On 10/7/2013 5:29 PM, LizR wrote:
On 8 October 2013 12:57, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>
wrote:
On 10/7/2013 4:14 PM, LizR wrote:
Yes of course it's mostly handguns, just as most deaths aren't due to mass
shootings. Handguns are more common (cheaper, and easier to conceal if you
intend
to commit a crime). Firearms cause around 30,000 deaths/year in the US,
Of which 2/3 were suicides. I don't think the government has a right to
prevent
suicides.
Good point, I didn't realise that. I agree with you there, although I would be
interested to know how the suicide rate compares to countries with less easily available
(or certain) methods. Perhaps some suicides wouldn't have carried it through without it
being so easy, and would have gone on to overcome their suicidal depression and live
happy and fulfilling lives (I managed it. I wonder how I would have fared if there had
been a firearm handy...)
Yes, I'm sure availability has an effect. Switzerland which has a very low homicide rate
but high gun availability, has a higher suicide rate by gun than the U.S. But Finland has
an even higher one - suicide rate seems to go with low population density and lack of
sunshine.
apparently (plus about 70,000 injuries) - about the same number as car accidents - yet
the budget for research into preventing gun deaths is, guess what, only one 20th of the
budget for preventing car accidents.
That would depend a lot on the accounting. You could say that all police
budgets
are for preventing gun deaths due to homicide. And exactly what would you
expect
such research to do; conclude that guns that wouldn't fire would prevent gun
deaths. It's kinda the point of guns that they can kill things. With cars
it's an
accident. And car accidents kill six times as many people as guns, 18
times as many
if you discount suicides.
I guess this Wintemute guy in New Scientist got his stats wrong, then. (He's some sort
of researcher into this field, too, so a surprising mistake.) He placed the numbers at
about equal.
No, he was right and I was wrong. I checked and I had inadvertently compared gun deaths
(about 30,000) to all injury deaths (180,000). Auto deaths are about (33,000).
Yes, why guns kill people is a no-brainer, which is why most countries don't allow them
to be available to everyone in apparently unlimited quantities. But apparently the US
doesn't agree with that, and requires people to do research on the subject (and then
makes publishing their results illegal, or so I'm told).
Not exactly. Congress just stopped funding the CDC to study gun violence; no doubt due to
various lobbying pressures. But I think they still include gun death and injury in their
statistical summaries. Anyone who wants to can study and publish whatever they want.
It's almost as though there's a conspiracy ... oh, wait, there is!
Apparently there are 315 million people living in the US, who between them own 300
million guns, and 260 million cars.
And about two billion pairs of shoes and 250 million TV sets. So what? Is
there
some prescribed, right number for these things?
That's a strange comment. Given that the topic under discussion is guns in the US, and a
comparison was made with cars, it seems reasonable to fill in a few extra pieces of gun
and car related background information. And obviously these both relate to the
population - a million guns in a population of 100,000 would seem more significant than
if the population was 1 billion - don't you think?
I guess. But my point is that people decided to have three television sets and seven
pairs of shoes and three guns and two cars and... So who is to say, "No, you can decide
how many shoes and TVs and cars you want, but you can't decide how many guns you want." I
own six guns, only two of which I bought (I inherited the others).
Brent
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