Martinez
2927
Super-deep Qt3 member discounts.
Interesting article on data regarding gun accidents. The NYT found high rates (roughly 50%) of underreporting, even in fatal accidents. Largely, accidental deaths were classified generically as homicides, lumping them in with intentional killings. The article focuses on child deaths, but presumably the same issue would be true for adult deaths, potentially doubling the rate of accidental firearm deaths (though obviously not total deaths as this is a shift from one categorization to another).
This is the part I’d quibble with, especially without some data to back it up—the article covers a lot of accidents caused by behaviors I wouldn’t expect to see from even the below-average gun owner. The fact that children die more frequently than other age slices in gun accidents suggests to me that parents who own guns ought to be 1) more proactive in hammering safety rules into them from a young age and 2) a little more concerned with the details of their storage scheme.
I don’t think that’s been established. What the article highlights is that there’s inconsistency in use of the categorization “accidental deaths”. They analyzed only child deaths, not adult deaths. Adult deaths may or may not suffer from the same categorization issue. Frankly, I see no reason why they wouldn’t. What’s not known is how many “true” accidental adult deaths there are, as that was not analyzed. In other words, the magnitude of the categorization issue is not known in adult deaths.
Here, from 2007 statistics. ~2% of all accidental deaths from 5-14, ~0.5% for adult age groups (the 15-24 group is an anomaly, but if you assume that 15-18 stays with the 2% number and 19-24 goes down to 0.5%, it comes to the given 1%).
The miscategorized deaths the NYT looks into were, in my quick read of the article, almost exclusively children playing with guns and pointing them at other people. I have exactly as much evidence behind my thought here as there is behind the opposite proposition, but I could definitely see that sort of accident being rarer among adult gun owners.
I think you’re still missing some of the details in the article.
The article posits that all current accidental death statistics, including the ones you linked, undercount because of differences in how local agencies categorize deaths by firearm. I see no reason to conclude that the issues affecting the accuracy of child accidental death reporting would not similar effect adult death reporting. Perhaps the ratios you put forth are still accurate (i.e., that accidental gun deaths are predominantly children), but we don’t know.
On the article identifying only accidental deaths of children-- yeah, that’s all they even looked at. It wasn’t necessarily because they didn’t find any miscategorized adult deaths or that adult accidental deaths are very low. Rather, they didn’t look for adult death data, at all. Also, the article states that they looked at self-shootings as well as child-on-child shootings. They did point to some interesting numbers on boys vs. girls.
Again, the likely conclusions are that all accidental gun deaths are likely subject to mischaracterization (perhaps by about 50%) as homicides rather than clearly being flagged as accidental. The link you provided is exactly the type of statistic that the NYT articles posits as being highly undercounted, because not all agencies flag these things as accidental deaths.
ShivaX
2934
I think it’s fairly safe to say that proper gun safety is a serious issue. If I read another story about some idiot at a gun show accidentally shooting someone… not to mention shit like fucking “safety instructors” having loaded weapons go off. How the fuck is that even possible? Considering the first 3 steps are basically: 1) Make sure the weapon isn’t loaded 2) treat it as if it WAS loaded even if you KNOW it isn’t 3)NEVER point a weapon at anything you don’t want destroyed or killed. Yet some jackhole always manages to avoid all three steps. The most dangerous thing about guns is being lazy. They’re like power tools like that, the amount of stupid things people do with them boggles the mind. Thing is with firearms you’re more likely to die than with say a table saw, where you’ll just lose some fingers.
ShivaX
2936
God, that fucking idiot is the first thing that comes to mind.
The rules of gun safety follow from this mindset. There are many variations, and one of them is the Four Rules introduced by Colonel Jeff Cooper, which are:
All guns are always loaded.
Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy.
Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target.
Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.
—Jeff Cooper[1]
The NRA provides a similar set of rules:
ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.
ALWAYS keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot.
ALWAYS keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.
—The National Rifle Association, The fundamental NRA rules for safe gun handling[2]
The Canadian Firearms Program uses the concept of The Four Firearm ACTS:
Assume every firearm is loaded.
Control the muzzle direction at all times.
Trigger finger off trigger and out of trigger guard.
See that the firearm is unloaded. PROVE it safe.
—Canadian Firearms Centre, The Four ACTS of Firearm Safety[3]
Fucking police are some of the worst offenders of not following that rule. And of course they don’t have safeties on their weapons and have to have them loaded at all times pretty much.
Combine those two things and you get stupidity.
And I get that, but to many non-Americans gun ‘culture’ is a strange, creepy, gleefully lethal compensation for some kind of danger that apparnetly only exists in America.
I get that starlight is an insufferable smug brit, but ElGuapo hurfdurfing about how he bought a gun store and wants to name it after the gun store from GTA (for fuck’s sakes) is also really, really fucking weird… and unlike starlight’s douchebaggery it doesn’t fetishize lethal violence against human beings.
There are pricks on both sides of the debate but for some reason your side has this strange fascination with buying and collecting and maintaining and customizing and comparing these objects that just happen to be weapons that are designed to kill people. In most parts of the world, that’s pretty distasteful.
Yeah, I know, don’t tread on me, these colours don’t run, greatest country on Earth, etc. It’s still fucking creepy.
To show that I don’t just post anti-gun stories:
http://news.yahoo.com/school-tells-cop-not-wear-uniform-pick-own-133405957.html
This is ridiculous. Cop asked to not drop off his own kid while in uniform (with gun). The school basically jumps when any one parent complains, without any thought. I’m surprised this happened in AZ.
Janster
2940
Finally a tally has been made in the US of Gun deaths per year.
Slate has the details
olaf
2941
Finally! An unbiased site like Slate takes a stab at gun violence! I guess this will finally prove that more restrictive gun laws do nothing to prevent gun violence. Whew!
So you think it proves your point?
Well, let’s see. America vs the UK…oh.
The hyperlink to their methodology doesn’t work on two different browsers, so I can’t properly laugh at it. I’m morbidly curious why they don’t just want to wait for FBI data that spells it all out. The dates indicate they started this last December, so I guess they are simply frustrated the data doesn’t come out fast enough? Bizarre.
In other news, Texas concealed handgun license holders commit gun murders and manslaughters at a rate of .70/100,000—30 incidents over 16 years from a population of about 4.5 million.
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/rsd/chl/reports/demographics.htm
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/rsd/chl/reports/convrates.htm
Is it difficult to get a concealed carry license in Texas, or is it something that requires that you display some responsibility and make some effort for? Because it sounds like you are arguing in favour of requiring a license to own a gun, something I think that would unquestionably lower the rate of gun deaths in the US.
That’s my impression. They’re frustrated that there’s not official numbers available. I don’t know enough about the individuals in question to know whether they’re interested in doing actual real science with the data or scoring political points.
From the description, I don’t gather that they are trying to convince anyone that their numbers are in any way scientific, but rather to present something with enough visual impact to get others asking that same underlying political question, “Why don’t we have real numbers about this?”
