Bang bang you’re dead
The BBC reports a horrifying statistic:
About 1,300 US children under the age of 17 die from gun-related injuries per year, a government study has found.
Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also found that guns seriously wounded about 5,800 children each year.
We’re horrified by all the people who died or were injured in Grenfell Tower, and this number dwarfs that.
“Firearm injuries are a leading cause of death among US children aged one to 17 years and contribute substantially each year to premature death, illness and disability of children,” said CDC’s Katherine Fowler, who led the study.
“About 19 children a day die or are medically treated in an emergency department for a gunshot wound in the US,” she told Reuters.
CDC researchers examined national data in what they describe as “the most comprehensive examination of current firearm-related deaths and injuries among children in the United States to date”.
The study found a 60% increase in gun suicides from 2007-15, according an analysis of national injury records.
A Grenfell Tower every few days, not because a tower block catches fire but because there are way too many guns floating around in this country.
…and a lot of that can be attributed to the safety negligence that most gun nuts seem to practice.
As a fan of guns (and gun control) it upsets me that so many fail to unload and lock up their firearms.
BKiSA, yes agreed. Where I am you need a license to own a hunting or target weapon. this is renewable every 10 years and involves Police vetting. If you want a handgun or military style weapons you need a different category of licence with more intense vetting again. Weapons must be locked away securely and ammunition (and the bolt if any) must be locked away separately. I strongly regard anyone who doesn’t follow these procedures as culpable for any misuse or accidents that occur.
When I expressed that view on FtB once I was accused of victim blaming.
I’d rather there hadn’t been a victim…
Did not Congress, at one time, pass some stipulation preventing the CDC from releasing or studying firearm death and injury statistics?
Sounds correct; there are always other means of getting those numbers though…
I grew up in a house with all sorts of guns, and no accidents. My dad kept the guns locked up, and kept the ammo locked in a different place. There were never loaded guns in our house until my brother (Donald Trump with less class, I think I’ve mentioned him) started bringing loaded firearms into the house. Fortunately, the only one he ever shot was himself, and that was at work so we didn’t have to witness it…he is truly a gun fondler, and funny thing, guns are like cats. If you fondle them the wrong way, they will hurt you.
Does it bother anyone else that you are comparing deaths from a single event to deaths from multiple independent events? It’s like adding up deaths from car accidents and thinking it says something about our attention on a single mass murder.
Even guns considered ‘safe’ enough for military use (e.g. the 1911 US Army Colt) have design quirks that almost guarantee eventual accidents. Dropping the magazine will leave a live round in the chamber. Owners have ‘forgotten’ this simple fact unknown thousands (by now possibly millions) of times.
This is the one issue where I’m prone to agree with the ‘polarization is the problem’ stance.
One of the key problems on this issue is that on the Right, the issue is simply verbotten, and thus they refuse to invest any effort in crafting compromise regulations on firearms. So any laws that do get written, usually get written by people with little hard, practical knowledge of firearm safety or ownership.
The assault-weapon ban was one of the results of this. It was… not well-designed, as it focused on a term that had been hyped by the media but didn’t actually have a hard definition at the time. So the legislation had to define “assault weapons”, and the resulting definition pretty much was the expected result of design-by-committee. It was essentially a laundry list of features, any two of which would trigger ‘assault weapon’ status. Now, some of these were things that legitimately need to be restricted, such as magazine size and fire rate. Others, not so much; I submit that no one, in the horrific history of mass shootings in this country, has ever shouted, “Look out, he’s got a bayonet!”
When people who want to own a hunting rifle or feel they need a gun for self-defense (I know the statistics, but that’s another issue entirely) see rules like that, they come to one of two conclusions–either the regulations are worthless, or they’re a prelude for a future total ban. After decades of this, the gun owners are often so paranoid that any use of the words “gun control” immediately trigger a Pavlovian aggressive response.
I came across this article this morning regarding the CDC and gun studies. I thought it would be relevant here. My own impressions were mistaken.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-gun-research-funding-20160614-snap-story.html
Lacunaria @ 6 – yes, fair point, but that is what I was doing. I was aware that it was one event : multiple events, but that’s something that gets pointed out a lot: that we humans get in a lather over one large event but not over much larger cumulative totals from smaller events. It’s a flaw in the way we think (story as opposed to statistics). I do it myself. I think it’s worth reminding ourselves of the less dramatic but much bigger body count that adds up one or two at a time.
Sackbut @9 – so Congress didn’t explicitly forbid the research, but removed exactly the amount proposed., which seems to be a distinction without a difference. As I recall the same thing happened with stem cell research.
Lacunaria @6/Ophelia @10 – yes and this characteristic is exploited mercilessly by politicians in pursuit of their agendas (or their paymaster’s agendas) The CDC research is a good case in point.