The Decision 3
Dec11
And onward goes the plotline! Or something.
We’re coming up on the anniversary of Sandy Hook, and already the anti-nuts are howling about how 194 American kids have died from gun related incidents since then.
WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE KIDS?
Of course, we could also think of how many kids died in the last year from car accidents. Or household accidents. Or child abuse. Or just plain old accidents at the playground. Or non-firearm related murder.
Ugh. Honestly, in a nation of 314,000,000 people, 194 kids died specifically from guns? Shit, that number seems a little low, in my esteem. I say this as a parent.
And now, the internet.
Not to argue your point that it’s an overblown statistic, but that’s still 194 kids dead. That may not be worth drastic legislation, but it’s certainly worth a modicum of respect.
Let those that use the children to push their agenda, show some respect for the children by not using the children in their propaganda. You know, for the children.
Seriously.
The Bloody Shirt is an old, old political tactic, but this form is particularly tasteless.
Respect, sure.
But Mother Jones is including 50 parental homicides (i.e., mom or dad murdered their kid – they separated homicide from accident) in that.
Seems to me that a parent bent on killing their child intentionally isn’t a “gun problem”, but a “murderous parent problem”, and it’d be hard to stop them.
Braking on the gravel with your face, I know couple of such stories. Even if they managed to erase their scars through many surgeries, their facial structure was changed and also their voice.
Was their voice more gravely?
You had to go there, didn’t you?
It’s your own asphalt.
As a fellow motorcycle rider I felt I must go there but weirdly enough I found after I posted the comment that I was in terrible taste. I would of removed the comment but there is no option.
We all need to delve into bad taste once in a while.
Gravel from a bail-out sucks, no matter what the speed. 16 year young me 2 days out from the state mandated safety course, on a learners permit, following my dad through some fun curvy hilly roads took a turn a tad too fast, hit the gravel and lost it. I made simultaneously a smart and dumb decision, I put my leg down as if I was going to just step off of the bike. Yeah, legs aren’t designed for just picking up mobility at 35mph. I blew out my knee but started a rolling tumble that kept the rest of me relatively intact. It was only when I lost enough momentum that I couldn’t do one more rotation that I slid to a stop in the gravel on my arms. Shredded my shirt and skin in short order and I was probably not going more than 10mph, if that. 24 years later if people look hard enough at my arms they can tell I’ve got road rash. My knee still goes out if I push it too much. That was low speed. I gained respect for speed on bikes real fast after that. I was up and riding again 2 weeks later. 🙂
As for the number of child deaths since Sandy Hook I’m fine with that metric. Really, I am. But I think every time they mention it they have to compare it to the number of citizens killed by police in the same breath. For me, personally, I understand that there are going to be nutters who are looking to take out as many people as they can. I get that. But the number of police killing stories I’ve seen over the past few years are the ones that concern me because those people are supposed to protect us. In fact, they are trained to do so and it is that training that forms some of the anti- crowd’s core arguments, “But the police are trained to use firearms!” Good, then let’s compare that to the nutters and see how good of a job they’re doing.
and for god’s sake, can we compare it against the number of people who lawfully defend themselves?
I’m curious to know, how many of those “children” were involved in criminal activity at the time of their demise?
My thoughts exactly, how many of these “children” were committing crimes at the time of their deaths?
Probably zero.
The reason the number is only 194 is that – in a rare moment of fairness and accuracy – this isn’t a dataset where “child” goes up to 19 or 22 or 25.
The cutoff for this list was 12 (they published their dataset, also a good move).
I’m willing to bet that kids 12 and under were basically never shot in commission of a crime; that becomes an issue more around 15 or 16.
As mentioned above, over a quarter of those “children shot” were murdered by their parents; what this is supposed to mean for “guns as a problem in themselves” is unclear to me, other than pure emotional appeal. Which is also typical.
I wouldn’t be too sure. The gangs and the drug rings and the pimps recruit early these days.
Didn’t you watch ‘Breaking Bad’? 😉
The amount of insecurity and embarrassment she has about the hidden side of her face makes me think her scarring is in the shape of a dick or something. Or she is hiding an actual dick, which was used in the skin graft from a recently deceased donor because she did not have enough skin left to harvest from herself. Good god, could you imagine?
growing a pube beard with your dick skin face transplant, lol that is horrible.
Every girl should wear a foofy white gown, at least once. Even if only to show why she *shouldn’t* wear foofy white gowns. :-p
Had a roommate pick up several ounces of gravel with his leg. That is to say, that was the amount of gravel they *didn’t* get out. He healed well enough, but it forever after looked like a tiger cub had used his leg as a scratching post.
You did see that it was Mick who would be wearing the gown, yes? I think the answer to why he shouldn’t wear a foofy white gown is obvious.
And who wears the pants in that realationship…? Eh?
Of course I know it’s Mick in the gown. 😛
In the past year 294 kids died of drowning.
BAN DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE
Thank you, Tommycat, that was the statistic I was wondering about. However, I find it a little surprising; that’s lower than I would have expected. Do you know if there are any limitations on that statistic (eg, drowning in pools only)? I seem to remember in past years that the total number of accidental drownings of children was more like double that. If that’s actually the correct figure, then either we’ve come a long way in safety or there have been hundreds of lucky kids this year.
The problem, fundamentally, is that humans are very, very bad at putting risks in perspective. 200 people per year die from their vehicles hitting deer. (Does this mean deer hunting saves lives?) Tens of thousands of people die from influenza complications every year, but I hear people say getting a flu shot isn’t worth their time. (This is not a choice affecting only the person making it; see “herd immunity”.) Nobody died as a result of Three Mile Island, but it led to a nearly 3-decade moratorium on reactor building in the US and thus increased deaths from pollution caused by fossil fuel plants. Which is more scary, a mosquito (responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths per year worldwide) or a shark (responsible for about a dozen unprovoked deaths per year worldwide)? We give disproportionate weight to deaths caused by things that we already think of as scary, and tend to ignore deaths caused by things we think of as mundane.
I propose, instead of gun bans, that all vehicles be equipped with breathalyzers that you need to use before starting the engine. This common-sense measure could prevent over 200 deaths of children per year from alcohol-impaired driving crashes.
Whoops, wrong statistic. That was for Australia. The US it’s about 390 per year children under 15. Most under 5.
Which becomes even more bleakly amusing when you consider how many regulations and ordinances are in place to make accessing a pool in one’s own yard damn near impossible (I did the research when shopping for a house a couple of years ago).
I also thank you, Tommycat, for providing us with a comparison. Three questions to always ask when considering policy are, “Compared to what?” “At what cost?” and “Do you have any hard evidence?” The writer pretty much admits that his source is a news search. I would be interested in the numbers from pediatric ED and OR records, but that’s a little tricky to obtain. I think he probably has avoided any significant set of false positives. I’d say his evidence probably supports his claims regarding gun deaths. It does not follow that their hobby-horse gun restrictions should be enacted. The second question, “at what cost?”, is almost NEVER answered in debates over legislation, particularly laws that will regulate our behavior “for our own good.”
194 dead since Newton; OK, how many were born since then? Without consulting statistics, I’m sure it was more than 194.
And the number of new gun owning households I would bet was far greater than even the birth numbers…
Reasonable things to which child firearms deaths could be compared:
Other causes of death for children (provides scope)
Other causes of homicide against children (provides scope)
Number of defensive gun uses in households with children (demonstrates probable costs)
The reason you want these is because another question often not answered is, “Are you trying to reduce incidence of childhood mortality, or only that subset due to guns?” The reason that question isn’t allowed into the conversation is because of general awareness of the Pareto Principle, which suggests that in most cases, 80% of outcomes are due to 20% of causes. I strongly suspect that gun homicide (including accidental homicide) is a very minor cause of death in children. You can bet that if it was a leading cause of childhood injury and death, it’d be loudly proclaimed by those who wish to outlaw gun ownership.
Okay I’m going to stick my neck out there, say a couple of things, and probably get my head handed back to me…
First: Does anyone remember back twenty years ago or so when this new organization called MADD showed up and went all haywire over the deaths on the highways due to drunk drivers? The moms who banded together to save their children made a big ruckus about making the penalties stiffer for driving under the ‘influence’, right? Well it worked, I guess, somewhat… the highways are a bit safer now and the jails are filling up with DUIs. But… Suddenly there are numerous killings in schools from guns(over the years), Columbine being the first(ish). Maybe Mother nature(or Darwin) is culling the herd so to speak, by eliminating the ones who didn’t die on the highways with another means; guns. People are born, live, and die. There is no guarantee of a long life for anyone and nobody lives forever. Sooo… car, guns, suicide, knives, drugs… people are going to die from these things, even from gangs, using all manner of similar things… Therefore if the guns are gone more people will continue to die in different ways. Maybe because they can’t defend themselves from the stronger, violent and more vicious individuals in the herd and the culling will go on…
Second: Gun safety should be taught. starting in elementary school. Using verbal lessons at first grade level and then at around age 9 or 10, begin target practice, (at school) under strict supervision with pellet guns or BB guns or such like. As the student matures and learns the safe handling of hand weapons they move on to single shot 22s or even 25 cal hand and long guns. Again under strict trained adult supervision. In Jr. High or Middle school what have you, begin accuracy competitions between schools; make it into a sport. Grade the students on handling and cleaning and accuracy. As these students progress they will learn to respect and control firearms and respect each other. When they graduate… not quit High School with a minimum academic GPA. At the age of 18 they may apply for their Conceal Carry Certificate. An entire generation trained to safely use and respect fire arms and… respect other individuals and their property.
You’ve noticed the same trend I have, but drew a very different conclusion; I don’t think there’s any DUI relationship. School shootings did indeed skyrocket after Columbine. However, there’s a very important fact about Columbine that is frequently forgotten: it wasn’t intended to be a shooting spree. It was intended to be bombs, just like the Bath School attack, except that the perpetrators had guns to shoot survivors running out. However, the perpetrators sucked at making bombs, leading to them falling back to an active-shooters tactic. This drew widespread coverage, and since then, school shootings have become disturbingly frequent. School bombings, on the other hand, are rare (at least in the U.S.); the most deadly school attack in the U.S. was a bombing, but it was so long ago as to be all but forgotten.
The problem as I see it is that Columbine saw tremendous media coverage. This has led to over a decade of copycat attacks, and every time, the perpetrators’ names and faces are plastered all over the news for weeks. What I want to see is to report NOTHING about the perpetrator. The people who commit these crimes should effectively cease to exist; no pictures shown, no names mentioned, buried in an unmarked grave. (You thought you were anonymous before?) The perpetrators are almost always mentally disturbed people who want to leave their “horrible” lives in a blaze of glory. Deny them that, and remove much of the motivation.
As for your gun safety proposal, I could not possibly be more on-board. I had the rules drilled into me in Boy Scouts, and have never forgotten them, and to this day I respect but don’t fear guns (just as I respect but don’t fear automobiles). Get an entire generation to think of guns as dangerous but useful tools instead of fearsome magic powersticks and see what happens. Too bad it’ll never fly. For one thing, it wouldn’t pass because there are too many adults who also think of them as fearsome magic powersticks. For another, it might be relatively ineffective; there are a lot of people who don’t respect the power that is an automobile either.
Shooting sprees existed long before Columbine. Long before. And I would wager that they’re no more significantly prevalent now than they were before Columbine. What IS more prevalent is the sensational news coverage.
Sadly, what we call “news” today is actually anything but. With the advent of “ratings” and “popularity” in news reporting, and the application of entertainment-based systems of reward and punishment based on these criteria, what we today refer to as “news” is nothiing but prepackaged bits of sensationalism mixed with clips of water-skiing squirrels – the modern-day equivalent of recorded/printed “freak shows.” “News” companies are no longer interested in keeping you abreast of what’s actually happening or being accurate in what they report, they’re interested in being the vehicle for the next viral YouTube clip or for selling more of their advertisers widgets than the other guy.
And I am totally on board with the anonymization of those that do commit these types of events – of any type. Shooting, bombing, stabbing, celey-stalk beatings, whatever – if the “fame factor” of these events in reduced or eliminated, then a dramatic decrease in their occurence should be seen.
But hey, I still like water-skiing squirrels.
Now, now, let’s not get common sense involved. 🙂
bike accidents are not only for motorbikes…we had a nice little minibike that we’d use to do donuts in my grandmother’s yard (she HATED that and would come out yelling…one time she came out yelling and had to just STOP because it was my DAD messing up her yard!). anyway, i can roaring around the house one time…
it was 1979, right after the record flooding, and i had *forgotten* that my dad had strung an extra clothesline (wire clothesline) to help with the extra laundry that had to be done after everything got wet. a *low* clothesline that i could not duck under. it hit me right at the base of my neck, scraped all the way up and pulled the helmet off, i flew up and then down on *top* of the bike. that was not fun.
i still have a very faint scar on my neck, and there were a couple of burn-scars on my legs when i got reminded a couple of times that climbing on a bike while wearing shorts is a precarious proposition. good times, good times.
I still want to know: How does she keep her hair in place all the time?? Mousse? Hairspray? The cut of the hair? Dark magic? All of the above?
Um, paint maybe? Royal Blue enamel perhaps. Holding power but a bitch to wash out… on second thought, why wash it just a little Turtle wax once a week should do it.
Bondo.