http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp? sNav=pb&id=604
Executive Summary: Widely televised firearm murders in many countries during the 20th Century have spurred politicians to introduce restrictive gun laws. The politicians then promise that the new restrictions will reduce criminal violence and "create a safer society." It is time to pause and ask if gun laws actually do reduce criminal violence. ...
The upshot is that violent crime rates, and homicide rates in particular, have been falling in the United States. The drop in the American crime rate is even more impressive when compared with the rest of the world.
I wrote a thing up for my book club a year or two ago when we started talking about gun control and how dangerous "just having guns around" is, so I looked into it. I know this is long, but maybe some of you will find the numbers different than your intuition tells you. (Disclaimer: I am pro-gun).
My queries are for the years 1999-2002 (all they have), the entire U.S., all races, both sexes, all ages. (four year totals)
Unintentional death by falling : 57,760
Unintentional Pedestrian deaths: 24,079
Unintentional Drowning : 13,739
Unintentional death by burning : 13,642
Unintentional Firearms deaths : 3,164
Unintentional Bicyclist deaths : 3,099
You can also break it down by age range. If we're worried about the teen years, we can look at ages 12-18. (four year totals)
Unintentional Pedestrian deaths: 1,561
Unintentional Drowning : 1,495
Unintentional Firearms deaths : 494
Unintentional Bicyclist deaths : 453
Unintentional death by burning : 423
Unintentional death by falling : 306
Younger still, ages 1-11: (four year totals)
Unintentional Pedestrian deaths: 2,118
Unintentional Drowning : 2,870
Unintentional death by burning : 1,920
Unintentional Bicyclist deaths : 371
Unintentional death by falling : 292
Unintentional Firearms deaths : 164
Accident-wise, young kids have a lot more to worry about than guns. And teenagers are almost as likely to die on their bicycles. God forbid they're bicycling to the swimming pool... or even worse,
*walking* to the swimming pool... but yes, there are gun accidents.
Non-accidental deaths:
It's interesting to note that more than half of violent deaths attributed to firearms are suicide. Whenever you read an article in the media that mentions the number of gun deaths it's a good
bet that they're including suicides.
Violent deaths by firearm: 113,160 (includes suicides)
Suicide by firearm: 67,162
Now I, personally, don't mind if people kill themselves. More power to them. I do agree that that there is a lower barrier to entry when using a gun and understand that depressed people might not
be the best people to own guns, but gun control isn't really the solution to depression.
So, more people are definitely intentionally killed by guns than by
any other single cause, roughly 11K people per year.
But...
How many times are guns used defensively? Since defensive gun use isn't something that is reported (like an offensive gun use is), numbers are harder to find. Here is the page I have bookmarked
with the only numbers I've ever seen. (refers to Gary Kleck's survey and a DOJ-sponsored study, and has a table of the results of 13 other surveys). (Gary Kleck is a criminologist at FSU - and,
no, he's not an NRA member. http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/p/faculty-gary-klec k.php)
Summary: Kleck thinks defensive gun use happens 2.5M times per year,
other surveys listed range between 770K and 3.6M. The DOJ
study thinks it's 1.5M times per year.
Let's aim low and go with 1M defensive uses per year. The question posed at the book club was "when does the ratio become w
"If a nuclear bomb was convincing enough to force a surrender then why did it take two? One of each type developed?"
If the Japanese were ready to surrender already, what were they doing
during the 3 days between Hiroshima and Nagasaki? And why did it take
another 5 days before they agreed to surrender?
The Japanese were brutal agressors. Why would the U.S. possibly
trust hints of possible surrender when no actions backed it up?
The use of nukes in WWII did not save more lives than the bombs took. Its pretty clear they were experimenting with WMD on a civilian population.
Slashdot Mirror
These numbers are all from the CDC.
http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.h tml
My queries are for the years 1999-2002 (all they have), the entire U.S., all races, both sexes, all ages. (four year totals)
Unintentional death by falling : 57,760
Unintentional Pedestrian deaths: 24,079
Unintentional Drowning : 13,739
Unintentional death by burning : 13,642
Unintentional Firearms deaths : 3,164
Unintentional Bicyclist deaths : 3,099
You can also break it down by age range. If we're worried about the teen years, we can look at ages 12-18. (four year totals)
Unintentional Pedestrian deaths: 1,561
Unintentional Drowning : 1,495
Unintentional Firearms deaths : 494
Unintentional Bicyclist deaths : 453
Unintentional death by burning : 423
Unintentional death by falling : 306
Younger still, ages 1-11: (four year totals)
Unintentional Pedestrian deaths: 2,118
Unintentional Drowning : 2,870
Unintentional death by burning : 1,920
Unintentional Bicyclist deaths : 371
Unintentional death by falling : 292
Unintentional Firearms deaths : 164
Accident-wise, young kids have a lot more to worry about than guns. And teenagers are almost as likely to die on their bicycles. God forbid they're bicycling to the swimming pool... or even worse, *walking* to the swimming pool ... but yes, there are gun accidents.
Non-accidental deaths:
It's interesting to note that more than half of violent deaths attributed to firearms are suicide. Whenever you read an article in the media that mentions the number of gun deaths it's a good bet that they're including suicides.
Now I, personally, don't mind if people kill themselves. More power to them. I do agree that that there is a lower barrier to entry when using a gun and understand that depressed people might not be the best people to own guns, but gun control isn't really the solution to depression.
So, anyway, taking out suicides leaves us with:
As compared to
So, more people are definitely intentionally killed by guns than by any other single cause, roughly 11K people per year.
But...
How many times are guns used defensively? Since defensive gun use isn't something that is reported (like an offensive gun use is), numbers are harder to find. Here is the page I have bookmarked with the only numbers I've ever seen. (refers to Gary Kleck's survey and a DOJ-sponsored study, and has a table of the results of 13 other surveys). (Gary Kleck is a criminologist at FSU - and, no, he's not an NRA member. http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/p/faculty-gary-klec k.php)
Summary: Kleck thinks defensive gun use happens 2.5M times per year, other surveys listed range between 770K and 3.6M. The DOJ study thinks it's 1.5M times per year.
Let's aim low and go with 1M defensive uses per year. The question posed at the book club was "when does the ratio become w
If the Japanese were ready to surrender already, what were they doing during the 3 days between Hiroshima and Nagasaki? And why did it take another 5 days before they agreed to surrender?
The Japanese were brutal agressors. Why would the U.S. possibly trust hints of possible surrender when no actions backed it up?
Your opinion is noted. Wrong, but noted.