Visualizing gun deaths – Comparing the U.S. to rest of the world

Ridiculous hyperbole.

Fact:
For every gun used to murder someone in the US yesterday, 16.4 million were not.
Your conclusion:
OMFG!! Ban guns!!!

 

You have the right to defend yourself. The 2nd amendment gives us the right to own guns.

 

i agree, its absurd to call for a ban on all gun ownership.

 

And yet you are the one who has said background checks should be expanded to cover all criminal convictions, even misdemeanor offenses that bring no jail time.

 

He is apparently complete unaware of the fact that it is not against the law to own a gun under most misdemeanor offenses, and so such a background check is useless.

 

when did i say this?

 

Table 10 Number of deaths from 113 selected causes, Enterocolitis due to Clostridium difficile, drug-induced causes, alcohol-induced causes, and injury by firearms, by age: United States, 2013

Accidental discharge of firearms (W32-W34) - 505
Intentional self-harm (suicide) by discharge of firearms (X72-X74) - 21,175
Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms (*U01.4,X93-X95) - 11,208
Discharge of firearms, undetermined intent (Y22-Y24) - 281

Total: 33,168

Drug-induced deaths (2,3) - 46,471

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf

There are 13,303 MORE drug induced deaths than folks dying as a result firearms.

 

http://www.politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=426890&page=49&p=1065443296#post1065443296

That is where and when you said it. When you said background checks need to check if someone has been convicted of a crime. Those who have been convicted of felonies are already prohibited from firearms ownership. Therefore checking to see if someone has committed a crime would mean checking for misdemeanor convictions, and prohibiting ownership on those grounds.

 

You don't have to ban Guns, let um make all the Guns they can possibly manufacture and sell, just BAN! all the sale of Black powder and Ammo and after a few years all the supplies will dry up and those useless guns will be as dangerous as Squirt Guns. The Right to bear Arms doesn't mean the right to supply Bullets and the Black powder to shoot out of um. That's the solution

 

A completely nonsensical one, at that.

 

We humans have an inherent right to defend ourselves with whatever is available, this is verified by the COTUS.

 

I would possibly agree with you, but please show a graph that includes Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and Iraq.

Thanks

 

i meant all crimes besides non-violent misdemeanors

 

Then perhaps you should say what you actually mean, rather than saying what you do do not. That is the benefit of online communication over a message board forum; having ample time to construct a message to say precisely what you mean, rather than what you do not.

None of which changes the fact that the point remains. You are in favor of expanding the list of prohibited individuals to include those that have been constructed of misdemeanor offenses. Once that is done, it is only a matter of time before the list is extended once again to include any and all misdemeanors. If the united states were to follow such logic, a conviction for failing to signal a lane change would constitute a lifetime prohibition on owning a firearm.

 

As often happens, when you put yourself in someone else's shoes, the issue isn't as clear as it first appears.

I am by any reasonable definition among the "anti-gun nuts". To me it is obvious that the gun deaths in the U.S. - nine times higher than in places where gun ownership is regulated - point directly to a conclusion that about 29,000 people every year would not be dead if such regulations were in place in the USA. Lots of Canadians own large gun collections; they just have to go through some regulatory hoops, and can't carry them around in public. So why are such apparently moderate and clearly life-saving measures rejected by US gun owners?

Let me play devil's advocate here for a bit.

For starters, does no one but me find it astonishing that, given the sheer number of weapons in circulation in the United States, the number of gun deaths are so low?

Seriously. Lets juggle some numbers, using good old Google stats.

There is reportedly about one gun for every American citizen, so over 300 million of them. That presumably does not mean on the street, since many of these are lost, unservicable, illegally exported, more-or-less secured in large personal collections and gunshops, or owned by persons too elderly or infirm to actually find and use them. So, lets say at an extremely conservative estimate there are 100 million citizens who are for practical purposes armed, or at least have a weapon readily at hand.

The gun death count was just over 33,000 in 2013, of which 11,000 were homicides. Assuming that the same proportion of the 84,000 nonfatal gun injuries were with murderous intent, that means we add another 28,000 to the 11,000 for a total of roughly 40,000 times in a year somebody fired a gun with intent to harm / kill. Finally, let's make the not unreasonable assumption that at least half of the 40,000 incidents were committed by criminals during criminal acts (rather than angry citizens acting out road rage or blowing away an annoying spouse).

So, if you divide the number of non-criminal gun fatalities by the number I suggested for guns actually available for that purpose - 100 million - that means that only one non-criminal gun owner in every 5000 uses his or hers for a "bad" purpose each year.

My calculations could be off for any number of reasons - feel free to weigh in - but not by enough to affect my conclusion: the pro-gun lobby appears to have a case that a gun-saturated citizenry can and apparently does behave with astonishing restraint, most of the time. The widespread possession of guns does not create the wild west that the U.S. is perceived to be. This also lends credence to the argument that it is the sheer number of guns, not a gun-happy vigilante attitude among gun owners, that causes the deaths.

It makes sense to me that all those responsible (or at least harmless) gun owners - 4999 out of 5000 - would feel aggrieved that the government or police want to restrict or question their access to a gun just because of the one in 5,000 of them kills.

I likewise have no trouble imagining that the responsible gun owners feel more secure having a gun to defend themselves. While the NRA claim that armed self-defence occurs 2.5 million times a year is clearly self-serving hyperbole, even the most conservative estimates say it happens at least 100,000 times a year. That is an entirely high enough number to justify a belief that a gun might be worth having to defend you and yours. Even if it weren't true - and sometimes defending yourself with a gun just gets you killed - if a high proportion of citizens FEEL more secure owning a gun, that's an important societal benefit, and not something you want to remove lightly.

I am certain that many gun owners, especially men, own them not for protection but simply because guns are cool and shiny and their friends have them. The anti-gun argument would be that such people are recklessly aiding in the proliferation of guns for a trivial reason. But again, do you want to reduce the quality of life for 4999 people to prevent violence by the 5000th?

I don't own a gun, but I am a photographer and own far more camera bodies and lenses than I need because they are shiny toys and make me happy at a visceral level. Imagine that some legislator pointed out that child pornographers use cameras in the commission of their hideous crimes, and proposed that no one should be allowed to own a camera until he or she proved they had no evil fantasies or intent involving children. Having been granted a permit to own, imagine that photographers were further required to provide elaborate secure storage for both cameras and lenses, separate from the digital storage media, and could not carry a camera in public without a permit. I would be very unhappy and think my rights infringed, while those proposing the restrictions would interpret my objections as support for child molestation.

None of this justifies the 29,000 dead bodies annually. I still think gun ownership comes with responsibilities that include submitting to reasonable background checks and other restrictions to save thousands of lives a year, which it clearly would. Still, for all the reasons above, I understand and sympathize with the gun owner's side of the argument, and why they angrily resist proposals for government and police restrictions. Such folks would still be welcome at my barbecue, packing if they preferred, and I would happily admire their latest acquisition, provided they were equally impressed with my new long zoom lens.

However, if parents of the 20 dead Sandy Hook Elementary first graders were also there for a burger, I would insist that hypothetical armed neighbour explain to them why citizens have a right to their guns.

 

You think anyone can legally get away with that sort of technicality? Who would vote for it?

 

A large portion of you post not only makes coherent sense, but is presented in a professional manner, rather than treating readers as if they are lacking the intelligence needed to even breathe without being instructed.

That said, there are still points that are questionable, and should be discussed in more detail. To begin with, there has been no evidence presented that would either conclusively, or casually suggest that firearms ownership does not already come with responsibilities.

Another point to address is how it is questionable if there are any restrictions that could truly save thousands of lives per year. Hypothetically what would these restrictions be? The supreme court has declared it unconstitutional to attempt and outlaw an entirely class of firearms, especially those that are in common use. Handguns are most often the firearm of choice used in committing crimes, but they cannot be outlawed. Firearms classified as "assault weapons" are used in only a handful of crimes per year, so focusing on them would do little good overall, and it has already been tried once before at the federal level, with the results being deemed far too insignificant to either measure, or justify continued enforcement through renewal of the failed law.

There is also the fact that very few firearm laws are ever enforced. Prosecutors rarely seek firearm charges, as they almost always drop such charged in order to issue a plea bargain to expedite conviction on a reduced charge. And the current administration has an abysmally low rate for prosecuting firearms traffickers and straw purchasers.

Case in point, a Milwaukee individual by the name of Dontray Mills, who purchased twenty seven firearms with fake identification, before trafficking them to known criminal individuals involved in gang activity. He faced centuries of prison time, ensuring he would never be free again. Instead the department of justice was willing to let him take a plea deal that gave him one year of probation to serve.

 

Cars kill more people than guns.
Hand over your car keys.

 

we have the right to possess firearms

 

Non sequitur.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

In terms of the total number of guns in each country, any given gun in Canada is more likely to be involved in a murder than any givem gun in the US.

 

In 2011, the US had 8454 gun-related homicides.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/u...able_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2009-2013.xls
This represents 0.00237% on the guns in the US.

 

Cars are required to be built to improve safety.... Via regulation

Owners that mis use cars can have their car confiscated

You need to prove some competence in order to drive a car

Cars are registered, with mandated insurance

Are you saying that cars provide a good model to improve safety and financial accountability for an item that s useful but inherently dangerous?

 

I love people that post what you just did.

I do not need a license to buy or own a car, keep it in my property, or use it on private property.
There is no registration or insurance requirement for a car I keep on my property or use on private property.

Now, tell me why what you said is relevant.

 

Democrat Party strategic thinking: Disarm Americans - Arm Iran

 

It is relevant in the same way that the post i responded to compared the general danger of cars to the danger of guns

I guess if no one took their car off their own property, cars would not kill so many people
And there would not be so many regulations on cars
Nor would there be so much contention about regulating guns if everyones guns remained on their own property.

Btw
I am not arguing against gun rights
Simply pointing out the limitations of a previous posters mo glib argument suggesting we might as well ban cars as regulate guns