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750 were killed by hammers or clubs which includes any blunt force attack (vase, bat, golf club, etc. I am assuming that you're accurately quoting a number, tho

750 were killed by hammers or clubs which includes any blunt force attack (vase, bat, golf club, etc. I am assuming that you're accurately quoting a number, though last I saw that number was more in the 450 range). Secondly every home has numerous objects that qualify as "clubs", many of them serving valid, functional roles (for instance to hammer, or to hit balls, etc). In many households a firearm has one single purpose, which is to kill or maim (given that hunting is rare, though I suppose that's a weird exception I make given that hunting is ultimately about killing, food pyramid and all). So that's the first gross misrepresentation that you've made. The second is that few argue for "rifle control", but instead want "gun control". Those guns that kill 30,000+ Americans per year (whether homicide, suicide, or accidental). I'm a hunter (albeit here in Canada), but just as I despise misrepresentation of facts one way, it doesn't justify gross misrepresentation the other way.

granitepail 13y ago
It's also worth noting that while blunt objects such as hammers and baseball bats find uses in construction and non-violent sports, guns do not necessarily share such innocent use cases. Sport shooting is the major exemption (I'm quite a fan, myself) but at the end of the day guns are designed to put holes (some messier than others) in objects very far away. When a gun is pointed at a living organism and the trigger is pulled, its chances of survival plummet.
- learc83 13y ago
  > When a gun is pointed at a living organism and the trigger is pulled, its chances of survival plummet. When a hammer is raised above someone's head and lowered with force, chances of survival plummet. Guns are a far more useful tool than baseball bats. Guns have a non recreational purposes as functional tools, baseball bats do not. The number of deaths per baseball bat are far higher than the number of deaths per "assault weapon", making baseball bats deadlier by far.
  - tome 13y ago
    > The number of deaths per baseball bat are far higher than the number of deaths per "assault weapon", making baseball bats deadlier by far. Wait, are you really claiming that a baseball bat is deadlier than an assault weapon?
    - learc83 13y ago
      Yes, per baseball bat. If you are looking at banning something because it causes deaths. You want to look at how many deaths are caused per item. Reducing the number of items by X will result in Y fewer deaths. Baseball bats kill more people per baseball bat than do "assault weapons". What other reason could you have for banning something other than reducing harm. Looking strictly at the numbers banning baseball bats would prevent more killings than banning "assault weapons".
      - corresation 13y ago
        Baseball bats kill more people per baseball bat than do "assault weapons". What font of imaginary statistics are you pulling this ludicrous claim from? Do you know how many hundreds of millions of baseball bats there are in the United States? If we're discussing the confused, exaggerated stats that originally kicked this off, add in the billions of other "club-like" objects in circulation. You are making absolutely ridiculous claims.
        nsmartt 13y ago
        Do keep in mind that the parent was specifically referring to assault weapons, which are presumably much more rare than other firearms, and also very rarely used in crime. I have no statistics, and I have no clue how many baseball bat deaths occur annually. I just thought maybe this would be a useful reminder.
        mindcrime 13y ago
        I haven't looked up the stats lately, but IIRC, the number of times a legally owned actual assault weapon was used in a crime in the US was something like 3 or 4... ever.
- Terretta 13y ago
  Fantastic point. Considering the rifle's primary purpose, and the number of them out there, it certainly suggests the typical rifle owner must be pretty responsible. Compare to the 200 kiddie pool deaths every summer, which have the unfortunate side effect of almost exclusively killing kids despite mostly non lethal purposes, and rifle owners start to seem extraordinarily more responsible than kiddie pool owners. At some point, I think we might as well cut through the hyperventilation, acknowledge potentially dangerous things are potentially dangerous, and let people choose their own risk profiles.
  - corresation 13y ago
    Compare to the 200 kiddie pool deaths every summer You have a very loose handle on facts. There are about 20 "kiddie pool" deaths in the United States in an average year. There are many more swimming pool accidents, which is exactly why there are endless regulations and safety actions around swimming pools, and it remains a serious tragedy that absolutely needs action. It is completely and outrageously unacceptable that children continue to die tragic deaths in swimming pools, and whether it's increased safety measures, or more education starting at a younger age, it is untenable and at some point in the future people will look back and marvel at the stupid risk taking that occurred. Of course it's a garbage analogy anyways. Swimming pools provide recreation and physical activity for tens of millions of people. Guns generally sit in closets until that day it's used to commit a suicide, a robbery, a murder, etc.
runjake 13y ago
> In many households a firearm has one single purpose, which is to kill or maim (given that hunting is rare). Kill or maim criminal intruders (given that murderers are rare). I'm not sure where in Canada you are, but hunting is far from rare in Canada and most areas of the US.
- corresation 13y ago
  but hunting is far from rare in Canada 5% of Canadians hunt. That qualifies as pretty rare to me. I don't know what the percentage is in the US, but just gut feeling is that there's a wide gap between gun ownership and hunting.
  - runjake 13y ago
    It doesn't to me. You're factoring in all Canadians of all ages (newborn->elderly, men, women) in all areas. 1 in 20 of every single human being regardless of age/gender seems pretty common in context. If I were to perform the same sort of blanket percentage on Americans that actually watch baseball games regularly, I bet I'd reach a similar percentage. That doesn't mean that baseball fans are rare. A citation for your 5% figure would be nice, because it might contain some meaningful context to lay a better picture than it does by itself.
    - corresation 13y ago
      5%, or 1/20, is the commonly reported figure - https://www.google.ca/search?q=percentage+of+canada+hunts https://www.google.ca/search?q=percentage+of+canada+hunts I live in the Toronto area, and around here the percentage is, unsurprisingly, incredibly low. Out of the thousands of people that I engage with, I know one other person who hunts.
  - evan_ 13y ago
    That's still 1,724,138 people.
- voidlogic 13y ago
  I'm not comfortable with the parent posters assumptions. I live in Wisconsin and last I heard 15% of residents hunt regularly. I'd estimate for every 5 people I know who have guns for hunting, one has a handgun. I don't personally know anyone who has a handgun and does not have guns for hunting.
learc83 13y ago
>The second is that few argue for "rifle control", but instead want "gun control". Except that's not what was actually happening. Most of what was hotly debated over the last few months has been over an "Assault Weapons Ban", that is a ban on certain semi-automatic rifles, very rarely involved in crime. It was only after that was defeated that people started talking about universal background checks. >Those guns that kill 30,000+ Americans per year 60% of those are from suicide. If you look at suicide rate by country--there is no correlation with gun ownership. How is gun control going to help our suicide rate? The best information we have shows it's not going to help because there are too many easily available alternates.
- nemof 13y ago
  Yes there is http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/03/suicides-vs-handgun-background-checks http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/03/suicides-vs-handgun-... Introduce background checks and you will reduce the number of suicides, more likely than not.
  - learc83 13y ago
    The conclusions motherjones got from that study were absolutely ridiculous. The big graph they display is meaningless. Here is a quote from the article. "...gun suicides, where the majority of victims don't have a documented serious mental illness." In many states background checks don't require a waiting period. So a background check wouldn't have stopped them from buying a gun. Their entire premise is based on suicide being quick and impulsive. Yet their only data is on background checks for private sales. Are you telling me that someone who wants quick access to a gun is going to wait until Saturday rolls around, drive to a gunshow and buy a gun?
    - jsonne 13y ago
      Motherjones also fails to recognize that MANY states already have mandatory "cooling off periods" where if you buy a gun on say Monday you can't pick it up until later in the week. http://www.ehow.com/list_6745387_illinois-gun-license-requirements.html http://www.ehow.com/list_6745387_illinois-gun-license-requir... "As with many states, Illinois has a mandatory 72-hour wait period between the time a person purchases a handgun and the time he can take the gun home from a licensed dealer."
jordan0day 13y ago
Do you have a source for that 30,000+ figure? The FBI statistics link in this thread mentions around 8600 firearm-related murders for 2011 (but not suicide or accidents). That's the only hard data I've seen in this thread so far though. In these sorts of threads, anecdotes and hyperbole can quickly overrule data and thoughtfulness, so I'm just hoping that numbers like "30,000+" aren't being pulled out of thin air. I'm not saying that's what you did, I'd just like to see people actually source their claims in threads like this which tend to devolve quickly.
- corresation 13y ago
  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-19/american-gun-deaths-to-exceed-traffic-fatalities-by-2015.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-19/american-gun-deaths... As others have mentioned, a hefty percentage of those deaths are suicides. Would those suicides have happened if the option of a firearm wasn't available? Perhaps.
  - ctdonath 13y ago
    Japan has a very high suicide rate despite near non-existence of guns.
    - DigitalTurk 13y ago
      The issue at stake here is the counterfactual ‘If guns were (not) available, would the suicide rate be different’. How does your (oddly specific) statistic address this question?
      - ctdonath 13y ago
        The suicidal find a way. Where guns are not available, in at least one major comparable example, the suicide rate is different by being higher (by a lot). Sure, guns make it easy...but there are many other easy ways.
        13y ago
ownagefool 13y ago
I have a baseball bat in my house and it's not there to hit balls but to hit anyone who attempts to come into my home without my permission. I doubt I'll ever need to use it, but there you go, it's one single purpose is to "maim or kill", which in reality is actually protection and I'd be happy with fear itself being the deciding factor. I don't come down on either side on gun control, they're mostly banned here in the UK and that's just how it is. However, I think you'll find most people actually consider protection is a legitimate reason to have a weapon, so you shouldn't so easily write it off.
- tome 13y ago
  You are correct, but it's a matter of degree. It's much, much easier to maim or kill with a gun than with a baseball bat and that's why I'm glad no one has guns in the UK. If someone comes at me with a baseball bat I can run away. If someone comes at me with a gun, I'm dead.
  - mikegotroot 13y ago
    Not to belittle your point, but you're not necessarily dead if someone comes at you with a gun. Many factors dictate if the shooting will be fatal. For example, in far too many cases police officers and others defending themselves have had to fire multiple shots to disable or kill an attacker. And in some cases have failed. So you might not be dead. With that said, people do have guns in the UK, just not law abiding people. Gun crime is apparently up 89% the UK since the ban as well, so there are guns in the UK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223193/Culture-violence-Gun-crime-goes-89-decade.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223193/Culture-viol... So the points being: 1) you may survive an attack with a firearm, according to the OP it appears a majority of gunshot victims do (30k shot vs 8k killed in the US) 2) there are guns in the UK, and more gun crime since the ban went into effect. Infer from that what you will.
    - tome 13y ago
      > 1) you may survive an attack with a firearm Agreed, my initial claim was hyperbole. I don't think weaking my claim to "serious injury" weakens my point. > 2) there are guns in the UK, and more gun crime since the ban went into effect. Infer from that what you will. Twice a tiny amount is still a tiny amount.
marknutter 13y ago
> In many households a firearm has one single purpose, which is to kill or maim Or, you know... to shoot targets or clay pigeons.

granitepail 13y ago

It's also worth noting that while blunt objects such as hammers and baseball bats find uses in construction and non-violent sports, guns do not necessarily share such innocent use cases. Sport shooting is the major exemption (I'm quite a fan, myself) but at the end of the day guns are designed to put holes (some messier than others) in objects very far away. When a gun is pointed at a living organism and the trigger is pulled, its chances of survival plummet.

learc83 13y ago
> When a gun is pointed at a living organism and the trigger is pulled, its chances of survival plummet. When a hammer is raised above someone's head and lowered with force, chances of survival plummet. Guns are a far more useful tool than baseball bats. Guns have a non recreational purposes as functional tools, baseball bats do not. The number of deaths per baseball bat are far higher than the number of deaths per "assault weapon", making baseball bats deadlier by far.
- tome 13y ago
  > The number of deaths per baseball bat are far higher than the number of deaths per "assault weapon", making baseball bats deadlier by far. Wait, are you really claiming that a baseball bat is deadlier than an assault weapon?
  - learc83 13y ago
    Yes, per baseball bat. If you are looking at banning something because it causes deaths. You want to look at how many deaths are caused per item. Reducing the number of items by X will result in Y fewer deaths. Baseball bats kill more people per baseball bat than do "assault weapons". What other reason could you have for banning something other than reducing harm. Looking strictly at the numbers banning baseball bats would prevent more killings than banning "assault weapons".
    - corresation 13y ago
      Baseball bats kill more people per baseball bat than do "assault weapons". What font of imaginary statistics are you pulling this ludicrous claim from? Do you know how many hundreds of millions of baseball bats there are in the United States? If we're discussing the confused, exaggerated stats that originally kicked this off, add in the billions of other "club-like" objects in circulation. You are making absolutely ridiculous claims.
      - nsmartt 13y ago
        Do keep in mind that the parent was specifically referring to assault weapons, which are presumably much more rare than other firearms, and also very rarely used in crime. I have no statistics, and I have no clue how many baseball bat deaths occur annually. I just thought maybe this would be a useful reminder.
        mindcrime 13y ago
        I haven't looked up the stats lately, but IIRC, the number of times a legally owned actual assault weapon was used in a crime in the US was something like 3 or 4... ever.
Terretta 13y ago
Fantastic point. Considering the rifle's primary purpose, and the number of them out there, it certainly suggests the typical rifle owner must be pretty responsible. Compare to the 200 kiddie pool deaths every summer, which have the unfortunate side effect of almost exclusively killing kids despite mostly non lethal purposes, and rifle owners start to seem extraordinarily more responsible than kiddie pool owners. At some point, I think we might as well cut through the hyperventilation, acknowledge potentially dangerous things are potentially dangerous, and let people choose their own risk profiles.
- corresation 13y ago
  Compare to the 200 kiddie pool deaths every summer You have a very loose handle on facts. There are about 20 "kiddie pool" deaths in the United States in an average year. There are many more swimming pool accidents, which is exactly why there are endless regulations and safety actions around swimming pools, and it remains a serious tragedy that absolutely needs action. It is completely and outrageously unacceptable that children continue to die tragic deaths in swimming pools, and whether it's increased safety measures, or more education starting at a younger age, it is untenable and at some point in the future people will look back and marvel at the stupid risk taking that occurred. Of course it's a garbage analogy anyways. Swimming pools provide recreation and physical activity for tens of millions of people. Guns generally sit in closets until that day it's used to commit a suicide, a robbery, a murder, etc.

runjake 13y ago

> In many households a firearm has one single purpose, which is to kill or maim (given that hunting is rare). Kill or maim criminal intruders (given that murderers are rare). I'm not sure where in Canada you are, but hunting is far from rare in Canada and most areas of the US.

corresation 13y ago
but hunting is far from rare in Canada 5% of Canadians hunt. That qualifies as pretty rare to me. I don't know what the percentage is in the US, but just gut feeling is that there's a wide gap between gun ownership and hunting.
- runjake 13y ago
  It doesn't to me. You're factoring in all Canadians of all ages (newborn->elderly, men, women) in all areas. 1 in 20 of every single human being regardless of age/gender seems pretty common in context. If I were to perform the same sort of blanket percentage on Americans that actually watch baseball games regularly, I bet I'd reach a similar percentage. That doesn't mean that baseball fans are rare. A citation for your 5% figure would be nice, because it might contain some meaningful context to lay a better picture than it does by itself.
  - corresation 13y ago
    5%, or 1/20, is the commonly reported figure - https://www.google.ca/search?q=percentage+of+canada+hunts https://www.google.ca/search?q=percentage+of+canada+hunts I live in the Toronto area, and around here the percentage is, unsurprisingly, incredibly low. Out of the thousands of people that I engage with, I know one other person who hunts.
- evan_ 13y ago
  That's still 1,724,138 people.
voidlogic 13y ago
I'm not comfortable with the parent posters assumptions. I live in Wisconsin and last I heard 15% of residents hunt regularly. I'd estimate for every 5 people I know who have guns for hunting, one has a handgun. I don't personally know anyone who has a handgun and does not have guns for hunting.

learc83 13y ago

>The second is that few argue for "rifle control", but instead want "gun control". Except that's not what was actually happening. Most of what was hotly debated over the last few months has been over an "Assault Weapons Ban", that is a ban on certain semi-automatic rifles, very rarely involved in crime. It was only after that was defeated that people started talking about universal background checks. >Those guns that kill 30,000+ Americans per year 60% of those are from suicide. If you look at suicide rate by country--there is no correlation with gun ownership. How is gun control going to help our suicide rate? The best information we have shows it's not going to help because there are too many easily available alternates.

nemof 13y ago
Yes there is http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/03/suicides-vs-handgun-background-checks http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/03/suicides-vs-handgun-... Introduce background checks and you will reduce the number of suicides, more likely than not.
- learc83 13y ago
  The conclusions motherjones got from that study were absolutely ridiculous. The big graph they display is meaningless. Here is a quote from the article. "...gun suicides, where the majority of victims don't have a documented serious mental illness." In many states background checks don't require a waiting period. So a background check wouldn't have stopped them from buying a gun. Their entire premise is based on suicide being quick and impulsive. Yet their only data is on background checks for private sales. Are you telling me that someone who wants quick access to a gun is going to wait until Saturday rolls around, drive to a gunshow and buy a gun?
  - jsonne 13y ago
    Motherjones also fails to recognize that MANY states already have mandatory "cooling off periods" where if you buy a gun on say Monday you can't pick it up until later in the week. http://www.ehow.com/list_6745387_illinois-gun-license-requirements.html http://www.ehow.com/list_6745387_illinois-gun-license-requir... "As with many states, Illinois has a mandatory 72-hour wait period between the time a person purchases a handgun and the time he can take the gun home from a licensed dealer."

jordan0day 13y ago

Do you have a source for that 30,000+ figure? The FBI statistics link in this thread mentions around 8600 firearm-related murders for 2011 (but not suicide or accidents). That's the only hard data I've seen in this thread so far though. In these sorts of threads, anecdotes and hyperbole can quickly overrule data and thoughtfulness, so I'm just hoping that numbers like "30,000+" aren't being pulled out of thin air. I'm not saying that's what you did, I'd just like to see people actually source their claims in threads like this which tend to devolve quickly.

corresation 13y ago
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-19/american-gun-deaths-to-exceed-traffic-fatalities-by-2015.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-19/american-gun-deaths... As others have mentioned, a hefty percentage of those deaths are suicides. Would those suicides have happened if the option of a firearm wasn't available? Perhaps.
- ctdonath 13y ago
  Japan has a very high suicide rate despite near non-existence of guns.
  - DigitalTurk 13y ago
    The issue at stake here is the counterfactual ‘If guns were (not) available, would the suicide rate be different’. How does your (oddly specific) statistic address this question?
    - ctdonath 13y ago
      The suicidal find a way. Where guns are not available, in at least one major comparable example, the suicide rate is different by being higher (by a lot). Sure, guns make it easy...but there are many other easy ways.
      - 13y ago

ownagefool 13y ago

I have a baseball bat in my house and it's not there to hit balls but to hit anyone who attempts to come into my home without my permission. I doubt I'll ever need to use it, but there you go, it's one single purpose is to "maim or kill", which in reality is actually protection and I'd be happy with fear itself being the deciding factor. I don't come down on either side on gun control, they're mostly banned here in the UK and that's just how it is. However, I think you'll find most people actually consider protection is a legitimate reason to have a weapon, so you shouldn't so easily write it off.

tome 13y ago
You are correct, but it's a matter of degree. It's much, much easier to maim or kill with a gun than with a baseball bat and that's why I'm glad no one has guns in the UK. If someone comes at me with a baseball bat I can run away. If someone comes at me with a gun, I'm dead.
- mikegotroot 13y ago
  Not to belittle your point, but you're not necessarily dead if someone comes at you with a gun. Many factors dictate if the shooting will be fatal. For example, in far too many cases police officers and others defending themselves have had to fire multiple shots to disable or kill an attacker. And in some cases have failed. So you might not be dead. With that said, people do have guns in the UK, just not law abiding people. Gun crime is apparently up 89% the UK since the ban as well, so there are guns in the UK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223193/Culture-violence-Gun-crime-goes-89-decade.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223193/Culture-viol... So the points being: 1) you may survive an attack with a firearm, according to the OP it appears a majority of gunshot victims do (30k shot vs 8k killed in the US) 2) there are guns in the UK, and more gun crime since the ban went into effect. Infer from that what you will.
  - tome 13y ago
    > 1) you may survive an attack with a firearm Agreed, my initial claim was hyperbole. I don't think weaking my claim to "serious injury" weakens my point. > 2) there are guns in the UK, and more gun crime since the ban went into effect. Infer from that what you will. Twice a tiny amount is still a tiny amount.

marknutter 13y ago

> In many households a firearm has one single purpose, which is to kill or maim Or, you know... to shoot targets or clay pigeons.