Debate: American Gun Advocates Are Incredibly Selfish Individuals
Side: No

So you’re saying only talk about guns used in killings.So you are reading things I haven’t written. Your read my post right? It deals quite a lot with injury.So your rather long point is that guns are not a problem but swimming pools are ?I’m starting to think that any post you start with “so” is going to be a misrepresentation. In my last post I specifically said “Would you say the US has a swimming pool problem? I wouldn’t.”It’s interesting to note that you said the Irish have a drink problem because they drink and it’s culturalYou forgot to start this with “so”. What I said was “Should Ireland ban alcohol? No. You guys like alcohol”. I also said “Americans drink less but have a higher alcohol related death rate than Ireland”. This implies an American drinking problem, not an Irish one. My point was that a Saudi operating on your premises, would be justified in thinking you should ban alcohol the way Saudi’s do.Let’s see drunk driving is not a drink problem but a car problem is that the way it works ?No it isn’t. Claiming that drunk driving is a car problem would be more akin to your position on guns. Incidentally you do realize swimming pools were made for pleasure guns were made to kill do you see a difference there ?Doesn’t it bother you that a product designed for pleasure is more effective at killing than a lethal weapon?Your swimming pool example is pure bullshit and a favourite ploy of the N R AThe data comes straight from the CDC. I got the idea from Freakonomics. I don’t read NRA publications.it’s a pity you resort to deception as in misrepresentating the figures to attempt to make a caseYou and everyone has access to the CDC data just the same as me. I haven’t altered any numbers. Repeat a lie often enough, and people (who don’t bother to look into the facts, and who like the sound of the lie) will repeat it along with youI literally crunched these numbers from the CDC database specifically for this debate. I haven’t repeated anything. I discovered it just today. You are free to check the CDC yourself.With a few well-spent minutes with the latest Centers for Disease Control (CDC) statistics, I quickly realized that the claim was completely falseSince everything I said was true and derived from CDC data, please provide whatever data you believe to be the correct CDC data. If I have made any mathematical error, I will gladly admit it. You realize one of my stats was actually worse than what you initially claimed right?For a quick comparison of the 2013 CDC statistics:Age 14 and under, deaths by drowning: 625Age 14 and under, deaths by firearm (intentional and otherwise): 408Age 15 to 24, deaths by drowning: 501Age 15 to 24, deaths by firearm (intentional and otherwise): 6085My data was for all age groups in 2015 unless otherwise stated. So let’s use your age groups and year (I don’t know why you didn’t use 2015)I am finding 667 deaths by drowning for ages 14 and under in 2013 (I don’t know why there’s a discrepancy. Are you using the same CDC link?). Age 14 and under for firearm deaths, I am finding 409 (again, not sure why the slight discrepancy). You didn’t mention Age 14 and under for unintentional firearm deaths, that’s a mere 69. I’m finding that the Age 15 to 24 death by drowning is 573 in 2013. I find firearms deaths for ages 15 to 24 to be slightly higher than yours at 6,181. Unintentional firearm deaths for the same group and year is a mere 107. That tells me that most firearm deaths for this group, as for any group, is a problem of criminality. It further illustrates the demographic where crime is highly problematic. No one will be surprised to see it is the typical age group for street gang involvement.So, by including those people over the age of 14 in the statistics, the numbers skew undeniably toward guns being much more dangerous than swimming pools. Including all age groups in the U.S., there is a total of 3,391 drowning deaths to a total of 33,169 deaths by firearmYou using straight numbers rather than rates, rates will give a more accurate risk factor. Remember, I accounted for the number of households in the US, the number of households with guns, and the number of households with pools. I won’t re-post here, I’ll let you or any interested reader just scroll up. I thought it went without saying, but I get all household and population figures from the census.Also, keep in mind that drowning does not only include swimming poolsI was pretty careful about this. Just as having a gun in the house doesn’t mean your gun is the one you accidentally get killed by, owning a pool doesn’t mean your pool is the cause of your drowning. That’s why I used the word correlate. Causation may be inferred, but it cannot be assumed. So I only presented the information as a correlate, not a causation. We don’t have the information for anything more.But, even if the statistics weren’t so blatantly obvious in spelling out the relative danger of guns versus drowning, the assertion of the relative danger of swimming pools versus guns is, on its face, rather stupidIt’s not uncommon for human intuition to be completely out of step with statistical reality. Consider the risk of terrorism. The number of deaths due to terrorism in 2015 was a questionable 5 (low numbers are considered automatically questionable). Yet terrorism is, on its face, a very dangerous problem.But with the NRA pushing for everybody to have access to guns everywhere and at all times, concealed or open carryI don’t really know the NRA, but I haven’t seen anyone pushing for the gun rights of felons, or the mentally unstable; quite the opposite. The ridiculous number of people who shouldn’t have guns, committing gun crimes, makes people who are perfectly safe with guns want to keep them. Since they aren’t criminals or mentally unstable, why not?I suppose I could throw a bone to the pro-gun folks and say that in terms of accidental deaths, there are more deaths by drowning than deaths by accidental discharge of firearms across all age categories.No bone necessary. I’m concerned with facts.Still, a swimming pool, even in your own backyard, is less likely to be involved in the death of a family member than a gun you ownThe correlation death by gun and drowning to gun ownership and pool ownership respectively, tells a different story.but after that age, the gun surges ahead by thousands.You stopped at 24. My last post included all age groups.Okay—I know that actually citing statistics with pro-gun people is about as useful as, say, asking my dogs to brush their own teethThat’s weird since I have been citing statistics this entire time. By the way, that dog is more likely to bite you than you are to be accidentally shot by a gun when you are in the US.  I can easily imagine the pro-gunners reading the paragraph immediately preceding this one and taking it as evidence that swimming pools are, in fact, more dangerous than guns.Good, that means you are statistically savvy. The number of households with guns far outnumber the number of households with pools. That’s why any given pool is more dangerous than any given gun.The rest of your post is just you burying your head in the and firing off statsWhen considering the weight we should give to an issue, it is appropriate to consider how many deaths or injuries are caused by various things. Including simple things that cause more death or injury than firearms is an appropriate comparison.so childhood deaths through guns not a problemSee? You started with “so”. Any preventable death is a problem and ways to prevent more of them should be considered. But compared to other various dangers out there, gun deaths are not a concern for the vast majority of US citizens. Obviously gun deaths become a significant concern if you are in a neighborhood with high criminality or, as is often the case here, your child is a gun toting criminal. 22,000 suicides yearly through guns no worriesI haven’t mentioned suicides. But I’m pretty sure owning a gun hasn’t increased my risk. It’s a pity you’re so upset at me asking about gun accidents and feel the need to childishly state it’s moving three goalpostsAs I said before, crunching the number has been pretty enjoyable, even if you don’t understand/accept what they mean. When you moved the goal post to injuries, I was happy to find the CDC data that related. The links for my data are as follows. Please look closely at the variable you entered as I would like to see where the slight discrepancies came from (I don’t think they made a significant different in the argument).Non-Fatal Injury Data: https://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/nfirates.html Fatal Injury Data: https://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/dataRestriction inj.html