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> Guns aren't that scary. We are good at identifying and arresting/shooting gunmen, they can rarely kill more than a handful of us Guessing you're from the US

> Guns aren't that scary. We are good at identifying and arresting/shooting gunmen, they can rarely kill more than a handful of us Guessing you're from the US - where there were 14,078 firearm related homicide deaths in 2010? I don't think that's an indicator you're any good at identifying gunmen at all. 14,000 deaths is also considerably more than "a handful". Gun deaths in UK in 2007 totalled 51. So yes, I do feel less scared in the UK than I do in USA. In 2010, 499 service personnel were killed in Afghanistan. I wonder what public sentiment would be if that total was closer to the 14,000 back at home. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Stat... http://icasualties.org/oef/ http://icasualties.org/oef/

pessimizer 13y ago
>closer to the gun death rate back at home You haven't mentioned one rate, just totals.
- TomGullen 13y ago
  Yes you're right, edited.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    In the wrong direction, though; I think for your point, it's important to cite rates. If we only sent 500 soldiers to Afghanistan, but the US population was 5 billion, thoughtful people would think that the US was remarkably safe when it came to gun violence according to your totals.
betterunix 13y ago
"14,000 deaths is also considerably more than "a handful"." It is also considerably less than the number of automobile deaths per year -- less than half, in fact. "Gun deaths in UK in 2007 totalled 51. So yes, I do feel less scared in the UK than I do in USA." The murder rate is lower in the UK for all weapons, so you are right to feel safer there.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Eh, if you are not a common criminal or associate with common criminals, then the chances that you will be shot by anyone but yourself are not really worth considering, even with the dramatically higher gun death rate in the US. While I would be safer in the UK I wouldn't say that I would feel more safe because that would imply that I could feel more safe about my prospects of being killed by a gun than I do right now. That meter is already pegged to zero.
- wtallis 13y ago
  Comparing gun deaths with automobile deaths to show that gun deaths aren't that big of a problem is silly. Automobile deaths are caused by and counterbalanced by the extreme usefulness of cars, where guns are mostly just for sport. So gun deaths can be easily reduced by reducing the number of guns, and the side-effects would be very minor compared to taking the naive way of reducing automobile deaths. If your goal is to reduce death rates, you have to take into account not just the death rate, but how easy it is to change that death rate.
  - hga 13y ago
    At this point, guns in the US are mainly "used" for self-defense; hunting has gotten to be a very low percentage, between 14-17% from what I've read in the last 2 years. And guns are used about 2.25 million times a year in self-defense, which I consider to meet the standard of "extreme usefulness". But as long as we're talking automobiles, the absolute number of fatal gun accidents per year is around 600 (down a quarter during the same period the US population and number of guns owner increased by ~50%). The early estimate for 2012 car accident fatalities is 34,080 (http://www.nhtsa.gov/NCSA http://www.nhtsa.gov/NCSA). Guns turn out to be a lot easier to use safely.
    - wtallis 13y ago
      All the gun owners I know do almost exclusively range/target shooting, a category you seem to have ignored. And you also don't seem to have at all tried to normalize for the amount of time spent using a car versus using a gun. Are you even trying to make a valid point?
Jach 13y ago
Meanwhile...[1] Homicides from firearms aren't even close to the largest cause of death. More people kill themselves with firearms than they kill others (19k vs 11k--I'm not sure where that wiki page is getting its numbers since their own citation matches mine[2]). We also have 5k unspecified or non-firearm-related homicides. Across the whole world, about 1.8 people die per second, 14k is about 2 hours, spread across an entire year. All this is why 14k is a handful relative to other causes of death. [1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm [2] http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/10LCID_Violence_Related_Injury_Deaths_2010-a.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/10LCID_Violence_Relate...

pessimizer 13y ago

>closer to the gun death rate back at home You haven't mentioned one rate, just totals.

TomGullen 13y ago
Yes you're right, edited.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  In the wrong direction, though; I think for your point, it's important to cite rates. If we only sent 500 soldiers to Afghanistan, but the US population was 5 billion, thoughtful people would think that the US was remarkably safe when it came to gun violence according to your totals.

betterunix 13y ago

"14,000 deaths is also considerably more than "a handful"." It is also considerably less than the number of automobile deaths per year -- less than half, in fact. "Gun deaths in UK in 2007 totalled 51. So yes, I do feel less scared in the UK than I do in USA." The murder rate is lower in the UK for all weapons, so you are right to feel safer there.

jlgreco 13y ago
Eh, if you are not a common criminal or associate with common criminals, then the chances that you will be shot by anyone but yourself are not really worth considering, even with the dramatically higher gun death rate in the US. While I would be safer in the UK I wouldn't say that I would feel more safe because that would imply that I could feel more safe about my prospects of being killed by a gun than I do right now. That meter is already pegged to zero.
wtallis 13y ago
Comparing gun deaths with automobile deaths to show that gun deaths aren't that big of a problem is silly. Automobile deaths are caused by and counterbalanced by the extreme usefulness of cars, where guns are mostly just for sport. So gun deaths can be easily reduced by reducing the number of guns, and the side-effects would be very minor compared to taking the naive way of reducing automobile deaths. If your goal is to reduce death rates, you have to take into account not just the death rate, but how easy it is to change that death rate.
- hga 13y ago
  At this point, guns in the US are mainly "used" for self-defense; hunting has gotten to be a very low percentage, between 14-17% from what I've read in the last 2 years. And guns are used about 2.25 million times a year in self-defense, which I consider to meet the standard of "extreme usefulness". But as long as we're talking automobiles, the absolute number of fatal gun accidents per year is around 600 (down a quarter during the same period the US population and number of guns owner increased by ~50%). The early estimate for 2012 car accident fatalities is 34,080 (http://www.nhtsa.gov/NCSA http://www.nhtsa.gov/NCSA). Guns turn out to be a lot easier to use safely.
  - wtallis 13y ago
    All the gun owners I know do almost exclusively range/target shooting, a category you seem to have ignored. And you also don't seem to have at all tried to normalize for the amount of time spent using a car versus using a gun. Are you even trying to make a valid point?

Jach 13y ago

Meanwhile...[1] Homicides from firearms aren't even close to the largest cause of death. More people kill themselves with firearms than they kill others (19k vs 11k--I'm not sure where that wiki page is getting its numbers since their own citation matches mine[2]). We also have 5k unspecified or non-firearm-related homicides. Across the whole world, about 1.8 people die per second, 14k is about 2 hours, spread across an entire year. All this is why 14k is a handful relative to other causes of death. [1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm [2] http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/10LCID_Violence_Related_Injury_Deaths_2010-a.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/10LCID_Violence_Relate...