• Guns are the second leading killer of U.S. kids, after car crashes,
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https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/guns-kill-twice-many-kids-cancer-does-new-study-shows-n950091 Nearly twice as many kids died from gun injuries in 2016 as died from cancer, the study by a team at the University of Michigan found. The gun fatality rate for U.S. children is 36 times higher than the rate in other developed nations, according to the analysis.
This isn't a "polidicks" thread. There is nothing political about it.
“Among firearm deaths, 59 percent were homicides, 35 percent were suicides, and 4 percent were unintentional injuries.” On the count of homicides, how are the deaths broken down? Was it street violence? Family member? Context is important. 35% being suicides is nothing new, and sadly not much can be done to deal with it. It's one of those cases where failure to invest into healthcare and some standardized procedure for classifications is ripping this countries mental health apart. Take it from someone in and out of the system: Psychiatrist and Therapist are some of the most untrained folks out there medically. It scares me at points how some of them just want to throw more anti-anxiety meds and prozac, and expect it to fix the world. Also 4% of unintentional injuries is a classic case example of parents not teaching their kids about firearms when they have them in the house. Honestly, not much can be done about that either outside having more education in the classroom regarding firearm safety in general. If the parents didn't teach them in the first place, it's sadly unlikely that
Gun control is about as political as the US gets.
The U.S. simply has more guns around than other countries do, the researchers noted. “One in three U.S. homes with youth under 18 years of age has a firearm, with 43 percent of homes reporting that the firearm is kept unlocked and loaded, which increases the risk of firearm injuries,” they wrote. Really... “The rate of death from motor vehicle crashes among U.S. children and adolescents was the highest observed among high-income countries; the U.S. rate was more than triple the overall rate observed in 12 other developed countries,” the researchers wrote. The rate of kids killed in car crashes was much higher than in Britain, Sweden or Australia and close to the rate of road deaths in Mongolia. Now this one is a bit of an unfair comparison due to Mongolia having a total population at 3 million and severe weather swings (40c to -40c on average throughout the year) that murderlates roads.
Is it unfair? I mean the population size doesn't matter since it's per capita, and the fact that US weather in each state is moderately more stable than in Mongolia just means US traffic schools don't prepare their students enough, isn't it? I'm truly sorry but I'm not much seeing the point here, if you could elaborate.
teaching proper gun safety in a professional environment would be much more effective and constitutional
Oh yeah it would definitely help. As would banning people who keep loaded and open firearms in child-accessible places from owning guns. You would agree that something like that should be taught in a gun safety course right? People who can not safely store weapons around children should not be allowed to own guns is my opinion.
Its ratios. If 40,000 people die by car in a country of 300,000,000 million that's terrible but not as nearly as bad as 40,000 people dying in a 3,000,000 population country by car. Secondly if we're talking about the trafficking of children to legal learning sites the states have made more than sure school buses are built to fall off a cliff and keep everyone alive inside. mongolia just uses range rover equivalents as school buses.
Like I said, it's not ratios since they consider per capita.
I wouldn't exactly call it hidden. It's not - strictly speaking - per capita (as far as I'm concerned, anyway), since per capita would be so-and-so many per person, not per a 100000 or whatever. Sometimes rate and per capita are used a bit interchangeably, since they're both population adjusted (though a rate could also be adjusted for a bunch of other factors).
Fair enough, it's my own bad as well for using it fairly loosely. GDP Per Capita for example is literally gdp per individual human being. I just use it as a shorthand for "X per Y people", but the idea is the same.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/220592/ba1980fd-07d5-478b-b217-7a23f74dcd9a/image.jpeg “Ok kids, time for the morning drill!” https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/220592/dd6673f7-bcbc-4e24-a583-023f97fdbe35/image.jpeg This is pretty much the reality we’re living in.
Depending on what you mean there is scant proof this works effectively, meanwhile it definitely intensifies social divides and turn the policy debate into cultural conflict. It's essentially saying the culture of some where the problem is less prevalent, usually more rural areas, needs to be regulated by urban political machines for the sake of cities as a priority, with little evidence it actually works and that legal gun ownership is the leading causal factor in our epidemic of gun deaths. Look at the graph in the source. It shows there's no real lasting impact of the expiration of the AWB in 2004. Further, household gun ownership rates have remained more or less constant since the 60s/70s while gun deaths, whether you look at mass shootings or general gun homicide, have risen or fallen independently of that fact. There are other causes for US gun violence, violent crime in general really, that have nothing to do with its culture of gun ownership, it's a convenient scapegoat for inept policy makers who want re-election and left-wing people who hold believe America's right-wing qualities in comparison to other first world countries is the be-all end-all explanation for every problem we have in a moment of post-truth. Look here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_death_rates_in_the_United_States_by_state#Murders Sort by gun murders and look at the correlation with ownership rates, it's very weak. The problem with murder and suicide in the US is a deeper question of its social fabric, not policy, and gun control will not address that. This article makes bad and misleading claims: But over the 2013-2016 period, gun deaths rose by 28 percent. Kids in the U.S. are far more likely to be killed by gunshots than kids in any other developed country. That's because this is when our murder rate spiked again. • USA
I'd rather a link to a more exhaustive study that compares more factors than just the two. (research of course which is hampered by the NRA actively and successfully lobbying to defund such research). Well yeah, it stands to reason that gun murders would rise with overall murders. My questions are more in line with how ownership affects violent crime rates itself. Gun ownership and violent crime are more often positively correlated than not. At least the research seems to say so. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1612/3d261e15-de10-4cd6-a78d-91d50b43b2a4/image.png Conclusion snippet: The NRC (2004) review found insufficient evidence to draw a conclusion about the causal relationship between gun prevalence and violent crime. We examined new evidence from U.S.-based studies since the NRC review (2005–2016) that were designed to estimate the causal effect of gun prevalence on violent crime. The six studies we identified examined total homicides, firearm-related homicides, nonfirearm-related homicides, intimate partner homicides, homicides committed by youth (aged 13–17 or 18–24), and homicides by race (of the decedent). Four of the six studies found the prevalence of firearms to be significantly and positively associated with homicide rates, and these associations were found across reasonably independent data sets.
This school district’s plan to stop shooters: Arming students with a bucket of rocks
Question since I see this suggestion pop up so often: how do you enforce this? I see a lot of people advocating gun control, but gun control is useless if it isn't enforced, which has been the case in many situations.
There's nothing wrong with that, but I wanted to bring it up because it's a key point that suggests the problem may not ultimately be US gun culture, that's a variable that has remained constant and not associated with the rise in violent crime and mass shootings we saw from the 70s/80s onward. For the record, I'm not raking you over the coals or anything. I think it's a secondary question since gun ownership is not even close to the most significant and certain causal factor in our violent crime issue, something like single parent households is a bigger and more clear causal factor, while the effect of regulation is also questionable. Maine has as many gun laws (not many) as Louisiana, yet the latter has almost 3x the gun-related death rate, while California has the same gun-related death rate as Maine but with 10x the amount of gun laws. This amount of variance suggests there's a lot more to gun violence than the extent of regulation, I think it has to do with local culture and the social fabric. The independent relationship between household gun ownership rates and mass shootings or violent crime helps support this, especially since the latter is largely an urban problem. As a result, I really don't see a clear cut case for gun laws and I think the left is missing the forest for the trees, in part because left-right falls along cultural divisions that are parochial and insular. I think that's the biggest problem with America. One of the biggest contributors to the decline in gun violence is an increase in policing. This decline is in spite of not only the gun ownership rates I mentioned, but there are now more guns than people and concealed carry permits has exploded from 2.7 to 14.5 million. For the record I am open to the idea that gun prevalence is a causal factor to some extent, but anything beyond correlations is mixed and how much it actually is a causal factor matters a lot in weighing cost and benefit. Personally, I am concerned about broad federal regulations for surface-level causal factors that have no regard for America's diversity, and so they end up reflecting on political imbalances in the country that fall along cultural lines. I think that's a contradiction that gun control advocates tend to ignore, it suggests the cure is worse than the disease.
Honestly? I truly don't know., it's just my opinion that they shouldn't. I'm (clearly) no lawyer, legislator or statistician. I do know there's a legal subset of such laws called Child Access Prevention laws for which the science seems to be pretty clear-cut, but the actual application of those laws? dunno lol sry BACKGROUND: State-level child access prevention (CAP) laws impose criminal liability on adults who negligently allow children access to firearms. RESULTS: After adjusting for race, sex, age, and socioeconomic income quartile, strong CAP laws were associated with a significant reduction in all (incidence rate ratio, 0.70; 95% confidence interval, 0.52-0.93), self-inflicted (incidence rate ratio, 0.46; 95% confidence interval, 0.26-0.79), and unintentional (incidence rate ratio, 0.56; 95% confidence interval, 0.43-0.74) pediatric firearm injuries. Weak CAP laws, which only impose liability for reckless endangerment, were associated with an increased risk of all pediatric firearm injuries. Absolutely I agree. My opinion isn't that gun ownership should be the main focus point of what people look at when discussing gun violence, I just think that the idea of banning people from owning guns based on certain characteristics shouldn't be a faux pas. There's a 2018 RAND paper that analyzes the effects of policy. Lots of scientifically specific language. Key Findings Despite Modest Scientific Evidence, the Data Support a Few Conclusions Of more than 100 combinations of policies and outcomes, surprisingly few have been the subject of methodologically rigorous investigation. Notably, research into four of the outcomes examined was essentially unavailable at the time of the review, with three of these four outcomes representing issues of particular concern to gun owners or gun industry stakeholders. Available evidence supports the conclusion that child-access prevention laws, or safe storage laws, reduce self-inflicted fatal or nonfatal firearm injuries among youth, as well as unintentional firearm injuries or deaths among children. There is moderate evidence that background checks reduce firearm suicides and firearm homicides, as well as limited evidence that these policies can reduce overall suicide and violent crime rates. There is moderate evidence that stand-your-ground laws may increase homicide rates and limited evidence that the laws increase firearm homicides in particular. There is moderate evidence that violent crime is reduced by laws prohibiting the purchase or possession of guns by individuals who have a history of involuntary commitment to a psychiatric facility. There is limited evidence these laws may reduce total suicides and firearm suicides. There is limited evidence that a minimum age of 21 for purchasing firearms may reduce firearm suicides among youth.
I think those policies are all pretty tame and acceptable
Oh look medical doctors pulling this shit again. "Rebecca M. Cunningham, M.D., Maureen A. Walton, M.P.H., Ph.D., and Patrick M. Carter, M.D" The one PhD has a degree in psychiatry. The rest are medical doctors. This is a medical journal. They are not criminologists. They are not sociologists. They are not in any way shape or form experts in this field. Researching human behaviors and trends is literally an entire wing of academia for good reason. It is insanely complicated and requires dedication to deliver useful results. You do not, in the course of receiving a medical degree, get anywhere near sufficient instruction to do this research. You don't even go to school for as long as you do for a PhD. I'm not even going to bother tearing apart their methods.
@GarrettFox thoughts on our conversation then?
I still don't see why having to pass a test to be given a license to own would be so controversial. Pretty sure tons of countries do that already, and it would ensure that everyone who owns is sensitised to how to safely store their weapons, and the consequences of not doing so. You do have to have a license to drive even though driving is much more vital than shooting in the US, and nobody seems to find that abusive.
... Their paper isn't an exhaustive finding of the underlying human psyche related reasons why as many people died of what causes as they did. It's a report on the statistics. The objective fact of the matter is that Guns ARE the second leading killer of U.S. kids, after car crashes. Really the only way you can "tear apart their methodology" is go tell the people who died of gun violence that they didn't actually die of gun violence, because that's literally all they say. I don't mean to sound passive aggressive, but I thought you guys were supposed to be held to a higher standard of posting quality, not wannabe intellectual nonsense like this without even reading the article or what the report is about.
.... its not research? Its just stating thats its one of the leading cause of death for children in the US. They're not saying gun crime is the reason or inappropriate gun usage, they are stating those are the tallies.
The Major Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States _ NEJM.pdf I registered an account and downloaded the statistics in full in PDF form for those interested.
This is a symptom of a destruction of social relations, upbringing, education, with so many factors that go from the lowest to the highest levels of life. If the accessibility of guns is so problematic, then why do we, 2nd on the entire planet in guns per capita, and much more hearty and easy to explode people, yet we have no school shootings, or massacres of these kinds?
because actually attempting to solve the problems that lead to these things happening is seemingly impossible for americans to comprehend. Maybe don't push people away, maybe learn to feel more empathetic towards others' situations, and maybe don't treat people who're even slightly different from your idea of 'normal' as garbage and exclude them from your circles, to say nothing of bullying people at school and at workplaces. In a nutshell, if people were treated less like trash for no reason, maybe even if their lives weren't so great they wouldn't take out their frustrations on others as a way to be remembered.
Yeah, good question, why is that. Firearms must be held in a safe place, firearm permits are denied to people with a criminal history, mental disorder or any form of substance abuse. Every gun permit requires a thorough background check, and can be confiscated depending on necessity. Rifles, shotguns and handguns may be owned with specific permits, and licensing for handguns is strict. Having a permit does not allow the bearer to open or concealed carry. Transportation is only allowed with unloaded guns, with the concealed carry being very hard to obtain. Every gun transaction is recorded by the police, fully auto firearms are prohibited to civilians. So the simple answer to your question is that despite the high percentage of gun ownership, the people that DO own guns are more strictly vetted, they have less leeway in what kinds of guns they can have, and how they can handle them. Which in a nutshell is gun control I guess? I mean throwing around numbers is cool and all but it's not really the right thing to do here is it.
I think there's more to it. Despite being poor and from a strife-ridden region, I think Serbia benefits from being small, relatively more homogeneous, and with rooted communities that have been around for a long time. America is new, dynamic, and a nation based on creed because it's ultimately a young nation based on a market that rapidly expanded. This agitates the left and right in different ways, usually in economic ways for the former and social ways for the latter roughly speaking. America's mental illness and atomization problem is incredible. We are more lonely and more neurotic than Europeans. This is particularly concentrated in its youth, who will also not live like their parents. They are proles. They are unlikely to have good finances, own property, have stable marriages, reliance on one job or skill, and so on. They will deal with incredible inequality and a detached central government increasingly run by money. They will also deal with the confusion and complications of American foreign policy after the cold war, which has started to feel like a burden. It's a recipe for disaster, and it bears fruit in the violence in our society.
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