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You can almost randomly choose a European country and disprove your argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate http

You can almost randomly choose a European country and disprove your argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r... In the list you can easily see that the U.S. has the highest firearm related death rate of any OECD country. In fact it is almost 100 times higher than Germany for homicides.

caeril 6y ago
Priorities are important. Completely preventable medical errors kill TEN TIMES as many Americans as firearms do, even including suicide-by-gun as a firearm death (which, incidentally, far oustrips firearm-related homicide or accidents). I'm still waiting for Congress to even propose, let alone pass, the bill that mandates background checks for nurses to know how to properly multiply or divide drug IV dosages by ten, or to learn the difference between milli- and micro-. I'm still waiting for doctors to have to wait ten days for multiparty approval on their decision to proceed with a procedure predicated on an obvious misread of the patient's chart. Until that day, gun control advocates have the blood of 590 Americans on their hands, every day, for choosing their Cause Célèbre to be something that kills far, far fewer people than a much, much bigger problem. Reminder that any policy advocacy position that comes from any standpoint other than holistic harm prevention has one goal, and one goal only: power and control. edit: HN hivemind apparently believes I am factually incorrect. Approximately 24k Americans die annually via firearms[1], whereas approximately 250k Americans die annually via preventable medical errors[2]. [1] https://health.ucdavis.edu/what-you-can-do/facts.html https://health.ucdavis.edu/what-you-can-do/facts.html [2] https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139.full https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139.full
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I'm still waiting for Congress to even propose, let alone pass, the bill that mandates background checks for nurses to know how to properly multiply or divide drug IV dosages by ten, or to learn the difference between mill- and micro Nursing licensing standards already cover that skill (and a lot more.) Congress has also worked to promote things that deal with actual problems that exist, rather than things that are long solved, and which have been demonstrated to reduce preventable medical errors like meaningful use of EMRs; knowing how to multiply and divide correctly doesn't help when poor, unstructured records give you inaccurate or incomplete information to start with.
  - caeril 6y ago
    Drug dosage administration errors are still a not-insignificant cause of death, and are by no means a completely solved problem. And I already addressed the charting defects. My broader point is that if you are a policy advocate, and you have N hours to dedicate to a specific policy advocacy, if you choose a cause that addresses the death of far fewer people than a more significant problem, your choice is a violation of the least-harm principle, and you are indirectly responsible for allowing more people to die than if you had made a more factually-aligned choice. Gun control advocates are, therefore, obviously driven by a desire to control others, and not by any serious intention to save lives. A decision to advocate for gun control is a conscious decision to NOT advocate ( per limited hours/resources tradeoffs ) for cancer treatment research, dietary policy improvements, medical error prevention, traffic safety research funding, environmental policy, Alzheimer's research, or any number of things that will save more lives. It's rational to assume that the motivation is something other than actually saving human life. Control and power, being common and time-tested motivations of humans, seems to be a reasonable first assumption.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Drug dosage administration errors are still a not-insignificant cause of death, and are by no means a completely solved problem. But the cause of that problem isn't even arguably “there is no required testing to verify they nurses can do the task appropriately”, since there is, in fact, required testing that includes that within it's scope. So the idea that Congress enacting a new requirement on that would be parallel to it's initial adoption of a background check requirement for guns but for a more pressing problem is not defensible. The fact that Congress has also repeatedly recently adopted (not merely discussed) new rules designed to address things that are actually empirically contributors to avoidable medical errors also demonstrates that the implication that that is being neglected while gun control is being discussed is also false. > My broader point is that if you are a policy advocate, and you have N hours to dedicate to a specific policy advocacy, if you choose a cause that addresses the death of far fewer people than a more significant problem, your choice is a violation of the least-harm principle If you assume that every advocate is equally effective in all issues, and that the targets of that advocacy are equally easily moved on all issues, and that the effect of policy change that would be acheived by the same movement of decision-makers is proportional to the scale of the problem being addressed, then this is a defensible position. But none of those are reasonable assumptions.
- blablabla123 6y ago
  > Completely preventable medical errors kill TEN TIMES as > many Americans as firearms do, even including suicide-by- > gun as a firearm death (which, incidentally, far oustrips > firearm-related homicide or accidents). This is quite a jump from guns to medical errors and I think this is comparing apples and oranges. It seems absurd to me only fix "burning" issues because then only mediocrity can be reached. It's better to fix root causes. That said, I wonder how many of these errors happen because both medical personal and patients are under extreme stress due to a bad financial situation, a dangerous neighborhood etc. Imagine you live in a neighborhood where people have guns and actually use them. Wouldn't you be a bit stressed out and thus being more prone to make errors, communicate incorrectly, both as patient but also as nurse/doctor?
  - yeetawayhn 6y ago
    > Imagine you live in a neighborhood where people have guns and actually use them. Wouldn't you be a bit stressed out and thus being more prone to make errors, communicate incorrectly, both as patient but also as nurse/doctor? No, have you never lived in a rural area?
- ericb 6y ago
  Speaking for myself, I downvoted not because you are factually wrong. I downvoted because your entire argument is whataboutism. It is irrelevant to the topic being discussed, and makes the entire debate worse for its presence.
  - Bancakes 6y ago
    Giving any sort of context in order to destroy FUD is now whatabautism? I guess you just have confirmation bias, huh.
rsj_hn 6y ago
Why compare the US to Europe? The US is roughly 60% Europe, 25% Latin America, 10% Africa and 5% Asia. It has the homicide rate you would expect if you averaged the homicide rates for these continents - roughly 5 per 100,000, which is the global average. People have this schizophrenic notion that the US should have the demographics of Brazil but the homicide rate of Sweden, and that aint gonna happen no matter what kind of gun control laws you pass. Same thing for measures of corruption, etc. So you have nations with very low homicide rates, like Bangladesh, versus nations with high homicide rates, like Nigeria or Brazil or Jamaica. And the gun control laws don't seem to make much of a difference in comparison to ethnicity. Looking at Europe, you have wide variations in gun ownership rates but a fairly low homicide rate across the board. Looking at US states, again wide variations of gun ownership rates not well correlated to homicide rates. So stop pretending that the high homicide rates in the US, which are accounted for in urban centers are because of loose gun control laws in DC or Chicago. The US has exactly the homicide rate you'd expect just by using WHO intentional homicide rates per continent and comparing that to US demographics.
- kbelder 6y ago
  Thank you, that has given me a new train of thought to ride.
  - rsj_hn 6y ago
    It's an important factor to consider. Just because you copy, say, the legislative system of Switzerland isn't going to give you Swiss outcomes. There was a story about some Latin American nations trying to copy Swedish style practices and it turned out an absolute disaster. In Japan, if you leave a cell phone in a coffee shop, you can come back hours later and it will be given to you. In Russia, not so much. In the 80s there was an effort -- the early shoots of globalism -- of trying to "industrialize" west Africa by trying to import Western European-style management and business practices, and all of these projects failed, and some resulted in large debt loads being carried. One wonders what could have happened if they just let Africa be Africa and develop its own industries with its own practices at its own pace. You are not going to get English property rights or rule of law, but you will get something that actually works in the local environment, which is more important, IMO.
Huwyt_Nashi031 6y ago
They also tend to have a much higher proportion of Europeans than America does. You would need to isolate the rate of European American firearm homicides for it to be comparable. And I understand this is a politically charged comment but the statistics bear it out and I won't ignore that in favour of progressivism: if you count only White Americans, USA has a comparable homicide rate to most European countries.
bsder 6y ago
And, if it holds (cite please because I really don't believe the top parent), it probably only holds in the US in gun ownership areas that are predominantly non-minority. And probably only to certain levels of gun ownership. Once you start getting enough gun ownership, you start getting the "Who's the bad guy?" problem when there are conflicts. And the cops won't be terribly restrained if the gun owners aren't white.
m463 6y ago
I wonder if it holds up at the state level. Each state has different firearm availability and laws. Some states have very liberal gun laws, including automatic or semi-automatic weapons and concealed carry. Others have very strict laws, and with limited types of guns available and a loaded gun in a car or concealing a handgun would involve jail time.
- mcv 6y ago
  Restrictions per state don't mean a whole lot if you can just drive to another state without border checks, though.
  - yeetawayhn 6y ago
    Except when most of the guns used in crimes come from within the state, how are you going to scapegoat those other states?
throwaway189262 6y ago
I have a strong suspicion that firearm deaths are related to crime which is related to wealth inequality. Of which US does extremely badly compared to most developed countries. People become criminals when there's few other options
milkrocks 6y ago
Now try breaking it down by race, and you'll see if it wasn't for blacks and hispanics we'd have one of the lowest gun crime rates in the world. This begs the question is it a gun problem in America or a different problem?
- badmadrad 6y ago
  I see where you are heading but I think you have to take in 1 level deeper than race or skin color. Its culture. There are many non violent blacks and hispanics but their culture and values lead them in that direction. The blacks and hispanics you are describing have a culture problem.
  - milkrocks 6y ago
    Unfortunately FBI crime statistics don't break it down by culture, the fact of the matter is though we don't have a gun problem.

caeril 6y ago

Priorities are important. Completely preventable medical errors kill TEN TIMES as many Americans as firearms do, even including suicide-by-gun as a firearm death (which, incidentally, far oustrips firearm-related homicide or accidents). I'm still waiting for Congress to even propose, let alone pass, the bill that mandates background checks for nurses to know how to properly multiply or divide drug IV dosages by ten, or to learn the difference between milli- and micro-. I'm still waiting for doctors to have to wait ten days for multiparty approval on their decision to proceed with a procedure predicated on an obvious misread of the patient's chart. Until that day, gun control advocates have the blood of 590 Americans on their hands, every day, for choosing their Cause Célèbre to be something that kills far, far fewer people than a much, much bigger problem. Reminder that any policy advocacy position that comes from any standpoint other than holistic harm prevention has one goal, and one goal only: power and control. edit: HN hivemind apparently believes I am factually incorrect. Approximately 24k Americans die annually via firearms[1], whereas approximately 250k Americans die annually via preventable medical errors[2]. [1] https://health.ucdavis.edu/what-you-can-do/facts.html https://health.ucdavis.edu/what-you-can-do/facts.html [2] https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139.full https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139.full

dragonwriter 6y ago
> I'm still waiting for Congress to even propose, let alone pass, the bill that mandates background checks for nurses to know how to properly multiply or divide drug IV dosages by ten, or to learn the difference between mill- and micro Nursing licensing standards already cover that skill (and a lot more.) Congress has also worked to promote things that deal with actual problems that exist, rather than things that are long solved, and which have been demonstrated to reduce preventable medical errors like meaningful use of EMRs; knowing how to multiply and divide correctly doesn't help when poor, unstructured records give you inaccurate or incomplete information to start with.
- caeril 6y ago
  Drug dosage administration errors are still a not-insignificant cause of death, and are by no means a completely solved problem. And I already addressed the charting defects. My broader point is that if you are a policy advocate, and you have N hours to dedicate to a specific policy advocacy, if you choose a cause that addresses the death of far fewer people than a more significant problem, your choice is a violation of the least-harm principle, and you are indirectly responsible for allowing more people to die than if you had made a more factually-aligned choice. Gun control advocates are, therefore, obviously driven by a desire to control others, and not by any serious intention to save lives. A decision to advocate for gun control is a conscious decision to NOT advocate ( per limited hours/resources tradeoffs ) for cancer treatment research, dietary policy improvements, medical error prevention, traffic safety research funding, environmental policy, Alzheimer's research, or any number of things that will save more lives. It's rational to assume that the motivation is something other than actually saving human life. Control and power, being common and time-tested motivations of humans, seems to be a reasonable first assumption.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Drug dosage administration errors are still a not-insignificant cause of death, and are by no means a completely solved problem. But the cause of that problem isn't even arguably “there is no required testing to verify they nurses can do the task appropriately”, since there is, in fact, required testing that includes that within it's scope. So the idea that Congress enacting a new requirement on that would be parallel to it's initial adoption of a background check requirement for guns but for a more pressing problem is not defensible. The fact that Congress has also repeatedly recently adopted (not merely discussed) new rules designed to address things that are actually empirically contributors to avoidable medical errors also demonstrates that the implication that that is being neglected while gun control is being discussed is also false. > My broader point is that if you are a policy advocate, and you have N hours to dedicate to a specific policy advocacy, if you choose a cause that addresses the death of far fewer people than a more significant problem, your choice is a violation of the least-harm principle If you assume that every advocate is equally effective in all issues, and that the targets of that advocacy are equally easily moved on all issues, and that the effect of policy change that would be acheived by the same movement of decision-makers is proportional to the scale of the problem being addressed, then this is a defensible position. But none of those are reasonable assumptions.
blablabla123 6y ago
> Completely preventable medical errors kill TEN TIMES as > many Americans as firearms do, even including suicide-by- > gun as a firearm death (which, incidentally, far oustrips > firearm-related homicide or accidents). This is quite a jump from guns to medical errors and I think this is comparing apples and oranges. It seems absurd to me only fix "burning" issues because then only mediocrity can be reached. It's better to fix root causes. That said, I wonder how many of these errors happen because both medical personal and patients are under extreme stress due to a bad financial situation, a dangerous neighborhood etc. Imagine you live in a neighborhood where people have guns and actually use them. Wouldn't you be a bit stressed out and thus being more prone to make errors, communicate incorrectly, both as patient but also as nurse/doctor?
- yeetawayhn 6y ago
  > Imagine you live in a neighborhood where people have guns and actually use them. Wouldn't you be a bit stressed out and thus being more prone to make errors, communicate incorrectly, both as patient but also as nurse/doctor? No, have you never lived in a rural area?
ericb 6y ago
Speaking for myself, I downvoted not because you are factually wrong. I downvoted because your entire argument is whataboutism. It is irrelevant to the topic being discussed, and makes the entire debate worse for its presence.
- Bancakes 6y ago
  Giving any sort of context in order to destroy FUD is now whatabautism? I guess you just have confirmation bias, huh.

rsj_hn 6y ago

Why compare the US to Europe? The US is roughly 60% Europe, 25% Latin America, 10% Africa and 5% Asia. It has the homicide rate you would expect if you averaged the homicide rates for these continents - roughly 5 per 100,000, which is the global average. People have this schizophrenic notion that the US should have the demographics of Brazil but the homicide rate of Sweden, and that aint gonna happen no matter what kind of gun control laws you pass. Same thing for measures of corruption, etc. So you have nations with very low homicide rates, like Bangladesh, versus nations with high homicide rates, like Nigeria or Brazil or Jamaica. And the gun control laws don't seem to make much of a difference in comparison to ethnicity. Looking at Europe, you have wide variations in gun ownership rates but a fairly low homicide rate across the board. Looking at US states, again wide variations of gun ownership rates not well correlated to homicide rates. So stop pretending that the high homicide rates in the US, which are accounted for in urban centers are because of loose gun control laws in DC or Chicago. The US has exactly the homicide rate you'd expect just by using WHO intentional homicide rates per continent and comparing that to US demographics.

kbelder 6y ago
Thank you, that has given me a new train of thought to ride.
- rsj_hn 6y ago
  It's an important factor to consider. Just because you copy, say, the legislative system of Switzerland isn't going to give you Swiss outcomes. There was a story about some Latin American nations trying to copy Swedish style practices and it turned out an absolute disaster. In Japan, if you leave a cell phone in a coffee shop, you can come back hours later and it will be given to you. In Russia, not so much. In the 80s there was an effort -- the early shoots of globalism -- of trying to "industrialize" west Africa by trying to import Western European-style management and business practices, and all of these projects failed, and some resulted in large debt loads being carried. One wonders what could have happened if they just let Africa be Africa and develop its own industries with its own practices at its own pace. You are not going to get English property rights or rule of law, but you will get something that actually works in the local environment, which is more important, IMO.

Huwyt_Nashi031 6y ago

They also tend to have a much higher proportion of Europeans than America does. You would need to isolate the rate of European American firearm homicides for it to be comparable. And I understand this is a politically charged comment but the statistics bear it out and I won't ignore that in favour of progressivism: if you count only White Americans, USA has a comparable homicide rate to most European countries.

bsder 6y ago

And, if it holds (cite please because I really don't believe the top parent), it probably only holds in the US in gun ownership areas that are predominantly non-minority. And probably only to certain levels of gun ownership. Once you start getting enough gun ownership, you start getting the "Who's the bad guy?" problem when there are conflicts. And the cops won't be terribly restrained if the gun owners aren't white.

m463 6y ago

I wonder if it holds up at the state level. Each state has different firearm availability and laws. Some states have very liberal gun laws, including automatic or semi-automatic weapons and concealed carry. Others have very strict laws, and with limited types of guns available and a loaded gun in a car or concealing a handgun would involve jail time.

mcv 6y ago
Restrictions per state don't mean a whole lot if you can just drive to another state without border checks, though.
- yeetawayhn 6y ago
  Except when most of the guns used in crimes come from within the state, how are you going to scapegoat those other states?

throwaway189262 6y ago

I have a strong suspicion that firearm deaths are related to crime which is related to wealth inequality. Of which US does extremely badly compared to most developed countries. People become criminals when there's few other options

milkrocks 6y ago

Now try breaking it down by race, and you'll see if it wasn't for blacks and hispanics we'd have one of the lowest gun crime rates in the world. This begs the question is it a gun problem in America or a different problem?

badmadrad 6y ago
I see where you are heading but I think you have to take in 1 level deeper than race or skin color. Its culture. There are many non violent blacks and hispanics but their culture and values lead them in that direction. The blacks and hispanics you are describing have a culture problem.
- milkrocks 6y ago
  Unfortunately FBI crime statistics don't break it down by culture, the fact of the matter is though we don't have a gun problem.