Let me be blunt: Carrying a gun is not going to make me feel safer in a national park. . . . Hikers in the back country will have a different experience. I will probably be discouraged from many hikes if other visitors are walking around openly carrying guns. Frankly, it is threatening to see a person hiking with a gun when it isn’t hunting season.Park staff are charged with maintaining safety for everyone in what usually amounts to a very broad area. It is a pretty impossible job already, with budgets what they are. Guns won't help.
"it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."Sadly, it seems, having a black man in charge of the country is about as frightening for some people as having passenger jets hijacked by Muslim terrorists and flown into buildings. And in neither case is gun ownership going to do a thing to help them economically. Statistically, it just increases the chance that someone in their family will be shot and/or killed by their gun. Though I suppose on the upside that's an evolutionary pressure against gun ownership, and perhaps a little extra ironic since the people most likely to be eliminated are the ones least likely to believe in that mechanism.
In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent.There's a reason it was really difficult to debate this subject. The great experiment in Britain -- the one that's continuing with the belief that cameras without consequences will magically eliminate crime -- was a pretty rough data point to argue against.
Davenhill: Meanwhile, about 10 kids are killed each and every day by handguns. But we all know that handguns don't kill people... um, playful children do?posted by Davenhill at 9:34 AM on February 24, 2010
Effugas: Great. Now show that gun control affects this number.
Go on. Find some data that even hints in that direction.
First, read my post, I'm not advocating gun control. I'm just saying it's a lot more dangerous to have a gun in the house than not.
Second, hope I'm wrong, but you're coming off like a Creationist daring me to provid any valid evidence for Evolution, i.e. you sound like you've already made your mind up on ideological reasons and would reject any information that contradicted it. I think most people can figure out as a matter of common sense that a home with a gun is more likely to have a shooting death than a home without a gun in it, and the only people denying that are pushing an ideological agenda.
As for some data that even hints in that direction, here's what I found in about 30 seconds of looking:
The American Journal of Epidemiology Guns in the Home and Risk of a Violent Death in the Home: Findings from a National Studythe presence of a gun in the home was associated with a nearly fivefold risk of suicide (adjusted odds ratio = 4.8) (13) and an almost threefold risk of homicide (adjusted odds ratio = 2.7) (14). Other case-control studies have also found an increased risk of suicide for those with firearms in the home, with relative risks ranging from 2.1 to 4.4 (15–19).It's well cited, but I'm looking forward to learning why the AJE is a biased source of Liberal propaganda that is a part of a conspiracy of lies against those poor, harmless and unfairly maligned handguns.
Some studies have specifically examined the association between purchase of a handgun and risk of a violent death (20, 21). In a case-control study of members of a large health maintenance organization, Cummings et al. (20) found that a history of family handgun purchase was associated with an elevated risk of both homicide and suicide.
ammo has gotten crazy expensiveAs Chris Rock jokes, we don't need gun control, we need ammo control. If bullets cost $50,000 there would be no more innocent bystanders.
In the UK, there are 2,034 offenses per 100,000 people, way ahead of second-place Austria at 1,677. The U.S. has a rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, Canada has 935, Australia has 92, and South Africa has 1,609.Wow. That sort of sucks. More data, along these lines.
winks007 Davenhill, I think the homes that have knives have a higher rate of cutting/stabbing injuries than in a knife-free home. The weapon is not the motivation for suicide/murder - it's only a vehicle.And homes with guard-bears have higher rates of mauling deaths than homes without guard-bears. That doesn't mean guard bears are a net improvement to your household's safety.
In a case-control study of members of a large health maintenance organization, Cummings et al. (20) found that a history of family handgun purchase was associated with an elevated risk of both homicide and suicide.Why is that?
effugas: Davenhill-- I'm saying we spent three months arguing this subject, and in those three months, nobody could point out a single strong datapoint that said "We passed this law, and violent crime dropped." Remember, you can't magically make guns disappear. You can only make them harder to legally acquire and legally possess.This is a strawman. You're arguing a different point from the assertion I made. The gist of my point was that bringing a gun into your home increases the risk of injury or death to your family members, not reduces it.
effugas: God. You really have no idea what you're talking about. It's OK. A ton of martial artists don't, either. So the reality is that knives are really, amazingly, horrifyingly deadly.I'm not sure insults or condescension help your argument. Nor does your continuing use of strawmen. Nobody is saying knife wounds aren't horrible or deadly, or whatever arbitrary adjectives one might use to describe them, but rather that however horrible the average stab wound is, the average gunshot is comparatively worse than the average stab wound.
The Journal of Trauma (36:4 pp516-524) looked at all injury admissions to a Seattle hospital over a six year period. The mortality rate for gunshot wounds was 22% while that for stab wounds was 4%. Even among patients that survived, gunshot wounds were more serious -- the mean cost of treatment for these patients was more than twice that for stab wounds.or a comparison of costs:
We analyzed charges and reimbursements for the treatment for all patients with GSWs (n = 1116) and stab wounds (SWs) (n = 1529) admitted to a level I trauma center from 1986 through 1992. Mean and median charges were higher for GSWs ($14,541; $7,541) than for SWs ($6,446; $4,249) (p <>The Journal of TraumaaSome studies note hospital numbers under-represent the comparative lethality of gunshot wounds to stab wounds because more gunshot victims die en route to hospitals than victims of stabbings.
Direct admission to the mortuary was three times as common in cases of gunshot compared with stab wounds. The hospital mortality rate for gunshot wounds was 8 times that for stab wounds. South African Medical Journal.85(11):1172-4, 1995:These may not be definitive, but I'd wager they are more probative than anecdotes about videos you've watched, or non sequiturs about someone being able to stab a police officer before they can pull a gun, or the prevalence of knife crimes in Britain.
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Here's an exhaustive listing of what Virginia did. I grew up there; I'm sad to see them do ridiculous shit like this.
posted by Mikey-San at 6:18 PM on February 23, 2010 [2 favorites]