Intrafamilial Debate- RESPONSES REQUESTED!!!

[nick]

Phew, can you tell I had 15 min to waste on this? Let's hope it helps with digestion, since I was eating lunch

[Librarian]

Cousin Andrew: You can post it if you want, but obviously I didn't expect to change minds, I just wanted my questions answered, and no one has been able to tell me how to give everyone guns, but keep cops and 4 year olds from being shot to death.

If people on the forum don't think that those deaths are a problem, and that there isn't a problem with guns in this country, then that is where we differ.

Poor Andrew.

We live in a dangerous world. Everything has risks. The questions become

1. 'what is an acceptable level of risk?' and
2. 'what is the cost to reduce the risk to an acceptable level?'

One should look at WISQARS.

Our society has made that judgement with respect to automobiles: in 2005 there were
43,667 traffic fatalities, 14.76/100,000 people, and
2,864,022 injuries, 967.92/100,000.

The same values for firearms in 2005 are
29,684 violence-related deaths, 10.03/100,000
69,825 injuries, 23.60/100,000

There are roughly 300,000,000 firearms in 'civilian' hands. DOT/FHA says there were 231,389,998 motor vehicles in the US in 2004.

Vehicles/guns ~= 77%
Vehicle deaths/gun violence deaths ~= 147%
Vehicle injuries/gun injuries ~= 4100%

Every death is a tragedy to someone. But if we use how we feel about deaths as our criterion, Cousin Andrew ought to campaigning to get rid of cars. Cars are obviously even more dangerous than guns, beyond the numbers: almost all of those motor vehicle deaths and injuries are accidents. The gun deaths are primarily deliberate acts, horrid decisions by one human being to end the life, or risk the end, of another.

And again, no one wants to give everyone guns.

Not everyone wants one. That's cool; not everyone wants an Xbox or a lawn mower, either.

As a society, we've decided that some people, by their actions, have shown themselves not trustworthy and they shouldn't have guns (not that it's really possible to prevent them from getting guns) - there are about 800,000 parolees and 1,300,000 state and Federal prisoners, plus some unfindable-at-the-moment number of other convicted felons who are out of prison, off probation, but whose rights have not been restored. Call that number about equal to the ones I found, and we have about 4 million 'ineligibles'.

As a society, we generally don't want children to have guns, at least without adult supervision (lots of special exceptions in this group) - around 73 million US residents are 17 and under.

[hoffmang]

Hell with that idea. How about instead of midnight basketball leagues for troubled youts we instead give them free marksmanship lessons. That way when they whip out their gats on another scumbag they actually kill their intended target instead of innocents. In no time at all there'll be a dearth of breathing scumbags.

Rayra,

We don't always agree, but here we do.

-Gene