Gun Control is Completely Useless.

[B00Mer]

Gun-Toting Good Samaritan Thwarts Carjacking

A Georgia man with a concealed-carry license is being hailed as a hero after preventing an attempted carjacking and possibly saving a woman's life.

The harrowing incident was caught on surveillance camera at Fast Track Car Wash in Smyrna, Georgia, on Friday afternoon.

When a teenager tried to steal a woman's car, she jumped on the hood to try and stop him from driving away. Witnesses say that prompted the alleged thief to speed up.

A gun-toting bystander saw the chaos unfolding and drew his weapon, shooting the thief in the shoulder.

"The guy that got shot, he was falling out of the car and he was holding his chest. And he started shivering and shaking, and then he kind of flopped on the ground," witness Chris Roberts said.

The armed bystander, a Smyrna city employee, held the alleged carjacker at gunpoint until police arrived.

The suspect was transported to the hospital. He will be charged with felony aggravated assault and misdemeanor theft by taking of a motor vehicle.

Watch footage of the incident above.

source: Gun-Toting Good Samaritan Thwarts Carjacking

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JwwjTg4Oig

 

[bluebyrd35]

Well of course! They don't fit into your little world, so they don't exist!

I mean, don't bother checking the sources to see if the are reputable or accurately cited, that would require wayyyy too much thought!

Intellectually lazy, and incompetent.

Just go away....go watch the unicorns frolic in your back yard in your "reality".

I have checked your stats over and over and over again. I have matched them with others saying the exact opposite, including how stats can be skewed to display whatever one wants them to. I have given explanations why none of the recent years stats are reliable and which organization made sure they would not be. There have been no reliable stats since 2009 in the US and why those stats mean zilch. I am done!! I intend to let matters play out as they are meant to. I DON'T CARE as long as I am never in the line of fire.

However, I do feel very sorry about all those who have had close relatives shot, injured or permanently maimed through loose gun control laws. Sometimes they get lucky, like the lady last week shot in the head for blowing her car horn. She survived!!. So this will be my final post here for a good long while. I am no longer interested in trading insults. I have better things to do.....like going to the beach, gardening, throwing dinner parties and traveling.

I will not meet the eyes of the driver who cut me off, or honk my horn at him. I will not interfere with a domestic dispute (such as occurred on this street) several nights ago, but will call the police to sort it out (which another neighbor did), in other words I will be very careful not to offend, no matter the provocation while in the US. My advice to those who travel here in the next few years, is to follow those same rules. Oh and take shelter when the guns go off on New Years eve when you hear shots at midnight.

Oh I see what you just posted. I remember that, since it is not too far down the road from where I winter and I am going to New Smyrna Beach for supper with family on Saturday or Sunday to a new restaurant that has just opened there. You see I do not lie when I tell you about the violence here. That is one guy caught in the hundreds of shootings that have already occurred here since the New Year.



Oh and my world is certainly not small. So far Amsterdam is my favorite and Venice is next.......Got serenaded in a gondola there and brought traffic on that part of the canal to a halt. Can't beat that. bye.

 

[Colpy]

I have checked your stats over and over and over again. I have matched them with others saying the exact opposite,.

Liar.

You have neither checked my stats, nor do you have any that contradict them.

My stats come from three places:

1. StatsCan, which is certainly the most respected data source in Canada.

2. The Death Penalty Information Center in the USA, a very liberal organization that certainly is not going to lie to protect gun owners. They draw their homicide data from the FBI Crime Reports.....are you gonna tell me those are doctored?

3. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a rabidly anti-gun organization.

Cite your stats that contradict mine, or STFU.

 

[bluebyrd35]

Awk geez one more time.......The stats are not on gun violence (which include multiple cases of gun injuries, non fatal, maiming, non fatal injuries in robberies, no injuries, accidental shootings, not homicides and finally, suicides. These are violence by guns. The FBI as I have pointed out more than once, take on cases that their presence is REQUESTED on by the local police. Also, injuries by guns are no longer required to be reported to a central region in the US. Every state handles their own, in whatever way they choose to do so. The funding was cut off from the Department that used to compiled all those stats from all the US in the exact amount that represented the gun stats in 2008,

I have never questioned the Canadian stats, as all GUN shots, accidental, suicidal, deliberate homicides as well as accidental injuries to self or others must be reported to a central agency. Once more I reiterate ..........HOMICIDES are not all handled by the FBI and all gun shot woundings, maimings, robberies etc but are handled first by local police or the local hospitals, who are under no obligation in the US to report them to the FBI!! So, don;t keep repeating the same bloody nonsense.

Don't bother responding to me, research how and when the N.R.A managed to screw the stats for yourself. The Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence is not a government program and nobody is required to report to them. They depend on local news teams around the country to bother reporting such violence and on any reports published in newspapers. I have told you this many times over and I DO my homework.....now you do yours!!.

 

[Colpy]

Awk geez one more time.......The stats are not on gun violence (which include multiple cases of gun injuries, non fatal, maiming, non fatal injuries in robberies, no injuries, accidental shootings, not homicides and finally, suicides. These are violence by guns. The FBI as I have pointed out more than once, take on cases that their presence is REQUESTED on by the local police. Also, injuries by guns are no longer required to be reported to a central region in the US. Every state handles their own, in whatever way they choose to do so. The funding was cut off from the Department that used to compiled all those stats from all the US in the exact amount that represented the gun stats in 2008,

I have never questioned the Canadian stats, as all GUN shots, accidental, suicidal, deliberate homicides as well as accidental injuries to self or others must be reported to a central agency. Once more I reiterate ..........HOMICIDES are not all handled by the FBI and all gun shot woundings, maimings, robberies etc but are handled first by local police or the local hospitals, who are under no obligation in the US to report them to the FBI!! So, don;t keep repeating the same bloody nonsense.

Don't bother responding to me, research how and when the N.R.A managed to screw the stats for yourself. The Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence is not a government program and nobody is required to report to them. They depend on local news teams around the country to bother reporting such violence and on any reports published in newspapers. I have told you this many times over and I DO my homework.....now you do yours!!.

You do not have a clue.

You claimed to have "checked (my) stats over and over and over again." Liar. Show me the contradictory evidence, or STFU.

The FBI gathers yearly crime statistics, including homicide, from all sources and compiles the Crime Report.....it is part of their mandate, and it is very accurate.

The NRA can not change homicide stats.

 

[DaSleeper]

Not a clue

 

[bluebyrd35]

| Mother Jones.webarchive/Users/Frankie/Desktop/How The NRA Kills Gun Violence Research - Business Insider.webarchive/Users/Frankie/Desktop/CDC Ban on Gun Research Caused Lasting Damage - ABC News.webarchive/Users/Frankie/Desktop/Gun violence research: NRA and Congress blocked gun-control studies at CDC..webarchive/Users/Frankie/Desktop/Republicans Say No to CDC Gun Violence Research | Mother Jones.webarchive

 

[JLM]

| Mother Jones.webarchive/Users/Frankie/Desktop/How The NRA Kills Gun Violence Research - Business Insider.webarchive/Users/Frankie/Desktop/CDC Ban on Gun Research Caused Lasting Damage - ABC News.webarchive/Users/Frankie/Desktop/Gun violence research: NRA and Congress blocked gun-control studies at CDC..webarchive/Users/Frankie/Desktop/Republicans Say No to CDC Gun Violence Research | Mother Jones.webarchive

Yeah, there's many opinions about guns- some are right some are wrong and most are somewhere in between. I just get tired of hearing from the radicals on both ends!

 

[Colpy]

| Mother Jones.webarchive/Users/Frankie/Desktop/How The NRA Kills Gun Violence Research - Business Insider.webarchive/Users/Frankie/Desktop/CDC Ban on Gun Research Caused Lasting Damage - ABC News.webarchive/Users/Frankie/Desktop/Gun violence research: NRA and Congress blocked gun-control studies at CDC..webarchive/Users/Frankie/Desktop/Republicans Say No to CDC Gun Violence Research | Mother Jones.webarchive

None of which relates in any way to the sources or the stats I used.

None of my info came from the CDC.

None of the data I used in any way is concerned specifically with "gun violence" (except the Brady rating of gun control laws), just homicide rates. Any real or imagined suppression of info by the NRA would not have influenced the sources I used.

In other words, none of what you cite has the slightest relevance to the topic at hand.

You did not check my stats.

 

[DaSleeper]

She claims to do web research and can't even post a damn link:roll:

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

Gun deaths involving children are devastating. The NRA has no idea what to say about them.


By Nathan J. Robinson April 9

As the National Rifle Association’s annual conference hits Nashville this weekend with 70,000 expected attendees, the organization has good reason to be upbeat. For another year, it has succeeded in stalling legislative attempts at moderate gun controls, rolling back existing state regulations and winning media battles. But there’s a looming question that should be seriously concerning the NRA and its supporters: how to reconcile the organization’s agenda with new evidence on the prevalence of gun accidents involving children.

Over the past year, new studies and media reports have documented America’s extraordinary number of child-involved shootings. These occur when a child happens upon a gun, or is left alone with one, and ends up shooting themselves or another person. Such disasters result in hundreds of child fatalities and have made American children nine times more likely to die in gun accidents than children anywhere else in the developed world. These deaths pose a massive challenge for the NRA. They demonstrate fairly conclusively that guns cannot be both safe and ubiquitous; the inevitable consequence of widespread gun ownership is a never-ending series of tragedies involving children. But, desperate to insist there’s nothing wrong, the NRA has proved itself totally incapable of responding to the problem.

The stories are endless and gruesome. A toddler shoots an infant while they are left alone in a car. A five-year-old boy shoots a three-year-old girl. And so on, ad infinitum. In Texas last month, the sheriff of Houston pleaded despairingly with the public after three children were shot dead in four days. And in widely reported Idaho incident, a two-year-old shot his mother to death in a Walmart after finding a gun in her handbag.

These cases change the terms of the gun control debate. Ordinarily whenever America’s extraordinary level of gun violence is brought up, usually after a mass killing of newly shocking savagery, the NRA offers its well-honed reply: For every bad guy with a gun, there should be a good guy with a gun. It’s the people, not the guns. These slogans, with their emphasis on personal responsibility, have been tremendously effective. But the child-involved shootings are much harder to explain away, since they don’t allow for such facile moral narratives. Talk of good guys and bad guys loses all meaning when a toddler has shot his baby brother.

Because of this difficulty, each time the NRA has been confronted with the child-death problem, it has adopted what might be called a “Look—what’s that over there?” strategy. The organization tries to paint media coverage of the deaths as the true problem; when a 9-year old killed her shooting range instructor with an Uzi, the NRA called the outcry “exploitative” and a “trick” by “anti-gun advocates in the media.” Alternatively, spokespeople point to other ways children die, and other kinds of gun deaths, to downplay the seriousness of the issue. The NRA has a habit of suddenly become very interested in bicycle accident statistics when the issue is raised, and Gun Owners of America insists that children are “more likely to die by choking on their dinner,” as if choking deaths is at all pertinent to gun deaths. Occasionally, they go as far as Tennessee State Rep. Glen Casada, who when speaking in support of the state’s new NRA-promoted guns-in parks bill, called these deaths “acts of God,” about which nothing could possibly be done.

Of course, we know one thing that could be done: We could admit that there are too many guns and get serious about reducing their number. These child-deaths are a uniquely American problem; in other countries, simply accepting such an endless string of accidental killings would be unthinkable. And as the child accident statistics have poured in, so have those on the efficacy of gun control: It’s becoming harder and harder to deny that more guns equals more violence. We also know that massive restrictions can have major positive effects. The word “Australia” is verboten among the gun rights crowd now that Australia has succeeded in cutting its firearm death rate by 59 percent after passing sweeping prohibitions on gun ownership. In fact, the Australian case offers such rock solid evidence of the life-saving potential of gun control that the pro-gun side has struggled to offer any response, except to yelp, “But you’re talking about confiscation!” (To which one might reply: “And?”) So there is a way to avoid having our preschools look like a Peckinpah film. It just involves some tough measures.

Some people insist that these gun accidents involving children are a problem of insufficient parent accountability. Writing in Slate, Justin Peters argued that when a child finds a gun and shoots herself, the parents should be criminally prosecuted. If we care about the deadly consequences of carelessness, Peters says, it’s time to get serious about punishing those who let their children near guns unsupervised.

But on this, the NRA’s position is far more reasonable than that of the reformers. It’s unfair to blame the parents, because even the most responsible gun owners can make mistakes and have accidents. To believe that absent-mindedness amounts to criminality is astonishingly unforgiving. In the case of a Florida two-year-old who shot himself in the chest in January, the parents had stored the gun securely in the glove compartment, unaware that their mischievous son would be able to wriggle his way in. These parents took what they believed were the wise steps for gun owners; the point is that owning a gun to begin with is unwise.

Consider the Idaho Wal-Mart shooting. Speaking to the press in the aftermath, the victim’s father-in-law was furious at gun control advocates who attempted to blame the mother for the tragedy, saying: “They are painting Veronica as irresponsible, and that is not the case… Veronica had had hand gun classes; [she was] licensed to carry, and this wasn’t just some purse she had thrown her gun into.” Indeed, the gun had been in a sealed pocket specially designed for a firearm.

But the very fact that the victim was aresponsible gun owner should be unsettling. It suggests there is no such thing as safe gun possession. There’s a tradeoff between accessibility and safety; if we want people to be able to defend themselves by having rapid access to guns, we have to accept that a lot of children will die by accident. The New York Timeswas therefore wrong when it classified these deaths as “eminently preventable,” suggesting mere parental mindfulness could have helped. For this, every single gun owner would have to exercise the highest possible level of caution at all times, with no room for even the tiniest error or slip-up. It’s an unlikely prospect, especially considering that nearly half of gun owners with children keep their guns unlocked as a matter of course, let alone by accident. Preventing these deaths will require more than individual care; it will require fewer guns to begin with.

Since they strongly oppose both ownership restrictions and parent accountability, one might expect the NRA to emphasize safety. Yet the prevailing attitude appears to be that even talk of basic responsible ownership is for wusses and Constitution-haters. The NRA has waged all-out war against pediatricians and the CDC for recommending gun safety to parents, lobbying hard for laws to prohibit doctors from even discussing firearms risks with families. They’ve also stood staunchly against any effort to require that guns be kept safely stored out of the reach of children. The massive Nashville conference schedule contains endless presentations on the necessity of an armed citizenry, but apparently not a single event on safety or training. There are all kinds of rousing flourishes about “our role as an Armed American Citizen in the future challenges to our nation,” and how one’s weapon must always be at the ready because “danger can lurk around any given corner.” There are even sessions to discuss new strategies for skirting or dismantling the measly remaining gun control laws.

But safety, as always, is the organization’s bottom priority. (​The organization occasionally touts its “Eddie Eagle” safety program for kids, but this has been dismissed as a program to market guns to children that is backed by little evidence.)​ In reality, there’s not a whit of interest in trying to curtail cowboyish recklessness, thanks to which the bodies of inquisitive youngsters and their unfortunate parents will continue to pile up.

This weekend’s gathering will be a buoyant jamboree of gun-themed gaiety. Over three packed days at hundreds of booths, guns will be sold, caressed and discussed nonstop. The conference boasts seminars on everything from the history of sniping to how to defend yourself from “jihadist social media.” The NRA has planned a plethora of celebrity guest appearances including Iran Contra drug trafficker Oliver North and aging one-hit-wonder guitarist Ted Nugent (of “Barack Obama is a subhuman mongrel” fame.) But accidental child shootings cast a terrible shadow over all this revelry. The gravity of the problem is now an undeniable fact, and this makes gun advocates squirm — it’s hard to see how such cases could ever be prevented except by having fewer guns.

The tradeoffs between safety and accessibility put the NRA in a bind. Either it must acknowledge that these deaths will be a logical consequence of its policies, or it must retreat from its absolutist position on regulation. Neither seems likely, which is why the organization will spend its time in Nashville listening to Nugent and studying military history, carefully avoiding the one conversation it is desperate not to have.

Gun deaths involving children are devastating. The NRA has no idea what to say about them. - The Washington Post

One for blubyrd.

 

[DaSleeper]

I guess you are less dead if you drown or choke on your food than if you get shot........

 

[bluebyrd35]

Gun deaths involving children are devastating. The NRA has no idea what to say about them.


By Nathan J. Robinson April 9

As the National Rifle Association’s annual conference hits Nashville this weekend with 70,000 expected attendees, the organization has good reason to be upbeat. For another year, it has succeeded in stalling legislative attempts at moderate gun controls, rolling back existing state regulations and winning media battles. But there’s a looming question that should be seriously concerning the NRA and its supporters: how to reconcile the organization’s agenda with new evidence on the prevalence of gun accidents involving children.

Over the past year, new studies and media reports have documented America’s extraordinary number of child-involved shootings. These occur when a child happens upon a gun, or is left alone with one, and ends up shooting themselves or another person. Such disasters result in hundreds of child fatalities and have made American children nine times more likely to die in gun accidents than children anywhere else in the developed world. These deaths pose a massive challenge for the NRA. They demonstrate fairly conclusively that guns cannot be both safe and ubiquitous; the inevitable consequence of widespread gun ownership is a never-ending series of tragedies involving children. But, desperate to insist there’s nothing wrong, the NRA has proved itself totally incapable of responding to the problem.

The stories are endless and gruesome. A toddler shoots an infant while they are left alone in a car. A five-year-old boy shoots a three-year-old girl. And so on, ad infinitum. In Texas last month, the sheriff of Houston pleaded despairingly with the public after three children were shot dead in four days. And in widely reported Idaho incident, a two-year-old shot his mother to death in a Walmart after finding a gun in her handbag.

These cases change the terms of the gun control debate. Ordinarily whenever America’s extraordinary level of gun violence is brought up, usually after a mass killing of newly shocking savagery, the NRA offers its well-honed reply: For every bad guy with a gun, there should be a good guy with a gun. It’s the people, not the guns. These slogans, with their emphasis on personal responsibility, have been tremendously effective. But the child-involved shootings are much harder to explain away, since they don’t allow for such facile moral narratives. Talk of good guys and bad guys loses all meaning when a toddler has shot his baby brother.

Because of this difficulty, each time the NRA has been confronted with the child-death problem, it has adopted what might be called a “Look—what’s that over there?” strategy. The organization tries to paint media coverage of the deaths as the true problem; when a 9-year old killed her shooting range instructor with an Uzi, the NRA called the outcry “exploitative” and a “trick” by “anti-gun advocates in the media.” Alternatively, spokespeople point to other ways children die, and other kinds of gun deaths, to downplay the seriousness of the issue. The NRA has a habit of suddenly become very interested in bicycle accident statistics when the issue is raised, and Gun Owners of America insists that children are “more likely to die by choking on their dinner,” as if choking deaths is at all pertinent to gun deaths. Occasionally, they go as far as Tennessee State Rep. Glen Casada, who when speaking in support of the state’s new NRA-promoted guns-in parks bill, called these deaths “acts of God,” about which nothing could possibly be done.

Of course, we know one thing that could be done: We could admit that there are too many guns and get serious about reducing their number. These child-deaths are a uniquely American problem; in other countries, simply accepting such an endless string of accidental killings would be unthinkable. And as the child accident statistics have poured in, so have those on the efficacy of gun control: It’s becoming harder and harder to deny that more guns equals more violence. We also know that massive restrictions can have major positive effects. The word “Australia” is verboten among the gun rights crowd now that Australia has succeeded in cutting its firearm death rate by 59 percent after passing sweeping prohibitions on gun ownership. In fact, the Australian case offers such rock solid evidence of the life-saving potential of gun control that the pro-gun side has struggled to offer any response, except to yelp, “But you’re talking about confiscation!” (To which one might reply: “And?”) So there is a way to avoid having our preschools look like a Peckinpah film. It just involves some tough measures.

Some people insist that these gun accidents involving children are a problem of insufficient parent accountability. Writing in Slate, Justin Peters argued that when a child finds a gun and shoots herself, the parents should be criminally prosecuted. If we care about the deadly consequences of carelessness, Peters says, it’s time to get serious about punishing those who let their children near guns unsupervised.

But on this, the NRA’s position is far more reasonable than that of the reformers. It’s unfair to blame the parents, because even the most responsible gun owners can make mistakes and have accidents. To believe that absent-mindedness amounts to criminality is astonishingly unforgiving. In the case of a Florida two-year-old who shot himself in the chest in January, the parents had stored the gun securely in the glove compartment, unaware that their mischievous son would be able to wriggle his way in. These parents took what they believed were the wise steps for gun owners; the point is that owning a gun to begin with is unwise.

Consider the Idaho Wal-Mart shooting. Speaking to the press in the aftermath, the victim’s father-in-law was furious at gun control advocates who attempted to blame the mother for the tragedy, saying: “They are painting Veronica as irresponsible, and that is not the case… Veronica had had hand gun classes; [she was] licensed to carry, and this wasn’t just some purse she had thrown her gun into.” Indeed, the gun had been in a sealed pocket specially designed for a firearm.

But the very fact that the victim was aresponsible gun owner should be unsettling. It suggests there is no such thing as safe gun possession. There’s a tradeoff between accessibility and safety; if we want people to be able to defend themselves by having rapid access to guns, we have to accept that a lot of children will die by accident. The New York Timeswas therefore wrong when it classified these deaths as “eminently preventable,” suggesting mere parental mindfulness could have helped. For this, every single gun owner would have to exercise the highest possible level of caution at all times, with no room for even the tiniest error or slip-up. It’s an unlikely prospect, especially considering that nearly half of gun owners with children keep their guns unlocked as a matter of course, let alone by accident. Preventing these deaths will require more than individual care; it will require fewer guns to begin with.

Since they strongly oppose both ownership restrictions and parent accountability, one might expect the NRA to emphasize safety. Yet the prevailing attitude appears to be that even talk of basic responsible ownership is for wusses and Constitution-haters. The NRA has waged all-out war against pediatricians and the CDC for recommending gun safety to parents, lobbying hard for laws to prohibit doctors from even discussing firearms risks with families. They’ve also stood staunchly against any effort to require that guns be kept safely stored out of the reach of children. The massive Nashville conference schedule contains endless presentations on the necessity of an armed citizenry, but apparently not a single event on safety or training. There are all kinds of rousing flourishes about “our role as an Armed American Citizen in the future challenges to our nation,” and how one’s weapon must always be at the ready because “danger can lurk around any given corner.” There are even sessions to discuss new strategies for skirting or dismantling the measly remaining gun control laws.

But safety, as always, is the organization’s bottom priority. (​The organization occasionally touts its “Eddie Eagle” safety program for kids, but this has been dismissed as a program to market guns to children that is backed by little evidence.)​ In reality, there’s not a whit of interest in trying to curtail cowboyish recklessness, thanks to which the bodies of inquisitive youngsters and their unfortunate parents will continue to pile up.

This weekend’s gathering will be a buoyant jamboree of gun-themed gaiety. Over three packed days at hundreds of booths, guns will be sold, caressed and discussed nonstop. The conference boasts seminars on everything from the history of sniping to how to defend yourself from “jihadist social media.” The NRA has planned a plethora of celebrity guest appearances including Iran Contra drug trafficker Oliver North and aging one-hit-wonder guitarist Ted Nugent (of “Barack Obama is a subhuman mongrel” fame.) But accidental child shootings cast a terrible shadow over all this revelry. The gravity of the problem is now an undeniable fact, and this makes gun advocates squirm — it’s hard to see how such cases could ever be prevented except by having fewer guns.

The tradeoffs between safety and accessibility put the NRA in a bind. Either it must acknowledge that these deaths will be a logical consequence of its policies, or it must retreat from its absolutist position on regulation. Neither seems likely, which is why the organization will spend its time in Nashville listening to Nugent and studying military history, carefully avoiding the one conversation it is desperate not to have.

Gun deaths involving children are devastating. The NRA has no idea what to say about them. - The Washington Post

One for blubyrd.

Thank you....

 

[taxslave]

Not a clue

Getting to be much like waldo. Deny anything that doesn't support your position. Must really suck to be so wrong so often.

Gun deaths involving children are devastating. The NRA has no idea what to say about them.


By Nathan J. Robinson April 9

As the National Rifle Association’s annual conference hits Nashville this weekend with 70,000 expected attendees, the organization has good reason to be upbeat. For another year, it has succeeded in stalling legislative attempts at moderate gun controls, rolling back existing state regulations and winning media battles. But there’s a looming question that should be seriously concerning the NRA and its supporters: how to reconcile the organization’s agenda with new evidence on the prevalence of gun accidents involving children.

Over the past year, new studies and media reports have documented America’s extraordinary number of child-involved shootings. These occur when a child happens upon a gun, or is left alone with one, and ends up shooting themselves or another person. Such disasters result in hundreds of child fatalities and have made American children nine times more likely to die in gun accidents than children anywhere else in the developed world. These deaths pose a massive challenge for the NRA. They demonstrate fairly conclusively that guns cannot be both safe and ubiquitous; the inevitable consequence of widespread gun ownership is a never-ending series of tragedies involving children. But, desperate to insist there’s nothing wrong, the NRA has proved itself totally incapable of responding to the problem.

The stories are endless and gruesome. A toddler shoots an infant while they are left alone in a car. A five-year-old boy shoots a three-year-old girl. And so on, ad infinitum. In Texas last month, the sheriff of Houston pleaded despairingly with the public after three children were shot dead in four days. And in widely reported Idaho incident, a two-year-old shot his mother to death in a Walmart after finding a gun in her handbag.

These cases change the terms of the gun control debate. Ordinarily whenever America’s extraordinary level of gun violence is brought up, usually after a mass killing of newly shocking savagery, the NRA offers its well-honed reply: For every bad guy with a gun, there should be a good guy with a gun. It’s the people, not the guns. These slogans, with their emphasis on personal responsibility, have been tremendously effective. But the child-involved shootings are much harder to explain away, since they don’t allow for such facile moral narratives. Talk of good guys and bad guys loses all meaning when a toddler has shot his baby brother.

Because of this difficulty, each time the NRA has been confronted with the child-death problem, it has adopted what might be called a “Look—what’s that over there?” strategy. The organization tries to paint media coverage of the deaths as the true problem; when a 9-year old killed her shooting range instructor with an Uzi, the NRA called the outcry “exploitative” and a “trick” by “anti-gun advocates in the media.” Alternatively, spokespeople point to other ways children die, and other kinds of gun deaths, to downplay the seriousness of the issue. The NRA has a habit of suddenly become very interested in bicycle accident statistics when the issue is raised, and Gun Owners of America insists that children are “more likely to die by choking on their dinner,” as if choking deaths is at all pertinent to gun deaths. Occasionally, they go as far as Tennessee State Rep. Glen Casada, who when speaking in support of the state’s new NRA-promoted guns-in parks bill, called these deaths “acts of God,” about which nothing could possibly be done.

Of course, we know one thing that could be done: We could admit that there are too many guns and get serious about reducing their number. These child-deaths are a uniquely American problem; in other countries, simply accepting such an endless string of accidental killings would be unthinkable. And as the child accident statistics have poured in, so have those on the efficacy of gun control: It’s becoming harder and harder to deny that more guns equals more violence. We also know that massive restrictions can have major positive effects. The word “Australia” is verboten among the gun rights crowd now that Australia has succeeded in cutting its firearm death rate by 59 percent after passing sweeping prohibitions on gun ownership. In fact, the Australian case offers such rock solid evidence of the life-saving potential of gun control that the pro-gun side has struggled to offer any response, except to yelp, “But you’re talking about confiscation!” (To which one might reply: “And?”) So there is a way to avoid having our preschools look like a Peckinpah film. It just involves some tough measures.

Some people insist that these gun accidents involving children are a problem of insufficient parent accountability. Writing in Slate, Justin Peters argued that when a child finds a gun and shoots herself, the parents should be criminally prosecuted. If we care about the deadly consequences of carelessness, Peters says, it’s time to get serious about punishing those who let their children near guns unsupervised.

But on this, the NRA’s position is far more reasonable than that of the reformers. It’s unfair to blame the parents, because even the most responsible gun owners can make mistakes and have accidents. To believe that absent-mindedness amounts to criminality is astonishingly unforgiving. In the case of a Florida two-year-old who shot himself in the chest in January, the parents had stored the gun securely in the glove compartment, unaware that their mischievous son would be able to wriggle his way in. These parents took what they believed were the wise steps for gun owners; the point is that owning a gun to begin with is unwise.

Consider the Idaho Wal-Mart shooting. Speaking to the press in the aftermath, the victim’s father-in-law was furious at gun control advocates who attempted to blame the mother for the tragedy, saying: “They are painting Veronica as irresponsible, and that is not the case… Veronica had had hand gun classes; [she was] licensed to carry, and this wasn’t just some purse she had thrown her gun into.” Indeed, the gun had been in a sealed pocket specially designed for a firearm.

But the very fact that the victim was aresponsible gun owner should be unsettling. It suggests there is no such thing as safe gun possession. There’s a tradeoff between accessibility and safety; if we want people to be able to defend themselves by having rapid access to guns, we have to accept that a lot of children will die by accident. The New York Timeswas therefore wrong when it classified these deaths as “eminently preventable,” suggesting mere parental mindfulness could have helped. For this, every single gun owner would have to exercise the highest possible level of caution at all times, with no room for even the tiniest error or slip-up. It’s an unlikely prospect, especially considering that nearly half of gun owners with children keep their guns unlocked as a matter of course, let alone by accident. Preventing these deaths will require more than individual care; it will require fewer guns to begin with.

Since they strongly oppose both ownership restrictions and parent accountability, one might expect the NRA to emphasize safety. Yet the prevailing attitude appears to be that even talk of basic responsible ownership is for wusses and Constitution-haters. The NRA has waged all-out war against pediatricians and the CDC for recommending gun safety to parents, lobbying hard for laws to prohibit doctors from even discussing firearms risks with families. They’ve also stood staunchly against any effort to require that guns be kept safely stored out of the reach of children. The massive Nashville conference schedule contains endless presentations on the necessity of an armed citizenry, but apparently not a single event on safety or training. There are all kinds of rousing flourishes about “our role as an Armed American Citizen in the future challenges to our nation,” and how one’s weapon must always be at the ready because “danger can lurk around any given corner.” There are even sessions to discuss new strategies for skirting or dismantling the measly remaining gun control laws.

But safety, as always, is the organization’s bottom priority. (​The organization occasionally touts its “Eddie Eagle” safety program for kids, but this has been dismissed as a program to market guns to children that is backed by little evidence.)​ In reality, there’s not a whit of interest in trying to curtail cowboyish recklessness, thanks to which the bodies of inquisitive youngsters and their unfortunate parents will continue to pile up.

This weekend’s gathering will be a buoyant jamboree of gun-themed gaiety. Over three packed days at hundreds of booths, guns will be sold, caressed and discussed nonstop. The conference boasts seminars on everything from the history of sniping to how to defend yourself from “jihadist social media.” The NRA has planned a plethora of celebrity guest appearances including Iran Contra drug trafficker Oliver North and aging one-hit-wonder guitarist Ted Nugent (of “Barack Obama is a subhuman mongrel” fame.) But accidental child shootings cast a terrible shadow over all this revelry. The gravity of the problem is now an undeniable fact, and this makes gun advocates squirm — it’s hard to see how such cases could ever be prevented except by having fewer guns.

The tradeoffs between safety and accessibility put the NRA in a bind. Either it must acknowledge that these deaths will be a logical consequence of its policies, or it must retreat from its absolutist position on regulation. Neither seems likely, which is why the organization will spend its time in Nashville listening to Nugent and studying military history, carefully avoiding the one conversation it is desperate not to have.

Gun deaths involving children are devastating. The NRA has no idea what to say about them. - The Washington Post

One for blubyrd.

None of which has anything to do with keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. Which is what almost all ligit gun owners are interested in.

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

None of which has anything to do with keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.

You mean. . . and article that wasn't about guns in the hands of criminals didn't talk about guns in the hands of criminals? Say it ain't so, Joe!

Which is what almost all ligit gun owners are interested in.

You think gun owners aren't interested in gun safety? Wow. Kinda makes a body wonder why every single gun training course I ever heard of deals extensively with gun safety.

 

[bluebyrd35]

Getting to be much like waldo. Deny anything that doesn't support your position. Must really suck to be so wrong so often.



None of which has anything to do with keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. Which is what almost all ligit gun owners are interested in.

My God, I hope not!! Children are rarely killed by criminals, except in drive by shootings, which as far as I tell, is a form of fun for some. Even then I would bet occasionally even a legitimate gun owner will indulge for fun or for revenge. Certainly the tradition of shooting in the air New Year's Eve has killed more than couple of kids, and adults. That is an advanced form of drive by in my opinion.

None of which relates in any way to the sources or the stats I used.

None of my info came from the CDC.

None of the data I used in any way is concerned specifically with "gun violence" (except the Brady rating of gun control laws), just homicide rates. Any real or imagined suppression of info by the NRA would not have influenced the sources I used.

In other words, none of what you cite has the slightest relevance to the topic at hand.

You did not check my stats.

Oh you mean the stats on gun violence that are NOT a part of the FBI"s mandate really are useless? I agree. There is NO/NONE/RIEN/ NADA sponsored agency, government or private to which ALL cases of gun violence are obligated to report to in the US. So what good are your stats?? I know, that there are daily in my small area between 4 and the double digits violence by gun, reported locally EVERY single morning. So I know damned well I am neither an idiot or stupid or clueless, no matter how often you say it.

Oh and of course how could you get stats from the CDC when the NRA through lobbying congress, made sure they took away all the funding that related to the collection of those stats an threatened that if they persisted in continuing anyway, would take that amount from them as well. They claimed it gave gun ownership a bad image!! LOL.

 

[Colpy]

Oh you mean the stats on gun violence that are NOT a part of the FBI"s mandate really are useless? I agree. There is NO/NONE/RIEN/ NADA sponsored agency, government or private to which ALL cases of gun violence are obligated to report to in the US. So what good are your stats??.

WTF are you talking about?

I don't think you even know.

The stats I listed (that you claimed to have checked) had nothing to do with Gun violence specifically, I was talking about HOMICIDE RATES.....you do understand the difference? Well, maybe not.

Yes, the FBI is required to collect HOMICIDE statistics, and all states are required to report them.

So I know damned well I am neither an idiot or stupid or clueless,
.

Naw...you're all of the above, and a liar to boot, as you have never checked a damned thing..........

M

Oh and of course how could you get stats from the CDC when the NRA through lobbying congress, made sure they took away all the funding that related to the collection of those stats an threatened that if they persisted in continuing anyway, would take that amount from them as well. They claimed it gave gun ownership a bad image!! LOL.

I did not cite stats from the CDC, did I?

I used stats from three sources:

Death Penalty Information Center (which uses stats from the FBI's Uniform Crime statistics)

Statistics Canada

Brady Campaign.

I guess you must have checked them really well.

 

[JamesBondo]

Gun deaths involving children are devastating. The NRA has no idea what to say about them.
...

sure they are devastating, but not as devastating as children and swimmimg pools.


Number For children less than 15 years old
4.147 Swimming pool drowning deaths per 100,000 residential swimming pools
0.166—0.214 Accidental firearm deaths per 100,000 households with at least one firearm
0.039 Accidental firearm deaths per 100,000 firearms

Cause of death Per 100,000 population
All poisonings 13.9
Motor vehicle deaths 10.9
All firearm deaths 10.3

FastStats - Injuries

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

sure they are devastating, but not as devastating as children and swimmimg pools.


Number For children less than 15 years old
4.147 Swimming pool drowning deaths per 100,000 residential swimming pools
0.166—0.214 Accidental firearm deaths per 100,000 households with at least one firearm
0.039 Accidental firearm deaths per 100,000 firearms

Cause of death Per 100,000 population
All poisonings 13.9
Motor vehicle deaths 10.9
All firearm deaths 10.3

FastStats - Injuries

So, we shouldn't worry about them, right?

Actually, the article is crap. That it was carried as "news" is a travesty. I just put it up because it's relevant to the thread. If I get bored enough, maybe I'll point out some of the ways in which it's crap.

 

[JamesBondo]

So, we shouldn't worry about them, right?

Clearly you missed the part where I implied that we already are worrying about them, and we are more successful at protecting our kids than swimming pool owners.

Now don't you think it is a bit hypocritical if an anti-gun nut used the child safety angle if they know about and ignore the child/swimming pool drowning rates. Also, don't you think they are blowing the gun risks out of proportion if they know about the risks of residential swimming pools?

Actually, the article is crap. That it was carried as "news" is a travesty. I just put it up because it's relevant to the thread. If I get bored enough, maybe I'll point out some of the ways in which it's crap.

I know. I have a basic familiarity with your point of view on this topic. I just had to ride your shirt tail a bit, and throw in a bit a response to anyone that might read that article.