ID - 2 year boy accidentally shoots and kills mother in walmart in ths US

[Deleted member 39678]

But why on earth are people upset? if 400 dead kids are nothing to worry about because it's so freakishly rare, then why should anybody care about only 20?

I don't think that anyone said it wasn't anything to worry about. I said that it should be put into perspective. Not the same thing.

 

[sonjay]

Well if accidental shootings are freakishly rare then it seems to me that self defense cases are even more freakishly rare...yet the off chance that there is an intruder is the reason everybody has to have unsafely stored weapons available to kids all the time.

Oh, heck, even the very anti-gun Violence Policy Center admits to 235,700 defensive uses of firearms during the 5-year period from 2007-2011. That's 47,000 times per year! And to get that figure, the VPC relies on the National Crime Victimization Survey, which doesn't even ask specifically if people who were victims of a crime used a firearm in self-defense -- that number is base on how many people volunteer that they used a gun in self-defense.

http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable.pdf

The higher estimates come from surveys that actually do ask specifically whether a firearm was used in self-defense. The highest estimate, 3 million, is probably too high. Based on my own previous research on defensive gun uses and the validity of the survey methodologies, I'd personally put the number at somewhere north of 100,000 times per year. How far north, I couldn't begin to guess.

 

[sonjay]

BBM. No it doesn't, it says, fatal or non-fatal.

Sorry, you're correct. I'm human and I made a mistake. I apologize. I'm just glad it wasn't a fatal mistake.

Most of the time, the studies that result in very low estimates of defensive firearm uses do focus only on dead people, and I made the mistake of assuming that this one did the same, and I failed to read it closely enough enough. This one focused on shot people, whether they ended up dead or not.

However, even given that, most self-defensive gun uses don't even end up with shot criminals. Pull your gun, the bad gun leaves. Or shoot and miss, and the bad guy leaves. Often, it's not even reported to police. Counting only people who end up shot or dead results in a very serious misunderestimate of how often guns are used in self-defense.

 

[Donjeta]

I don't think that anyone said it wasn't anything to worry about. I said that it should be put into perspective. Not the same thing.

If you read the thread you will find several posts implying that it's actually quite ridiculous to think that 400 dead kids are a problem.

 

[sonjay]

If you read the thread you will find several posts implying that it's actually quite ridiculous to think that 400 dead kids are a problem.

Please quote one single post that said 400 dead children aren't a problem. You can't, because that didn't happen.

We have only, and repeatedly, tried to put that number in perspective.

 

[Deleted member 39678]

If you read the thread you will find several posts implying that it's actually quite ridiculous to think that 400 dead kids are a problem.

I have been reading and I didn't get that impression from anyone's posts.

 

[Donjeta]

Please quote one single post that said 400 dead children aren't a problem. You can't, because that didn't happen.

All of this hyped-up inflammatory rhetoric isn't about a threat of any significance.

the vanishingly small percent of people killed by unintentional firearm injury...

If hermaphrodites are bizarre, then children dying from accidental gun injuries are even more bizarre.

They're just some freakshow.

What is in question is the ramped-up fear-mongering rhetoric suggesting hordes of irresponsible gun owners out there letting their toddlers play with their weapons in Wal-Mart. The fact is, things like this happen so exceedingly rarely that it's really just not something that's worth worrying about. You might as well spend your time worrying about being hit by an asteroid. Would you feel silly fretting constantly about being killed by a meteorite? That's about how silly it is to worry about being killed a by a toddler firing a gun in a Wal-Mart.

If you like to fret over such unlikely possibilities, by all means, feel free to continue to do so.

Nobody here is probably particularly worried about Walmart, more like things like this happening in general. But why would anyone say that it's too silly to worry about, not worth worrying about if 400 dead kids were a problem?

We have only, and repeatedly, tried to put that number in perspective.

Yes, sometimes using misleading statistics to achieve that.

More women die from abortions in the U.S. every year than people die from unintentional firearm injuries.

Deaths from abortion in the U.S.:
0.6 per 100,000 procedures
http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publication...501118_eng.pdf

Unintentional deaths from firearms:
.26 per 100,000 population

Anyone who is pro-choice is not only a baby-killer but also a woman-killer.

Interestingly, WHO considers the U.S. abortion mortality rate to be "negligable."

But an unintentional firearm death rate less than half that of abortion is an omnipresent real and present hazard about which something must be done immediately.

If that last sarcastic comment isn't intended to say that 400 dead children aren't a real problem it is quite misleading IMO.

But anyway, it's not true that more women die of abortions. In 2008 abortion complications killed 12 women.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6108a1.htm

Deaths of women associated with complications from abortions for 2009 are being investigated under CDC's Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System. In 2008, the most recent year for which data were available, 12 women were reported to have died as a result of complications from known legal induced abortions. No reported deaths were associated with known illegal induced abortions.

 

[Deleted member 39678]

Nobody here is probably particularly worried about Walmart, more like things like this happening in general. But why would anyone say that it's too silly to worry about, not worth worrying about if 400 dead kids were a problem?

<modsnip>
I'm not going to worry about a toddler shooting me next time I go to Walmart or anywhere else.

<modsnip>

 

[Elley Mae]

lots of info here

http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/ficap/resourcebook/pdf/monograph.pdf

 

[Donjeta]

<snipped broken quote>


You know, I'm pretty sure getting shot by a toddler in Walmart isn't going to be my cause of death either. It's just another funny strawman, that's all.
People who think it's a problem are in fact talking about the general rate of children's gunshot incidents and the factors leading up to them and not just stupidly panicking about getting shot in Walmart by random toddlers.
This thread started about a Walmart incident but I'm sure Walmart is not the hotspot for such deaths.

<modsnip>

 

[sonjay]

But anyway, it's not true that more women die of abortions. In 2008 abortion complications killed 12 women.

Of the population of women who have abortions, a higher percentage die than the percentage of the population who die from unintentional firearm injuries.

It's estimated that somewhere between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors.
Source: http://www.fluentmedical.com/docs/To_Err_Is_Human.pdf

1,000 people dead from unintentional firearm injuries (including approx. 400 children) vs. 44,000 to 98,000 from medical errors.

I bet that despite that number, most people here go to the doctor when they get sick or injured.

Why? Because we put that number in perspective. Out of the many millions of doctor & hospital visits every year, 44,000 to 98,000, while serious numbers, mean that it's highly unlikely that you will die as a result of medical error when you go to the doctor or hospital.

The likelihood that you will be killed by unintentional firearm injury is vastly lower than that.

It would be a far better use of your time to campaign against all the irresponsible doctors making all those fatal mistakes, and demanding new regulations to stop them. You would be far more likely to save lives.

 

[sonjay]

People who think it's a problem are in fact talking about the general rate of children's gunshot incidents and the factors leading up to them

And the general rate of children's gunshot incidents is vanishingly small. 400 per year in a nation of 300 million people and what? some 270 million guns? Maybe more, I disremember the number. That's barely a rounding error compared to the number of traffic fatalities. That number itself is proof that the vast majority of gun owners are sufficiently responsible to not allow young children to get their hands on loaded firearms. If that were not the case, there would be lots more than 400 dead children every year.

 

[Donjeta]

Of the population of women who have abortions, a higher percentage die than the percentage of the population who die from unintentional firearm injuries.

OK that's better wording, the way it was first phrased was misleading since it sounded like you were talking about absolute numbers.

It's estimated that somewhere between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors.
Source: http://www.fluentmedical.com/docs/To_Err_Is_Human.pdf

1,000 people from unintentional firearm injuries (including approx. 400 children) vs. 44,000 to 98,000 from medical errors.

I bet that despite that number, most people here go to the doctor when they get sick or injured.

Why? Because we put that number in perspective. Out of the many millions of doctor & hospital every year, 44,000 to 98,000, while serious numbers, mean that it's highly unlikely that you will die as a result of medical error when you go to the doctor or hospital.

The likelihood that you will be killed by unintentional firearm injury is vastly lower than that.

It would be a far better use of your time to campaign against all the irresponsible doctors making all those fatal mistakes, and demanding new regulations to stop them. You would be far more likely to save lives.

Well as a matter of fact I am involved in some work that aims to improve patient safety. But medical errors are not always caused by irresponsibility that could be legislated against. Sometimes it's just inevitable because the correct diagnoses and suitable treatments aren't obvious and there is a degree of uncertainty in medicine that means sometimes doctors just make the wrong treatment decisions.

I do not think that the desire to improve patient safety and the quality of care in hospitals conflicts with wanting to reduce the rates of gunshot injuries.

We have billions of neurons, we can have more than one thought and support more than one worthy goal.

 

[Deleted member 39678]

You know, I'm pretty sure getting shot by a toddler in Walmart isn't going to be my cause of death either. It's just another funny strawman, that's all.
People who think it's a problem are in fact talking about the general rate of children's gunshot incidents and the factors leading up to them and not just stupidly panicking about getting shot in Walmart by random toddlers.
This thread started about a Walmart incident but I'm sure Walmart is not the hotspot for such deaths.


http://health.usnews.com/health-new...-safer-for-women-than-childbirth-study-claims



http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html
89% are performed in the first twelve weeks.

I think that the general rate of children's gunshot incidents to be quite low. I agree with the premise that education about gun safety should be encouraged to make it even lower.

Trying to legislate every potential hazard out of existence whether it's falling off of ladders or unintentional gun shots will not work in my opinion.

 

[sonjay]

I do not think that the desire to improve patient safety and the quality of care in hospitals conflicts with wanting to reduce the rates of gunshot injuries.

We have billions of neurons, we can have more than one thought and support more than one worthy goal.

A real desire to save lives would be more likely to concentrate its efforts in areas where it could make a significant difference. Even if one elects to narrow one's focus to unintentional injury deaths, there's lots of low-hanging fruit where a small difference would result in thousands of lives saved: medical errors.... traffic fatalities.... drunk driving.... unintentional poisoning... drowning.... suffocation....

Even if by virtue of exceeding amounts of time, efforts, money and other resources, one managed to reduce unintentional firearm injury deaths to zero, one would save at maximum approx. 1,000 lives per year.

But if one managed to reduce traffic accident deaths even by just 10%, one would save about 3,500 lives.

In light of the vanishingly small rate of unintentional firearm injuries, the excessive -- one might even say obsessive -- concern about wanting to reduce them might seem more like an attempt to whip up hysteria, fear and paranoia about gun ownership in general than like a real desire to save lives.

 

[Montjoy]

The comparisons between cars and guns are totally worthless. The differences are just too great. Consider how many cars are in use, and for how many hours they are in use, in any given day. Now consider how often guns are in use -- being handled, fired, what have you. We're not talking about parked cars or safely stored guns here, but objects that are in use.

Car-use-hours would be thousands, if not millions, of times larger than gun-use-hours. So comparisons of the rates of accidents for these two objects are meaningless. They're rhetoric that the NRA and other gun advocates provide for those who are unable and/or unwilling to evaluate critically.

 

[sonjay]

The comparisons between cars and guns are totally worthless. The differences are just too great. Consider how many cars are in use, and for how many hours they are in use, in any given day. Now consider how often guns are in use -- being handled, fired, what have you. We're not talking about parked cars or safely stored guns here, but objects that are in use.

Car-use-hours would be thousands, if not millions, of times larger than gun-use-hours. So comparisons of the rates of accidents for these two objects are meaningless. They're rhetoric that the NRA and other gun advocates provide for those who are unable and/or unwilling to evaluate critically.

If we mandated a universal 20 mph speed limit for everyone, everywhere, we could likely save somewhere in the neighborhood of 35,000 lives per year. That's more than all firearm fatalities, including suicide and homicide.

But oh well.... I guess those 35,000 dead people don't matter, because cars are used a lot.

 

[sonjay]

Unintentional falls kill nearly 29,000 people every year.

I wonder how much time people spend falling? Do the hours that falls are in use qualify them for a comparison?

If we managed to reduce deaths from unintentional falls by just 10%, we would save 3 times as many lives as if we managed to reduce unintentional firearm deaths to zero.

Perspective, people.

 

[Donjeta]

And the general rate of children's gunshot incidents is vanishingly small. 400 per year in a nation of 300 million people and what? some 270 million guns? Maybe more, I disremember the number. That's barely a rounding error compared to the number of traffic fatalities. That number itself is proof that the vast majority of gun owners are sufficiently responsible to not allow young children to get their hands on loaded firearms. If that were not the case, there would be lots more than 400 dead children every year.

No, I disagree. Sorry. It's not proof of anything but the number of kids who died accidentally of gunshot wounds (and even that tends to get underestimated because of classification issues, according to links that have been quoted earlier).

The children who die of accidental gunshot wounds are just a fraction of all the irresponsible adults.

Let's not forget the cases where the kids didn't die but got injured.

Then there are the cases where children didn't die themselves but they killed somebody accidentally. If it's an adult victim it would be invisible when we just look at children's mortality statistics. One of the links that I posted earlier said that it's difficult to get information based on the age of the accidental shooter so there might not be accurate figures about this. Maybe someone can find them.

Then the kids who shot and injured someone accidentally but not fatally.

Then there are the cases where kids got their hands on a weapon and shot somebody on purpose. They'd be classified as homicides or homicide attempts but there's still some irresponsible adult somewhere who allowed them to have access to a gun.

Then the cases of children's shooting suicides. Again, not classified as accidents but nevertheless some idiot allowed a suicidal child access to firearms.

Then there are the undetermined cases of children dying of gunshot wounds, some of which might be relevant if known.

Then there are the kids who got their hands on a gun but couldn't or wouldn't fire it, who shot an animal, who shot harmlessly in the air or caused a bullethole in the wall, lost interest, or an adult noticed the danger in time to take it away before anything could happen. Most of these wouldn't be reported and we won't see them in the statistics because no one was injured.

Then there are the kids whose families get consistently lucky and avoid incidents although they're store loaded firearms openly where the kids' friends could find them, even if the family's own children might know better. Again, not coming up in the mortality statistics, but I quoted a survey earlier where 85% of gun owner parents said they didn't store theirs safely although they thought it was important and I've seen several posters here on WS indicate that in their family weapons were never kept away from the kids so I'm thinking there are probably quite a few of these. The thing is, you won't know if anyone is going to get hurt until after everybody's grown up, so I don't necessarily think these people were any less reckless just because they got lucky and ever nothing happened.

Someone asked about gun storage in families with kids earlier and here are some numbers:

A study of firearm storage patterns in U.S. homes found that &#8220;[o]f the homes with children and firearms, 55% were reported to have one or more firearms in an unlocked place,&#8221; and 43% reported keeping guns without a trigger lock in an unlocked place.8

A recent study on adult firearm storage practices in U.S. homes found that over 1.69 million children and youth under age 18 are living in homes with loaded and unlocked firearms.9

Keeping a firearm unloaded and locked, with the ammunition stored in a locked location separate from the firearm, significantly decreases the risk of suicide and unintentional firearm injury and death involving both long guns and handguns. These safe storage measures serve as a &#8220;protective effect&#8221; and assist in reducing youth suicide and unintentional injury in homes with children and teenagers where guns are stored.10

The presence of unlocked guns in the home increases the risk not only of accidental gun injuries but of intentional shootings as well. One study found that more than 75% of the guns used in youth suicide attempts and unintentional injuries were stored in the residence of the victim, a relative, or a friend

http://smartgunlaws.org/guns-in-the-homesafe-storage-statistics/


http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/01/22/peds.2013-1809.full.pdf+html

In 2009 there were 7391 hospitalizations for firearms injury in children and adolescents. 2149 of these were classified as unintentional, 413 as undetermined, 270 as suicides. There are even two suicides in the age group 0-4 years and 2 in the age group 5-9 years.

I don't know...two may be a vanishingly small number but IMO there should be exactly zero cases where a child that age shoots themselves to death on purpose.

 

[sonjay]

No, I disagree. Sorry. It's not proof of anything but the number of kids who died accidentally of gunshot wounds (and even that tends to get underestimated because of classification issues, according to links that have been quoted earlier).

The children who die of accidental gunshot wounds are just a fraction of all the irresponsible adults.

Let's not forget the cases where the kids didn't die but got injured.

Then there are the cases where children didn't die themselves but they killed somebody accidentally. If it's an adult victim it would be invisible when we just look at children's mortality statistics. One of the links that I posted earlier said that it's difficult to get information based on the age of the accidental shooter so there might not be accurate figures about this. Maybe someone can find them.

Then the kids who shot and injured someone accidentally but not fatally.

Then there are the cases where kids got their hands on a weapon and shot somebody on purpose. They'd be classified as homicides or homicide attempts but there's still some irresponsible adult somewhere who allowed them to have access to a gun.

Then the cases of children's shooting suicides. Again, not classified as accidents but nevertheless some idiot allowed a suicidal child access to firearms.

Then there are the undetermined cases of children dying of gunshot wounds, some of which might be relevant if known.

Then there are the kids who got their hands on a gun but couldn't or wouldn't fire it, who shot an animal, who shot harmlessly in the air or caused a bullethole in the wall, lost interest, or an adult noticed the danger in time to take it away before anything could happen. Most of these wouldn't be reported and we won't see them in the statistics because no one was injured.

Then there are the kids whose families get consistently lucky and avoid incidents although they're store loaded firearms openly where the kids' friends could find them, even if the family's own children might know better. Again, not coming up in the mortality statistics, but I quoted a survey earlier where 85% of gun owner parents said they didn't store theirs safely although they thought it was important and I've seen several posters here on WS indicate that in their family weapons were never kept away from the kids so I'm thinking there are probably quite a few of these. The thing is, you won't know if anyone is going to get hurt until after everybody's grown up, so I don't necessarily think these people were any less reckless just because they got lucky and ever nothing happened.

Someone asked about gun storage in families with kids earlier and here are some numbers:
http://smartgunlaws.org/guns-in-the-homesafe-storage-statistics/


http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/01/22/peds.2013-1809.full.pdf+html

In 2009 there were 7391 hospitalizations for firearms injury in children and adolescents. 2149 of these were classified as unintentional, 413 as undetermined, 270 as suicides. There are even two suicides in the age group 0-4 years and 2 in the age group 5-9 years.

I don't know...two may be a vanishingly small number but IMO there should be exactly zero cases where a child that age shoots themselves to death on purpose.

Okay, fine. Unintentional firearm injuries involving children comprise an epidemic of major proportions. What do you propose to do about it?