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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

#321

Post by rogersmith »

aninhumer wrote: post #319
rogersmith wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, because if some crazy asshole shoots people randomly it's a mass shooting but if he happens to be muslim it's terrorism. Sorry, keep forgetting about that memo.

Well the relevant difference is whether the shooters had external support to commit their crime. That it's possible for a determined group to acquire guns and attack people is one thing. It being possible for a single mentally unstable person to do so is quite another.

Feel free to share your sources establishing the shooters of both the Paris Hebdo and Bataclan attacks received external support.

What about Columbine (multiple shooters, conspired in advance to commit the attack), terrorism, mass shootings?

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

#322

Post by firethief »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #298
skewart wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a single person, or a small group? I know of no one who believes that. Fair enough. Neither do I. I meant it as a rhetorical question because it's such an absurd thing to think, but I realize that wasn't necessarily clear. > The US military is composed predominately of gun owners :). So is the thinking that people in the military would disobey commands and join the uprising? (Or are you being entirely facetious…

It really depends on the circumstances, but I severely doubt that the military would not fracture if it were ordered to attack US citizens.

Yeah, if the order came today. They haven't been programmed for that. It would take at least a few months of intensive witchhunting (probably for Domestic Terror) to work up to it -- or the right convenient incident to spark adequate mass hysteria.

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

#323

Post by radiorental »

pjc50 wrote: post #289
radiorental wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> firearm murders are extremely rare (about one per year in a country of 60m) Are you sure about those statistics? http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/192/total_num...

Sorry, that was indeed way out. The true number is a few hundred per year, still far lower per population than the US.

No question, a lot less than the US. Even when we Irish were at the height of bashing the crap out of each other there were still more total gun related incidents in D.C. than had happened across the peak 25 years of the troubles.

All other factors aside your proposition is true; fewer guns per capita, fewer bullets leaving said guns at capita

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

#324

Post by sobbybutter »

The statistics are always misinterpreted; they can't be considered in the same domain. Terrorists fall in the risk domain that is subject to tail events. Toddlers with guns don't. In plain English, you're not going to see a 10x increase in deaths one year from toddlers playing around with guns, while that's very possible with terrorist activity. In fat-tailed domains like terrorism, single, extreme events make up the entire mean, so just because something bad doesn't happen for a short period of time doesn't mean it's any safer. All it takes is one extreme terrorist event to do some serious damage.

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

#325

Post by agarden »

alistairSH wrote: post #86
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…

Because guns are expressly designed to kill. They serve no other purpose (ignoring sporting uses, as those are basically a proxy for proving how well one can kill with a gun). There is no reason anybody outside of the military needs a gun to carry out their day to day jobs. That isn't true of cars or hospitals.

I'm not sure how being designed to kill changes the risk calculation. Cars are not designed to kill, but they are designed to do something that is inherently dangerous and potentially lethal. The fundamental thing is how much risk is posed, not whether the risk is incidental to the goal or intentional, right?

...I think you are suggesting that people consider the risk of cars acceptable because the risk/reward ratio is acceptable, but many people see no value in guns and so the risk/reward ratio is abysmal in their eyes. That is a rational argument.

If that is what is going on, then processing the risk/reward ratio is subconscious. If it comes out badly, people just think and talk about the risk. If it comes out well, one just doesn't think of that thing as risky. That makes some sense, but it doesn't feel like it fully accounts for the terror I read in such articles as this one in the Guardian.

(Incidentally, if you live in the country and keep animals, having a gun might not be strictly necessary, but it is a tool you probably do not want to be without.)

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

#326

Post by cowardlydragon »

adwf wrote: post #36
jjoonathan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it worked out quite the way you said: http://crimeresearch.org/2013/12/murder-and-homicide-rates-b... Obligatory un-zeroed-axis warning, but the point stands.

Terribly cherry-picked charts there. The UK had a spike in homicides in 2003, so what? The overall trend is clearly downwards. The 2009 firearm homicide rate is less than half the avg. rate for the 90's and I believe it has only gone down further since (cherry picked date ranges). Ireland had an increase in homicides following gun bans in the 70's? And it was the gun ban that caused it, not the Troubles? Likewise Jam…

I've heard that somewhere in Somalia some guy had established a 10' x 10' gun free zone, and yet still got killed for a 100% death rate.

Clearly laws are useless.

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

#327

Post by pjc50 »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #192
developer2 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood this argument. The day you pull a gun on "government" is the day you will be killed on the spot, or sentenced to death row, or sent to life in prison with no chance of parole. You will be permanently removed from your comfortable life, and whomever takes that life away from you will face no penalty for doing so. So you own a handgun? The government will have assault rifles. Oh, you own an assaul…

No one is imagining turning into Rambo and overthrowing their local sheriff. The idea is that there are limits to how far the American people can be pushed before we - as a group - simply refuse to go along anymore. This stems directly from American history. The Constitution was written in a time when things like the Boston Massacre, Bunker Hill, and Col. Parker's stand in Concord and Lexington were fresh in the coll…

No one is imagining turning into Rambo and overthrowing their local sheriff.

I think people certainly do imagine that, although few of them put it into practice. What about those guys who occupied the wildlife refuge? Like a lonelier, more heavily armed Occupy?

Brits gave up their weapons without a fight .. German invasion

Funny thing this. The war looms large in UK national identity; our finest hour, Dunkirk, the Blitz, the Few, etc. However there's no English(+) tradition of anti-government armed struggle, and obviously WW2 we were fighting for the government. There is very little gun culture either. It's just not an important factor in politics. The idea of the government going rogue is just not something people think about - unless you're on the left, which has perhaps a few more wounds. Whereas in the US this particular kind of armed antigovernmentalism seems to be a right-wing thing.

(+) does not apply in Scotland and NI!

The UK history of violent confrontation with the state is mostly "left". Bloody Sunday. Orgreave. Hillsborough(++). Peterloo. Red Clydeside. Brixton.

(++) an accident made far worse by aggressive victim-blaming and systematic evidence forging by police and press.

The ways in which violence, crime, race, poverty, policing, politics, political violence and dissent are conceptualised are mostly entirely different. Ideas do constantly leak through from the US film industry though.

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

#328

Post by TallGuyShort »

piyush_soni wrote: post #290
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…

As an outsider, I've always wondered about this: Since a lot of people in America are so much hell bent on keeping a gun for a hypothetical future situation of government turning hostile (completely ignoring the 'real, actual' killings that are happening very frequently because some psycho got access to what they obtained for their own safety) - will all these people be personally willing to take responsibility and g…

I think it's irresponsible to not take reasonable precautions with guns. I keep mine in a GunVault. But mandating that by law and assigning liability to the owner is a slippery slope. I agree it makes sense with guns, but if someone breaks into my house looking for prescription medicines and I failed to adequately label poison, am I liable? If they ban guns and an armed robber breaks into my house, are the politicians who wrote the law liable?

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

#329

Post by pjc50 »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #293
pjc50 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the purpose of personal gun ownership is to curb governmental power No, that's what the legal system is for. The idea of trying to have some sort of legal right to political violence (terrorism) is bonkers. Maybe it comes from the Lost Cause or something. The AR-15 has been mentioned in a couple of places in this thread. It has rather different connotations in the UK, being one of the favoured weapons of the IRA: htt…

You don't have a "legal right" to political violence, by definition. You have a moral right under some circumstances and the legal right to own guns helps gives the ability to act. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide#Rwandan_Patri... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_%281972%29 ?

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

#330

Post by firethief »

hnal943 wrote: post #139
jcromartie wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You seem to be dividing people into "law abiding" and "law disregarding". I posit that it's more complicated, and a law can disincentivize an activity even for people who break other laws.
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