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

[Brightbird]

Not all dogs are brown. But I love dogs, and if brown dogs were being shot more than black dogs and grey dogs then I'd want to do something to help the brown dogs

 

[ATasteOfHoney]

Scotland says 'hi'.

.....and Lynchburg says hi back atcha'! Lol!

 

[daisy7]

You must have missed where I said the article linked to by CoolJ said that.

If you want to compare accidental deaths, then compare accidental deaths. Suicides are not accidental deaths.

A few hundred accidental firearm deaths per year vs. tens of thousands of accidental motor vehicle fatalities per year.

It's not even close. Cars are much more dangerous.

I have never said accidental deaths, just deaths. I'm not sure why this is so difficult for some to understand

 

[Montjoy]

RSBM

I have claimed that you are mistaken. All I have to do is show that there are some places with lots of guns and low crime. Lots of guns and low murder rate. Lots of guns and low suicide rate. Or, conversely, few guns and high crime. Few guns and high murder rates. Few guns and high suicide rates. Any one of those situations proves that your thesis is incorrect.

No, you are completely mistaken. Having taken many postgraduate courses in statistics, I can tell you quite confidently that what you are doing does not constitute any sort of statistical evidence or analysis. What you're describing is more along the lines of statistical anecdotes rather than statistical analysis. You're cherry picking outliers here. It's like saying "I can prove that smoking and drinking doesn't shorten one's lifespan because Auntie Edna is 105 and smokes and drinks every day."

My stats prove that your thesis is wrong. Just plain wrong. If your thesis were correct, there would not exist any place with high gun ownership and low crime rates, nor any place with low gun ownership and high crime rates.

Again, your hypothetical statistics do not prove anything. They aren't statistics, but specifically chosen discrete cases, whereas statistics refers to an analysis of a totality of cases (or a randomly drawn sample of them). Your purported 'statistics' (or more to the point, your attempt at analysis of such) also denies that there are many variables at play in these cases -- such as, for instance, poverty. But just because there are other variables, it does not mean that access to firearms is not a statistically significant variable.

 

[ATasteOfHoney]

With the exception of our Civil War, which was not a foreign war, whatever do you mean? Our casualty numbers are very low compared to other combatants in the two World Wars:

England had 7 time as many people killed in WWI as we did; France has 10.3 times as many, Germany had 10.7 to 20 times (and that's just counting combat deaths.

In WWII, Germany lost to death 1 out of every 10 citizens, military and civilian. Russia and the Slavic Countries had 26 MILLION deaths, roughly equivalent to the entire state of California today. US killed and missing totaled about 400,000 (roughly the same lost in Japan in 3 raids: Tokyo fire bombing, and A-bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki). (In fact our entire strategy was to let the Russians do the dying while we built tanks and planes.)

Although it's difficult now to say how many Native Americans were killed in combat and how many died from epidemics inadvertently brought by Europeans, suffice it to say the death ratios are similar to that in WWII.

More recently, we've suffered what? 4,000 to 6,000 deaths in Iraq. Far too many we will all agree. But the Iraqis have suffered more than 100,000!

If we have a "deadly history", it's because we have been so ready to dish it out, not because we have suffered so much mortality.

This is not to diminish the sacrifice of any of our wounded or their loves ones. But I understood you to say the U.S. had some sort unique casualty level throughout history and that is simply not true. The Jews alone lost more people in the early 1940s than the U.S. has lost to war in its entire history.

I thought my point was obvious & you did elude to it in your response--we were not invaded yet sent our boys overseas to fight.
But the bigger point is that we have a violent history....from the Genocide of the Native Americans, to the Revolution, to the Civil War, etc, etc.

I'm just trying to explain one aspect that makes Americans different in the approach to guns. Just one aspect within many others I've presented.
Moo

 

[al66pine]

cancel

 

[daisy7]

RSBM



No, you are completely mistaken. Having taken many postgraduate courses in statistics, I can tell you quite confidently that what you are doing does not constitute any sort of statistical evidence or analysis. What you're describing is more along the lines of statistical anecdotes rather than statistical analysis. You're cherry picking outliers here. It's like saying "I can prove that smoking and drinking doesn't shorten one's lifespan because Auntie Edna is 105 and smokes and drinks every day."




Again, your hypothetical statistics do not prove anything. They aren't statistics, but specifically chosen discrete cases, whereas statistics refers to an analysis of a totality of cases (or a randomly drawn sample of them). Your purported 'statistics' (or more to the point, your attempt at analysis of such) also denies that there are many variables at play in these cases -- such as, for instance, poverty. But just because there are other variables, it does not mean that access to firearms is not a statistically significant variable.

Amazing how just a few words is making me remember my graduate level stats classes and using SPSS

 

[Bernina]

Just have to say, I'm glad we all have specific freedoms according to US Constitution, State and local laws. I'm glad I live in Arizona. I'm incredibly thankful that my State laws allow me a bit more choices than other States.
And I'm terribly heartbroken that a women lost her life in a momentary lapse of judgement. But, I don't believe "human error" is a justifiable reason to make more laws. Unfortunately, this woman made quite a few "human errors" and paid the ultimate price. She was trained, "legal", experienced, and in just a few seconds the culmination of these errors brought about a tragedy.

I hope that members with firearms and those seeking to own firearms take this as a "learning lesson", a cautionary albeit tragic tale. "Could of, should of, would of" doesn't matter, no one else was harmed in Walmart, what's done is done. There are plenty of safety measures and laws out there. The family has many years of healing to go through.

It would be great if for just once, gun owners and non-gun owners could come together and have a meaningful dialogue.

*Statistics tend to be slanted by the organization sponsoring them. NRA, CDC, Bloomberg, New York Times, whoever.
*Agencies that are SUPPOSED to enforce the current gun laws are totally lax. One of the local gun dealers in the area has BOXES of sales forms he filled out in triplicate that the ATF has NEVER requested. He claims at least 15 years of them. "Fast and Furious" has already been mentioned, another such operation was run out of Texas during Bush Sr. Then you have NY's Bloomberg's "undercover" gun buying fiasco.
*Nobody has a background check done on them at gun shows in Arizona, and we haven't had to renew our CCW's for over a decade, we no longer need them to conceal/carry. Open carry hasn't ever been an issue, it's been legal since I was a kid.
*Arizona does not require registration for your firearm (Fed Class 3 is through ATF) Of the 30+ firearms we have, 3 are registered. Realistically you could double, triple, maybe quadruple the amount of firearms owned in Arizona because only registered firearms are used in gun totals.
*What many of you are NOT taking into consideration is the areas where people live. Many people in rural areas use guns as "tools". It's part of that particular rural culture, NOT "gun culture". I grab my .357 mag when I leave the property just as many people grab their cell phones. It's normal, been doing it for 25+ years.
*Prohibited possessors here are: convicted felons, involuntary psych patient hospitalizations, and those who have active TRO's.


There is plenty of cartel and gang violence in the bigger cities here, in most cases, shootings involve criminal elements and/or LE. Out here in the boonies, it's varmints or the random tweeker who stumbles over your fence.

The laws are in place, we just need the Government to step up and do their job. We need to educate teachers to recognize mental illness. We need to stop demonizing mental illness so families bring their loved ones in to get treatment. We need stricter laws governing domestic violence and restricting gun ownership by the aggressor. Our rural school system gives out free trigger locks to anyone who wants them to protect children from discharging a fire arm. Harsher penalties for prohibited possessors .

When you have a problem you go to the source, treating the symptoms just prolongs the problem. Law abiding gun owners are NOT the problem, human error, criminals, and unstable people are.
No realistic gun owner EVER wants to shoot another human being.

JMO

 

[Brightbird]

You can't just select two numbers (e.g, Russia's 4000 gun ownership rate and 25.5 murder rate) and call it a negative correlation. That's just two numbers. You need multiple cases before you can test whether there's a correlation.

 

[Elley Mae]

Thank goodness the clerk was able to protect himself.


http://www.ktul.com/story/27845283/store-clerk-shoots-and-kills-one-suspect-injures-another

The clerk told police that three masked men entered the store armed with handguns. Police say the clerk pulled out his semi-automatic pistol and shot two of the three suspects.

 

[Elley Mae]

in reference to my last post.

I have to say that I found that while looking at a media site that is not allowed to be posted here. When I find articles in sites that can't be posted I google key words from the article and find it in a local paper that only some media will pick up and carry forward to the outer reaches of local media. So the cases of people using firearms/handguns as protection are out there you just have to look, it's there.

 

[sonjay]

You can't just select two numbers (e.g, Russia's 4000 gun ownership rate and 25.5 murder rate) and call it a negative correlation. That's just two numbers. You need multiple cases before you can test whether there's a correlation.

You mean like Florida's murder rate going DOWN as concealed carriers go UP?

You mean like England's murder rate going UP as gun ownership goes DOWN?

You mean like Chicago's crime rate going UP as handgun ownership goes DOWN?

Like that? Yeah, we got that covered.

In the first chart, showing the homicide rates and gun ownership in European countries, I was showing that there are countries with high gun ownership and high crime, high gun ownership and low crime, low gun ownership and low crime, and low gun ownership and low crime. Any assertion that more guns = more crime is clearly disproved by the existence of countries with more guns and less crime. Any assertion that less guns = less crime is clearly disproved by the existence of countries with less guns and more crime.

Would you like it better if I group those countries together? Here you go:

Russia, Luxembourg and Hungary are the three countries with the highest murder rate, and all three have very low gun ownership rates. Austria, Norway, Germany and Switzerland are the 4 countries with the lowest murder rates and high gun ownership rates. Therefore, we see the correlation across countries that more guns = less crime and less guns = more crime.

The point is that no one who is willing to consider actual facts can look at those numbers and insist that more guns = more crime -- or more "needless deaths" as CoolJ likes to put it. I'm still not sure what specific deaths CoolJ is referring to, because "more guns" does not consistently correlate with more murder or more suicide.

 

[sonjay]

Thank goodness the clerk was able to protect himself.


http://www.ktul.com/story/27845283/store-clerk-shoots-and-kills-one-suspect-injures-another

The clerk told police that three masked men entered the store armed with handguns. Police say the clerk pulled out his semi-automatic pistol and shot two of the three suspects.

And, two of those thugs just increased the number of "firearm deaths" by 2.

I don't consider those "needless deaths." I consider those self-defense that resulted in justifiable homicide.

 

[Nova]

I thought my point was obvious & you did elude to it in your response--we were not invaded yet sent our boys overseas to fight.
But the bigger point is that we have a violent history....from the Genocide of the Native Americans, to the Revolution, to the Civil War, etc, etc.

I'm just trying to explain one aspect that makes Americans different in the approach to guns. Just one aspect within many others I've presented.
Moo

You are using the wrong evidence to support what I believe to be your point. When it comes to military violence--at home or abroad--we lag far behind Russia, Germany, Japan, England, France or China. Yet all of those have come to their senses and realized that arming everyone is no protection.

What may be different about the U.S. is that through most of our history we have been a "frontier" nation that depended on armed, private citizens to protect the territory we had taken from its rightful owners. As such, we have a history of private armaments that has no equivalent in most countries.

 

[sonjay]

Here's another negative correlation. More guns, fewer child firearm deaths. This is for the entire U.S., covering a period of almost 20 years. Hardly an "outlier."

 

[sonjay]

You really don't get the term "cherry picking" do you? This is a trend I am noticing as I look through control opinion pieces. The pro-gun folks point to these outlier situations to prove their point. The anti-gun folks point to full studies that look at the information as a whole. Yes we know you can find charts (and don't get me started on how easy it is to make a chart look the way you want) to support any view. Let me have a read through the "Harvard" study. But at a quick glance it looks to be an interpretation of previous studies. There were no new studies involved.

Well, as a matter of fact, I now understand your definition of cherry picking: Any statistics, studies or datasets that you don't like.

The homicide rate for all of England and Wales for a period covering 40 years is hardly "cherry picking."

The murder rate for Chicago for period covering 43 years is hardly "cherry picking."

The murder rate for the entire state of Florida for a period covering 48 years is hardly "cherry picking."

When I posted the chart that showed worldwide gun ownership vs. crime rates, which clearly showed a complete lack of correlation between firearms and crime, you scoffed at it because it included third-world countries. When I post charts or tables showing developed European countries, you call it cherry picking.

Fine, you'll believe whatever you wish to believe, despite its falsity.

 

[CoolJ]

Seriously? I have shown you many. You dismiss them and ignore them, because you don't like what they show.

Here's one:

View attachment 67658

Russia - extremely high murder rate, very low gun ownership rate. (This is a negative correlation, BTW)
Finland - highest gun ownership rate on the chart, murder rate is a less than a tenth of Russia's. (This is a negative correlation, BTW)
Norway - second highest gun ownership rate, second lowest murder rate. (This is a negative correlation, BTW)

Here's a Harvard study - you seem to like Harvard studies:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf

The authors reviewed dozens upon dozens of studies. They cite a 2004 evaluation by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences that review 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, along with its own empirical research. The USNAS failed to identify any gun control that had reduced violence crime, suicide or gun accidents.

About England, they wrote:

On the one hand, despite constant and substantially increasing gun ownership, the United States saw progressive and dramatic reductions in criminal violence in the 1990s. On the other hand, the same time period in the United Kingdom saw a constant and dramatic increase in violent crime to which England’s response was ever‐more drastic gun control including, eventually, banning and confiscating all handguns and many types of long guns. 22 Nevertheless, criminal violence rampantly increased so that by 2000 England surpassed the United States to become one of the developed world’s most violence‐ridden nations.

About gun ownership rates and murder rates, they wrote this:

The non‐correlation between gun ownership and murder is reinforced by examination of statistics from larger numbers of nations across the developed world. Comparison of “homicide and suicide mortality data for thirty‐six nations (including the United States) for the period 1990–1995” to gun ownership levels showed “no significant (at the 5% level) association between gun ownership levels and the total homicide rate.” Consistent with this is a later European study of data from 21 nations in which “no significant correlations [of gun ownership levels] with total suicide or homicide rates were found.

You really should read the entire article. You might find it enlightening.

Here's a chart showing England's homicide rate since passing its 1968 and 1997 gun control laws:
View attachment 67661
Not counting certain homicide anomalies (not related to guns), the homicide rate in England and Wales has average 52% higher since the 1968 gun control law, and 15% higher since the 1997 handgun ban. That's a negative correlation, BTW.

Here's another:

View attachment 67662


After Chicago banned handguns in 1982 through 2007 when this chart was compiled, the city's murder rate average 17%. But guess what? The overall U.S. murder rate average 25% lower during that same period. IOW, for the U.S. overall, with no handgun ban, the murder rate dropped faster than it did in Chicago with its handgun ban. That is a negative correlation.

What about concealed carry? Here's what happened in Florida vs. the U.S. after Florida passed its right-to-carry law:

View attachment 67663

During the years covered by this chart, Florida's murder rate averaged 36% lower after the right-to-carry law. By comparison, the overall U.S. murder rate average 15% lower during the same period. Nationally, murder rates dropped, but Florida's murder rate dropped faster than the national rate after Florida passed its shall-issue concealed-carry law. That's a negative correlation, BTW.

Want more? I can continue.

Ok so after a little bit of digging, I am finding some very interesting stuff about the authors of this "Harvard study" note- it is not a Harvard study at all. It is an opinion piece or "student law review for conservative and libertarian legal scholarship.”

Gary Mauser - a CANADIAN professor (very politically aligned) with little to no published work other than some anti gun control opinion pieces over the past 20 years:
Here is a picture of him:


And here is a response to this "article" (opinion piece) from the Harvard School of Public Health
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1264/2013/06/Kates-Mauser.pdf

 

[ATasteOfHoney]

You are using the wrong evidence to support what I believe to be your point. When it comes to military violence--at home or abroad--we lag far behind Russia, Germany, Japan, England, France or China. Yet all of those have come to their senses and realized that arming everyone is no protection.

What may be different about the U.S. is that through most of our history we have been a "frontier" nation that depended on armed, private citizens to protect the territory we had taken from its rightful owners. As such, we have a history of private armaments that has no equivalent in most countries.

Nope....I stand behind my own personal statement but thanks anyway.
Read my initial post---I didn't state the U.S. had. Unique "casualty" rate". As far as wars go, we have involved ourselves (esp the last 100yrs) in wars that we could've not been involved in (ie invaded in the mainland). We went willingly. A good example is Viet Nam.

Quoting death tolls from civilians or soldiers of their own I invaded/occupied countries during a single war is s different discussion.

 

[CoolJ]

Just another little tidbit about Gary Mauser (the author of the "study" cited by sonjay)

He wrote a book in 1990. The title of the book?

Manipulating Public Opinion

http://www.amazon.com/Manipulating-...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421525110&sr=1-1

This guy is a beauty!

 

[sonjay]

Just another little tidbit about Gary Mauser (the author of the "study" cited by sonjay)

He wrote a book in 1990. The title of the book?

Manipulating Public Opinion

http://www.amazon.com/Manipulating-...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421525110&sr=1-1

This guy is a beauty!

When we can't refute the message, we attack the messenger.

Love it.