4 ms·

I like the analogy of swimming pools. I don't _need_ a swimming pool, and having a pool by definition makes neighborhood children and visitors with children to

by diek 10y ago

I like the analogy of swimming pools. I don't _need_ a swimming pool, and having a pool by definition makes neighborhood children and visitors with children to my house less safe. In fact, children under 15 are about 40 times more likely to die by swimming pool than by an accidental firearms discharge [0]. I still have a pool. There are reasonable laws about having auto-closing gates and a fenced-in yard. I don't see anyone clambering to tighten restrictions on assault swimming pools. Likewise, semi-automatic, detachable-magazine-fed rifles are responsible for something like 2% of shootings. The only real place they have significance is in mass shootings. The only refute I have to, "but if we ban these rifles we won't have shootings" is that it would just happen through a different means. The Happy Land Fire killed 87 people, not a shot fired. Timothy McVeigh killed 189 people with fertilizer... and that was in 1995 -- under the "Assault Weapons Ban" of 1994. [0] http://www.m1-garand-rifle.com/gun-safety/firearms-versus-swimming-pools.php http://www.m1-garand-rifle.com/gun-safety/firearms-versus-sw...

finnh 10y ago
> In fact, children under 15 are about 40 times more likely to die by swimming pool than by an accidental firearms discharge [0]. You know, it's not really the accidental discharges I'm worried about. It's the mass shootings. Also, you appear to be misquoting that article. The 40x number is scaled by the number of pools/firearms, and so is saying "an individual firearm is less likely to kill a child than an individual pool" (although firearms are vastly more common than pools). And, finally, that article uses "86 children killed by accidental firearm discharge in 2000" as its primary metric. The top google hit [0] for "How many children are killed each year by guns?" gives a value of 1,500. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=How+many+children+are+killed+each+year+by+guns https://www.google.com/search?q=How+many+children+are+killed...
- diek 10y ago
  It looks like the 1,500 number includes all deaths of children under 18. However -- without going into that particular dataset -- these numbers are normally inflated by gang violence and include 17-year-olds killed in shootouts with police. I'm certainly interested in more data, but it's hard to find summary datasets that aren't slanted.
  - finnh 10y ago
    Ah, thanks for the clarification. But I think those 17-and-unders are still children, and I'd prefer them alive and with a chance to regret their gang-banging ways.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      Then you should probably disarm the police too.
      - finnh 10y ago
        agreed.
nl 10y ago
The Happy Land Fire killed 87 people, not a shot fired. Timothy McVeigh killed 189 people with fertilizer... and that was in 1995 -- under the "Assault Weapons Ban" of 1994. I don't understand arguments like this at all. Is the argument that "there are other bad things so we shouldn't tackle this thing"?
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Is the argument that "there are other bad things so we shouldn't tackle this thing"? I believe its actually "people can be killed without assault weapons, therefore restricting assault weapons has no benefit in protecting people from being killed". Which, ultimately, has the same basic kind of error in reasoning as "there are other bad things so we shouldn't tackle this thing", but its not precisely the same argument.
  - erichocean 10y ago
    Right, they couple that with "…and it's also a constitutional right that our gov't believed—at the time—was important enough to put a blanket ban on themselves writing laws in the future to limit it." Other than that, completely like "banning bad things".
- diek 10y ago
  It's the substitution problem. The argument (seems to be), "If we ban semi-automatic rifles, that person who wants to kill all those people won't be able to harm anyone." History has shown us this simply isn't the case. People who want to kill people will kill people with whatever means available. Happy Land, Oklahoma City, etc are just examples of this. I didn't see a huge push to ban pressure cookers after the Boston bombings.
  - erichocean 10y ago
    > I didn't see a huge push to ban pressure cookers after the Boston bombings. That's not true, "assault pressure cookers" were banned—especially the scary looking ones. Problem solved!
jpgvm 10y ago
I can't take a pool to the local cinema and kill everyone inside. It's an irrelevant comparison. To be exposed to the risk of drowning in your pool I actually need to go to said pool. This is not different from exposing myself to any other risk of my own free will. My free will has no bearing on if someone wants to bring a gun to a public place and murder me and everyone else around.
- diek 10y ago
  That's only a valid comparison to mass shootings, which are a tiny, tiny percentage of gun deaths. By comparison, referenced in my other comments, if someone really wanted to kill everyone in a theater they could do it with a container of gasoline, or a pressure cooker. Newtown could have been accomplished with a sword, given the size difference of the attacker to the victims. Anyone who wants to kill you can, with any number of objects readily accessible. This is only evident to some people when they think of an object like an AR-15 because they don't think about all the other ways they could be killed.
  - jpgvm 10y ago
    Lethality of all of those other methods is significantly below that of a semi-automatic rifle. The fact more people are killed outside of mass shootings by guns is irrelevant. Mass shootings are a good enough reason to get rid of them, it's a risk people shouldn't have to live with.
    - diek 10y ago
      > Lethality of all of those other methods is significantly below that of a semi-automatic rifle. That's just not true. In Somalia, U.S. Army soldiers actually complained about how the AR-15 round (5.56 NATO) wouldn't take down enemy combatants in a single shot. Compare that to, say, the bombs used in the Boston Marathon. It's a night and day difference. If you're trapped in a crowded nightclub that's on fire, your odds of survival are abysmal. People survive serious gunshots every day with proper medical attention. One of the big issues in the Orlando shooting was the 3 hour wait before any of the victims got medical attention.

by diek 10y ago

finnh 10y ago

> In fact, children under 15 are about 40 times more likely to die by swimming pool than by an accidental firearms discharge [0]. You know, it's not really the accidental discharges I'm worried about. It's the mass shootings. Also, you appear to be misquoting that article. The 40x number is scaled by the number of pools/firearms, and so is saying "an individual firearm is less likely to kill a child than an individual pool" (although firearms are vastly more common than pools). And, finally, that article uses "86 children killed by accidental firearm discharge in 2000" as its primary metric. The top google hit [0] for "How many children are killed each year by guns?" gives a value of 1,500. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=How+many+children+are+killed+each+year+by+guns https://www.google.com/search?q=How+many+children+are+killed...

diek 10y ago
It looks like the 1,500 number includes all deaths of children under 18. However -- without going into that particular dataset -- these numbers are normally inflated by gang violence and include 17-year-olds killed in shootouts with police. I'm certainly interested in more data, but it's hard to find summary datasets that aren't slanted.
- finnh 10y ago
  Ah, thanks for the clarification. But I think those 17-and-unders are still children, and I'd prefer them alive and with a chance to regret their gang-banging ways.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    Then you should probably disarm the police too.
    - finnh 10y ago
      agreed.

nl 10y ago

The Happy Land Fire killed 87 people, not a shot fired. Timothy McVeigh killed 189 people with fertilizer... and that was in 1995 -- under the "Assault Weapons Ban" of 1994. I don't understand arguments like this at all. Is the argument that "there are other bad things so we shouldn't tackle this thing"?

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Is the argument that "there are other bad things so we shouldn't tackle this thing"? I believe its actually "people can be killed without assault weapons, therefore restricting assault weapons has no benefit in protecting people from being killed". Which, ultimately, has the same basic kind of error in reasoning as "there are other bad things so we shouldn't tackle this thing", but its not precisely the same argument.
- erichocean 10y ago
  Right, they couple that with "…and it's also a constitutional right that our gov't believed—at the time—was important enough to put a blanket ban on themselves writing laws in the future to limit it." Other than that, completely like "banning bad things".
diek 10y ago
It's the substitution problem. The argument (seems to be), "If we ban semi-automatic rifles, that person who wants to kill all those people won't be able to harm anyone." History has shown us this simply isn't the case. People who want to kill people will kill people with whatever means available. Happy Land, Oklahoma City, etc are just examples of this. I didn't see a huge push to ban pressure cookers after the Boston bombings.
- erichocean 10y ago
  > I didn't see a huge push to ban pressure cookers after the Boston bombings. That's not true, "assault pressure cookers" were banned—especially the scary looking ones. Problem solved!

jpgvm 10y ago

I can't take a pool to the local cinema and kill everyone inside. It's an irrelevant comparison. To be exposed to the risk of drowning in your pool I actually need to go to said pool. This is not different from exposing myself to any other risk of my own free will. My free will has no bearing on if someone wants to bring a gun to a public place and murder me and everyone else around.

diek 10y ago
That's only a valid comparison to mass shootings, which are a tiny, tiny percentage of gun deaths. By comparison, referenced in my other comments, if someone really wanted to kill everyone in a theater they could do it with a container of gasoline, or a pressure cooker. Newtown could have been accomplished with a sword, given the size difference of the attacker to the victims. Anyone who wants to kill you can, with any number of objects readily accessible. This is only evident to some people when they think of an object like an AR-15 because they don't think about all the other ways they could be killed.
- jpgvm 10y ago
  Lethality of all of those other methods is significantly below that of a semi-automatic rifle. The fact more people are killed outside of mass shootings by guns is irrelevant. Mass shootings are a good enough reason to get rid of them, it's a risk people shouldn't have to live with.
  - diek 10y ago
    > Lethality of all of those other methods is significantly below that of a semi-automatic rifle. That's just not true. In Somalia, U.S. Army soldiers actually complained about how the AR-15 round (5.56 NATO) wouldn't take down enemy combatants in a single shot. Compare that to, say, the bombs used in the Boston Marathon. It's a night and day difference. If you're trapped in a crowded nightclub that's on fire, your odds of survival are abysmal. People survive serious gunshots every day with proper medical attention. One of the big issues in the Orlando shooting was the 3 hour wait before any of the victims got medical attention.