Ummmm - try reading instead of skimming I was talking to another member and making a comparison with the way that we have actioned accidental child deaths Again proving that there is an automatic expectation that any thread that has a tittle "kids and guns" will have people screaming and demanding that all Americans surrender firearms immediately Sorry to disappoint you but that is not the case Oh! And the quote button is in the bottom right hand corner of your screen
Now who's at fault for this little communication error? I didn't say most firearms owners. I said most firearms owners that I know. Would you like me to have all the firearms owners that I know comment here as proof?
Oooh! Look A MULTIQUOTE!! Please read otherwise I will come to the conclusion you are merely trolling and at that point I will add you to my "Don't bother reading" list
I have fully read the thread. You did not answer the question I asked. Are you now trying to claim that the comparison has nothing to do with guns and children? Because it seems odd to me that you would go off on a completely unrelated child saving tangent that has nothing to do with the topic you originated.
For what cause you wanna hold the guns? Firearms are needed to kill. It's not a souvenir. We must be secured by police not by ourselves. I work for missioner in Russian Federation. There are no legal gun owners in Russia.
People are willing to accept risk in many aspects of life. Cars involve a tremendous risk (the nbr 1 cause of death for Americans under 25), yet as a society we are willing to accept that risk in exchange for the benefits. Its the same with firearms. You see 613 accidental deaths as a calamity, I see the same 613 as tiny and inevitable. Tiny because out of 307 million people, 613 is ... tiny. Inevitable because no matter what we do, even a ban on firearms, there will always be room for accidents and error and stupidity. And you ignore the benefits. The National Self-Defense Survey shows that Americans used their personal firearms to stop over 2 million crimes every year. Those numbers are typical of the many surveys done on this subject in the USA. Besides crime there is the ability to resist a tyrannical govt. Some find that to be a weak arguement but that was the major intent of the founders of the nation. Many nations are enslaved because their people are unarmed. Libya was not freed until its people were armed by NATO. The US is not Libya, but govt's change. "The right of the citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possilble." - stated in 1960 by United States Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. Different culture. You probably love Australia, I would never live there, just like I would never live in Canada or most of Europe, because they limit my freedom too much.
No, it's not. You're comparing something that is designed to kill, with something that is designed to transport. It's a ridiculous comparison.
Why do assume people that don't agree with you have been brainwashed? That's the typical arguement we get from the socialists, people that oppose Obama and the progressive/socialist agenda are simply misinformed, brainwashed, or ignorant, and if they only were presented the right information they would fall in line. Its a closed minded attitude. Out of curiosity I looked up the crime rates in Australia. The gun ban / buyback doesn't seem to have done anything outside of the suicide rate. Crime rates in general seem to be unaffected, burglary, robbery, armed robbery, assault. Most continue their pre-ban trend until around 2001-2002 when a new trend started. Accidental firearm shootings in Australia actually went up, then down, then way up, then down, and for the past several years are on a steady upward trend. Oddly the overall murder rate, gun murder rate, and armed robbery rate are completely unaffected by the ban. There are plenty of studies on the apparent irrelevency of the ban/buyback. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2008-2009 6.3% of Australians over 15 years old were victims of at least one assault (http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by Subject/1370.0~2010~Chapter~Crime (4.4) ). In the US the number is 0.3%. Are you "het up" over the number of assaults, which number far far more than 613? Maybe thats a trade Australia is willing to make. Fewer firearms (but not less firearm related crime and accidental shooting) for more assaults?
No its not. People accept the costs of an item in exchange for the the benefits of the use of an item. It doesn't matter what the item is. Firearms have a benefit which people want. You personally may not want it, but most of the US does want it.
You'd have to argue that we can understand gun demand purely in terms of rational economic man. Good luck with that one!
Let us speak of these statistics another way - that is more than a child a day DYING. Now for every child that dies more are injured Bloody hell! Gary (I am paid shill for the firearms manufacturers) Kleck and his dancing statistics If that is true then why are not more Aussies and Brits How come those figures do not add up? http://www.stat.duke.edu/~dalene/chance/chanceweb/103.myth0.pdf of crime? I said they were dancing figures for a reason - can anyone say gross overestimate? 37-39. Overestimates of self-defense gun use We use epidemiological theory to explain why the "false positive" problem for rare events can lead to large overestimates of the incidence of rare diseases or rare phenomena such as self-defense gun use. We then try to validate the claims of many millions of annual self-defense uses against available evidence. Major findings: The claim of many millions of annual self-defense gun uses by American citizens appears to be invalid. ttp://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use/index.html I will refer to THIS myth as the "Make my day punk" myth Oh! Dear! The guns = freedom myth Another Furphy and one that frankly does not stand scrutiny and more than the others So, what I predicted in the beginning - that Americans would trot out the same old tired and debunked myths instead of addressing the issue of injured and dead children
I buy my guns for either protection or recreation,both are benificial to me So it looks like ony YOU 'know' it.
US government statistics estimate up to 800,000 defensive gun uses per yeareven at that 'low end' it justifies the right to bear arms... And none of the 'myths' have been adequately ;debunked' bvy you or any of the others
Sampling methods have to be employed and those methods suggest that guns are more likely to be used against family members than in their defence. Puts it in perspective somewhat!
Your refusal to answer my question is telling and this last response confirms my suspicion. Your intent with this thread is not to have a discussion about gun safety in regards to children. Your intent is to solicit "standard myth based responses" from gun proponents. What a sad way to exploit the death of children. And you had the temerity to suggest that I was trolling you.
Feel for you, really do! In the mean time how do you think we can reduce the horrifically high firearm child accidental injury rate in the US? Given the US also has a high non-firearm rate, is there something more general going on here that standard gun control comment will miss?
While we are not in agreement that the child accident rate is "horrifically high" I will concede that efforts should be made to reduce the rate. I would say that education is the best course of action.
In terms of relative comparison, it cannot be denied. The only issue is the vocab used, from epidemic to endemic etc. There are indeed several studies that have found significant effects from education. However, it certainly is no panacea and a significant number of children see no change in risk rates.
Good luck trying to objectively qualify my subjective opinion. Statistical significance exists in all proposed solutions to the problem. The point that has been made here multiple times by myself and others has been that the risk must be weighed against the benefit. The risk that I will fall down the stairs and crack open my skull is statistically significant. In fact, it's much more likely that I will be mortally wounded on the stairs as a child then the likelihood that I will be shot as a child. Yet I think I would be hard pressed to find a study that shows people think that fall related deaths are horrifically high.
Your subjective opinion is irrelevant. I'm only bothering with the reality, using objective comparison to make indisputable point. This sentence is quite meaningless. The important point is "why isn't education enough?". We shift the analysis, for example, to concerns over bounded rationality and therefore specific controls. Take, for example, the seatbelt rule. We've seen regulations lead to a change in behaviour such that injury costs have fallen. No it isn't, but I'm happy for you to try and support that statement with evidence! Because they aren't
Why isn't education enough to accomplish what? Are you talking about the total elimination of unintentional firearm related death? Education isn't enough because humans are fallible. No methodology can completely remove our own fallibility from the equation. I agree they aren't. The problem with your argument is that fall related deaths are much higher then accidental firearm discharge related deaths. Why is one described by you as "horrific" while the other is not "horrific"? Is it simply an intentional bias? Odds of dying due to accidental discharge of firearm in 2000: 1 in 1,196,983 Odds of dying due to a fall from stairs in 2000: 1 in 210,640. http://danger.mongabay.com/injury_death.htm
It was once common for 11 year old boys to go off on their own with a rifle in Finland and many parts of Sweden. It taught them about responsibility. Yet today in many places, any adult who even owns a gun is often considered a potential threat to society. These types of hobbies are potentially dangerous, and there needs to be proper education, as severe injury or death could result. But I would hate to see our countries become nanny-states, where the government decides which activities are too dangerous for us. The entire country of Norway, for example, actually banned skateboarding for many years because it was throught to be to dangerous of an activivty for the youth! Many of our countries were able to function completely satisfactorily for many years when guns (and explosives) were not beyond the reach of a 14 year old boy. What has changed today so much that the older children can no longer be trusted? The problem of gun violence is almost entriely a problem of inner city poverty and dysfunction, mostly amongst ethnic minorities. Phrasing it a different way: people integrated into society with decent jobs and houses can be trusted.
