5 year old shoots infant in the head

[Johan]

I know who said what. You asked why we can't use these conversations constructively and I told you why. I don't find bashing constructive. Its great that you're willing to put up with it and/or ignore it. I'm not.

[PickelledEggs]

I know who said what. You asked why we can't use these conversations constructively and I told you why. I don't find bashing constructive. Its great that you're willing to put up with it and/or ignore it. I'm not.

I'm not sure what you mean by "put up with /ignore it". Can you reword that last post so I know what you're saying? How is thinking constructively ignoring a problem like gun tragedies?

Sent from your mom.

[Atheon]

Guns don't kill people, five-year-olds with guns do.

[SGOS]

Guns don't kill people. People with guns do.

[Johan]

I'm not sure what you mean by "put up with /ignore it". Can you reword that last post so I know what you're saying? How is thinking constructively ignoring a problem like gun tragedies?

Sent from your mom.

I said ignoring the bashing. As in ignoring the posts that say things like 'if only that infant had a gun....' That is a post which meant to do nothing but insult those who support gun rights. You wanna have a constructive conversation about the problem? Great, so would I. But weeding through the posts that are meant to do nothing but insult in order to get to the posts which are actually trying to have a constructive dialog gets old quick and I no longer have the desire to put up with it.

I said exactly that earlier in the thread and the response by someone else was 'well shame on you Johan.' And your reply to that post said 'exactly what I was thinking'. Clear enough for you now?

[Solitary]

Johan, are you willing to kill someone with a gun that is unarmed that invades your house?

[PickelledEggs]

I said ignoring the bashing. As in ignoring the posts that say things like 'if only that infant had a gun....' That is a post which meant to do nothing but insult those who support gun rights. You wanna have a constructive conversation about the problem? Great, so would I. But weeding through the posts that are meant to do nothing but insult in order to get to the posts which are actually trying to have a constructive dialog gets old quick and I no longer have the desire to put up with it.

I said exactly that earlier in the thread and the response by someone else was 'well shame on you Johan.' And your reply to that post said 'exactly what I was thinking'. Clear enough for you now?

Oh ok. Yeah I agree.

So let's move on from bashing each other and try to come up with something. We're not stupid on here. I bet we can at think of something, even if it's just shy of only hinting a solution...  Which I would say is better than nothing.

Sent from your mom.

[Solitary]

I agree too, so give us a rational argument for owning a hand gun, and preventing accidents that kill with one, suicide by one, and how they make us safer when every Tom, Dick, Jane, and Harry has one. Solitary

[Johan]

Johan, are you willing to kill someone with a gun that is unarmed that invades your house?

Depends. You've said they're unarmed. But do they intend to harm me or my family or do they simply intend to do something else such as steal some valuables and make a hasty exit the moment someone in the house is aware of their presence?

Possessions are insured and I would not be comfortable killing someone over the theft of household goods. But if the home invader in question was there with the intent of harming me or my family, say a rapist with a knife for instance. Well lets just say I'd have no ethical problem with bringing a gun to a knife fight in that situation. Killing the intruder would not be my intent at that point but protecting my family would.

But this is all hypothetical. I don't own any handguns, only small caliber long guns which are kept locked and unloaded in the basement. IOW, in a home invasion situation my guns aren't going to do squat for me. But yeah, if someone was attacking my wife and I could get my hands on a kitchen cleaver or a framing hammer or a chainsaw or a crowbar or, well you get the idea. I would use whatever object I could find to serve as a weapon and I use it until the intruder were no longer a threat. Them living or dying would not be a concern of mine at that point, only that they are no longer a threat.

[PickelledEggs]

I agree too, so give us a rational argument for owning a hand gun, and preventing accidents that kill with one, suicide by one, and how they make us safer when every Tom, Dick, Jane, and Harry has one. Solitary

I was actually thinking more along the lines of what we can do to prevent things like this from happening again...  Like maybe PSAs or something...  I wasn't really looking to start an argument about if people should or shouldn't own guns. I was however thinking more along the lines of getting people aware of how bad the problem is so they care about doing something about it.

Sent from your mom.

[Johan]

I was actually thinking more along the lines of what we can do to prevent things like this from happening again...  Like maybe PSAs or something...  I wasn't really looking to start an argument about if people should or shouldn't own guns. I was however thinking more along the lines of getting people aware of how bad the problem is so they care about doing something about it.

Sent from your mom.

I don't think PSA's are going to get it done. Its already very common for states to have laws in place that prevent you from leaving the store when buying a gun unless you have a lock for it. Bring your own lock or you have to buy one in order to get the gun out of the store.

No one can buy a gun legally without knowing full well that they're supposed to keep it locked when not in use.

As I've suggested before I'd like to see a law which holds the registered gun owner accountable for deaths that happen as a result of them storing the gun unlocked. Leave your unlocked and your nephew gets his hands on it and accidentally shoots his brother with it? You as the registered owner face murder charges as a result the same as you'd face if you yourself had pulled the trigger. That's the law I'd like to see. That's the law I think is needed to convince people to choose to keep their guns locked. But that's also a law that I don't expect will ever see the light of day in this country.

[Johan]

I agree too, so give us a rational argument for owning a hand gun, and preventing accidents that kill with one, suicide by one, and how they make us safer when every Tom, Dick, Jane, and Harry has one. Solitary

Well the first thing in your question that jumps out at me is the suicide thing. Suicide is a problem. But for the life of me I can't understand why people want to reduce the number of suicides by guns. That seems really disingenuous to me as though its saying we don't care if people kill themselves in other ways so long as they don't use a gun to do it.

Now I understand that this is not the case and that the thinking is if we can make guns more difficult to get we can thus lower the number of people who use guns to kill themselves and therefore lower the number of people who kill themselves overall. But the problem is the numbers don't show that to be the case. Look at Australia. They imposed extremely tight gun restrictions in the late 90's along with a buyback program that took 600,000+ out of the hands of citizens at that time. And the suicide rate by firearms did indeed drop after that. The problem is the overall suicide rate didn't really change at all. People still committed suicide at almost exactly the same rate, they just found other ways to do it.

[Hakurei Reimu]

Where did you get this?

[PickelledEggs]

So what are some similar things that we have greatly reduced in terms of tragedies? Is there anything that can be directly compared to accidental gun deaths? Does drunk driving count as something like that?

I'm wondering if we can look at similar things and use the means that we used to reduce tragedies for those things and apply them to gun accidents.

[Johan]

I'm wondering if we can look at similar things and use the means that we used to reduce tragedies for those things and apply them to gun accidents.

Well before we get too deep into trying to fix this problem, perhaps we should get an idea for how big the problem actually is.

This link shows the top five causes of accidental death in the US.
http://listosaur.com/miscellaneous/top-5-causes-of-accidental-death-in-the-united-states/
Accidental shootings aren't in the top 5. But they are on the list at number 7 with about 600 deaths per year. So clearly this is a problem and something should be done because 600 deaths are 600 too many and I don't want to downplay that at all. Especially when most of those deaths could probably be prevented by secure firearm storage practices. But lets add some perspective before get too far into brainstorming solutions.

Number one on that list is auto accidents with 42,000 deaths per year. And according to the CDC about 10,000 of those involved a drunk driver. Source: http://www.cdc.gov/Motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html

600 accidental gun deaths per year. 10,000 deaths at the hands of drunk drivers per year. If you use the search function on this forum and put in 'drunk driving' you will get one page of results that point to 30 different threads. If you search this forum for the word 'gun' you will get 21 pages of results. 600 accidental shooting deaths and 100's of threads, 10,000 accidental dui deaths and 30 threads. Hmmm....

Again I'm not denying there is a problem or that something shouldn't be done. But the simple fact is there are far more deadly problems out there that no one seems to care about. The reason this thread exists at all is because this event made the national news. How many people died at the hands of a drunk driver within 100 miles of that Walmart that day? Those deaths will barely make the local paper much less nation news.

I'm all for trying to reduce accidental death. But lets not allow the media and their tendency to sensationalize what sells and downplay what doesn't cloud our view of the where the biggest problems actually are.