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Why are we even discussing guns? They account for less than 0.5% of deaths (excluding suicides) in the USA. You are two and a half times more likely to fall to
by thuffy 14y ago
Why are we even discussing guns? They account for less than 0.5% of deaths (excluding suicides) in the USA. You are two and a half times more likely to fall to your death accidentally than be killed by a gun. You are three and a half times more likely to die in a car crash.
Heart disease kills 28 innocent people in the USA every 25 minutes! Cancer kills another 28 innocent people in that time! More innocent people die from car crashes every minute than die from guns. Does a mad gunman kill 28 people every 25 minutes? I haven't even heard of any more such shooting this week, nevermind every 25 minutes since the Sandy Hook incident.
Guns don't even make the top 15 list* (below)! And #15 ranks in at 2.8% the amount of deaths as #1. In the interest of tackling problems that would actually make a meaningful difference, looking at causes at that small percentage of the problem is really a waste of time.
If any remember not too long ago, the 'year of the shark', it is much like how that 'epidemic' of shark attacks was suddenly so pressing in our consciousness. Not because you had any chance at all of dying of shark attacks, but simply because the media had chosen to spotlight the infinitesimally small amount of deaths caused by sharks. Just as you have no chance to die of sharks, you have no chance to die from guns. Just because the media purposely chooses to fill their pages with mostly gun crime doesn't mean that what they choose to report actually reflects the ratios that exist in reality. The tyrants have an agenda to disarm the people so that they can more easily enslave them. Just as the tyrants of Russia took control of the media in order to sway peoples opinions to suit their agenda, the tyrants of our countries have long ago done so as well.
In the USA, approximately 6,755 people die - every day. Twenty eight people dying is a sad thing, but irrelevant to the 6,755 people that die every day! The national media focuses on this negligible number of deaths because it suits the agenda of the parasitic ruling class. If they didn't choose to focus on it (for weeks and weeks even), then it would just be another 0.4145% of the deaths that occurred in a day.
Guns are our only defense against the next Trotsky, Stalin, Lennin or Mao once again purging a 100 million of their own people. Let's ban cars instead of guns. It would prevent more deaths, and cars are a lot less important to our freedom than guns. I would rather walk or bike to work than be thrown in the next gulag or purged because we allowed the tyrants to disarm their people.
Note that it is right to exclude suicides because: a) really, those people have the right to die, b) only half of suicides are by guns, thus you would only cut suicide by 50%, and c) you wouldn't even cut it by 50% as probably most of those people would use another way to kill themselves just like the other 50% of people who commit suicide do. Regardless, even if you don't exclude suicide then you are still more likely to die from falling or an auto accident than by a gun.
Proof of the pure BS that the media is stirring up against guns:
From the CDC's: National Vital Statistics Report, Volume 60, Number 4 (January 2012)
Numbers for 2010 (latest tabulated in the 2012 report):
Total deaths in 2010: 2,465,932
595,444 Heart Disease
573,855 Cancer
137,789 Chronic lower respiratory disease
129,180 Cerebrovascular disease
118,043 Accidents [A]
83,308 Alzheimer's
68,905 Diabetes mellitus
50,472 Influenza and pneumonia
37,793 Suicide [S]
37,843 Septicemia
31,802 Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis
26,577 Essential hypertension and hypertensive renal disease
21,963 Parkinson's disease
17,001 Pneumonitis due to solids and liquids
... ( ^ top 15 )
16,065 Assault (homicide) [M]
472,889 All other causes
[A]:
118,043 Accidents (total)
-> 37,661 Transport accidents
---> 35,080 Motor vehicle accidents
-> 25,903 Accidental Falls
-> 600 Accidental discharge of firearms
-> ...
[S]:
37,793 Suicide (total)
-> 19,308 Suicide by discharge of firearms
-> 18,485 Suicide by other means.
[M]:
16,065 Assault (homicide)
-> 11,015 Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms
-> 5,050 Assault (homicide) by other means.
- codegeek 14y ago"Twenty eight people dying is a sad thing, but irrelevant to the 6,755 people that die every day!" In terms of number, yes you are correct. But are you honestly arguing that just because 28 ppl die due to guns every day while 6755 ppl die due to heart disease, cancer etc, we should stop talking about the 28 ppl ? Say that 1 more time? It is not about the numbers. It is about how those 28 ppl are dying vs. the 6755 ppl. Cancer: enough research/actions are being taken and going on. Heart disease: plenty. Ppl have a choice there with lifestyle etc to an extent. What choice do I have if someone comes at me with a semi-automatic gun ? Is that my fault ? "Let's ban cars instead of guns" Even if you say this 1000 times, it does not change the fact that you are comparing apples and oranges. Yes ppl die to due to car accidents but until ppl start using cars to mass murder 26 ppl like sandy hook, stop using this analogy. Try running over 26 ppl at once with a car in a matter of minutes and see how far u get. Try the same with an semi-automatic gun.
- thuffy 14y agoAll you are pointing out is that yes, the media uses the logical fallacy of an appeal to emotion in their argument to disarm the people.
- richcollins 14y agoBecause we're wired for a time in which violence was a primary cause of death
- mikeyouse 14y agoWe are discussing guns because the US has a homicide rate on par with countries like Yemen and Bulgaria. Every other 'first-world' economy is significantly safer than us. It's not a binary choice between gun safety and heart health, we can (and are) working on all of these things in parallel. Traffic fatalities have dropped from 5.3/100mm miles in 1965 to 1.11/100mm thanks largely to those overbearing regulations corporatists love to hate. This is approximately equivalent to 120,000 US citizens not killed on highways every year. In the same time span, the homicide rate went from 5.1/100k to 4.8/100k (with a massive spike in the 70s and 80s)... There is clearly room for progress. As for the "We're one law away from the next Lenin or Mao", I can't believe people honestly think that is a possible outcome. Especially when the length of the gun regulation is more along the lines of "Everyone should undergo a background test before buying a weapon" and "30-round magazines should be more strictly regulated". Is there any appreciable difference between a country with 200 million firearms and one with 200 million firearms where people with a history of mental illness don't own the weapons?