Some facts about guns in the US

fraggle said:
It seems that every individual is 100% certain that he is not like everyone else: 5 times as likely to kill himself, a friend, a family member, a confused stranger; or for the gun to be discovered by a child; or to be stolen or wrestled out of his hands and used in a lethal crime... than to actually use it against a human assailant or a predatory animal with both the intention and ability to cause great harm.
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And almost certainly correct in that presumption. \

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...ricans-own-guns-but-just-how-many-is-unclear/

Since there are fewer than 400 million guns of all kinds in the US, and about 2/3 of all households surveyed report none on the premises, it is statistically certain that a majority of adults do not own a gun of any kind.

The general estimate of handguns only is something like this: http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/citation/quotes/6676

So if we figure half the US population is male, and 4/5 of them are voting age, we do seem to have approximately one handgun per voting age male - over 114 million handguns, about 125 million voting age males.
 
That propaganda piece is ridiculous on the face of it.

Very heavily edited, if not complete fabrication..
 
Dr_Toad said:
That propaganda piece is ridiculous on the face of it.

Very heavily edited, if not complete fabrication..
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Even if its not fabrication... i dout that its very effective in keepin people from buyin guns... but parts of it might make some people thank twice about leavin a gun in the reach of children.!!!
 
All the people I know who own guns are responsible gun owners, and have never drawn one on a human being. Therefore I'd say that all gun owners are responsible.
 
tali89 said:
All the people I know who own guns are responsible gun owners, and have never drawn one on a human being. Therefore I'd say that all gun owners are responsible.
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All the gun owners that I know are responsible, as well. They’re all white, though. Therefore, I'd say that all responsible gun owners are white.
 
So there are no people of other ethnicities where you live? Or that you don't know any?

Sounds boring..
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"The only normal families are the ones you don't know very well".
"The only normal, sane people you know are the ones you don't very well".

And so forth. Kind of funny, kind of true, and there's a corollary in the gun ownership world:

If you don't know any irresponsible gun owners, you don't know very many gun owners.

They're out there, and there are a lot of them. And like the cell phone driver, they are mostly oblivious to the potential consequences of their behavior.
 
tali89 said:
All the people I know who own guns are responsible gun owners, and have never drawn one on a human being. Therefore I'd say that all gun owners are responsible.
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There may be as many as one hundred million gun owners in the USA. (Isn't it amazing that we can't even count them, much less name them?) Since "only" twenty thousand of us are killed wrongly by gunfire every year, it's easy to do the math and "prove" that only .02% of American gun owners are irresponsible.

But when you extrapolate that statistic to a lifetime and discover that the average American (including you, your spouse, your siblings, your parents, your children and your friends) has a one percent probability that the cause of his death will be a bullet that he didn't deserve, it starts to make all gun owners look a little more like despicable assholes.

I'm willing to accept the one percent probability that the cause of my death will be a road accident, because cars have an extremely useful purpose. The only purpose of a gun is to make a little man feel bigger.
 
fraggle said:
But when you extrapolate that statistic to a lifetime and discover that the average American (including you, your spouse, your siblings, your parents, your children and your friends) has a one percent probability that the cause of his death will be a bullet that he didn't deserve,
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The incompetent misuse of statistics to support intrusive and misconceived legislation, by gun control advocates, is a major obstacle to gun control in the US.

So is the retailing of bogus statistics to support this kind of bs:
it starts to make all gun owners look a little more like despicable assholes.
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The average American does not have anything close to a 1% lifetime chance of being killed by gunfire. That is because the average American is not a young black man involved in a criminal gang, or a potential 15 - 55 year old male suicide. The average American is not even male.
 
iceaura said:
The incompetent misuse of statistics to support intrusive and misconceived legislation, by gun control advocates, is a major obstacle to gun control in the US.
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you label anything that prevent deaths and "misconcievied" you delibritely lie and misrepresent the facts ice so please spare us your false victimhood.
 
Heres a personal stastistic... out of a total of 33 closest family members on mine an my wifes side... ther has been 3 killed by gunfire (handguns).!!!
 
My lily-white (favorite) uncle was killed by gunfire. It was a suicide, but why should that make any difference? Roughly half of gun deaths are, in fact suicides.

People often feel despondent and consider suicide. But if they have to do it in a traditional way, it's much more difficult and takes quite a bit of time to plan it, to acquire the materials, and set it up.
  • Hang yourself? The physics are tricky. Not enough force and you'll dangle there with just enough air to stay alive, but not enough to nourish your brain so you'll end up a vegetable. Too much force and you'll decapitate yourself, leaving a grisly scene for your family to walk in on.
  • Jump off a building? To be sure you're actually dead and not a vegetable or a quadriplegic spending the rest of your life in bed, with your family having to feed and bathe you, it needs to be a fairly tall building. These days, tall buildings don't have easy access to the roof.
  • Fill your garage with exhaust from your car engine? Your children come home and find not only a dead daddy, but the dog who would have given them sympathy during their time of grief managed to sneak in when you weren't looking so now he's dead too. Instead of crying over you, they're cursing the selfish, crazy oaf who killed their beloved pet.
  • Slit your wrists in a tub full of warm water? You may be okay with the idea of killing yourself, but inflicting pain was not in the bargain!
All of these methods take time, time for you to realize that you aren't quite as despondent as you thought you were. You might even come to your senses and make an appointment with a shrink to help figure out why you feel so bad.

But if you have a fucking goddamned gun in your desk drawer, it's over in a minute or less.
 
Of the 3 i mentioned... one was murdered by a robber an the other 2 was suicides -- a 30 year old man an a 15 year old girl... he was alcholic an depression issues (1 year ago)... the girl also had depression issues (about 50 years ago) an her dad always left his hand gun in the open.!!!
 
fraggle said:
My lily-white (favorite) uncle was killed by gunfire. It was a suicide, but why should that make any difference?
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It invalidates your ludicrous "1%" number.

fraggle said:
All of these methods take time, time for you to realize that you aren't quite as despondent as you thought you were. You might even come to your senses and make an appointment with a shrink to help figure out why you feel so bad.

But if you have a fucking goddamned gun in your desk drawer, it's over in a minute or less.
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Your ill-informed fantasies about how and why people commit suicide are not a good basis for designing gun regulations.

If you are setting out to prevent suicide by having the government remove the means from the victim's life, you are going to be advocating tyranny.
 
iceaura said:
Your ill-informed fantasies about how and why people commit suicide are not a good basis for designing gun regulations.

If you are setting out to prevent suicide by having the government remove the means from the victim's life, you are going to be advocating tyranny.
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so something that is repeatedly born out in statistics is ill concievied and ill informed. ice before you lecture people why don't you get your facts straight before you start making shit up and attacking people. its rather obvious that your views are driven more by personal ideology and pathology than facts.
 
iceaura said:
The average American does not have anything close to a 1% lifetime chance of being killed by gunfire. That is because the average American is not a young black man involved in a criminal gang, or a potential 15 - 55 year old male suicide. The average American is not even male.
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I think you may have a bit of a misunderstanding of how averages work.
"The average car accident takes place within 1 mile of home - but I live at my girlfriend's, so I am safe!"
 
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