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Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

theguardian.com

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Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

#131

Post by jcromartie »

geggam wrote: post #18
pjc50 wrote: post #12

Since this is today's gun argument thread, I'll just point out that the UK is currently commemorating the 20th anniversary of its first and last "mass shooting" incident, at a school in Dunblane, Scotland. The ensuing total ban on handguns and further restriction on gun licensing mean that mass shootings are nonexistant, firearm murders are extremely rare (about one per year in a country of 60m), shooting of suspects…

UK govt does kill its citizens though. Without trial. The restrictions of guns by the government ensures you have no defense from the one entity that has killed more people than anything. Their own govt. http://blogs.ft.com/david-allen-green/2015/09/08/when-does-t...

So, how does it turn out for people who shoot at the police? I'm sorry but you are living in libertarian cowboy fantasy.

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

#132

Post by Retric »

mifdsfdrfes wrote: post #115
smcl wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was sure there was a nasty bit of deception going on, I was digging through gov.uk's England/Wales crime stats PDFs looking for the explanation and it seems you've figured it out :) However if my previous chats with pro-gun types are anything to go by, please don't be surprised if there's a reply along the lines of "so if that was the cause then why don't you go ban medication..."

Washington DC has the lowest gun ownership per capita and yet the highest gun murder rates in America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta... Please explain the lack of correlation between gun murders and gun ownership. Even when controlling for density, there is still no correlation.

Bad stats, there is no actual nationwide tracking of gun ownership in the US making such numbers pure BS.

Further, crime rates need to be adjusted for poverty or they become meaningless.

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

#133

Post by maldusiecle »

agarden wrote: post #99
smcl wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> ... t-boned by a drunk driver and everyone dies, that is considered a tragedy. But no one will advocate giving up driving Apples and oranges there. It is a criminal offense to drink drive where I am, and probably where you are too. I find it a bit painful/hilarious that I actually predicted someone would come up with your second example about 25 minutes ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11289280

It is a criminal offense to shoot people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

#135

Post by talmand »

jcromartie wrote: post #127
TallGuyShort wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> police are not routinely armed I'm a gun owner and this is the key point for me. No politician is in a position to tell me I don't need my semi-automatic pistol if every day I see a patrol car go by my house with 2 fully automatic AR-15s locked between the front seats and my local police department owns an armoured vehicle. If you really think you have a plan for getting rid of guns for bad guys as well as me, pro…

And part of the reason why cops are armed to the teeth is because the citizens are. It would require real total mutual disarmament of citizens and police to change anything in the USA. So I don't see it changing any time soon.

American citizens have always been armed to the teeth, so to speak. American police departments were not, this is a more recent phenomenon. It's partly due to the Federal level programs that are equipping the police with surplus military hardware. I find it doubtful that a regular street cop is going to encounter a situation in their day-to-day to justify the level of armament as if they were on the SWAT team.

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

#136

Post by blackrose »

FussyZeus wrote: post #87

This is the latest in a line of articles (and arguments) for that matter that completely fails to address the gun culture we have in the United States. It paints a picture that people who have guns are just these crazy old hicks, ha ha look at them with their silly guns. First of all in large areas of the country (and around the world) guns can be useful tools of survival or hobbies, including around where I live. We…

Yes, now if only the government would let me buy that cocaine I want.

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

#137

Post by agarden »

jernfrost wrote: post #109
agarden wrote: post #76

What interests me about the gun debate (if one can call it that), is that there are ways of dying that are considered acceptable risks and ways of dying that are not. If you are driving your kids across town and get t-boned by a drunk driver and everyone dies, that is considered a tragedy. But no one will advocate giving up driving. Something really bad happened, everyone move on with your lives. Or when a relative d…

So sick of replying to this sort of logic. Nobody says we should GIVE UP guns. We are talking about regulating. Just like the dam car you used in your retarded analogy. WHY is the car strictly regulated in the US like anywhere else, but NOT the gun!!!??? Are guns somehow way safer than cars? Pretty much anything which is dangerous is regulated. I mean McDonalds even has to put a sticker on your cup, stating it is hot…

Guns are regulated. You must be at least eighteen in most states in order to buy a gun. In many places (most?), there is a waiting period. You pay one day, you come back another to pick it up. Concealed carry is either illegal or requires taking a class, registering, and getting a permit. Open carry is legal in some places, illegal in others.

It is harder to get a concealed carry permit than a driver's license, at least past the age of 21.

I'm not saying that there aren't more regulations that could be passed that would make gun ownership safer. I think there probably are. But to hold that car ownership is more regulated than gun ownership is not a tenable position.

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

#138

Post by Loque »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #121
Loque wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears everything was correctly enforced? He went through the appropriate channels - filled in the correct forms, and appeared sane at the time of application. I guess another question would be, why on earth would anyone need _any_ of those guns.

There was a lot of discussion at the time, and my recollection is he was already known to mental health services. The Sun et al had him painted as a rabid survivalist of course. Wiki seems to say it was retrospective diagnosis, so I'm not sure... I can understand wanting to collect, or at least try, different types, but who in the world needs an assault rifle?

Try different types of guns for what? The only primary purpose of a gun is to inflict a lot of damage to something.

The Sun, is a terrible, terrible source of 'news'; http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3062107/Getting-hi... (you can safely ignore any of the red tops in the UK)

I can understand the deep interest in guns, for instance I thoroughly enjoy FPS russia. But I do not think as a society we can manage the general public having guns, Australia and the UK are a very good example of how new laws have come into place.

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

#139

Post by hnal943 »

jcromartie wrote: post #127
TallGuyShort wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> police are not routinely armed I'm a gun owner and this is the key point for me. No politician is in a position to tell me I don't need my semi-automatic pistol if every day I see a patrol car go by my house with 2 fully automatic AR-15s locked between the front seats and my local police department owns an armoured vehicle. If you really think you have a plan for getting rid of guns for bad guys as well as me, pro…

And part of the reason why cops are armed to the teeth is because the citizens are. It would require real total mutual disarmament of citizens and police to change anything in the USA. So I don't see it changing any time soon.

...because the criminals are. And therein lies to fatal flaw of gun control - only people who are law abiding would comply with the new laws.

Re: Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do

#140

Post by pjc50 »

merpnderp wrote: post #97
pjc50 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as I saw John Lott, I knew I was going to be dealing with one-sided data. But I'm having trouble replicating that graph from https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm... It did point out that I was wrong about no mass shootings (p57): "In 2010/11, the police provisionally recorded 642 offences of homicide, which includes the 12 people killed by Derrick Bird in June 2010. Homicide offences i…

But are homicides down overall? What's the purpose of banning firearms if they don't prevent murders? Because if we compared home invasion rates (and perhaps some other categories), I'm guessing they'd look drastically lopsided. In the US state where I live 80% of those convicted of home invasion said they carefully picked a house where they believed the owner was not armed. And the news often carries stories of peop…

"Home invasion" is not a category known to UK crime reporting; the same PDF says

There has been a general downward trend in police recorded homicides over recent years. If the provisional figure of 642 homicides is confirmed when the final figures from the Homicide Index are published, then this would represent a fall of 19 per cent in homicides since 2001/02."

and

"The BCS shows that the number of violent incidents increased gradually through the 1980s and then increased sharply after 1991 to reach a peak in the mid 1990s. The number of incidents then showed steep decreases in the late 1990s. Since then, despite non-statistically significant year-on-year changes, there has been an overall decline."*

The decline in violence is actually somewhat global and not really anything to do with firearms either way. What the gun ban does unambiguously reduce is the opportunity for mass shootings.

(Did you mean compare rates within the same country, or rates between the UK and US? The UK's overall murder rate is comparable to that of two or three US cities. Sadly this PDF only goes back to 2000/2001 and doesn't cover the 90s.)

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