Originally Posted By: ottotheclown
So w e should do nothing re guns and start on serious regulation of the medical industry. The only problem with this kind of thinking is those deaths are by ACCIDENT AND ERRORS are not the same as loading a gun and pointing it at someone. Am I RIGHT??As I do parties and those kids look up at me I get more and more upset on how this country of ours thinks in alot of sections.But all of this is doing not much instead I have volunteered and am doing something I hope. I have gone to Newtown doing volunteering it makes things real in some ways.
I didn't say that we should do nothing. I think we should address all the risks that kill children (since you happen to have them looking up at you, I'll stick with the risks to children and skip all the adult risks).
First - you seem to think that accidents are OK...I don't...if I had that mentality (as a pilot), I would have been a smoking hole a long time ago. Accidents can be reduced. Risk can be managed.
And you seem to ascribe to the logical fallacy that restricting the rights of those who obey the law will somehow affect the rates of criminal and psychopathic behaviour...
So, the things that kill children:
Firearms accidents killed 174 children last year. But another 1,200+ teens died from homicide...because when a 16 year old criminal kills a peer with a gun, it's lumped in with children's deaths, when in actuality, it's homicide...criminal on criminal violence.
Motor vehicles killed over 6,000.
1,236 died from drowning.
Child abuse and neglect killed over 2,000.
Nearly 2,000 died from fires.
And just using the medical malpractice numbers, and averaging for the population distribution, over 10,000 died from malpractice.
So, you can save the most children by focusing on those things that are most likely to kill children....the above mentioned causes...and, if you like, though less likely than those causes, the homicidal psychopaths that kill children.
Don't forget that 29 of the 186 victims of the Oklahoma City bombing were children in the daycare center. Another psychopath, politically motivated, who didn't need a gun to kill hundreds...he did it with fertilizer, diesel fuel and a rented truck...so, do we screen diesel fuel purchases? Fertilizer? Truck rentals?
Address firearms violence by addressing the violence, the crime. Mandatory jail time for a felony committed with a firearm, enforcement of the multitude of state and federal laws that prevent straw purchases, the laws that restrict felons and the mentally ill from owning guns. Address firearms accidents through risk management (education, safety devices, safe storage, etc. in the case of firearms).
Now, if you want to save adult lives, look at alcohol, heart disease, motor vehicles and the like...
You can make improvements in many of those risk areas without restricting a single Constitutional right.
Be careful of drawing the wrong conclusion based on the details of these crimes. The recent psychopaths in Arizona, Colorado and Connecticut had one political predilection...while Tim McVeigh had the opposite...so, should we ban guns in the hands of left wing nuts and ban Ryder Trucks from the hands of right wing nuts? Of course not, just like we shouldn't say that readers of the New York Times are likely murderers (an article from the NYT was among the "evidence" found at the shooter's home).
Finally, just because a firearm caused a death, it does not always follow that the death could have been prevented by removing the firearm. That death may have been the death of a felon shooting at a police officer, or an armed citizen, both of whom have a right to self-defense.
Against a larger, stronger, or younger assailant, the firearm becomes the only effective means that an smaller, weaker, or older, innocent person has to stop the life-threatening attack. Their right to self-defense (which is meaningless without the means) must be remembered in this discussion.
