Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I should think everyone would have been aware of that by now, but it's not just homicides. Crime rates in general have fallen since then. Then having been 20 years after Roe v Wade.
given this is a known fact, you would think that the other causes of unecessary harm would be targeted
They are. Outside of NRA-land, there are fewer one-track minds in the country than some would appear to believe. Highway safety being something of a cliché, try looking into the history of food safety or mine safety or fire safety regulations as examples. Everywhere you look in fact, the pursuit of harm-reduction is alive and well. Guns get attention only because they in fact do so much harm.
They are. Outside of NRA-land, there are fewer one-track minds in the country than some would appear to believe. Highway safety being something of a cliché, try looking into the history of food safety or mine safety or fire safety regulations as examples. Everywhere you look in fact, the pursuit of harm-reduction is alive and well. Guns get attention only because they in fact do so much harm.
Personally I think there are several key factors that drive the extreme stances on both sides.
Guns are the only source of unnecessary harm protected by a constitutional amendment(giving supporters a legal leg to stand on).
Guns have valid uses as a defense measure (unlike drunk driving which has no valid use).
Guns are immediate and extreme in their delivery of harm (unlike unhealthy eating or smoking which damage gradually over time)
Guns are not encountered by most people on a regular basis(unlike driving) so the public perception is that the only time they are encountered is when people are trying to cause harm to others.
Guns require a conscious human decision (unlike fire safety or other "accidents") making it seem worse
While I don't necessarily know that any of the above actually make guns more deserving of the attention, the combination of those facts makes for very strong opinions on both sides.
With regards to how much harm guns do, I believe statistically, guns cause fewer deaths per person than a lot of other items(the highway safety statistic comes to mind) however when viewed differently, guns probably cause more deaths (such as when viewed "per usage").
It's likely because of the very polarizing facts and statistics that the debate continues to rage with both sides getting more firmly entrenched and as a result get a lot of attention.
Personally I think there are several key factors that drive the extreme stances on both sides.
Guns are the only source of unnecessary harm protected by a constitutional amendment(giving supporters a legal leg to stand on).
Guns have valid uses as a defense measure (unlike drunk driving which has no valid use).
Guns are immediate and extreme in their delivery of harm (unlike unhealthy eating or smoking which damage gradually over time)
Guns are not encountered by most people on a regular basis(unlike driving) so the public perception is that the only time they are encountered is when people are trying to cause harm to others.
Guns require a conscious human decision (unlike fire safety or other "accidents") making it seem worse
While I don't necessarily know that any of the above actually make guns more deserving of the attention, the combination of those facts makes for very strong opinions on both sides.
With regards to how much harm guns do, I believe statistically, guns cause fewer deaths per person than a lot of other items(the highway safety statistic comes to mind) however when viewed differently, guns probably cause more deaths (such as when viewed "per usage").
It's likely because of the very polarizing facts and statistics that the debate continues to rage with both sides getting more firmly entrenched and as a result get a lot of attention.
If you take a loaded firearm and place it on a table; if no one ever touches it; that firearm will never go off. Every time a firearm goes off, there is someone exerting external force to the trigger of the firearm. Now if you put that same firearm in a vice; and tie a string to the trigger, and pull on the string; you have created your own external force; but the result would be the same; the firearm would then go off.
There are problems with people misusing their firearm, leaving it out where someone else can get it; and instances where someone goes nuts with a firearm. But in each case there was a person behind the firearm that was pulling the trigger. It is in the violence that MAN is willing to inflict on his fellow MAN were we have the problem.
I have owned guns all my life and never threatened nor harmed anyone with any of them. I have had guns pulled on me and have taken them away from the persons threatening. My sons love shooting skeet and other targets as well as hunting just as I do, they to have never threatened nor harmed anyone with guns, they like I prefer to use our hands or other means to inflict harm on others usually for fun. I believe anyone who has guns should know some sort of self defense other than guns so they have other options at all times.
That is like saying "DRUGS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE".
If strong and fatal drugs are readily available you will see more people dying from drugs.
Well, it is no different when discussing guns and rifles, especially semi-automatic weapons.
Only because people choose to take the risk of using such drugs. That's a choice they make and they have the free will to make such choices. They take the drug, even though it's illegal, and knowing there's risks of death, but they still choose to consume a dangerous substance. Soooooo, all the Government laws in the world didn't prevent them from making the choice to kill themselves, it didn't prevent the drug dealer from pushing the harmful drug onto the users, and it didn't prevent the Cartel mules from hiking the drug over from Mexico, and it didn't prevent the Cartels from manufacturing the drug.
So then, tell me, what good is having more laws to control guns?
If a guy wants a gun and there are none in the USA, you can buy a completely untraceable ghost gun in Mexico for $300-$800 us dollars. Our juvenile gangs in this country covet such weapons, and they have created a black market of sorts that is far more alarming that the occasional nut case that shoots up a school/church etc.
More kids/young men die in this country at the hands of juvenile gang members over stupid stuff like territory, beef, and color of clothing. If we took every single gun from these juveniles, they would simply buy the guns from Mexico and other countries.
How many people have guns in Japan? Almost none, you say? They tend to have fewer than a dozen gun-related deaths per year? Wow! How come we can't do that...
How many people have guns in Japan? Almost none, you say? They tend to have fewer than a dozen gun-related deaths per year? Wow! How come we can't do that...
We can. The United States has an overall lower homicide rate than most of the world (it currently ranks 28th in gun-related deaths, despite owning between 35 - 50% of all non military firearms in the world), and in Canada, where we too own guns, the homicide rate is on par with Australia. Check out the maps and stats at this link for a contextual global comparison. (Greenland surprised me!)
In 2012, the United States lost 14,827 people to death by murder (all causes), with 9,146 of those murders being gun-related, while it lost a staggering 765,651 to murder via abortion.
(That number is 57 million since Roe vs. Wade.)
If the purpose of this thread is to complain about the level of lethal violence in the United States (presumably because we care about the lives of human beings), it is valid only in so far as we enumerate murdering the unborn, otherwise, the U.S. ranks low in the global homicide scale - and again, 28th in gun-related deaths.
I'm unlikely to find myself in either Greenland or Japan. I'm only curious as to how Japan can reduce gun-related death and mayhem to such trivial levels while we continue to see some 30,000 gun-related deaths each year and six or seven times that number of gunshot wounds serious enough to warrant treatment at an ER.
I'm unlikely to find myself in either Greenland or Japan. I'm only curious as to how Japan can reduce gun-related death and mayhem to such trivial levels while we continue to see some 30,000 gun-related deaths each year and six or seven times that number of gunshot wounds serious enough to warrant treatment at an ER.
You really need to separate out the suicides from homicides and accidental deaths. Over half the gun deaths in the US are suicides, and Japan has a higher suicide rate than the US. In Japan, the most common method is hanging. People also jump from high places or get run over by trains.
Reducing gun related suicides in the US is a mental health problem, not a gun problem. About one person in five with bipolar disorder will commit suicide. Improving access to psychiatric care would go a long way toward decreasing the suicide rate. Obviously, a home with a depressed family member should not make a loaded gun accessible to that family member, though some will just substitute another method. Robin Williams hanged himself.
Accidental deaths are by and large a result of poor firearms training and irresponsibility. The difficulty is that there is no easy way to keep guns out of the hands of such people without penalizing those who are responsible.
About two thirds of homicides are committed with firearms, mostly handguns. However, a significant number involve other methods, especially knives and blunt objects.
A significant number of homicides are domestic violence situations. Remove the gun, and substitution of another method is likely.
"Of the murders for which the circumstance surrounding the murder was known,
42.9 percent of victims were murdered during arguments (including romantic triangles) in 2011. Felony circumstances* (rape, robbery, burglary, etc.) accounted for 23.1 percent of murders. Circumstances were unknown for 38.0 percent of reported homicides."
That means that better intervention in domestic violence short of homicide could prevent some deaths - no matter what the weapon used.
Banning guns is not the answer to the problems that cause some people to want to harm others.
*Edited to add: That 23% is what those who have firearms for personal defense are trying to avoid becoming a victim of.
Last edited by suzy_q2010; 10-24-2015 at 04:26 PM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
