firearms. Why do you suppose that educated professional people seem to lack interest in guns? I live in the sticks now and them hicks love thier guns and thier bibles.

I do believe that you are making some assumptions that have little if any basis in fact. I know professional people who are firearm owners. I know craftsmen who are firearm owners. I know unskilled persons who are firearm owners. To assume that someone is or is not interested in firearms because of their way of earning a living is somewhat of a "paint it all with the same brush" attitude.

Just for the record, I have sheepskins. I did earn my living as a functioning engineer for many years before moving into production and then on to construction management. I strongly suspect that many of the people I worked with and who were subordinate to me were never aware that I was and still am a competitive marksman. As a matter of fact at one of the ranges where I compete I ran into a fellow, a professional, that I knew from work even though we worked for different firms. Neither of us knew that the other was a shooter and that we had a common interest in which of the disiplines we like to participate in. Until we ran into each other at a match.

To answer your question. Some professional, educated persons own firearms and participate in shooting sports. Some profession, educated persons do not own firearms and do not participate in shooting sports. Just because someone is complying with the law and not brandishing a firearm all of the time does not mean that the someone is not interested in shooting sports. You assume too much.

 

[Gagglegnash]

Hi

Wait just a second cowboy you saw Uncle Bubba that way. However for nearly 3 decades I lived and worked in one of the better educated regions of the country. I had for neighbors professional people, doctors, teachers, engineers, writers etc. Not one of them owned a gun or were interested in firearms. Why do you suppose that educated professional people seem to lack interest in guns? I live in the sticks now and them hicks love thier guns and thier bibles.

Why do you suppose this same educated professional people are all on the gun-control side of the argument?

Why do you suppose they put, "gun free zone," signs and regulations on the campuses where some of them teach?

Why do you suppose they blame the guns when those signs don't work and a mess of college kids get shot to ribbons?

What is it, exactly, that those well-educated people mean when they say things like, "freedom," and, "innocent until proven guilty?"

In a land that's supposedly built on an idea of political equality, with a mess of 'majority rule, minority rights' thrown in for good measure, why do they think it reasonable to remove a right enumerated in the Constitution on the basis of the jackassulation of at most one-eighth of one percent of the gun-owning population? (The number I used were of legal gun owners. There's an awful lot of those firearms injuries that are caused by persons not eligible to be in that list.)

Out here in the country, if folks break the law we arrest and punish them, not their neighbors! It must be different in those well-educated circles in which you traveled.

 

[Yjacket]

-- Originally posted by Crowlogic at post 154
I live in the sticks now and them hicks love thier guns and thier bibles.

-- Originally posted by Crowlogic at post 155]
I can assure you in Phildelphia PA USA you better be prepared to duck. I think we're the gun death capital of the country right now.

Which is it? You live in Philadelphia or in the sticks.

 

[Drudgewire]

I live in a state that is having a tax free weekend on all firearms sales Friday and Saturday. With the .22 I'm picking up it'll bring my grand total to seven guns.

 

[Lonewulf]

Wait just a second cowboy you saw Uncle Bubba that way. However for nearly 3 decades I lived and worked in one of the better educated regions of the country. I had for neighbors professional people, doctors, teachers, engineers, writers etc. Not one of them owned a gun or were interested in firearms. Why do you suppose that educated professional people seem to lack interest in guns? I live in the sticks now and them hicks love thier guns and thier bibles.

So now you're honestly going to stick with your prejudicial belief that "educated people won't buy guns, uneducated people love them". Sounds a lot like Danish Dynamite calling women that have firearms "ignorant".

I'm not a professional, but I'm looking into being an author. I'm currently studying German at the Max Weber Haus under the Heidelberg University. I'm currently looking into attending the University of Texas at San Antonio and pursue a degree in history, with possibly a minor in astronomy, to aid in my writing. I have an interest in physics and science, albeit more as a cheerleader than as anything else. I'm an atheist. I'm not a "cowboy"; living in Texas for a year doesn't make you qualify. I'm not sure if this makes me qualify in your black-and-white (or perhaps hillbilly gun lubber-educated gun hater) world view, but there it is.

I'm interested in firearms. I've fired firearms before as target practice, and it was pretty fun. I've known other intelligent people, one a physics instructor, that have also had fun at the range (I didn't ask him as to whether there should be strict gun control, but somehow I doubt it). I don't necessarily oppose certain kinds of gun control, but only those that attempt to ensure that they don't end up in the hands of criminals (background checks, etc.), although I would be willing to see a requirement for training before such things as a concealed carry permit. I see regulations that attempt to keep firearms out of the hands of average citizens to be an idea that's rather short-sighted, and attempts to simplify the issue.

And I notice you conveniently ignore the Pink Pistols; but I'm sure that they're just a bunch of uneducated hillbilly fundamentalist Christian homosexuals, I suppose.


I'm beginning to wonder if your intent in this thread is to troll.