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One-year-old shot dead by 3-year old in Cleveland home.

Then tell us what legislation would have surely prevented this incident.

Again, look at seat belts. How many lives have been saved since the law was enacted?, given seat belt use and design back before legislation was enacted. Before the law was enacted you can't retroactively look back and make claims about who would have been saved because it requires action on the part of those that drive, they must use the seat belt. I can't tell you who would have followed the law had there been a law sooner, only that some would have definitely followed the law and would have been saved due to use and improved design.

It's just like the lottery, the chances that you will win are 1 in tens of millions, the chances that someone will win are 1:1. My point is, I can't tell which children would be saved if laws required that owners be responsible for reasonably securing their weapons, but the chances that lives would be saved are virtually certain.
 
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The gun-owning community is hanging this woman out to dry over this incident. So let's just be clear from the get-go that this is not ok.

When I had a toddler in the house, I also had a gun in the house; in my right front pocket, to be exact. It was either in my pocket, or in the safe, no exceptions. While in the safe it was unloaded and trigger locked, because redundant levels of safety is the way to be.

You can't legislate personal responsibility. If you can't trust a person with a gun, then you can't trust them with a child, or a car, or any meaningful job, or even a box cutter.

It's weird that you keep arguing against points I haven't made. Where did I suggest we legislate personal responsibility? The only thing I'd tell a mother is if she buys a gun for protection, the odds are that she increases the risk of her child dying, because that is what the data show. You mention your safety measures, which sound great. If you do that, that's commendable. But the fact is most people do not, and most people don't do it without mistakes because we're all human and forget - we change pants, put the gun on the table, someone comes to the door and the gun is left there, etc. A million ways someone meaning well can make a fatal error. And the data indicate that guns at home increase the rate of death for those reasons and (more significantly) increase the risk you get drunk and in a fight with your wife and instead of hit her, shoot her in the head. Or you get depressed and pull that gun out and kill yourself.
 
Those stats are well out of date as illustrated and addressed. You are hardly in a position to censure anyone on ignoring studies :roll:


No, I'm pointing out to you why I rarely bother with them anymore: the other side ignores them.

Just as you just did.
 
Again, look at seat belts. How many lives have been saved since the law was enacted that, given seat belt use and design back before legislation was enacted? Before the law was enacted you can't retroactively look back and make claims about who would have been saved because it requires action on the part of those that drive, they must use the seat belt. I can't tell you who would have followed the law had there been a law sooner, only that some would have definitely followed the law and would have been saved due to use and improved design.

It's just like the lottery, the chances that you will win are 1 in tens of millions, the chances that someone will win are 1:1. My point is, I can't tell which children would be saved if laws required that owners be responsible for reasonably securing their weapons, but the chances that lives would be saved are virtually certain.


Among responsible gun owners it is already considered necessary to secure firearms from small children. Many of us have spent as much on gun safes as we have on the guns in them.

Those who don't lock up loose firearms where children are present are already in violation of the "societal ethic" on this. Making it illegal isn't going to fix stupid unless you do random home inspections, which will not fly.

But laws mandating storage thus-n-so DO open up a door for lawmakers to make owning a gun so onerous only the well-off can afford it... which is hardly fair to the working poor living in bad neighborhoods.



And as we've seen, lawmakers with an agenda will not hesitate to engage in backdoor covert actions infringing on rights.


So I see little benefit in cooperating with this notion, and considerable risk.

No thanks. Opposed. \
 
It's weird that you keep arguing against points I haven't made. Where did I suggest we legislate personal responsibility? The only thing I'd tell a mother is if she buys a gun for protection, the odds are that she increases the risk of her child dying, because that is what the data show. You mention your safety measures, which sound great. If you do that, that's commendable. But the fact is most people do not, and most people don't do it without mistakes because we're all human and forget - we change pants, put the gun on the table, someone comes to the door and the gun is left there, etc. A million ways someone meaning well can make a fatal error. And the data indicate that guns at home increase the rate of death for those reasons and (more significantly) increase the risk you get drunk and in a fight with your wife and instead of hit her, shoot her in the head. Or you get depressed and pull that gun out and kill yourself.

Indeed .....

Owning a gun has been linked to higher risks of homicide, suicide, and accidental death by gun.
• For every time a gun is used in self-defense in the home, there are 7 assaults or murders, 11 suicide attempts, and 4 accidents involving guns in or around a home.
• 43% of homes with guns and kids have at least one unlocked firearm.
• In one experiment, one third of 8-to-12-year-old boys who found a handgun pulled the trigger.

Seeing Is Believing: What Do Boys Do When They Find a Real Gun?
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Injuries and deaths due to firearms in the home. - PubMed - NCBI
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full
Association between handgun purchase and mortality from firearm injury -- Grassel et al. 9 (1): 48 -- Injury Prevention
 
The gun-owning community is hanging this woman out to dry over this incident. So let's just be clear from the get-go that this is not ok.

When I had a toddler in the house, I also had a gun in the house; in my right front pocket, to be exact. It was either in my pocket, or in the safe, no exceptions. While in the safe it was unloaded and trigger locked, because redundant levels of safety is the way to be.

You can't legislate personal responsibility. If you can't trust a person with a gun, then you can't trust them with a child, or a car, or any meaningful job, or even a box cutter.

When a nation passes a handgun ban they're saying they can't be trusted with anything.

And yet look at seat belt use.
 
Among responsible gun owners it is already considered necessary to secure firearms from small children. Many of us have spent as much on gun safes as we have on the guns in them.

Those who don't lock up loose firearms where children are present are already in violation of the "societal ethic" on this. Making it illegal isn't going to fix stupid unless you do random home inspections, which will not fly.

But laws mandating storage thus-n-so DO open up a door for lawmakers to make owning a gun so onerous only the well-off can afford it... which is hardly fair to the working poor living in bad neighborhoods.



And as we've seen, lawmakers with an agenda will not hesitate to engage in backdoor covert actions infringing on rights.


So I see little benefit in cooperating with this notion, and considerable risk.

No thanks. Opposed. \

More or less applies....

http://www.debatepolitics.com/breaking-news-mainstream-media/221638-one-year-old-shot-dead-3-year-old-cleveland-home-10.html#post1064527807
 
The Guardian advocates policy and is therefore biased. Try again.

Those numbers are generated from The Gun Control Network who advocates policy and is therefore biased. Try again.

"Gun crime" is only part of the picture, my sources regarded ALL crime to give the complete picture. Try again.

Another link only talking about "gun crime" not ALL crime. Here in America we use guns to prevent or stop non-gun offences, too, so your sources need to account for crimes which don't involve firearms. Try again.

Another link only talking about "gun crime" not ALL crime so as to give a slanted view. Try again.
 
Indeed .....

...• For every time a gun is used in self-defense in the home, there are 7 assaults or murders, 11 suicide attempts, and 4 accidents involving guns in or around a home.


I call horse****.


Even the more conservative estimates on DGUs place them at 80,000 to 200,000 annually, in government funded studies which were actually about crime victims (NCVS).

Other studies, some done by private universities, put annual DGU's at anything from 250,000 to 1.5 million.

It seems very likely that the real number is in the hundreds of thousands. A median figure would be 500,000 DGUs annually, and in most cases no shots fired.

So you're telling me there are 3.5 million assaults or murders (which?), 5.5 million suicide attempts (attempts? with a gun? what did they MISS?) and 2 million gun accidents?


Horse ****.
 
The point I keep trying to make isn't to compare the numbers of deaths from certain activities to other activities, but how preventable deaths are from activities relative to the need to partake and the assumption of risk relative to the benefits. Most of what you've listed are illnesses of some type where the actions needed to prevent them, if they can be prevented at all are worse than the risk we take if we get them.

Responsible firearm ownership may inconvenience the owner slightly, but when compared to the risk, especially to those that had nothing to do with the decision to handle the firearm in the first place (in the case of this thread that would be the 1yo that got shot) it seems acceptable that society asks this of firearm owners.

The problem is that any form of capitulation is perceived as a slippery slope that ends with the Government confiscating firearms from everyone. Given the national debate where both sides can overstep their bounds the hysteria on both sides continues and 1 year old's are shot by their 3 year old siblings because the adults in this country can't find the middle ground.
I think this child was shot because 1 adult was irresponsible, not because some grand audience on the national scale couldn't find common ground on some matter of policy.

Child endangerment is already illegal so there's no more common ground to be had anyway.
 
The Guardian advocates policy and is therefore biased. Try again.

Nonsense it cites the latest ONS figures

Those numbers are generated from The Gun Control Network who advocates policy and is therefore biased. Try again.

Prove its figures are wrong ?

"Gun crime" is only part of the picture, my sources regarded ALL crime to give the complete picture. Try again.

Another link only talking about "gun crime" not ALL crime. Here in America we use guns to prevent or stop non-gun offences, too, so your sources need to account for crimes which don't involve firearms. Try again.

Another link only talking about "gun crime" not ALL crime so as to give a slanted view. Try again

But gun crime is the topic at issue so I'm not about to indulge your attempted deflection 'try again'
 
So on the one hand you're saying having guns increases risk, yet you're saying we're so safe we don't need guns.

Correct, that's what the data show. And the stats were from Jerry's video - the violent crime rate has been halved in recent decades, the murder rate halved, and still trending down, not up, etc. And, right, the vast majority of us do not need a gun to be safe. I'm 51 - never carried a gun, don't ever feel unsafe and can't name even one moment when having a gun would have made me more safe. I'm sure I'm the norm for my area.

Yet the number of guns in the hands of citizens has gone way up over the past decade or two. Seeing a contradiction?

The share of households with guns is going down, but those that do own guns are buying more of them.

And no you haven't advocated any specific gun control... but you seem much more inclined to argue against gun ownership than for it, don't you?

Not all that persuasively since I have in the closet at this moment 3 shotguns, two rifles and two pistols, not counting pellet guns.

Bottom line is I'm not arguing for or against owning guns. I accept the risk because I like to hunt and shoot recreationally. What I don't do is pretend my hobbies come with no risk - they do. I've seen people shot in a dove field, had a guy blow out the side of a duck blind I was sitting in when his shotgun went off accidentally - missed my buddies knee by maybe an inch. A friend blew out his brain. Etc. They are weapons designed to kill, so there is a risk using them and having them around. Seems logical to me.

We make our own choices in this regard. I'm for allowing us to make choices. I'd probably be OK with more "gun control" than you - registration, licensing fine with me - but I've never made a call to any legislator on the broad issue of gun control and don't really care about it when voting.
 
I call horse****.


Even the more conservative estimates on DGUs place them at 80,000 to 200,000 annually, in government funded studies which were actually about crime victims (NCVS).

Other studies, some done by private universities, put annual DGU's at anything from 250,000 to 1.5 million.

It seems very likely that the real number is in the hundreds of thousands. A median figure would be 500,000 DGUs annually, and in most cases no shots fired.

So you're telling me there are 3.5 million assaults or murders (which?), 5.5 million suicide attempts (attempts? with a gun? what did they MISS?) and 2 million gun accidents?


Horse ****.

I backed up my position with evidence rather than subjective assertion . Perhaps you should do the same :roll:
 
I call horse****.


Even the more conservative estimates on DGUs place them at 80,000 to 200,000 annually, in government funded studies which were actually about crime victims (NCVS).

Other studies, some done by private universities, put annual DGU's at anything from 250,000 to 1.5 million.

It seems very likely that the real number is in the hundreds of thousands. A median figure would be 500,000 DGUs annually, and in most cases no shots fired.

So you're telling me there are 3.5 million assaults or murders (which?), 5.5 million suicide attempts (attempts? with a gun? what did they MISS?) and 2 million gun accidents?


Horse ****.


To expand on that, there were in 2013 about fourteen thousand murders and about three quarters of a million aggravated assaults. Way below those numbers.

Successful suicides by gun tend to run about 20,000 or so annually.

So no dice.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/1tabledatadecoverviewpdf/table_1_crime_in_the_united_states_by_volume_and_rate_per_100000_inhabitants_1994-2013.xls
 
I backed up my position with evidence rather than subjective assertion . Perhaps you should do the same :roll:


No point when you just ignore any stats you don't like, is there?

As predicted.

Stat-wars are pretty boring. We just "link at each other" while hardly anyone bothers to read any of it. :lamo
 
I think this child was shot because 1 adult was irresponsible, not because some grand audience on the national scale couldn't find common ground on some matter of policy.

Child endangerment is already illegal so there's no more common ground to be had anyway.

Again, should we not have enacted seat belt laws and chalked it up to failure to be responsible?
 
Again, should we not have enacted seat belt laws and chalked it up to failure to be responsible?



FTR I am opposed to seat belt laws. There are other ways to encourage responsible behavior without making it a mandate, and it isn't the gov's responsibility to save you from your own bad choices all the time.

The gov mainly uses seat belt laws to generate revenue via LE stops, and LE likes it because it gives them yet another excuse to stop people and be snoopy.
 
No point when you just ignore any stats you don't like, is there?

As predicted.

Stat-wars are pretty boring. We just "link at each other" while hardly anyone bothers to read any of it. :lamo

You keep making this allegation yet provide the best example of someone doing so on this thread. Dismissing or ignoring something out of hand because you don't like what its saying is not addressing anything. Its simply circling the wagons and waving a flag
 
You keep making this allegation yet provide the best example of someone doing so on this thread. Dismissing something out of hand because you don't like what its saying is not addressing anything. Its simply circling the wagons and waving a flag




Which is exactly what you're doing, which is exactly what I predicted, which I why I mostly stopped bothering with it some time ago.
 
It's weird that you keep arguing against points I haven't made. Where did I suggest we legislate personal responsibility? The only thing I'd tell a mother is if she buys a gun for protection, the odds are that she increases the risk of her child dying, because that is what the data show. You mention your safety measures, which sound great. If you do that, that's commendable. But the fact is most people do not, and most people don't do it without mistakes because we're all human and forget - we change pants, put the gun on the table, someone comes to the door and the gun is left there, etc. A million ways someone meaning well can make a fatal error. And the data indicate that guns at home increase the rate of death for those reasons and (more significantly) increase the risk you get drunk and in a fight with your wife and instead of hit her, shoot her in the head. Or you get depressed and pull that gun out and kill yourself.
The research cited assumes that if a person was killed and a gun was owned in the home, it was the gun in the home that was responsible for the death. In fact, virtually all of those deaths were due to guns being brought in by criminals getting into the home.

Faulty research.
 
Which is exactly what you're doing, which is exactly what I predicted, which I why I mostly stopped bothering with it some time ago.

Well as they say 'you can lead a horse to water' ........ :(
 
Well as they say 'you can lead a horse to water' ........ :(


... but you can't make him realize he's doing the same thing he's accusing others of doing: ignoring the other's guy's stats and studies. :D
 
One-year-old shot dead by 3-year old in Cleveland home

Right to bare arms? Shouldn't that right come with responsibility not to have a loaded gun where kids can get hold of them? Surely this is common sense. Another senseless and preventable death...face palm

Gun control? No?

Same thing happened here...but it was a cop that left the gun available. 7 yr old son killed 3 yr old sister.

It's not about training, it's about being responsible, period.
 
Again, should we not have enacted seat belt laws and chalked it up to failure to be responsible?
This is as if the mother ignored the seat-belt law, so I'm not getting your point.
 
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