The leading cause of death for children is car accidents, not guns. Child deaths represent 5% of all traffic deaths....while they only account for 0.5% of gun deaths, the majority of which are accidental deaths. Even that does not sound like a huge difference until you factor in guns kill 20,000 people per year (50% of those are suicides), whereas traffic accidents kill closer to 50,000. Yet we do not see calls for more driving laws do we? What is the fine for not putting your kid in a car seat? Not strapping them in with a seatbelt? A hundred bucks? lol. Really?
Bad example
The U.S. has already gone through huge overhaul when it comes to the rules of the road. Up until the 70's, laws on driving infractions were rarely enforced in the US. In recent decades, measures have been put in place to make American roads more safe; enforced speed limits, fines for unsafe practices, harsh penalties for DUI etc. and these measures have worked and made vehicle deaths about 1/3 of what they were in the 60's
.........Uh psstt.. A 1 in 10,000 chances is many many MANY times greater than getting shot or even GREATER of getting killed in a school shooting.. His point still stands.. And this is coming from some one who tends to lean towards the left in American politics.
Way to miss the point. I was trying to prove that regulation of vehicles brings down the death toll.
Yet the death toll dwarfs anything we are discussing here when it comes to shootings in schools.... I do think there should be some common sense regulation with guns, but this being the "leading example" to why it has to happen is absurd.. Your chances of getting killed in a school shooting is around other unfeasible things such as getting struck by lightning.. Surely there are graver threats to society in saving lives then going after this demographic.. Furthermore people have to accept the fact that SH!T happens, that your never going to prevent every such tragic event from happening.. Lets say we did add regulation and halved the deaths from school shooting.. These past few decades.. We would have ultimately lowered the deaths from 400 to 200.. That is the combined deaths in school shootings for a 3 decade span.. As mentioned early, each year there are 75+ million students who attend grades K through college.. Bacterial meningitis for instance claims something around 500 people a year.. According to statistics, between 5 to 15 students are killed each year from Meningitis.. And that is just now, most likely the number was greater in the past.. If we add up the deaths of college students with said ailment it would coincide with the deaths of school shootings.. Why isn't there great litigation and change being pushed forward about this? It's claiming as many lives as school shootings are.
The point is there are far greater things that claim far more lives in the United States that people seem not to care about.. And they would rather waste billions of dollars in trying to halve a very small number when we have other causes of death that dwarf this statistic.. Yes it is tragic, but there are all sorts of tragic things that happen in the United States at larger numbers..
Dunno, the string of school shootings perpetrated by teens seem to state otherwise.
And generally it isn't rocket science to hit a roughly 1,8 x 1 meter target with a gun at 10-20 meters, even the first time you pick it up. Also I have a hard time believing that anyone bent on perpetrating a school shooting wouldn't at least go to the gun range at some point before.
If you aren't familiar with a firearm, you don't have a good chance at hitting the broad side of a barn. So many shooters have experience with firearms but that's not always the rule. A firearm in the wrong hands of a competent, experienced shooter could be very deadly. Put it in the hands of a greenhorn and you'd be lucky to find someone who could even load it let alone hit their intended target. All of this harkens back to your original question. Everyone knows how to use a knife. Not everyone knows how to use a firearm.
I don't think there is one thing you can point to and say if we did this school shootings would go down. To me the problem seems to be cultural. There is something wrong with American culture and I think that's causing an abnormal number of people, especially young people (particularly those living in white suburbia), to feel alienated from their humanity.
At the risk of sounding like a new age charlatan I think the solution is some sort of large scale cultural renaissance, and that's not something the government can do, that's something individuals have to make an effort of doing within their community.
I'm not even against reasonable gun control measures. But shit like what Obama just said really pisses me off.
"The idea, for example, that we couldn't even get a background check bill in to make sure that if you are going to buy a weapon you have to go through a fairly rigorous process so that we know who you are so that you can't just walk up to a store and buy a semi-automatic weapon makes no sense."
That is complete and utter horseshit. No where in America can you go into a gun store and purchase a firearm without a background check. And some of you really wonder why we won't support Democrats and their bills. They don't have a CLUE as to what they're talking about.
Way to miss the point, moron. Try reading the post I responded to.
Airshocker's point was that freedom has a cost, which is a fact. The freedom to swim in a lake or pool, (it would be quite easy to ban pools), causes thousands of deaths each year.
The idiot I responded to doesn't think that allowing things to be legal , such as pools, does anyone harm. When it fact, it does. Hence, freedom having a cost.
Let's look at another example of a cost of freedom. If we let government agencies have 100% access to all of our personal information at all times without reason, we could probably save a lot of lives. Yet we choose not to do this as it reduces our freedom.
Point? Freedom has a cost.
Understand?
Once again Comparing the freedom of being able to own a swimming pool and the illegal act of drunk driving, to owning firearms Makes sense America's idea of 'freedom' seems to differ greatly than every other developed country in the world, those pesky costs of freedom along with it
Way to miss the point, moron. Try reading the post I responded to.
Airshocker's point was that freedom has a cost, which is a fact. The freedom to swim in a lake or pool, (it would be quite easy to ban pools), causes thousands of deaths each year.
The idiot I responded to doesn't think that allowing things to be legal , such as pools, does anyone harm. When it fact, it does. Hence, freedom having a cost.
Let's look at another example of a cost of freedom. If we let government agencies have 100% access to all of our personal information at all times without reason, we could probably save a lot of lives. Yet we choose not to do this as it reduces our freedom.
Point? Freedom has a cost.
Understand?
Once again
Comparing the freedom of being able to own a swimming pool and the illegal act of drunk driving, to owning firearms
Makes sense
America's idea of 'freedom' seems to differ greatly than every other developed country in the world, those pesky costs of freedom along with it
He's simply comparing the different dangerous things that people can own (pools, guns, alcohol). Why is it so mindblowing to you?
Because I don't think a pool or alcohol has ever gone into a school and killed a bunch of innocent children And just for some fun facts: Every day, about ten people die from unintentional drowning. (http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/water-safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html)
Drink driving killed about 10,228 people in 2010 (http://visual.ly/united-states-drunk-driving-statistics)
In 2009, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 67% of all homicides in the U.S. were conducted using a firearm. Two-thirds of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. are suicides. In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S. In the U.S. in 2011, 67 percent of homicide victims were killed by a firearm: 66 percent of single-victim homicides and 79 percent of multiple-victim homicides (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States - See references #4, 5 & 21)
If you actually still cannot differentiate between owning and swimming pool, motor vehicle and alcohol to owning a gun Then I have nothing further to say. Your country is alone, I hope you can realise it soon
Dunno, the string of school shootings perpetrated by teens seem to state otherwise.
And generally it isn't rocket science to hit a roughly 1,8 x 1 meter target with a gun at 10-20 meters, even the first time you pick it up. Also I have a hard time believing that anyone bent on perpetrating a school shooting wouldn't at least go to the gun range at some point before.
If you aren't familiar with a firearm, you don't have a good chance at hitting the broad side of a barn. So many shooters have experience with firearms but that's not always the rule. A firearm in the wrong hands of a competent, experienced shooter could be very deadly. Put it in the hands of a greenhorn and you'd be lucky to find someone who could even load it let alone hit their intended target. All of this harkens back to your original question. Everyone knows how to use a knife. Not everyone knows how to use a firearm.
Loading a gun hard and pointing the barrel at someone and pulling the trigger? If you say so. My parent's friend gave me a gun to fire when I was 12ish, and apart from pointing out where the safety was it really didn't take much for me to hit a wooden log from about 20 meters. And that's beyond the point, anyone perpetrating a school shooting wont do it without at least trying the gun out first.
And no, the point is that a knife means you need to close the distance to inflict injury, this opens you up to being counter-attacked pretty easily, and people can escape you a lot more easily. Any firearm will have enough range to take people out at up to 100 meters, which is a damn lot more than is the distance of any school hallway or anything really. Doesn't the fact that you almost never have a "stabbing spree" but "shooting sprees" are a pretty common thing make a point in itself?
I don't think there is one thing you can point to and say if we did this school shootings would go down. To me the problem seems to be cultural. There is something wrong with American culture and I think that's causing an abnormal number of people, especially young people (particularly those living in white suburbia), to feel alienated from their humanity.
At the risk of sounding like a new age charlatan I think the solution is some sort of large scale cultural renaissance, and that's not something the government can do, that's something individuals have to make an effort of doing within their community.
What is your idea of a cultural renaissance?
Would be hard to explain through text on a message board
main point though is that the solution isn't simple or easy
Wow, you still don't get it. Holy sh1t. I can't say I'm surprised.
Question: Would making swimming pools illegal cause drowning deaths to decrease and therefore save lives?
If you answer yes to this question and still think swimming pools should be legal...well, you're a fvcking monster and don't get about the children.
And lol "illegal act of drunk driving". Yep, you don't get it.
Yes drunk driving is illegal, but alcohol isn't (You can't have drunk driving without alcohol, FYI). Just like killing someone with a gun is illegal, but owning one and using it for recreational purposes, like target shooting and hunting, isn't.
I ride a motorcycle. Motorcycles are more dangerous than other options, such as a car. If we banned motorcycles there would be less motorcycle deaths. If you don't want motorcycles banned then you're a monster. You don't care about people.
Do you see the point that Airshocker was trying to make? Having certain freedoms, like swimming, driving, drinking, playing sports and just about everything can cause death. The idiot who responded to him was shocked by this. He thinks having these freedoms has no cost.
My post really had nothing to do with gun control and everything to do with that moron's (and your) assertion that freedom doesn't have a cost.
Wow, you still don't get it. Holy sh1t. I can't say I'm surprised.
Question: Would making swimming pools illegal cause drowning deaths to decrease and therefore save lives?
If you answer yes to this question and still think swimming pools should be illegal...well, you're a fvcking monster and don't get about the children.
And lol "illegal act of drunk driving". Yep, you don't get it.
Yes drunk driving is illegal, but alcohol isn't (You can't have drunk driving without alcohol, FYI). Just like killing someone with a gun is illegal, but owning one and using it for recreational purposes, like target shooting and hunting, isn't.
I ride a motorcycle. Motorcycles are more dangerous than other options, such as a car. If we banned motorcycles there would be less motorcycle deaths. If you don't want motorcycles banned then you're a monster. You don't care about people.
Do you see the point that Airshocker was trying to make? Having certain freedoms, like swimming, driving, drinking, playing sports and just about everything can cause death. The idiot who responded to him was shocked by this. He thinks having these freedoms has no cost.
My post really had nothing to do with gun control and everything to do with that moron's (and your) assertion that freedom doesn't have a cost.
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