Ravi
Diamond Member
Then let's ban rednecks and hip hoppers.
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It is hard to discuss when all the facts are against you. You have my sympathies.
Let's hear it then, Kirk.
I made specific points about your numbers. You ignored the points.
I made specific points about the propriety of using suicide figures, and made analogies to other death statistics. You ignored this.
Instead you responded with an ad hom and a comment that was irrelevant to what we're talking about.
If you don't have either the substantive arguments or the ability to defend your position, just say so.
The point is that the easy accessablility of guns in this country makes it easy for a depressed teenager, an angry spouse, or a drunk to kill themselves or others.
No your logic is flawed. The easier the access to guns, the more gun deaths. America has had one million gun deaths since 1960. The Japanese have had a few thousand. Why? Guns are restricted in Japan.
"In the United States, fatalities have increased slightly from 40,716 in 1994 to 42,884 in 2003
Car accident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
That's since techonology has had bette safety features...prior to this, the numbers were much higher....
If you mulitply the average number of automobile deaths by 48 years, you get approx. 2,400,000 deaths since 1960....You could compare these fatalities to other nations that ride bicycles for transportation and say that we have a public health crisis. Anyone with money and a driver's license can go buy a car. So basically, using your logic, a 16 year-old can go (more easily) purchase a deadly machine that can cruise up to 100MPH and drive it.
Not to mention, we have 2/3 more the population than Japan...
Approx. 21,000 people a year are killed by guns, using your 1,000,00 since 1960 stats. That's roughly half of the number killed by cars.....When a drunk driver gets in an accident, do you blame the car or the driver??? If you blame the driver, then you should do the same with guns....
That may be true. I believe that method accounts for roughly half of the suicides.
Has nothing to do with your original statement about 1,000,000 deaths, or with any of my responses to that statement, which you never addressed.
Once again you are changing the subject. The issue is gun deaths not automobiles.
I guess you missed this link I posted. It does require a little multiplication. I am sure you can do it.
Fatal Firearm Injuries in the United States - NCIPC
I already responded to the multiplication aspect of it, which you ignored because you don't have an answer for it.
You aren't seriously arguing that there haven't been one million gun deaths since 1960, are you? You are too smart for that. Here is a list of American gun deaths since 1979. It adds up to more than 800,000.
Deaths by Firearms, 19792003 — Infoplease.com
No, I was just asking for some hard stats - not a multiplier, which doesn't make sense. And I was suggesting that you remove suicides from the list if you want to get a better idea of how many people are killed by people with guns every year. The suicides are all together a different phenomenon and I wouldn't mix those together any more than I'd mix car suicides into auto deaths.
For the years I looked at, suicides were the biggest percentage of the death by guns.
You wouldn't mix suicide in? They are gun deaths, and they are part of the problem.
The problem being how easy guns make it to kill yourself and others.
No I wouldn't mix it in. The salient info in my mind is whether someone is likely to come try to kill me with a gun. Suicide is outside of that. It doesn't tell me anything about the inherent danger to me due to guns in society.
Like I said before, if you wanted to total the number of people killed every year by doctors, so you could evaluate your risk in a medical procedure, would you include doctor suicides? No. If you wanted to evaluate your risk on the highway, would you include people who turned their car on in their garage and killed themselves? No. None of these are risks to you, so adding them skews the numbers.
What I want to know about these things is what is the risk to me. That's the most sensible question to ask.
And yet MORE people have died due to car accidents over the same period of time and I do not hear one person complaining we should ban cars.
Doctors heal people. Guns kill people. Guns have no purpose except to kill. That is the difference.
Doctors heal people. Guns kill people. Guns have no purpose except to kill. That is the difference.
Cars are something all of us use everyday all day long. They have a purpose other than killing. That is the difference.
That's fine. Doesn't change anything I said. I'm not comparing doctors and guns, I'm just saying I don't think suicides are an accurate reflection of risks and shouldn't be included.