Based on a good suggestion from Silver, I thought it would be interesting to start this thread. In the news, we see commentary after commentary against guns because of the number of people killed in gun related incidents. There have been comments about how gun owners are irresponsible, dangerous, etc.
A trip to the CDC site reveals this about guns:
I am curious why we don't see as many, if any at all, anti alcohol comments from newscasters and politicians on the level and frequency of those who want stronger controls on guns or their outright abolishment in the private sector since alcohol causes far more death and mayhem on a yearly basis than guns.
Because.
Alchohol can be compared to a poisoned cake- will give you a sore tummy, but won't kill you.
A guns only perpose is death- you know by the silohet. To the human mind gun=death.
Because I mean that very often people are like. "Okay One more drink, I can handle it."
After that they get into their car and usually they get into a car crash.
Because I mean that very often people are like. "Okay One more drink, I can handle it." After that they get into their car and usually they get into a car crash.
The point being that it is strange we don't have big news stories, for example, on how many people died over a weekend from alcohol related causes in the news as we see in the New York Times about people dying from gun related causes. We do not see politicians having tirades against alcohol the way we see Obama going against guns.
Why the silence from these people about alcohol when it kills more and destroys more lives through various means, like job loss, health loss, marriages ruined, etc.?
Mr Nobody wrote: Well, we tried getting rid of alcohol but nobody liked that.
Who said get rid of it? We just need some common sense measures that will help regulate it more, and keep our children safe. Who could be against common sense measures?
Well 1:Guns tend, not always as shown before, meant to kill other people(And mostly yourself if you roll a one) 2:No one is going into schools and killing people with tequila shots 3: Alchohol Tastes good, a lead bullet im sure doesnt(I have yet t been able to catch a bullet in my mouth) 4: Drunk people are hilarious, Dead people not so much(Sometimes though) 5: Guns hit on touch AC and have no place in my fantasy
Cheesecat wrote: Wow, first post is using false equivalence were off to a great start.
Fact of the matter more people are dead and lives ruined from alcohol than guns. People get uptight over 31,000 people, 19,000 of whom are suicides, dying a year from guns. Alcohol death, even though at 88,000, doesn't rate much more than jokes, as we see in this thread.
The point being that it is strange we don't have big news stories, for example, on how many people died over a weekend from alcohol related causes in the news as we see in the New York Times about people dying from gun related causes. We do not see politicians having tirades against alcohol the way we see Obama going against guns.
Why the silence from these people about alcohol when it kills more and destroys more lives through various means, like job loss, health loss, marriages ruined, etc.?
The main thing with gun violence is that you (usually) don't chose to have someone shoot you. If you are the person drinking, than if you die it's usually your fault. I think that is the reasoning is for stuff like that.
And Obama having tirades against guns? I haven't heard about anything like that.
While I agree that alcohol abuse is a problem in this country and we need to find a way to fix it you could have just left it at that.
The point being that it is strange we don't have big news stories, for example, on how many people died over a weekend from alcohol related causes in the news as we see in the New York Times about people dying from gun related causes. We do not see politicians having tirades against alcohol the way we see Obama going against guns.
Why the silence from these people about alcohol when it kills more and destroys more lives through various means, like job loss, health loss, marriages ruined, etc.?
The main thing with gun violence is that you (usually) don't chose to have someone shoot you. If you are the person drinking, than if you die it's usually your fault. I think that is the reasoning is for stuff like that.
And Obama having tirades against guns? I haven't heard about anything like that.
While I agree that alcohol abuse is a problem in this country and we need to find a way to fix it you could have just left it at that.
About 10,000 people are killed by drunk drivers a year.
True, but why not recognize they're two very different problems (in terms of amount of time spent, location, purpose, etc) and both should be taken seriously rather than pretending they're really that similar and that one is more important than the other (well maybe one is it would be
interesting to see how someone evaluates that though).
The Shadow wrote: , but I didn't realise it was such a problem in the US...
It's not a "problem" in the US... the problem is idiotic policies created by ignorant people. It's in MUCH the same line as the Volstead Act (which was the punitive and legal measure to enforce the Prohibition Amendment), as they are ill-thought, nearly impossible to enforce laws that do nothing to do anything about the root problems of society.
I mean, really, we should be more concerned with WHY people drink to a point where they either die directly from alcohol or from doing something stupid (like driving, etc.). But if we're talking strictly numbers, then I'm sure heart disease and cholesterol account for more deaths than even Alcohol (too lazy to look), so, obviously we NEED to do something about the fat arses running around our planet (my solution involves Soylent Green )
Cheesecat wrote: True, but why not recognize they're two very different problems (in terms of amount of time spent, location, purpose, etc) and both should be taken seriously rather than pretending they're really that similar and that one is more important than the other (well maybe one is it would be
interesting to see how someone evaluates that though).
It's not like very few people own guns (47% of Americans report ownership. The number that own guns and don't report it is anyone's guess)
Cheesecat wrote: True, but why not recognize they're two very different problems (in terms of amount of time spent, location, purpose, etc) and both should be taken seriously rather than pretending they're really that similar and that one is more important than the other (well maybe one is it would be
interesting to see how someone evaluates that though).
yet alcohol has an 8 to 1 lead over gun related homicide as a cause of death.
Whether this reflected a true decline in gun ownership or a cultural shift in Americans' willingness to say they had guns is unclear.
That has to be one of the most true statements in that article. I tend to lean towards the latter here... With all the recent stories of the untrustworthiness of the US Gov't. I feel that more people are going to be reluctant to stand up and say "yep, Ive got guns"
As I said, alcohol death is a cause for humor with people, yet they freak at the far fewer number of people that are killed by guns.
For me the main reason for that would be, guns kill other people, alcohol involves a lot more killing yourself, which I don't mind.
All of the victims of drunk drivers would disagree. And has been pointed out, the majority of gun deaths are suicide, so their mostly for killing yourself as well.
I think you ahve to factor in the propinquity of said death. Unless you get killed by someone who drank, which is a sad occurance, having a drink or five will likely only kill you many years down the line and we are not fully-equipped to deal with such long term consequences of things that appear harmless. All the kids I teach who smoke disbelieve the statistics on tobacco-related disease and death, just because one cigarette doesn't really harm them, in fact it makes them feel great.
Speaking of which, do you also have access to those stats? I'm curious all of a sudden.
Relapse wrote: yet alcohol has an 8 to 1 lead over gun related homicide as a cause of death.
Why are you comparing (slow) alcohol related suicides with gun related homicides?
I think he's concerned about deaths in general.
That is correct. It doesn't matter if the death is fast or slow, at the end of it, more people are lilled yearly by alcohol than guns, even though there is a high percentage of people that admit owning guns. Add to the alcohol deaths, the other negative effects of alcohol, not only on the one drinking it but also those that have to be around the one drinking.
Again, from the CDC:
Excessive alcohol use has immediate effects that increase the risk of many harmful health conditions. These immediate effects are most often the result of binge drinking and include the following—
Unintentional injuries, including traffic injuries, falls, drownings, burns, and unintentional firearm injuries.
Violence, including intimate partner violence and child maltreatment. About 35% of victims report that offenders are under the influence of alcohol.
Alcohol use is also associated with 2 out of 3 incidents of intimate partner violence.
Studies have also shown that alcohol is a leading factor in child maltreatment and neglect cases, and is the most frequent substance abused among these parents.
Risky sexual behaviors, including unprotected sex, sex with multiple partners, and increased risk of sexual assault. These behaviors can result in unintended pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.
Miscarriage and stillbirth among pregnant women, and a combination of physical and mental birth defects among children that last throughout life.
Alcohol poisoning, a medical emergency that results from high blood alcohol levels that suppress the central nervous system and can cause loss of consciousness, low blood pressure and body temperature, coma, respiratory depression, or death.
Long-Term Health Risks
Over time, excessive alcohol use can lead to the development of chronic diseases, neurological impairments and social problems. These include but are not limited to—
Neurological problems, including dementia, stroke and neuropathy.
Cardiovascular problems, including myocardial infarction, cardiomyopathy, atrial fibrillation and hypertension.
Psychiatric problems, including depression, anxiety, and suicide.
Social problems, including unemployment, lost productivity, and family problems.
Cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, liver, colon, and breast.20 In general, the risk of cancer increases with increasing amounts of alcohol.
Liver diseases, including—
Alcoholic hepatitis.
Cirrhosis, which is among the 15 leading causes of all deaths in the United States.
Among persons with Hepatitis C virus, worsening of liver function and interference with medications used to treat this condition.
Other gastrointestinal problems, including pancreatitis and gastritis.
An utterly pointless gun thread based upon a false equivalency, I've not seen one of them before!
Nuclear weaponry don't kill anyone at all each year while according to some random internet source peanuts kill 150-200 people a year in the US. That means that loosely regulated private ownership of nuclear weaponry is perfectly safe. Right? Right?
Is there some sort of requirement to recycle the same threads ad nauseum?
Is there some sort of requirement to recycle the same threads ad nauseum?
Until you rise up, demand your right to self-defense and arms, and overthrow your obviously oppressive regimes, yep, there is a requirement for these threads
Mathieu Raymond wrote: I think you ahve to factor in the propinquity of said death. Unless you get killed by someone who drank, which is a sad occurance, having a drink or five will likely only kill you many years down the line and we are not fully-equipped to deal with such long term consequences of things that appear harmless. All the kids I teach who smoke disbelieve the statistics on tobacco-related disease and death, just because one cigarette doesn't really harm them, in fact it makes them feel great.
Speaking of which, do you also have access to those stats? I'm curious all of a sudden.
Yep, the links I posted are from the Center for Disease control website. Just jump on the links and they will take you there. The statistic that surprised me was the fact that most gun deaths (roughly 60%) are suicides.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Palindrome wrote: An utterly pointless gun thread based upon a false equivalency, I've not seen one of them before!
Nuclear weaponry don't kill anyone at all each year while according to some random internet source peanuts kill 150-200 people a year in the US. That means that loosely regulated private ownership of nuclear weaponry is perfectly safe. Right? Right?
Is there some sort of requirement to recycle the same threads ad nauseum?
Glad you saw the thread title and instead of moving on, felt the need to jump in. You must have felt required to.
How is the information I provided a false equivelancy? Did you bother to check the statistics provided?
hotsauceman1 wrote: Well
1:Guns tend, not always as shown before, meant to kill other people(And mostly yourself if you roll a one)
2:No one is going into schools and killing people with tequila shots
3: Alchohol Tastes good, a lead bullet im sure doesnt(I have yet t been able to catch a bullet in my mouth)
4: Drunk people are hilarious, Dead people not so much(Sometimes though)
5: Guns hit on touch AC and have no place in my fantasy
2: I'd love to see that-"excuse me kids, today's lesson is on 'body shots'. Gina, will you come up and lift your shirt so we can demonstrate?" This is only appropriate with 18yr old seniors, of which "Gina" is in this case.
4: stick the hand of a corpse down his own pants and make him look like he's jacking it. Hilarity ensues.
carlos13th wrote: You also need to look into other statistics such as the number of gun owners compared to people who drink alcohol.
47% of Americans admit to owning a gun. There are more out there that own at least one, but don't admit to it.
60% of Americans drink.
We have these statistics, yet we have 11,000 people murdered by guns a year compared to 88,000 from alcohol related causes.
This pretty much puts into perspective how dangerous gun ownership is in relation to other recreational items. The fact of the matter is, guns go beyond the area of recreation to a definite need, depending where in the country you are.. Alcohol rarely, if ever, fits that bill.
carlos13th wrote: You also need to look into other statistics such as the number of gun owners compared to people who drink alcohol.
47% of Americans admit to owning a gun there are more out there that don't admit to it, but who knows how many.
60% of Americans drink.
We have these statistics, yet we have 11,000 people murdered by guns a year compared to 88,000 from alcohol related causes.
This pretty much puts into perspective how dangerous gun ownership is in relation to other recreational items. The fact of the matter is, guns go beyond the area of recreation to a definite need, depending where in the country you are.. Alcohol rarely, if ever, fits that bill.
Considering it's technically a poison, I don't see how there would ever be a "need" for it.
How is the information I provided a false equivelancy? Did you bother to check the statistics provided?
I ignore almost all gun threads a s a matter of course given that they are nearly all the same anyway. I rarely skim brand new threads if they are less than a couple of pages but I almost always regret doing so.
It is a false equivelency as alcoholism and gun ownership have nothing in common. My nuclear weapon Vs peanut analogy should have made that clear.
If you are going to have a frank debate about gun control then at least use proper evidence.
Not to justify anything. I am just pointing out that a fairly large percentage of people are outraged over guns because of the number of people murdered a year, yet don't think twice about supporting an industry that kills 8 times as many yearly.
How is the information I provided a false equivelancy? Did you bother to check the statistics provided?
I ignore almost all gun threads a s a matter of course given that they are nearly all the same anyway. I rarely skim brand new threads if they are less than a couple of pages but I almost always regret doing so.
It is a false equivelency as alcoholism and gun ownership have nothing in common. My nuclear weapon Vs peanut analogy should have made that clear.
If you are going to have a frank debate about gun control then at least use proper evidence.
Statistics provided by a neutral agency are not evidence, or not what you want to admit?
Kilkrazy wrote: He's making a clear point that because people die from alcohol it is OK for people to die from guns.
That is a justification of guns.
Have you even read any of his posts? Or are you just being difficult on purpose? I'm tending to think the latter.
He has clearly said the only point he is making is that there is a double standard in how the two items are viewed. Not a single post of his has in anyway mentioned any support for gun rights. Not one. If you are interpreting it for that, then that is your own issue.
Kilkrazy wrote: He's making a clear point that because people die from alcohol it is OK for people to die from guns.
That is a justification of guns.
Have you even read any of his posts? Or are you just being difficult on purpose? I'm tending to think the latter.
He has clearly said the only point he is making is that there is a double standard in how the two items are viewed. Not a single post of his has in anyway mentioned any support for gun rights. Not one. If you are interpreting it for that, then that is your own issue.
As I said, alcohol death is a cause for humor with people, yet they freak at the far fewer number of people that are killed by guns.
For me the main reason for that would be, guns kill other people, alcohol involves a lot more killing yourself, which I don't mind.
All of the victims of drunk drivers would disagree. And has been pointed out, the majority of gun deaths are suicide, so their mostly for killing yourself as well.
Victims of drunk drivers would disagree that alcohol suicide is something I don't mind ... what?
Besides, I think the punishments for drunk driving are way too lax, everywhere.
carlos13th wrote: You also need to look into other statistics such as the number of gun owners compared to people who drink alcohol.
47% of Americans admit to owning a gun. There are more out there that own at least one, but don't admit to it.
60% of Americans drink.
We have these statistics, yet we have 11,000 people murdered by guns a year compared to 88,000 from alcohol related causes.
This pretty much puts into perspective how dangerous gun ownership is in relation to other recreational items. The fact of the matter is, guns go beyond the area of recreation to a definite need, depending where in the country you are.. Alcohol rarely, if ever, fits that bill.
How often does the average American go shooting, versus go drinking?
I went through this before, and usually get ignored:
The average American spends something like 300 hours a year operating a motor vehicle, and exponentially more time than that involved with motor vehicles (such as pedestrians crossing the street, etc). The average American spends nowhere near that much time with firearms. Not even close. So you can't look at the comparison as a matter of X guns and Y cars versus A deaths and B deaths. You have to look at the deaths against the rate of time spend using the tools.
And when that happens, I'd bet that you find *nothing* compares to the lethality of firearms.
ALSO: this is a really tired thread. Why was it started again?
Nope, don't own a gun, never felt the need. Just pointing out hypocrisy.
That's not hypocrisy at all, an example of hypocrisy would be saying that there is a gun problem in your country and then protesting against the government for trying to install new polices that could help reduce gun violence that would be hypocrisy, as hypocrisy is saying you believe in
something and then not following through with what you believe in. Also just because someone is for more gun control doesn't mean they aren't concerned about alcohol related deaths.
carlos13th wrote: You also need to look into other statistics such as the number of gun owners compared to people who drink alcohol.
47% of Americans admit to owning a gun. There are more out there that own at least one, but don't admit to it.
60% of Americans drink.
We have these statistics, yet we have 11,000 people murdered by guns a year compared to 88,000 from alcohol related causes.
This pretty much puts into perspective how dangerous gun ownership is in relation to other recreational items. The fact of the matter is, guns go beyond the area of recreation to a definite need, depending where in the country you are.. Alcohol rarely, if ever, fits that bill.
How often does the average American go shooting, versus go drinking?
I went through this before, and usually get ignored:
The average American spends something like 300 hours a year operating a motor vehicle, and exponentially more time than that involved with motor vehicles (such as pedestrians crossing the street, etc). The average American spends nowhere near that much time with firearms. Not even close. So you can't look at the comparison as a matter of X guns and Y cars versus A deaths and B deaths. You have to look at the deaths against the rate of time spend using the tools.
And when that happens, I'd bet that you find *nothing* compares to the lethality of firearms.
ALSO: this is a really tired thread. Why was it started again?
Yet you have people out there saying those who own guns are a danger to society, despite the fact that, according to you, gun owners don't use guns as much as people drink alcohol.
There are about 10% more people in the U.S. that drink than those who admit to owning guns, yet the death rate for alcohol related causes is 8 to 1 over gun related homicide.
As far as looking at the times involved in drinking versus gun use, it would seem that alcohol is a greater danger because of addiction, causing the drinker to use it more.
Just to reiterate,I am not a gun owner and I think any untimely death is horrible, whether by alcohol or gun, but there is a huge element of hypocricy with those who preach heavy gun control or abolition, yet frequently use and share alcohol.
Nope, don't own a gun, never felt the need. Just pointing out hypocrisy.
That's not hypocrisy at all, an example of hypocrisy would be saying that there is a gun problem in your country and then protesting against the government for trying to install new polices that could help reduce gun violence that would be hypocrisy, as hypocrisy is saying you believe in
something and then not following through with what you believe in. Also just because someone is for more gun control doesn't mean they aren't concerned about alcohol related deaths.
Then how come we never hear from them about alcohol related death?
carlos13th wrote: You also need to look into other statistics such as the number of gun owners compared to people who drink alcohol.
47% of Americans admit to owning a gun. There are more out there that own at least one, but don't admit to it.
60% of Americans drink.
We have these statistics, yet we have 11,000 people murdered by guns a year compared to 88,000 from alcohol related causes.
This pretty much puts into perspective how dangerous gun ownership is in relation to other recreational items. The fact of the matter is, guns go beyond the area of recreation to a definite need, depending where in the country you are.. Alcohol rarely, if ever, fits that bill.
That high on gun ownership? That surprises me even more so than only 60% of Americans drinking alcohol.
Considering it's technically a poison, I don't see how there would ever be a "need" for it.
My liver consistently makes chemicals that attempt to kill me, fortunately, doctors have found that if I drink enough alcohol, I can temporarily kill those cells
I don't know about the US, but here we do regulate alcohol. Alcohol-related violence been an increasing problem with recent discussion on what to do about it.
But part of why the discussion is different is alcohol has positive effects that aren't related to killing things. If you regulate alcohol badly you risk hurting an awful lot of people's lives. If you regulate guns, not so much, because it turns out most people don't actually need a gun.
HiveFleetPlastic wrote: I don't know about the US, but here we do regulate alcohol. Alcohol-related violence been an increasing problem with recent discussion on what to do about it.
But part of why the discussion is different is alcohol has positive effects that aren't related to killing things. If you regulate alcohol badly you risk hurting an awful lot of people's lives. If you regulate guns, not so much, because it turns out most people don't actually need a gun.
How many people would be adversly affected by not having alcohol and what are the conditions that make this so?
How many people would be adversly affected by not having alcohol and what are the conditions that make this so?
Restaurant/bar/club owners, plus the retail outlets that sell alcoholic beverages for one.
Under those terms, I could say gun store owners, manufacturers, their employees, and shooting ranges are adversly affected by excessive gun control or abolition.
Alcohol also can't be used in self defense. By taking away someone's right to use firearms you take away their ability to equal the playing field in the event of a robbery or attack.
But part of why the discussion is different is alcohol has positive effects that aren't related to killing things.
I differ in that if I hear about someone getting shot while attempting to rob someone else I think of it as a positive loss.
Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote: Alcohol also can't be used in self defense. By taking away someone's right to use firearms you take away their ability to equal the playing field in the event of a robbery or attack.
But part of why the discussion is different is alcohol has positive effects that aren't related to killing things.
I differ in that if I hear about someone getting shot while attempting to rob someone else I think of it as a positive loss.
Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote: Alcohol also can't be used in self defense. By taking away someone's right to use firearms you take away their ability to equal the playing field in the event of a robbery or attack.
But part of why the discussion is different is alcohol has positive effects that aren't related to killing things.
I differ in that if I hear about someone getting shot while attempting to rob someone else I think of it as a positive loss.
Hey, whiskey bottles pack a punch.
Harder to conceal though, I don't want anybody to know I'm packing
Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote: Alcohol also can't be used in self defense. By taking away someone's right to use firearms you take away their ability to equal the playing field in the event of a robbery or attack.
But part of why the discussion is different is alcohol has positive effects that aren't related to killing things.
I differ in that if I hear about someone getting shot while attempting to rob someone else I think of it as a positive loss.
I don't know if there's enough positive to outweigh the list of negative effects coupled with the 88,000 deaths a year from alcohol use.
Again, from the CDC:
Excessive alcohol use has immediate effects that increase the risk of many harmful health conditions. These immediate effects are most often the result of binge drinking and include the following—
Unintentional injuries, including traffic injuries, falls, drownings, burns, and unintentional firearm injuries.
Violence, including intimate partner violence and child maltreatment. About 35% of victims report that offenders are under the influence of alcohol.
Alcohol use is also associated with 2 out of 3 incidents of intimate partner violence.
Studies have also shown that alcohol is a leading factor in child maltreatment and neglect cases, and is the most frequent substance abused among these parents.
Risky sexual behaviors, including unprotected sex, sex with multiple partners, and increased risk of sexual assault. These behaviors can result in unintended pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.
Miscarriage and stillbirth among pregnant women, and a combination of physical and mental birth defects among children that last throughout life.
Alcohol poisoning, a medical emergency that results from high blood alcohol levels that suppress the central nervous system and can cause loss of consciousness, low blood pressure and body temperature, coma, respiratory depression, or death.
Long-Term Health Risks
Over time, excessive alcohol use can lead to the development of chronic diseases, neurological impairments and social problems. These include but are not limited to—
Neurological problems, including dementia, stroke and neuropathy.
Cardiovascular problems, including myocardial infarction, cardiomyopathy, atrial fibrillation and hypertension.
Psychiatric problems, including depression, anxiety, and suicide.
Social problems, including unemployment, lost productivity, and family problems.
Cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, liver, colon, and breast.20 In general, the risk of cancer increases with increasing amounts of alcohol.
Liver diseases, including—
Alcoholic hepatitis.
Cirrhosis, which is among the 15 leading causes of all deaths in the United States.
Among persons with Hepatitis C virus, worsening of liver function and interference with medications used to treat this condition.
HiveFleetPlastic wrote: I don't know about the US, but here we do regulate alcohol. Alcohol-related violence been an increasing problem with recent discussion on what to do about it.
But part of why the discussion is different is alcohol has positive effects that aren't related to killing things. If you regulate alcohol badly you risk hurting an awful lot of people's lives. If you regulate guns, not so much, because it turns out most people don't actually need a gun.
How many people would be adversly affected by not having alcohol and what are the conditions that make this so?
The primary benefit of alcohol is that people enjoy consuming it. That's the good it causes.
HiveFleetPlastic wrote: I don't know about the US, but here we do regulate alcohol. Alcohol-related violence been an increasing problem with recent discussion on what to do about it.
But part of why the discussion is different is alcohol has positive effects that aren't related to killing things. If you regulate alcohol badly you risk hurting an awful lot of people's lives. If you regulate guns, not so much, because it turns out most people don't actually need a gun.
How many people would be adversly affected by not having alcohol and what are the conditions that make this so?
The primary benefit of alcohol is that people enjoy consuming it. That's the good it causes.
So that's it? 88,000 dead a year (in America), solely for recreation?
HiveFleetPlastic wrote: I don't know about the US, but here we do regulate alcohol. Alcohol-related violence been an increasing problem with recent discussion on what to do about it.
But part of why the discussion is different is alcohol has positive effects that aren't related to killing things. If you regulate alcohol badly you risk hurting an awful lot of people's lives. If you regulate guns, not so much, because it turns out most people don't actually need a gun.
How many people would be adversly affected by not having alcohol and what are the conditions that make this so?
The primary benefit of alcohol is that people enjoy consuming it. That's the good it causes.
So that's it? 88,000 dead a year (in America), solely for recreation?
Hey, I'm not making an argument that alcohol is used perfectly in our cultures, or couldn't do with better regulation or whatever. I'm just saying it's quite different to guns in that regard.
Personally, I've never in my life been in a situation where I've suffered for lack of a gun, but I've been in plenty where I could have enjoyed a drink.
And the millions of Americans who find recreational use from their firearms? Whether sport shooting or hunting?
Edit: To expand, I'm just pointing out that double standard again. Alcohol is good because of recreation, nothing else really. Yet firearms provide that, and self defense, and is still the boogeyman.
djones520 wrote: And the millions of Americans who find recreational use from their firearms? Whether sport shooting or hunting?
Edit: To expand, I'm just pointing out that double standard again. Alcohol is good because of recreation, nothing else really. Yet firearms provide that, and self defense, and is still the boogeyman.
Firearms provide the ability to kill very efficiently. Alcohol does not. They are not the same.
But of course I'd be down with additional regulation of alcohol if you could make a good case for the particular regulation.
Firearms provide the ability to kill very efficiently. Alcohol does not. They are not the same.
Have you seen the victims of a drunk driving wreck? people killed in traffic accidents can be killed just as efficiently as with a gun. They provide the same results, and in this case it REALLY doesnt matter how one comes to that result.
The problem with ANY legislation that Western Nations can come up with for further regulating alcohol, or firearms, or driving cars, etc. is that they further limit the people who are actually "squared away" (that is to say, only law abiding citizens will be effected by regulations)
Firearms provide the ability to kill very efficiently. Alcohol does not. They are not the same.
Have you seen the victims of a drunk driving wreck? people killed in traffic accidents can be killed just as efficiently as with a gun. They provide the same results, and in this case it REALLY doesnt matter how one comes to that result.
The problem with ANY legislation that Western Nations can come up with for further regulating alcohol, or firearms, or driving cars, etc. is that they further limit the people who are actually "squared away" (that is to say, only law abiding citizens will be effected by regulations)
Bingo. Despite my first post here, I don't advocate any tighter restrictions on alcohol consumption. I just want the double standard to stop. If your going to go after one "killer" with such zealousness, then all such "killers" should be attacked with the same level.
djones520 wrote: And the millions of Americans who find recreational use from their firearms? Whether sport shooting or hunting?
Edit: To expand, I'm just pointing out that double standard again. Alcohol is good because of recreation, nothing else really. Yet firearms provide that, and self defense, and is still the boogeyman.
Firearms provide the ability to kill very efficiently. Alcohol does not. They are not the same.
But of course I'd be down with additional regulation of alcohol if you could make a good case for the particular regulation.
There is only a difference of a few hundred people between those killed by drunk drivers and those murdered by guns.
If the government numbers and statistics showing that alcohol is actually far more damaging than guns doesn't make the case for you, then not much will.
@Djones520, That's exactly what my point has been. People are going to drink, no stopping that, but they shouldn't be high horsing it when the industry they support creates so much more death and havoc with people's lives.
The difference, as I see, is that a gun is a weapon. It has been designed purely with the intent to kill.
Alcohol is not.
Guns make it very easy to kill other people if you want to. Alcohol does not.
Another difference regarding the numbers of alcohol related deaths vs the number of gun related deaths in the US is that alcohol is probably far more used than guns are.
To be honest, I do not really see the value in comparing guns to alcohol. They are two completely different things.
Or did you want to compare all possible causes of death?
Iron_Captain wrote: The difference, as I see, is that a gun is a weapon. It has been designed purely with the intent to kill.
Except there you are wrong. A gun is a weapon no more than a Frying pan is. A gun puts a projectile onto a target at a high velocity, many of these are designed purely for the pursuit of marksmanship awards/competition.
The numbers here are not lying to you. In the OP it was what, 60% of all firearm deaths are suicides? The big difference here is that alcohol invariably is taking someone else along for the "ride"
Iron_Captain wrote: The difference, as I see, is that a gun is a weapon. It has been designed purely with the intent to kill.
Alcohol is not.
Guns make it very easy to kill other people if you want to. Alcohol does not.
Another difference regarding the numbers of alcohol related deaths vs the number of gun related deaths in the US is that alcohol is probably far more used than guns are.
To be honest, I do not really see the value in comparing guns to alcohol. They are two completely different things.
Or did you want to compare all possible causes of death?
It might not be designed to kill people, yet it causes a far greater number of deaths a year. It's not designed to cause spouse or child abuse either, yet 2 out of three cases involve alcohol use. What we see on television are advertisements telling us that alcohol is all fun with the little "drink responsibly" statement at the end. If a drug company product caused these kind of effects, people would be up in arms with pitchforks and torches, even though the drug isn't designed to kill people and regardless if it was used far more than guns.
The defense for alcohol that it isn't designed to cause death but guns are is a poor one.
Why the silence from these people about alcohol when it kills more and destroys more lives through various means, like job loss, health loss, marriages ruined, etc.?
Bingo. Despite my first post here, I don't advocate any tighter restrictions on alcohol consumption. I just want the double standard to stop. If your going to go after one "killer" with such zealousness, then all such "killers" should be attacked with the same level.
The "double standard" exists because alcohol use and firearm ownership are not comparable. The most obvious distinction being that consuming alcohol impairs one's ability to reason, while owning a firearm does not.
Why the silence from these people about alcohol when it kills more and destroys more lives through various means, like job loss, health loss, marriages ruined, etc.?
Because the US has been there, and done that.
I'm not talking prohibition, though, just wondering why we don't get news items on the scale we do whenever people are killed by firearms.
That impairment of reasoning, as we see from the statistics, brings with it a lot of dire consequenses, though.
Except there you are wrong. A gun is a weapon no more than a Frying pan is. A gun puts a projectile onto a target at a high velocity, many of these are designed purely for the pursuit of marksmanship awards/competition.
Frying pans weren't designed to be used as weapons, whereas guns were. Indeed, marksmanship competitions exist, in large part, because of this fact.
You don't see many "How hard can you hit this target with a frying pan?" competitions.
I'm not talking prohibition, though, just wondering why we don't get news items on the scale we do whenever people are killed by firearms.
I'm arguing that we don't see articles discussing alcohol use in particular because of Prohibition. On a national level, the US has decided that alcohol use is acceptable; to the point where it is considered strange when a person does not drink.
Of course, there are plenty of articles discussing the consequences of alcohol use. Usually they question whether or not alcohol was a factor in horrible thing X, where "X" is usually a car accident.
I was actually surprised to see the statistic showing that roughly only only 60% of people admit to alcohol use. But I think you are right. Despite the damage it causes, people are conditioned to turn a blind eye to the negative factors of alcohol.
Relapse wrote: I was actually surprised to see the statistic showing that roughly only only 60% of people admit to alcohol use. But I think you are right. Despite the damage it causes, people are conditioned to turn a blind eye to the negative factors of alcohol.
Relapse wrote: I was actually surprised to see the statistic showing that roughly only only 60% of people admit to alcohol use. But I think you are right. Despite the damage it causes, people are conditioned to turn a blind eye to the negative factors of alcohol.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Well
1:Guns tend, not always as shown before, meant to kill other people(And mostly yourself if you roll a one) (guns, when used properly, protect lives, alcohol cannot) 2:No one is going into schools and killing people with tequila shots (really? I know 3 PERSONAL friends who died because of alcohol in high school) 3: Alchohol Tastes good, a lead bullet im sure doesnt(I have yet t been able to catch a bullet in my mouth) (ummm.. this is silly,) 4: Drunk people are hilarious, Dead people not so much(Sometimes though) (drunk people are only hilarious to drunk people, and cause lots of damage, death, mayham ect) 5: Guns hit on touch AC and have no place in my fantasy
to the OP,
yes its true, if someone dies from a car, or alchohol related reason, no one really cares (in the media and tv viewer world)... and no one calls to increase regulation, or ban these...
but when less people die from guns, its somehow worse... because people get all emotional due to lack of understanding of how guns actually work. put simply, cars, are far more deadly then guns, the debate on banning/limiting gun usage is based on completly false pretenses that they are somehow "unique" or above other tools in their killing power.
cars are just multi tonne, guided bullets, that can back up and "shoot" again until the gas runs out, not to mention they will hit multiple people due to the increased size.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Well
1:Guns tend, not always as shown before, meant to kill other people(And mostly yourself if you roll a one)
Where I come from, a one with a gun is a critical hit.
2:No one is going into schools and killing people with tequila shots
I know people who drank in school. Flasks FTW (For Their Win)
3: Alchohol Tastes good, a lead bullet im sure doesnt(I have yet t been able to catch a bullet in my mouth)
I... I actually don't have anything for this.
4: Drunk people are hilarious, Dead people not so much(Sometimes though)
Dead people can be hilarious when they ragdoll all over the place due to a glitchy physics system.
5: Guns hit on touch AC and have no place in my fantasy
My fantasies ALWAYS involve guns and scantily clad women, generally wielding them, because I'm a feminist and women can use guns at least as well as men can, if not better.
easysauce wrote: put simply, cars, are far more deadly then guns, the debate on banning/limiting gun usage is based on completly false pretenses that they are somehow "unique" or above other tools in their killing power.
Yeah, booze kills people, just like fire kills people.
Both are equally important to civilization.
Think about it; the rise of lameness and stupid bs rules and uncontrollable bureaucracy is tied intrinsically to the rise of clean drinking water and rules against drinking in public.
Before that, everyone drank at least a little throughout the day. Watered wine, a little tipple of whiskey to make the day go by... Think about it - how did a tiny lil backwater place like Europe become a world dominating power? Everyone was walking around in a mild alcoholic stupor all the time. Nothing seems impossible or even that hard when you have a little bit of booze in you. It gave Europe the chutzpah to go out and gut punch the world.
easysauce wrote: put simply, cars, are far more deadly then guns, the debate on banning/limiting gun usage is based on completly false pretenses that they are somehow "unique" or above other tools in their killing power.
Bromsy wrote: Yeah, booze kills people, just like fire kills people.
Both are equally important to civilization.
Think about it; the rise of lameness and stupid bs rules and uncontrollable bureaucracy is tied intrinsically to the rise of clean drinking water and rules against drinking in public.
Before that, everyone drank at least a little throughout the day. Watered wine, a little tipple of whiskey to make the day go by... Think about it - how did a tiny lil backwater place like Europe become a world dominating power? Everyone was walking around in a mild alcoholic stupor all the time. Nothing seems impossible or even that hard when you have a little bit of booze in you. It gave Europe the chutzpah to go out and gut punch the world.
Bromsy wrote: Yeah, booze kills people, just like fire kills people.
Both are equally important to civilization.
Think about it; the rise of lameness and stupid bs rules and uncontrollable bureaucracy is tied intrinsically to the rise of clean drinking water and rules against drinking in public.
Before that, everyone drank at least a little throughout the day. Watered wine, a little tipple of whiskey to make the day go by... Think about it - how did a tiny lil backwater place like Europe become a world dominating power? Everyone was walking around in a mild alcoholic stupor all the time. Nothing seems impossible or even that hard when you have a little bit of booze in you. It gave Europe the chutzpah to go out and gut punch the world.
easysauce wrote: put simply, cars, are far more deadly then guns, the debate on banning/limiting gun usage is based on completly false pretenses that they are somehow "unique" or above other tools in their killing power.
In the US car usage is limited.
in the US, so is gun usage. so is alcohol
whats your point captain obvious? everything is limited, the right to bear arms already has significant, common sense, restrictions on it.
the point of this thread is how we decides the limits of cars/alcohol vs guns. The first two being based on scientific fact, and the other based on emotional fears, despite the former doing far more harm then the latter.
we dont reduce the speed limit every time some drunken idiots kill people in a car, as we know that that changing/adding one more law for them to break, just gives us one more ticket to write after the fact, and saves no one. all it does is make everyone else who FOLLOWS the law have to drive at an artificially reduced speed limit for no good reason, when they in fact do need to go faster.
same thing with mag caps, bullet buttons, and all the idiot talk about micro stamping guns.
Because I mean that very often people are like. "Okay One more drink, I can handle it."
After that they get into their car and usually they get into a car crash.
Where on earth do you live that people usually get into a car crash? Last I heard the average person who gets a DUI has driven drunk over 200 times. I have no idea how you would come up with such a stat. In any case, the vast majority of people who drink and drive get away with it. I have no idea what you're talking about that they usually get into an accident. That is nonsense.
carlos13th wrote: You also need to look into other statistics such as the number of gun owners compared to people who drink alcohol.
47% of Americans admit to owning a gun. There are more out there that own at least one, but don't admit to it.
60% of Americans drink.
We have these statistics, yet we have 11,000 people murdered by guns a year compared to 88,000 from alcohol related causes.
This pretty much puts into perspective how dangerous gun ownership is in relation to other recreational items. The fact of the matter is, guns go beyond the area of recreation to a definite need, depending where in the country you are.. Alcohol rarely, if ever, fits that bill.
How often does the average American go shooting, versus go drinking?
I went through this before, and usually get ignored:
The average American spends something like 300 hours a year operating a motor vehicle, and exponentially more time than that involved with motor vehicles (such as pedestrians crossing the street, etc). The average American spends nowhere near that much time with firearms. Not even close. So you can't look at the comparison as a matter of X guns and Y cars versus A deaths and B deaths. You have to look at the deaths against the rate of time spend using the tools.
And when that happens, I'd bet that you find *nothing* compares to the lethality of firearms.
ALSO: this is a really tired thread. Why was it started again?
Yet you have people out there saying those who own guns are a danger to society, despite the fact that, according to you, gun owners don't use guns as much as people drink alcohol.
There are about 10% more people in the U.S. that drink than those who admit to owning guns, yet the death rate for alcohol related causes is 8 to 1 over gun related homicide.
As far as looking at the times involved in drinking versus gun use, it would seem that alcohol is a greater danger because of addiction, causing the drinker to use it more.
Just to reiterate,I am not a gun owner and I think any untimely death is horrible, whether by alcohol or gun, but there is a huge element of hypocricy with those who preach heavy gun control or abolition, yet frequently use and share alcohol.
You have made 3 distinct fallacies here. I will point them out.
Yet you have people out there saying those who own guns are a danger to society, despite the fact that, according to you, gun owners don't use guns as much as people drink alcohol
Your first fallacy. I am not those people out there. You should argue with me about what I have said, not argue with me about what someone else has said. The Dallas Cowboys do not lose to the Seahawks based on how many points the Seahawks score against the Jets.
Yet you have people out there saying those who own guns are a danger to society, despite the fact that, according to you, gun owners don't use guns as much as people drink alcohol
Your second fallacy. Whether or not guns are a danger to society is not affected by their rate of use compared to the rate of alcohol consumption. The former is a binary argument (either they are a danger or they are not) whereas the latter is a comparative argument (which one is more dangerous). That is, if a spiked baseball bat is less dangerous than a bear, that in no way means the spiked baseball bat is not dangerous.
There are about 10% more people in the U.S. that drink than those who admit to owning guns, yet the death rate for alcohol related causes is 8 to 1 over gun related homicide
Your third fallacy. Owning a gun and using a gun are two different things, just as admitting to drinking (how often? Only at Christmas? Every day? When?) is different than frequency of drinking. The entire premise of my initial post was that a comparison of "people who drink" versus gun ownership is faulty; you have to examine the frequency of intoxication versus the frequency of using the firearm. Anything less is merely a red herring.
Just to reiterate, I am a firearm owner and I support light gun control (basically mandatory safety training & thorough background checks as a requirement for licensing, and a ban on full-auto & burst fire weapons. I don't think anything beyond that is necessary or really beneficial)
Because I mean that very often people are like. "Okay One more drink, I can handle it."
After that they get into their car and usually they get into a car crash.
Where on earth do you live that people usually get into a car crash? Last I heard the average person who gets a DUI has driven drunk over 200 times. I have no idea how you would come up with such a stat. In any case, the vast majority of people who drink and drive get away with it. I have no idea what you're talking about that they usually get into an accident. That is nonsense.
1in 3 car accidents are alcohol related, resulting in over 10,000 deaths a year, so it is a big problem:
Aids is a big problem too, it is still complete nonsense to say that people who have unprotected sex usually get an STD, for example.
No one is saying its not a problem, I'm simply stating its complete nonsense to say that people that drink and drive usually get into a crash. That is not reality.
VanHallan wrote: Aids is a big problem too, it is still complete nonsense to say that people who have unprotected sex usually get an STD, for example.
No one is saying its not a problem, I'm simply stating its complete nonsense to say that people that drink and drive usually get into a crash. That is not reality.
So you totaly discount the fact that a third of all wrecks and 10,000 deaths are alcohol related. Gotcha.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
BlaxicanX wrote: There is a difference betwen killing yourself through ineptitude and taking someone else's life against their will.
If 99% of gun-related deaths were suicides, no one would care.
You are talking about car accidents. I am talking about people driving in general. Maybe this will help.
# of people driving > # of people getting into accidents.
of the # of people who get into accidents, 1/3 are alcohol related.
So
# of people driving > 1/3 of # of people who get into accidents.
Saying that people who drink and drive USUALLY get into accidents would mean that people who drive to bars, sporting events, parties, or what have you USUALLY crash on the way home.
That is not true, it is an absurd conclusion to draw based on no facts whatsoever.
Regardless of what % of motorists are intoxicated when they crash, it is an obvious fact that most people who drive do not get into car accidents, sober or not.
I'm not discounting what you said at all, simply stating that it has nothing to do with the motorists who DO NOT get into accidents, which is a much higher % of the driving public.
VanHallan wrote: No, you are not comprehending what I am saying.
You are talking about car accidents. I am talking about people driving in general. Maybe this will help.
# of people driving > # of people getting into accidents.
of the # of people who get into accidents, 1/3 are alcohol related.
So
# of people driving > 1/3 of # of people who get into accidents.
Saying that people who drink and drive USUALLY get into accidents would mean that people who drive to bars, sporting events, parties, or what have you USUALLY crash on the way home.
That is not true, it is an absurd conclusion to draw based on no facts whatsoever.
Regardless of what % of motorists are intoxicated when they crash, it is an obvious fact that most people who drive do not get into car accidents, sober or not.
I'm not discounting what you said at all, simply stating that it has nothing to do with the motorists who DO NOT get into accidents, which is a much higher % of the driving public.
Where did I say they usually get into accidents? I am stating a statistic that attributes a third of car accidents to alcohol. You 're the one who brought the term usually into the conversation.
The CDC study linked in the OP is interesting, until you look into the methodology and realize that a large portion of those 88,000 deaths are just guesses. It boils down to "if you are a woman that died of breast cancer, we will assume that x% of those deaths had something to do with alcohol and count that as an alcohol death. We will use this one study done in 96 to determine how many deaths in each category we will count as 'caused by alcohol'".
If we are counting "might have gotten breast cancer because they drank" as an alcohol death then we need to be fair and count "might have gotten lung cancer from breathing in gunpowder residue at the shooting range" and "something something lead exposure".
The CDC study you linked has the following totals for deaths that they admit can be 100% tied to alcohol use: 23,221.
You will notice that 100% able to tie 23,221 deaths to alcohol is quite a bit less than 31,672 deaths by firearm.
Of course the big one is going to be accidents. So I will let you include their guestimate of "accidents caused by alcohol" which is 12,460.
That brings our totals to:
Alcohol: 35681 Firearms: 31672
Pretty close so far.
Of course that is only one part of the equation. We also need to see how prevalent both guns and alcohol are.
I couldn't find any statistics on "percentage of people that own guns", so I went with Gallup, who placed the percentage of individual gun owners at 34.4%. I know that Relapse posted that according to that poll 47% of people reported owning a gun, but that is false. 47% of people said that somebody in their household owned a gun. Since we didn't track "households where somebody drinks" but are using "people drinking" we need to use "people owning guns" as the comparison IMO. I'm sure that will get picked apart by somebody, but so be it. Gallup also reports that 67% of the population drinks.
So:
Population drinking: 67% Population owning firearm: 34.4% Population dying because of alcohol: 35,681 Population dying because of firearm: 31,672 1% of the population using alcohol = 532.5 deaths 1% of the population owning a firearm = 920 deaths
If you want to include all the "maybe she had breast cancer because she drank alcohol" type deaths then you end up with a much higher number of course, but unless you include all deaths that could possibly have something to do with exposure to anything gun related (toddler drank gun oil, fell from tree-stand while hunting, etc etc etc) it's a pointless comparison.
@ relapse - no, my bad. My first quote in this thread is quoting someone else. I probably shouldnt have done it. It was a post from page 1 and now that we're on page 4 it looks like im responding to you in the first place.
whats your point captain obvious? everything is limited, the right to bear arms already has significant, common sense, restrictions on it.
That any argument which is based on the notion that firearm ownership is not distinct from alcohol use or car use is a bad argument, especially given that we restrict both alcohol use and car use.
the point of this thread is how we decides the limits of cars/alcohol vs guns. The first two being based on scientific fact, and the other based on emotional fears, despite the former doing far more harm then the latter.
What scientific fact is the limitation of car use based on?
Corpsesarefun wrote: Is the point of this statistic to somehow make guns seem less dangerous?
In the right hands (or just sitting there, not in a hand) a gun is no more dangerous than a spoon.
Thing is, as has been pointed out, the "evil guns" make better news stories than do your "average" drunk driver or other alcohol related incident.
Unless by "in the right hands" you mean "when not in use" that statement is ridiculous, of course a weapon solely designed to injure other living things is more dangerous than an implement design to move food into your mouth.
I don't believe guns are evil or that they should be banned, in fact I'd like to see the UK ease up on how tightly controlled firearms are here, but I find it bizarre when people claim that guns are not dangerous.
Corpsesarefun wrote: Is the point of this statistic to somehow make guns seem less dangerous?
Nope, to point out the hypocricy of broadcasting organizations and others who say guns are so dangerous and should be abolished when there is a far greater yearly toll taken by alcohol. What we get in the way of alcohol information instead is mainly in the form of advertisements saying how fun it is to have around.
Corpsesarefun wrote: Is the point of this statistic to somehow make guns seem less dangerous?
In the right hands (or just sitting there, not in a hand) a gun is no more dangerous than a spoon.
Thing is, as has been pointed out, the "evil guns" make better news stories than do your "average" drunk driver or other alcohol related incident.
Here's a good example of a crash that happened that was forgotten by the news in about a couple of weeks time with no yearly news commemerations like are done with a school shooting yet a large number people died in a ghastly fashion because of a drunk driver:
Unless by "in the right hands" you mean "when not in use" that statement is ridiculous, of course a weapon solely designed to injure other living things is more dangerous than an implement design to move food into your mouth.
How is it ridiculous? A firearm's sole design is to propel a projectile at a high velocity. I decide what it's use is. People who overeat are a danger to themselves (and by extension, others), just as if I have intent to aim/fire a firearm at someone then I am posing a significant danger to the person. It's exactly the same if I were holding a baseball bat, ax, mace, sword, or hand grenade.
Again, the reason why guns seem to be such a big deal, and almost any time they are used, become national headlines (whether they should be or not), is because events like the mass shootings happen so rarely compared to alcohol fueled events, and certainly, people who are left-leaning, and have no real life exposure to firearms are afraid of them.
Pretending that guns are not for injuring people/animals is precisely the ridiculous thing. Do you really believe the people that produce and purchase firearms do so for the novelty of moving a small projectile?
Guns are a big deal because they are currently the most effective commonly available weapon, there is nothing wrong with admitting that. Weapon is not a dirty word
The people that produce firearms do so to make money. the people who buy them have their own purpose in mind.
Yes, some buy them with the intent of injuring/killing things. It is a tool, nothing more, nothing less. The outcome desired from the purchase of a firearm is purely with the person who has bought it.
Can you say the same for people who buy alcohol? Aside from the medical grade "rubbing alcohol" what genuine purpose does alcohol serve? a Starter Gun is routinely used for track and field events, and other racing type events. What does a 5th of Vodka do? It's SOLE purpose is to inebriate people. And with inebriation comes more issues, like we see in spousal/child abuse, drunk driving, etc. It, again, boils down to an intent issue.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: The people that produce firearms do so to make money. the people who buy them have their own purpose in mind.
Yes, some buy them with the intent of injuring/killing things. It is a tool, nothing more, nothing less. The outcome desired from the purchase of a firearm is purely with the person who has bought it.
Can you say the same for people who buy alcohol? Aside from the medical grade "rubbing alcohol" what genuine purpose does alcohol serve? a Starter Gun is routinely used for track and field events, and other racing type events. What does a 5th of Vodka do? It's SOLE purpose is to inebriate people. And with inebriation comes more issues, like we see in spousal/child abuse, drunk driving, etc. It, again, boils down to an intent issue.
Every tool has a purpose, that is what defines it as a tool. When firearms are designed, what purpose are they being designed for? A select few are designed exclusively for clay pigeon shooting and the like but the vast majority are made for warfare, crime, hunting or personal protection. A tool used primarily to injure living things is known as a weapon. As I said before there is nothing "evil" or "wrong" about weapons, they are simply tools used to injure.
Yes it's true that alcohol is made with the intention of it getting people drunk, which is dangerous both for the consumer (both because alcohol is toxic and because it makes you more likely to injure yourself) and those around them. Alcohol is also dangerous.
Corpsesarefun wrote: Is the point of this statistic to somehow make guns seem less dangerous?
Nope, to point out the hypocricy of broadcasting organizations and others who say guns are so dangerous and should be abolished when there is a far greater yearly toll taken by alcohol. What we get in the way of alcohol information instead is mainly in the form of advertisements saying how fun it is to have around.
You mean those advertisements which almost all end with "Drink responsibly and in moderation"?
The sheer gall of talking about hypocrisy in this situation though. Hilarious.
The whole purpose of this thread is rather ridiculous. Something is worse than guns therefore guns aren't so bad and the other thing should be regulated more. If you're going for that, you'll need something better than alcohol. DARE, MADD and other educational groups, surgeon general's warnings, age restrictions, laws for selling and possessing alcohol, laws for public intoxication and a whole federal police service that has alcohol in it's name isn't enough for you? We tried prohibition as well and that didn't go so hot. I'm curious as to what else you want at this point. That hardly matters however, as the OP's argument smacks of strawman.
djones520 wrote: I love how no one is actually reading the thread.
I'm impressed that so many people can give the illusion of literacy by accurately replying to each others posts without even reading them, truly dakka is a marvelous place.
Surtur wrote: The whole purpose of this thread is rather ridiculous. Something is worse than guns therefore guns aren't so bad and the other thing should be regulated more. If you're going for that, you'll need something better than alcohol. DARE, MADD and other educational groups, surgeon general's warnings, age restrictions, laws for selling and possessing alcohol, laws for public intoxication and a whole federal police service that has alcohol in it's name isn't enough for you? We tried prohibition as well and that didn't go so hot. I'm curious as to what else you want at this point. That hardly matters however, as the OP's argument smacks of strawman.
I said earlier that prohibition isn't going to do it. What gets me are the news items and politicians that go on against guns. For instance the New York Times, among the many other anti gun messages it runs did a tally of every person that died in a holiday weekend because of guns. They have never run anything like that about alcohol deaths.
Here, again is an article common for it's type that often gets broadcast or published, and yes, what is depicted is terrible for the lives lost:
500 under the age of 21 killed, with 7,500 sent to emergency rooms yearly
Here, are alcohol statistics affecting the same age group, but never announced by broadcasters or publishers with the same frequency the run advertisements glorifying alcohol use:
I think the majority of posts on this thread (and especially this page) sum up how I would reply.
Although I would certainly agree that alcohol can be dangerous and kill people and destroy lives, one cannot equate alcohol and guns in the way the OP is attempting. As I said in the thread that spawned this one.
SilverMK2 wrote: I think the majority of posts on this thread (and especially this page) sum up how I would reply.
Although I would certainly agree that alcohol can be dangerous and kill people and destroy lives, one cannot equate alcohol and guns in the way the OP is attempting. As I said in the thread that spawned this one.
The only way that they are being equated is in the sense that alcohol kills more people than guns, which happens to be something that is true. No one is comparing the process, how they are used, or anything else. Only the end results are being compared, and that is that more people die because of alcohol than die because of guns.
SilverMK2 wrote: I think the majority of posts on this thread (and especially this page) sum up how I would reply.
Although I would certainly agree that alcohol can be dangerous and kill people and destroy lives, one cannot equate alcohol and guns in the way the OP is attempting. As I said in the thread that spawned this one.
The only way that they are being equated is in the sense that alcohol kills more people than guns, which happens to be something that is true. No one is comparing the process, how they are used, or anything else. Only the end results are being compared, and that is that more people die because of alcohol than die because of guns.
Well bee's kill more people than sharks on a yearly basis, but what are you more scared of.
Well bee's kill more people than sharks on a yearly basis, but what are you more scared of.
Me personally... bees. But then again, when I go to an oceanic beach, I do not actually enter the water But as many comedians have said in the past " the day a Shark walks into a 7-11 and eats someone is the day a shark attack should be news"
And the way I personally took the OP was more a wondering why the "misguided" outrage over firearm deaths, when the statistics show that alcohol, as a foreign substance in the body, does more killing. (I have been told by my good friend who spent 10+ years in the media as a journalist, that ALL news people are drunks, so that may go some way to explain why they dont report on it)
SilverMK2 wrote: I think the majority of posts on this thread (and especially this page) sum up how I would reply.
Although I would certainly agree that alcohol can be dangerous and kill people and destroy lives, one cannot equate alcohol and guns in the way the OP is attempting. As I said in the thread that spawned this one.
The only way that they are being equated is in the sense that alcohol kills more people than guns, which happens to be something that is true. No one is comparing the process, how they are used, or anything else. Only the end results are being compared, and that is that more people die because of alcohol than die because of guns.
Well bee's kill more people than sharks on a yearly basis, but what are you more scared of.
Between the two, I'm more scared of bees (well, wasps and hornets, especially those gigantic Japanese ones, which I've thankfully never encountered). But I really enjoy swimming in the ocean, so that might have something to do with it. I enjoy honey too though, so I don't know. I guess it's a toss-up.
People who are "pointing out hypocrisy" ITT really, really can't understand why several thousand deaths, out of a nation of millions, from liver failure each year isn't really a huge deal, but one man walking into a school and taking ten or so lives with a gun is? Really?
I've been making that point, with those exact stats in gun control threads for probably three years. So I'm pretty fething amazed that those numbers suddenly get their own thread, and get treated as new information.
But my point in all those threads and now this one will remain the same - there is nothing wrong with allowing a product that kills some of your citizens, whether it is alcohol or firearms. We do not live in a risk free society, and I do not think we want to, instead I think we are happy to accept some level of risk to our lives in order to enjoy something that can cause considerable harm if used in the wrong ways.
And if people believe that the pleasure and benefit they get out of guns being legal in their society is worth the deaths, then that's fine. But they just have to own the numbers, accept that the more guns you put in the hands of anyone who wants them, the more chance they'll use those guns to harm themselves or others.
I've been making that point, with those exact stats in gun control threads for probably three years. So I'm pretty fething amazed that those numbers suddenly get their own thread, and get treated as new information.
Relapse wrote: Whether designed to or not, alcohol still has a far more negative impact than guns.
Ultimately comparing the death toll of guns and alcohol is pointless. If alcohol killed half a million people it wouldn't make guns better, if alcohol killed no-one it wouldn't make guns worse. Because each is a decision made in isolation of the other - you can ban alcohol while keeping guns legal, or you can ban guns while keeping alcohol legal, or you can ban both or neither.
For alcohol, the only things that matter are the benefits of alcohol and the costs... whether the pleasure it gives people, the industry and jobs it creates, and the basic freedom for the individual of whether he wants to drink or not outweighs the costs in lives lost and lives greatly shortened.
And it is the exact same for guns. It is a simple question of whether the pleasure guns gives people, the industry and jobs created, and the basic freedom to choose or choose not to own a gun is worth the cost in lives.
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Asherian Command wrote: Its simply because people believe they can handle a drink, when they really can't.
Most of the lives lost to alcohol aren't through drink driving or anything immediate like that, but through people dying much sooner than they would if they hadn't drunk. If you drink multiple drinks every night, say half a bottle of wine, then there's a significant chance you'll die at 50 rather than 80. That's where most of the 80,000 lives comes from.
Which is actually one of the bigger problems we have right now with people thinking they can handle their alcohol. The public thinks only of binge drinking and alcoholics, but the biggest health risk is heavy drinkers who have little understanding of the health impacts.
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Ensis Ferrae wrote: It's not a "problem" in the US... the problem is idiotic policies created by ignorant people. It's in MUCH the same line as the Volstead Act (which was the punitive and legal measure to enforce the Prohibition Amendment), as they are ill-thought, nearly impossible to enforce laws that do nothing to do anything about the root problems of society.
I'm not going to defend the current gun control rules (because few of them are more than lood good nonsense), but this nonsense about 'root problems of society' has to end. It's an absolute cop out. There is no 'root problem' in American society that is unique to it, the issues of US society are shared by the rest of the developed world. But gun homicide and gun suicide are uniquely high in the US. It ultimately just makes no damn sense at all to see the gun proliferation, see the gun deaths, and pretend the two aren't very closely related.
That doesn't mean 'therefore ban the guns'... not by a long shot. Because as I just said to Relapse, like with alcohol you can make the case that the benefit is worth the deaths, but in order to have an honest position, let alone an conversation about the issue, you first and foremost have to own the reality of the situation, own the numbers, accept the negative part of guns.
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Relapse wrote: It's not like very few people own guns (47% of Americans report ownership. The number that own guns and don't report it is anyone's guess)
Not quite - 47% of households own a gun. That means if some other person in your house, such as your husband, wife, parent, sibling, or even just a housemate owns a gun, then you get counted in the 47%. The number of people who directly, personally own a gun, by the numbers given in your own link, is 34%.
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Relapse wrote: Yep, the links I posted are from the Center for Disease control website. Just jump on the links and they will take you there. The statistic that surprised me was the fact that most gun deaths (roughly 60%) are suicides.
Seriously? You're in just about every gun thread, and you didn't know that?
I used to think people were a bit lazy in what they read on dakka, they'd skim read and pick out a bit to argue against, and have no idea what the overall point was. Now I realise they don't even skim read, they just quote something and start writing about what they guessed it might have said.
Dakka is just like when you walk in the house and there's a group of women all sitting in a circle, and they're all talking at once, and they're all nodding and acknowledging each other's conversations, and the first time you see it you think it's amazing that they can talk and follow what everyone else is saying at the same time. And then you see it a bunch more times and you realise that they're nodding and doing all the things that look like conversation, but they're not listening to one goddamn word of what anyone else is saying.
Surtur wrote: The whole purpose of this thread is rather ridiculous. Something is worse than guns therefore guns aren't so bad and the other thing should be regulated more. If you're going for that, you'll need something better than alcohol. DARE, MADD and other educational groups, surgeon general's warnings, age restrictions, laws for selling and possessing alcohol, laws for public intoxication and a whole federal police service that has alcohol in it's name isn't enough for you? We tried prohibition as well and that didn't go so hot. I'm curious as to what else you want at this point. That hardly matters however, as the OP's argument smacks of strawman.
I said earlier that prohibition isn't going to do it. What gets me are the news items and politicians that go on against guns. For instance the New York Times, among the many other anti gun messages it runs did a tally of every person that died in a holiday weekend because of guns. They have never run anything like that about alcohol deaths.
Here, again is an article common for it's type that often gets broadcast or published, and yes, what is depicted is terrible for the lives lost:
500 under the age of 21 killed, with 7,500 sent to emergency rooms yearly
Here, are alcohol statistics affecting the same age group, but never announced by broadcasters or publishers with the same frequency the run advertisements glorifying alcohol use:
I already tried to cover this, but I will give it another shot (get it, shot? It's topical to both guns and booze, double zing!). Being on the receiving end of alcohol makes you more awesome. Sometimes you also die, but that is a side effect.
Being on the receiving end of a gun makes you dead or at least injured. It's a direct result, not a side effect. Which gives it significantly more weight as it were.
Relapse wrote: No point in trying, Seaward. They are so stuck in what they want to say they haven't bothered reading any posts.
You're accusing me of not reading posts? I have cited those exact same numbers in probably dozens of gun control threads, and here you are starting a new thread using the same numbers, talking about the research you did.
Nor did you respond to my post, which I made after reading each and every post you've made in this thread, and offered you a way of looking at this issue that was neither inherently anti-gun or pro-gun, but just a way of looking at the issue that actually makes some kind of sense.
If you want to have a conversation, then fething have it. I've given my response - the numbers are as they are, an in both cases they leave society with a choice for each product;
Are the personal and economic benefits of alcohol, and the free choice to drink as one pleases, worth the 80,000 lives each year?
Are the personal and economic benefits of guns, and the choice to be armed if one pleases, worth the 30,000 gun deaths each year?
But what you can't do is line one death toll up against the other and pretend that says anything about anything.
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Seaward wrote: He's not saying it's relevant to guns. He's saying that guns kill fewer people per year yet get about 19,000 times more media coverage. That's it.
And there's multiple thousands of gun suicides each year, getting approximately zero media interest, but a nut goes in to a school firing and it's wall to wall coverage for weeks. This isn't a gun thing, it's a sensationalist media thing, unless someone wants to start claiming there's a secret anti-shark lobby out there ensuring shark attacks are reported on wildly out of proportion to their numbers.
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Bromsy wrote: I already tried to cover this, but I will give it another shot (get it, shot? It's topical to both guns and booze, double zing!). Being on the receiving end of alcohol makes you more awesome. Sometimes you also die, but that is a side effect.
Being on the receiving end of a gun makes you dead or at least injured. It's a direct result, not a side effect. Which gives it significantly more weight as it were.
Only if the only use of a gun is to shoot someone with it. People do hunt with the things, and target shoot, and collect firearms just because they think they are neat. All of which can produce all manner of use to the owner without ever firing a shot in anger.
Relapse wrote: No point in trying, Seaward. They are so stuck in what they want to say they haven't bothered reading any posts.
You're accusing me of not reading posts? I have cited those exact same numbers in probably dozens of gun control threads, and here you are starting a new thread using the same numbers, talking about the research you did.
Nor did you
If you want to have a conversation, then fething have it. I've given my response - the numbers are as they are, an in both cases they leave society with a choice for each product;
Are the personal and economic benefits of alcohol, and the free choice to drink as one pleases, worth the 80,000 lives each year?
Are the personal and economic benefits of guns, and the choice to be armed if one pleases, worth the 30,000 gun deaths each year?
But what you can't do is line one product up against the other and pretend that means anything about anything.
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Seaward wrote: He's not saying it's relevant to guns. He's saying that guns kill fewer people per year yet get about 19,000 times more media coverage. That's it.
And there's multiple thousands of gun suicides each year, getting approximately zero media interest, but a nut goes in to a school firing and it's wall to wall coverage for weeks. This isn't a gun thing, it's a sensationalist media thing, unless someone wants to start claiming there's a secret anti-shark lobby out there ensuring shark attacks are reported on wildly out of proportion to their numbers.
You, Djones, dusa, Dogma, Seaward, and a couple of others seem like the only ones that seemed to have bothered reading anything beyond the thread title before writing your comments, and I appreciate that. My comments were not directed at any of you.
I am not even a gun owner, to tell the truth, and never felt the desire to own one. There is a serious double standard as I see it, though, between the depiction of guns in the media and the depiction of alcohol. As simple as that.
I had sticky notes full of numbers and percentages laying around my keyboard while typing my post (slow night at work) before I remembered how much I hate statistics...
I also was reminded of some of the stupid facts regarding alcohol statistics and car crashes that some of the agencies use (the CDC report states that they excluded these, so they were better): If there is a wreck and 4 people die, and one of the passengers (not the driver) had alcohol in his system, then all 4 passengers count as an "alcohol related traffic fatality" It's like the alcohol version of the Brady Campaign...
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Relapse wrote: There is a serious double standard as I see it, though, between the depiction of guns in the media and the depiction of alcohol. As simple as that.
Slightly unrelated, but interesting fact I learned from a recent Tom Hanks interview. He played Walt Disney, who was a huge chainsmoker, but they could not show him smoking because that would be an automatic R rating.
Not sure if that was made up, but wouldn't be surprising...
sebster wrote: And there's multiple thousands of gun suicides each year, getting approximately zero media interest, but a nut goes in to a school firing and it's wall to wall coverage for weeks. This isn't a gun thing, it's a sensationalist media thing, unless someone wants to start claiming there's a secret anti-shark lobby out there ensuring shark attacks are reported on wildly out of proportion to their numbers.
That'd be a valid point if I were talking only about coverage of crimes or incidents.
I'm mulling some things in my head that will probably need more stat crunching to discuss, but something I was thinking about was the fact that we tried to completely outlaw alcohol, and alcohol won, so we settled on a system that regulates it, criminalizes poor behavior, and, as best it can, puts the burden of the negative consequences of drinking on the person choosing to do the drinking. Comparatively, no robust, national effort has ever been undertaken to ban guns. I doubt it would work, but perhaps the way drinking has evolved over the past 100 years (getting banned, then unbanned but regulated), compared to guns (not too many long standing regulations have been put in place, and the guns themselves have gotten deadlier) creates greater acceptance of alcohol culturally compared to guns.
Also, when we're comparing these, we should strip out the people who die due to their own actions. Suicides by gun and death by cirrhosis are horrible tragedies, but ultimately those choices were made by the individual (albeit, likely not with the most stable mindset, but made by them nonetheless). We, as a culture, often tend to expect people to take responsibility for their actions, and tend to mourn people less if someone does it to excess and kills themselves. Comparatively we hate when people deprive us of our rights and make huge life choices (like shooting us or running us over) for us. So I think just the homicides linked to shooting and alcohol should be considered.
Deaths by drunk drivers were listed at slightly north of 10,000, while gun homicides were at 11,000, so they're roughly comparable in terms of taking away someone's like not by their own choosing.
The thing about news coverage and political coverage is that drunk driving deaths are more local in nature. A single person being killed by a drunk driver won't receive much national attention, the same way a single person being shot won't receive much national attention. The thing is, we have these mass shootings that DO gain national attention (rightly so).
So, in a nutshell, the difference in media coverage can likely be attributed to the fact that homicides linked to guns and alcohol are similar in total, BUT that guns have the capacity to result in a much higher death toll in a single incident, generally.
d-usa wrote: I had sticky notes full of numbers and percentages laying around my keyboard while typing my post (slow night at work) before I remembered how much I hate statistics...
I also was reminded of some of the stupid facts regarding alcohol statistics and car crashes that some of the agencies use (the CDC report states that they excluded these, so they were better): If there is a wreck and 4 people die, and one of the passengers (not the driver) had alcohol in his system, then all 4 passengers count as an "alcohol related traffic fatality" It's like the alcohol version of the Brady Campaign...
We have the same issue with speeding over here. If there is a fatal crash in which the driver was travelling at the speed limit or even under it, but there was heavy rain or some other factor that in the judgement of police the safe speed should have been slower than the car was travelling, then the police will record 'speed' as a cause of the accident, and then use that as part of their argument that speed kills and they need more speed cameras.
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Relapse wrote: You, Djones, dusa, Dogma, Seaward, and a couple of others seem like the only ones that seemed to have bothered reading anything beyond the thread title before writing your comments, and I appreciate that. My comments were not directed at any of you.
I am not even a gun owner, to tell the truth, and never felt the desire to own one. There is a serious double standard as I see it, though, between the depiction of guns in the media and the depiction of alcohol. As simple as that.
What did you think of my argument that what needs to happen is a comparison of how much benefit each thing produces, in comparison to the lives? That you can't just compare gun deaths to alcohol deaths, but compare the personal and economic benefits of alcohol to alcohol deaths, and the personal and economic benefits of guns to gun deaths.
And like you, I'm not a gun owner, and to be honest I'm fairly agnostic on the need and value of greater gun laws... I just wish the debate was argued with a lot more honesty and reality on both sides.
sebster wrote: If you aren't saying that then you aren't saying anything.
On the contrary. I get both the New York Times and the Washington Post. They're fond of running stories about guns even when they have nothing to do with crimes or incidents. The TTAG guy write-up, Bloomberg's crusade, sales figures, even town council elections, for the love of Jebus. You'll find way more coverage devoted to guns than you'll ever find related to alcohol, and it's not all linked to sensational crime stories.
Seaward wrote: You'll find way more coverage devoted to guns than you'll ever find related to alcohol, and it's not all linked to sensational crime stories.
Its almost like firearm ownership is a current, political issue; while alcohol use is not.
So the point of this thread isn't to compare how dangerous guns and alcohol are but it's ironic that guns are a political issue when alcohol kills more?
Seaward wrote: On the contrary. I get both the New York Times and the Washington Post. They're fond of running stories about guns even when they have nothing to do with crimes or incidents. The TTAG guy write-up, Bloomberg's crusade, sales figures, even town council elections, for the love of Jebus. You'll find way more coverage devoted to guns than you'll ever find related to alcohol, and it's not all linked to sensational crime stories.
"This isssue is covered lots" is, as I already said, not saying anything at all.
Corpsesarefun wrote: So you admit that you think that this statistic proves that alcohol is more dangerous than guns as it is responsible for more deaths?
I think this statistic proves that alcohol is responsible for more deaths than guns because it causes more deaths than guns.
dogma wrote: Do you know of an American organization in favor of more stringent gun control that seeks to reduce, in general, the number of American deaths?
I do not, no. Which makes it easy to conclude they don't care about saving lives, they simply care about making their dislikes into law.
Who said that was the goal, aside from you?
Nobody, which is the problem. If you're not trying to get rid of guns to keep more Americans alive, then there's no good reason to be doing it.
I don't think you understand the concept of irony.
That's a shame, given how highly I regard your opinion.
sebster wrote: "This isssue is covered lots" is, as I already said, not saying anything at all.
You did say that, yes. I wasn't sure why to begin with, and I'm even less sure now, as that's not the argument that was made. If you're going to start another strawman workshop, let me know now and I can leave you to it.
Seaward wrote: It's almost like if the goal were to reduce American deaths, there'd be more of a focus on alcohol. Makes me question if that's really the goal.
As I've already explained, just lining up the deaths for each thing makes no sense. Is stupid. Nonsense. Doesn't work.
It's like lining up the speed of a diving eagle against the speed of a jet liner. We can look at the two numbers and conclude that yes, one number is higher than the other, but that comparison tells us nothing about how good that eagle is a catching it's prey, or how useful that jet is travellers looking to cross the Atlantic.
To determine how useful that jet airliner is, we'd have to know how expensive it is, how regularly flights depart, how comfortable it is to travel on and all sorts of similar questions.
Similarly, the issue with guns and the 30,000 deaths is compared against the good guns do. That's it. Same with alcohol, compare the 80,000 deaths to good that it does, and form a conclusion.
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Seaward wrote: You did say that, yes. I wasn't sure why to begin with, and I'm even less sure now, as that's not the argument that was made. If you're going to start another strawman workshop, let me know now and I can leave you to it.
You noted that guns are covered more in the media, despite alcohol killing more. I assumed, wrongfully as it turned out, that you were implying some kind of conclusion to this, such that guns are treated unfairly in the news media and this might colour some people's opinions. But it turns out you weren't doing that, just saying that guns are covered more, with no mention of bias one way or the other... it was about as useful an insight as pointing out Madonna gets more coverage in the media than my Auntie Tracy, despite both of them being one person.
It's almost as if the goal of your earlier post was to imply something, but then you backed off from that because that's the kind of 'clever' you like to do on the internet.
I would once again point out that guns cause way more deaths per gun owner than alcohol does per person drinking, but since some people have me on ignore they can just repeat their version of reality...
d-usa wrote: I would once again point out that guns cause way more deaths per gun owner than alcohol does per person drinking, but since some people have me on ignore they can just repeat their version of reality...
If only we could read the invisible posts that eloquently rebut that point.
d-usa wrote: I would once again point out that guns cause way more deaths per gun owner than alcohol does per person drinking, but since some people have me on ignore they can just repeat their version of reality...
If only we could read the invisible posts that eloquently rebut that point.
What's to rebut? There are more gun deaths per gun owner than there are gun deaths per person drinking. That has zero influence on the fact that there are more alcohol-related deaths than there are gun-related deaths.
d-usa wrote: I would once again point out that guns cause way more deaths per gun owner than alcohol does per person drinking, but since some people have me on ignore they can just repeat their version of reality...
If only we could read the invisible posts that eloquently rebut that point.
I'm sure we would be rewarded with an very elaborate explanation regarding the truthyness of their reality.
d-usa wrote: I would once again point out that guns cause way more deaths per gun owner than alcohol does per person drinking, but since some people have me on ignore they can just repeat their version of reality...
If only we could read the invisible posts that eloquently rebut that point.
What's to rebut? There are more gun deaths per gun owner than there are gun deaths per person drinking. That has zero influence on the fact that there are more alcohol-related deaths than there are gun-related deaths.
When a random person is killed by a drunk driver 2 states away, do you hear about it? Usually not.
When a random person is shot two states away, do you hear about it? Usually not.
Mass car pile-ups tend to result in only a few deaths as well. While you might hear about a 120 car pile-up, there will usually be only 3 or so deaths. Looking at Wikipedia's list of major pile-ups, there have been (since the start of 2012, so over 2 years) 12 deaths across 11 accidents, and their list is not just the US, but seems to include European countries as well. Not all of these were necessarily alcohol related, they don't mention the causes. Still, even if we assumed alcohol was to blame in ALL of them, that's still a relatively low number of fatalities.
A single mass shooting can match multiple years worth of accidents in terms of deaths, and if you have several in a single year, the deaths from mass shootings dwarf the deaths from mass pile-ups, which again, might not be alcohol related.
I think that explains media coverage pretty well. One person dying in an accident is common, as is one person dying to a gun. When you scale it up in rarity, a massive pile-up with 3-5 deaths is about as rare as a mass shooting, but the mass shooting probably has 10+ people dead. 10 people > 3 people.
Plus you always have the intrigue of "why?" When a drunk driver kills a person in an accident, the why is simple. They were drunk. That holds in almost all cases even when you scale it up. The "why" for mass shootings tends to be more complex and interesting, tying into mental illnesses, depression, etc.
As for politics, again I think it has to do with how alcohol and guns are viewed. We tried banning alcohol, it didn't work, alcohol won, and thus it, as an institution, is ingrained as something we live with and regulate as best we can. We never outright banned guns, so the culture around it developed differently. In addition, over 2/3rds of the US drinks. While a lot of people own guns, less than half the US owns guns. It's a lot easier to build political momentum on an issue when it's not something that is just sort of consistently present, like alcohol is.
Finally, I'm fairly certain alcohol is handled legally at the state level a lot more often than guns are. While the federal government could step in on alcohol more, a lot of things, like local sales, criminal penalties, etc., are handled at the state level. Guns are also handled at the state level, but I think the Federal government is just naturally more involved on gun issues than alcohol issues just sort of as a natural evolution of those two issues, hence when there's a death via alcohol it's more of a state thing whereas when there's a death via a gun it has more ties to national issues.
Edit: Also, as D-Usa was saying, homicides per gun owner (11,000 homicides, 40% of population owns guns) are higher than homicides tied to drinking (10,000 deaths, 67% of population drinks).
Seaward wrote: What's to rebut? There are more gun deaths per gun owner than there are gun deaths per person drinking. That has zero influence on the fact that there are more alcohol-related deaths than there are gun-related deaths.
Which, once again, is a nonsense comparison. Sticking one number against another number without any context or reasoning and thinking you've proven something is the kind of 'logic' that should get you held back a highschool grade.
Which, given I'm pretty sure you're not repeating the 9th grade for the 13th time, means you know the comparison is inane. And yet you keep spamming it, because the silly conclusion is one that suits your politics.
I do not, no. Which makes it easy to conclude they don't care about saving lives, they simply care about making their dislikes into law.
I know it might be shocking, but organizations which are founded on supporting restrictions on firearm ownership tend to be primarily concerned with restrictions on firearm ownership.
Nobody, which is the problem. If you're not trying to get rid of guns to keep more Americans alive, then there's no good reason to be doing it.
We're not talking about getting rid of guns, we're talking about regulating gun ownership. I know that many people consider the two concepts to be the same, but they are not.
At any rate, the most obvious reason for restricting firearm ownership, absent concerns over mortality, is public safety. This concern dovetails nicely into the fact that guns are weapons, while alcohol is not a weapon. Generally speaking, people will be more concerned over the presence of weapons in their vicinity than the presence of drugs; though double points are awarded when the two are in confluence.
dogma wrote: Generally speaking, people will be more concerned over the presence of weapons in their vicinity than the presence of drugs; though double points are awarded when the two are in confluence.
Because weapons are more dangerous than drugs, if drugs were more dangerous than weapons then we'd use them as weapons.
I didn't go through the whole thread but I always introduced all the random ways Americans die each year.
How many in a year
Average frequency
In hospital 90,000 One American dies in a hospital from a medical error or a lethal infection every 6 minutes
Transport 43,443 One American killed by a traffic accident every 12 minutes
Poisoning 19,457 One American accidentally poisoned to death every 27 minutes
At home 18,048 One American killed in an accident at home every 29 minutes
Falls 17,227 One American killed in a fall every 31 minutes
Drunk driving 16,885 One American killed by a drunk driver every 31 minutes
Homicide 16,137 One American murdered every 32 minutes
Drowning 3,306 One American drowned every 159 minutes
Sources:
National Safety Council, for 2006
National Vital Statistics Report, for 2006
Home Safety Council, for 2004
Mothers Against Drunk Driving, for 2005
Department of Justice, for 2004
Over 443,000 Americans die due to cigarette smoking each year.
You guys have missed the elephant in the room , old age kills more people than guns per year so guns are safe. We really should have more controls on old age as it is a bigger killer ( probably on a per capita user rate as well - but we all know per capita means nothing) .
It is a pity old age isn't a current political issue , we need to get rid of it, I'm sick of standing up for old people on public transport , with their "it's nice to see people who have respect still" and "that's nice dear" and other malarky.
I say give old people a gun, a car, and some alcohol and solve the geriatric problem once and for all.... or I suppose have a million Real Life Gran Turinos.
LordofHats wrote: That's actually a good question XD How many people get drunk and then shoot someone (including themselves?). We got stats for that?
This is the closest I've found, though the original article is behind a paywall.
Yeah I found a bunch of articles about people shooting people while drunk but no studies or statistics. Looking like it's a number that's never been pinned down, or its just buried in the depths of the web.
old age kills more people than guns per year so guns are safe
dogma wrote: I know it might be shocking, but organizations which are founded on supporting restrictions on firearm ownership tend to be primarily concerned with restrictions on firearm ownership.
Indeed they are. Presumably with a rationale of public safety. Which is another way of saying, "Keeping people alive."
dogma wrote: We're not talking about getting rid of guns, we're talking about regulating gun ownership. I know that many people consider the two concepts to be the same, but they are not.
The concepts are not the same, no. The groups advocating for the one are in favor of the other, however. so while the concepts are separate, that's irrelevant when it comes to discussing the goal of anti-Second Amendment groups.
We have a shopping centre here called Carousel. I took my wife there on her 30th birthday and kept saying 'renewed! renewed!' She had no idea what I was going on about
What I am comparing here is the fact that alcohol kills more people than guns per year. I am not comparing which one is more dangerous(although I would say alcohol is more insidious because people seem to think it will never hurt them. By the time most users realize they are being adversly impacted, it's a battle to quit that they may not win), or which one gets used more, just the number of casualties and other negative impacts on life quality each produces at the end of the year. By that criteria, alcohol has a huge lead.
I am not talking prohibition because it is proven not to work, but I am saying that alcohol ads should go the way of cigarette ads
and the media report alcohol deaths and life crippling events with the same passion and frequency they reserve for guns.
There are reports in the news about alcohol and it's adverse effects, but nowhere near the scale reports about gun violence.
I would challenge anyone here to watch the news and other shows the way they normally do and note the number of reports, exposes, etc. about gun violence and then contrast that with the number of news reports about alcohol related tragedies. As well as this count the number of advertisments that portray alcohol in a positive, fun way as opposed to those that show the negative effects. Do the same with whatever you read for news or entertainment and see how the numbers add up.
Indeed they are. Presumably with a rationale of public safety. Which is another way of saying, "Keeping people alive."
No it isn't. Public safety is about keeping people free from harm, where harm can be physical or psychological. As such, concerns of public safety are not limited to "keeping people alive".
The concepts are not the same, no. The groups advocating for the one are in favor of the other, however. so while the concepts are separate, that's irrelevant when it comes to discussing the goal of anti-Second Amendment groups.
See, I don't think that's true. I think you're working very hard to erect a straw man.
Part of it is that as far as the media is concerned, the vast majority of alcohol deaths are just not sexy stories. They cover the checkpoints, the crashes, and other alcohol stories. But most of the deaths they are guessing to be alcohol deaths are chronic medical problems. None of the news shows are going to report breaking news that "local 54 year old woman died of breast cancer that might have been caused by her drinking habit".
When a random person is killed by a drunk driver 2 states away, do you hear about it? Usually not.
When a random person is shot two states away, do you hear about it? Usually not.
Mass car pile-ups tend to result in only a few deaths as well. While you might hear about a 120 car pile-up, there will usually be only 3 or so deaths. Looking at Wikipedia's list of major pile-ups, there have been (since the start of 2012, so over 2 years) 12 deaths across 11 accidents, and their list is not just the US, but seems to include European countries as well. Not all of these were necessarily alcohol related, they don't mention the causes. Still, even if we assumed alcohol was to blame in ALL of them, that's still a relatively low number of fatalities.
A single mass shooting can match multiple years worth of accidents in terms of deaths, and if you have several in a single year, the deaths from mass shootings dwarf the deaths from mass pile-ups, which again, might not be alcohol related.
I think that explains media coverage pretty well. One person dying in an accident is common, as is one person dying to a gun. When you scale it up in rarity, a massive pile-up with 3-5 deaths is about as rare as a mass shooting, but the mass shooting probably has 10+ people dead. 10 people > 3 people.
Plus you always have the intrigue of "why?" When a drunk driver kills a person in an accident, the why is simple. They were drunk. That holds in almost all cases even when you scale it up. The "why" for mass shootings tends to be more complex and interesting, tying into mental illnesses, depression, etc.
As for politics, again I think it has to do with how alcohol and guns are viewed. We tried banning alcohol, it didn't work, alcohol won, and thus it, as an institution, is ingrained as something we live with and regulate as best we can. We never outright banned guns, so the culture around it developed differently. In addition, over 2/3rds of the US drinks. While a lot of people own guns, less than half the US owns guns. It's a lot easier to build political momentum on an issue when it's not something that is just sort of consistently present, like alcohol is.
Finally, I'm fairly certain alcohol is handled legally at the state level a lot more often than guns are. While the federal government could step in on alcohol more, a lot of things, like local sales, criminal penalties, etc., are handled at the state level. Guns are also handled at the state level, but I think the Federal government is just naturally more involved on gun issues than alcohol issues just sort of as a natural evolution of those two issues, hence when there's a death via alcohol it's more of a state thing whereas when there's a death via a gun it has more ties to national issues.
Edit: Also, as D-Usa was saying, homicides per gun owner (11,000 homicides, 40% of population owns guns) are higher than homicides tied to drinking (10,000 deaths, 67% of population drinks).
You really should read up on the misinformation you are spewing.
The rate of gun ownership has actually increased in the US in the last 10 years to well over 50%. A Gallop poll from 2011 reported a 47% increase - well before the current buying frenzy. The numbers exceed 50% if we were to take into account the number of first time buyers, as well as the growing influx of independent minded women who take the responsibility of self protection seriously.
The whole push behind Gun Control is control, not safety. Always has been. As Americans were faced with the prospect of more control, they responded by purchasing more firearms in the 2011-2013 period than ever before. The fact that the MSM attempted to gin up support for gun control only pushed more people into looking into firearms ownership than ever before. Same thing happened during Prohibition.
d-usa wrote: Part of it is that as far as the media is concerned, the vast majority of alcohol deaths are just not sexy stories. They cover the checkpoints, the crashes, and other alcohol stories. But most of the deaths they are guessing to be alcohol deaths are chronic medical problems. None of the news shows are going to report breaking news that "local 54 year old woman died of breast cancer that might have been caused by her drinking habit".
I think you have it on the sexy angle. Watching someone disintigrate the way I have seen hardcore drinkers do seems to produce a , "who cares? They did it to themselves and it's never gonna happen to me," attitude from those that don't have any real association with the individual.
Relapse wrote: What I am comparing here is the fact that alcohol kills more people than guns per year. I am not comparing which one is more dangerous(although I would say alcohol is more insidious because people seem to think it will never hurt them. By the time most users realize they are being adversly impacted, it's a battle to quit that they may not win)
As I said earlier, it's a common misconception that most people who suffer from alcohol consumption are addicted. The most common health impact is to the person who drinks, say, half a bottle of wine a few nights a week, out of habit and preference, not out of addiction, which is likely to shave years off their life.
That doesn't dispute your overall point, it's just something that needs to be pointed out as often as possible.
I am not talking prohibition because it is proven not to work, but I am saying that alcohol ads should go the way of cigarette ads
We've actually moved to banning colour and art on cigarette packaging down under. It's something I thought was pointless, but it has had an impact on sales, and incredibly smokers have reported that cigarettes taste differently.
Do you favour that kind of thing for alcohol, out of curiousity?
Personally I'm getting kind of bored of death statistics over-riding all other considerations. It's a dangerous world, and picking out one dangerous activitity at a time isn't going to make it meaningfully less dangerous, but it is going to make a lot less interesting for those of us who like those activities.
and the media report alcohol deaths and life crippling events with the same passion and frequency they reserve for guns.
A complete, informative view of the country as a whole is just not how news media works. News media works in exciting daily anecdotes - if there's vision and a story people find interesting that means it'll get played on the nightly news. That means stuff that's inherently scary, like a gun going in to a school and shooting, is going to get media play in a way that the boring but far more informative listing of leading causes of death just doesn't.
That's why some people perceive guns as getting a bad rap. But you'll note that just as people became hyper-concerned about the (incredibly small) threat of their kids getting shot at school, they remained entirely oblivious to the fact that while the debate continued, close to 30 people were getting killed on average each day in isolated incidents that didn't make the news at all.
There are reports in the news about alcohol and it's adverse effects, but nowhere near the scale reports about gun violence.
Just don't look to the news for that kind of information. It isn't what the news does. Asking it to do so is like teaching a pig to dance - you'll get frustrated and the pig will not change at all.
Fortunately that kind of information exists, in reports like the CDC ones you opened this thread with. Luckily we're in the information age now, where any person can go to national stats offices and the like to find all kinds of incredible stats about how the world really works.
dogma wrote: No it isn't. Public safety is about keeping people free from harm, where harm can be physical or psychological. As such, concerns of public safety are not limited to "keeping people alive".
I haven't seen anyone campaigning against the psychological harm caused by guns. When we're discussing public safety as it relates to firearms, we're talking about death.
See, I don't think that's true. I think you're working very hard to erect a straw man.
Think what you like. Anti-gun organizations function exactly like anti-abortion organizations, as I've said time and time again. They know they won't get an outright ban right off the bat, so the goal is incremental progress towards it, culminating in the form of bans-in-all-but-name.
When a random person is killed by a drunk driver 2 states away, do you hear about it? Usually not.
When a random person is shot two states away, do you hear about it? Usually not.
Mass car pile-ups tend to result in only a few deaths as well. While you might hear about a 120 car pile-up, there will usually be only 3 or so deaths. Looking at Wikipedia's list of major pile-ups, there have been (since the start of 2012, so over 2 years) 12 deaths across 11 accidents, and their list is not just the US, but seems to include European countries as well. Not all of these were necessarily alcohol related, they don't mention the causes. Still, even if we assumed alcohol was to blame in ALL of them, that's still a relatively low number of fatalities.
A single mass shooting can match multiple years worth of accidents in terms of deaths, and if you have several in a single year, the deaths from mass shootings dwarf the deaths from mass pile-ups, which again, might not be alcohol related.
I think that explains media coverage pretty well. One person dying in an accident is common, as is one person dying to a gun. When you scale it up in rarity, a massive pile-up with 3-5 deaths is about as rare as a mass shooting, but the mass shooting probably has 10+ people dead. 10 people > 3 people.
Plus you always have the intrigue of "why?" When a drunk driver kills a person in an accident, the why is simple. They were drunk. That holds in almost all cases even when you scale it up. The "why" for mass shootings tends to be more complex and interesting, tying into mental illnesses, depression, etc.
As for politics, again I think it has to do with how alcohol and guns are viewed. We tried banning alcohol, it didn't work, alcohol won, and thus it, as an institution, is ingrained as something we live with and regulate as best we can. We never outright banned guns, so the culture around it developed differently. In addition, over 2/3rds of the US drinks. While a lot of people own guns, less than half the US owns guns. It's a lot easier to build political momentum on an issue when it's not something that is just sort of consistently present, like alcohol is.
Finally, I'm fairly certain alcohol is handled legally at the state level a lot more often than guns are. While the federal government could step in on alcohol more, a lot of things, like local sales, criminal penalties, etc., are handled at the state level. Guns are also handled at the state level, but I think the Federal government is just naturally more involved on gun issues than alcohol issues just sort of as a natural evolution of those two issues, hence when there's a death via alcohol it's more of a state thing whereas when there's a death via a gun it has more ties to national issues.
Edit: Also, as D-Usa was saying, homicides per gun owner (11,000 homicides, 40% of population owns guns) are higher than homicides tied to drinking (10,000 deaths, 67% of population drinks).
You really should read up on the misinformation you are spewing.
The rate of gun ownership has actually increased in the US in the last 10 years to well over 50%. A Gallop poll from 2011 reported a 47% increase - well before the current buying frenzy. The numbers exceed 50% if we were to take into account the number of first time buyers, as well as the growing influx of independent minded women who take the responsibility of self protection seriously.
The whole push behind Gun Control is control, not safety. Always has been. As Americans were faced with the prospect of more control, they responded by purchasing more firearms in the 2011-2013 period than ever before. The fact that the MSM attempted to gin up support for gun control only pushed more people into looking into firearms ownership than ever before. Same thing happened during Prohibition.
Gun ownership is at 34%. Your inability to read your own source is a testament to the quality of the rest of your argument.
You really should read up on the misinformation you are spewing.
The rate of gun ownership has actually increased in the US in the last 10 years to well over 50%. A Gallop poll from 2011 reported a 47% increase - well before the current buying frenzy. The numbers exceed 50% if we were to take into account the number of first time buyers, as well as the growing influx of independent minded women who take the responsibility of self protection seriously.
The whole push behind Gun Control is control, not safety. Always has been. As Americans were faced with the prospect of more control, they responded by purchasing more firearms in the 2011-2013 period than ever before. The fact that the MSM attempted to gin up support for gun control only pushed more people into looking into firearms ownership than ever before. Same thing happened during Prohibition.
I'll admit first off that I'm not sure where the 40% came from. That might have been a typo on my part BUT: 1. Personal gun ownership is at 34% according to the gallup poll, which is actually less than what I cited 2. Even if we lumped in people who personally own guns + people who live in households with guns but don't own guns, the number is still 47% of Americans, less than 50%.
Now, perhaps after sales have jumped greater than 50% of Americans live in a home that contains guns, but it is unlikely that 50% of Americans actually personally own guns AND, guns homicides per gun owner would STILL be higher than alcohol related homicides per alcohol drinker.
d-usa wrote: Gun ownership is at 34%. Your inability to read your own source is a testament to the quality of the rest of your argument.
It's incredible. Relapse had already posted that exact same link, and I'd corrected him on the same mistake, confusing household gun ownership with personal ownership. Then spacemanvic comes in, completely oblivious to that because he doesn't read the thread or read his own links, and makes the same bad claim.
People regularly compare arguing on the internet to whack-a-mole, with the same bad arguments popping up, getting whacked down, only for them to get up again and again until you can't be bothered any more. It looks like the game has changed though, now it seems that they don't even go down, they just get repeated straight away, in the same thread.
There are reports in the news about alcohol and it's adverse effects, but nowhere near the scale reports about gun violence. I would challenge anyone here to watch the news and other shows the way they normally do and note the number of reports, exposes, etc. about gun violence and then contrast that with the number of news reports about alcohol related tragedies. As well as this count the number of advertisments that portray alcohol in a positive, fun way as opposed to those that show the negative effects. Do the same with whatever you read for news or entertainment and see how the numbers add up.
You need to understand that when small incidents happen, they do not receive national attention, either for guns or alcohol related homicides. Major incidents DO get reported. The reason you see so many more negative gun related things in the media is because there are few if any single incidents where alcohol caused 10+ deaths, while there are several incidents per year where guns do.
In addition, the earlier numbers you were citing about 11,000 vs. 88,000 aren't fair comparisons. You strip out all non-homicide related deaths by guns, while leaving in all non-homicide deaths for alcohol. Either you have to leave them all in, or strip them all out.
Personally, I think the better measure for societal welfare is to strip out self-inflicted deaths. Alcohol diseases and gun suicides, they are personal choices, as tragic as they are. I think the vast majority of kids learned about the dangers of drinking too much AND about the dangers of playing with guns. When someone chooses to ignore that to their own detriment, be it alcohol poisoning or suicide by gun, that is them hurting themselves, and for the purposes of which is worse for the safety of society, alcohol existing or guns existing, people who make personal choices to their own detriment shouldn't really be included, because they'd likely just replace one self-destructive behavior with another (swap heroin for alcohol and wrist cutting for guns, perhaps). The better measure for societal safety is the number of lives of people who would be saved FROM OTHERS with removal of the object.
As such, the fairer totals to compare are 10,000 for alcohol homicides, a number put forth earlier in the thread by several people, and 11,000 for gun homicides.
As such, the fairer totals to compare are 10,000 for alcohol homicides, a number put forth earlier in the thread by several people, and 11,000 for gun homicides.
Is it just me, or do the numbers being very close make me wonder how many involve both...
I haven't seen anyone campaigning against the psychological harm caused by guns. When we're discussing public safety as it relates to firearms, we're talking about death.
The argument is that the existence of organizations in favor of regulating firearm ownership implies that firearm ownership causes psychological harm either in general, or in select circumstances.
But no, when we're discussing public safety in the context of firearm ownership we are not merely discussing death as, even ignoring any psychological harm, firearms are clearly capable of causing non-lethal injuries. Again, you seem to be trying very hard to erect a straw man.
dogma wrote: The argument is that the existence of organizations in favor of regulating firearm ownership implies that firearm ownership causes psychological harm either in general, or in select circumstances.
That's a terrible, terrible argument.
But no, when we're discussing public safety in the context of firearm ownership we are not merely discussing death as, even ignoring any psychological harm, firearms are clearly capable of causing non-lethal injuries. Again, you seem to be trying very hard to erect a straw man.
I've read and seen enough anti-gun activism to know that death by firearm is, again and again, the statistic endlessly trotted out. You can go on claiming otherwise, I suppose. Enjoy?
In the end it comes down to the same thing as pot legalization, abortion, and other risky topics.
Keep it regulated, safe, and people informed on the consequences.
Seaward you are discounting entire advocacy organizations by making the claim ALL groups that desire gun regulation want the removal of guns from our society. Even the president you so despise has said that he believes it should always be legal to own a gun, but there should be proper regulations in place to ensure public safety and well being.
Limiting amount of firearms per house or amount of ammunition per person are the same as saying "We will make pot legal, but you can't keep a bale of the stuff just laying around"
If you make the claim you need over 100 rounds of ammunition or more than 5 guns (especially guns that would not be able to be used for hunting/home defense realisticy) your just being silly. Obviously there are exceptions if say, you have a gun collecting licensee or own a gun related business.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also if you believe its the right of every citizen to own enough guns to stage a rebellion in there area than I hope YOU do lose your guns because as we can see abroad, violent revolutions against established governments with foreign support only leads to blood baths, on both sides.
If your a revolutionary 2nd amendment advocate, please stop as you make all others loose like they belong in the loony bin alongside you
Alexzandvar wrote: In the end it comes down to the same thing as pot legalization, abortion, and other risky topics.
I'm all for all of them.
Seaward you are discounting entire advocacy organizations by making the claim ALL groups that desire gun regulation want the removal of guns from our society. Even the president you so despise has said that he believes it should always be legal to own a gun, but there should be proper regulations in place to ensure public safety and well being.
Because the president has never lied about anything, that's for sure.
Democrats frequently claim they support Second Amendment rights. Politicians claim a lot of things that aren't true.
Limiting amount of firearms per house or amount of ammunition per person are the same as saying "We will make pot legal, but you can't keep a bale of the stuff just laying around"
Actually, it's not.
If you make the claim you need over 100 rounds of ammunition or more than 5 guns (especially guns that would not be able to be used for hunting/home defense realisticy) your just being silly.
Really? So you're saying you want gun owners to be very inexperienced with actually firing their gun?
I have around two thousand rounds in the house at any given time. I burn through roughly four hundred a week. My girlfriend does between one and two hundred. My carry gun doesn't become my carry gun until it's had at least two thousand through the pipe.
Im actually surprised that you wonder about such a thing. Politicians talk about whatever is currently debated most, the more outrage the better. A Politic wants to be elected again, and thus he will talk about current issues with the goal of seeming competent. Statistics and the like mean absolutely nothing in those scenarios, at least until enough people get worked up about them. Issues like that are not measured by their actual danger, but by the amount of outrage they provoke. Its the same with newspapers and TV. Yes its ironic and stupid, but it has been like that for forever.
Now, onto the actual issue. I actually just wanted to make a joke about not having seen a school killing being committed by using a glass full of Whisky, or an armed robbery by pointing a bottle of Cardinal at the owner. But its about 6 Pages too late for that, so i'll try the serious approach.
I find comparisons like that ridicolous, because it all sounds like "Y has more victims than X, and thus X is a non-issue." And I know the op has pointed out that for him, its about the irony of one issue being paraded around, while the other is not. But I think this is not true.
Alcohol, just like cigarettes, is demonized plenty. There are posters around, campaigns about "Dont drink and drive" and even debates about doing the same thing to alcohol that was done to cigarettes. (The whole stickers on Cig-Packs etc.) so I dont think alcohol is underpresented as an issue at all.
Also, some people in this thread questioned the necessity of alcohol. I agree that it is not critical, and arguing that "I NEED ALCOHOL" is pretty stupid. But there are positive things to the stuff, just like cigarettes.
I stopped smoking 1.5 years ago, but I can say that sometimes I really really miss it. It helped me calm down in stressful situations, gave me something to do when waiting somewhere and even served as grounds to meeting other people ("Do you have fire?")
Its similiar with alcohol. As long as you dont jug the stuff like water, it helps relaxing after a hard week, makes a lot of people more social and helps them open up and a lot of it tastes pretty nice too. So the statement that there is _no_ reason why alcohol isnt banned, is also pretty dumb.
Guns on the other hand, I dont consider positive in any way. At least, _real_ Guns. Marksmanship Competitions can just as easily be held by using nonlethal variants, and I dont mind those at all. The things are just way to dangerous in my eyes to be just carried around by everyone and used so casually. Thus I think the whole debate around the things is justified. You'd also have a hard time arguing with me about this, as we have Gun regulations over here and everything works out just fine, not to mention i've never seen someone over here complain that he cant run around with a loaded gun all day long.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also if you believe its the right of every citizen to own enough guns to stage a rebellion in there area than I hope YOU do lose your guns because as we can see abroad, violent revolutions against established governments with foreign support only leads to blood baths, on both sides.
If your a revolutionary 2nd amendment advocate, please stop as you make all others loose like they belong in the loony bin alongside you
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Guns on the other hand, I dont consider positive in any way. At least, _real_ Guns. Marksmanship Competitions can just as easily be held by using nonlethal variants, and I dont mind those at all. The things are just way to dangerous in my eyes to be just carried around by everyone and used so casually. Thus I think the whole debate around the things is justified. You'd also have a hard time arguing with me about this, as we have Gun regulations over here and everything works out just fine, not to mention i've never seen someone over here complain that he cant run around with a loaded gun all day long.
Spoken by someone who hasn't had a need to defend themselves...
Guns on the other hand, I dont consider positive in any way. At least, _real_ Guns. Marksmanship Competitions can just as easily be held by using nonlethal variants, and I dont mind those at all. The things are just way to dangerous in my eyes to be just carried around by everyone and used so casually. Thus I think the whole debate around the things is justified. You'd also have a hard time arguing with me about this, as we have Gun regulations over here and everything works out just fine, not to mention i've never seen someone over here complain that he cant run around with a loaded gun all day long.
Spoken by someone who hasn't had a need to defend themselves...
Yeah, maybe you should wonder about why so many people appearantly need to defend themselves in your country, instead of handing everyone a gun.
EDIT:
Also, maybe then wonder if giving everyone a gun is the correct response EVEN after ignoring underlying issues.
Stuebi wrote: Yeah, maybe you should wonder about why so many people appearantly need to defend themselves in your country, instead of handing everyone a gun.
Probably because there are almost as many guns in the US as there are people. I believe it's roughly a .9/1 ratio.
I did not say there couldn't be a revolution of sort, say, peaceful demonstration to change something.
Also advocating violent revolution is silly, and insane in our current world, not every quote from a famous person can be taken literally in modern context.
And Seaward, the fact you keep such a large amount of ammunition on you is frankly, scary, I hope to god you secure it properly. and you cannot take what YOU do and say "well I do it right so everyone else has to do it the same way".
Especially considering the fact that if if you hold more than one ounce of pot your considered a dealer, if you hold THAT much ammunition and THAT many guns you should be considered a dealer as well, or at least subject to more inspection/more government attention.
Stuebi wrote: Yeah, maybe you should wonder about why so many people appearantly need to defend themselves in your country, instead of handing everyone a gun.
Probably because there are almost as many guns in the US as there are people. I believe it's roughly a .9/1 ratio.
Holy Feth, really? I never knew it was actually that many.
If you make the claim you need over 100 rounds of ammunition or more than 5 guns (especially guns that would not be able to be used for hunting/home defense realisticy) your just being silly. Obviously there are exceptions if say, you have a gun collecting licensee or own a gun related business.
I disagree.
20 bore shotgun
12 bore shotgun
.308 hunting rifle
.22 rim fire varmint rifle
.22 rim fire target rifle
.308 target rifle
That is 6 guns that I would have, all with uses, if I had the space and money (Which is not that much, I just have too many other hobbies). Thats without taking in to account the fact that if I was serious about target shooting I would want 2 match rifles, as the last thing you want is for one to go wrong on the day of a serious competition. Also without taking in to account home defense where people would want a pistol (which I disagree with, both on the basis of not thinking you need a gun for that, and that a shot gun would be far better).
Ammunition, once you have 3 different types of buckshot, for Goose/High Duck, Pheasant/Low Duck and Rabbit, some 308 and some .22 rim fire you only have 20 of each which would probably be enough for a days hunting, but would leave you very limited on target shooting and doing allot of messing about buying small batches all the time.
Now, I'm not saying the gun laws in the US are right. I do have problems with them, mostly to do with the fact that they result in so many guns ending up overseas in criminal hands, but putting abritery numbers on these things dose not work. Its the same thing that means you guys can't really get hold of anything over a .50.
Equally however, seeing some of the laws I can see why people are paranoid. I tis very difficult in the US to get a suppressor. It is far easier to get a rifle with a suppressor or something over .50 in the UK than the US.
What worries me more with the US is not so much the access to guns, but the attitude. The fact that many people do not think a gun safe is needed and that loaded in a draw and telling kids "Don't touch" is gun safety. I'm not saying all, or even most, people do this, but enough do to make me think that needs looking at. I think that without any licensing or whatever laws on safe gun storage would go along way to answering some of the dangers.
The same can be said with alcohol. More respect for alcohol and removing the "Binge Drinking Culture" would change allot.
I guess what I am trying to say is there is a cultural problem with guns and drink both in the UK and the US. Both have problems and both need addressing. Sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "lalalalala" helps no one.
Alexzandvar wrote: I did not say there couldn't be a revolution of sort, say, peaceful demonstration to change something.
Also advocating violent revolution is silly, and insane in our current world, not every quote from a famous person can be taken literally in modern context.
You should read the rest of the letter it's from sometime. Jefferson was the honey badger of the founding fathers, in that he just didn't give a gak.
And Seaward, the fact you keep such a large amount of ammunition on you is frankly, scary, I hope to god you secure it properly. and you cannot take what YOU do and say "well I do it right so everyone else has to do it the same way".
I keep 17 rounds on me. A couple thousand rounds would be impractical to carry on a daily basis. .45's heavy.
And I'm certainly not saying everyone has to do it the same way. I'm saying everyone has the right to do it the same way.
Especially considering the fact that if if you hold more than one ounce of pot your considered a dealer, if you hold THAT much ammunition and THAT many guns you should be considered a dealer as well, or at least subject to more inspection/more government attention.
I actually consider 2000 to be a pretty low amount to keep on hand. Guys I know who shoot IDPA have far more. They also practice a lot more.
I likely would, too, if I ever got into reloading, I probably should, given the transition to .45.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Steve steveson wrote: Equally however, seeing some of the laws I can see why people are paranoid. I tis very difficult in the US to get a suppressor. It is far easier to get a rifle with a suppressor or something over .50 in the UK than the US.
It sort of depends on where you live. Your local chief LEO can put a stop to the tax stamp process pretty quickly, but my impression is most don't.
It wasn't difficult for me to get a suppressor, it just involved an annoyingly long wait. The ATF isn't exactly speedy with the background check involved.
If you make the claim you need over 100 rounds of ammunition or more than 5 guns (especially guns that would not be able to be used for hunting/home defense realisticy) your just being silly. Obviously there are exceptions if say, you have a gun collecting licensee or own a gun related business.
I disagree.
20 bore shotgun
12 bore shotgun
.308 hunting rifle
.22 rim fire varmint rifle
.22 rim fire target rifle
.308 target rifle
That is 6 guns that I would have, all with uses, if I had the space and money (Which is not that much, I just have too many other hobbies). Thats without taking in to account the fact that if I was serious about target shooting I would want 2 match rifles, as the last thing you want is for one to go wrong on the day of a serious competition. Also without taking in to account home defense where people would want a pistol (which I disagree with, both on the basis of not thinking you need a gun for that, and that a shot gun would be far better).
Ammunition, once you have 3 different types of buckshot, for Goose/High Duck, Pheasant/Low Duck and Rabbit, some 308 and some .22 rim fire you only have 20 of each which would probably be enough for a days hunting, but would leave you very limited on target shooting and doing allot of messing about buying small batches all the time.
Now, I'm not saying the gun laws in the US are right. I do have problems with them, mostly to do with the fact that they result in so many guns ending up overseas in criminal hands, but putting abritery numbers on these things dose not work. Its the same thing that means you guys can't really get hold of anything over a .50.
Equally however, seeing some of the laws I can see why people are paranoid. I tis very difficult in the US to get a suppressor. It is far easier to get a rifle with a suppressor or something over .50 in the UK than the US.
lll concede that I am nowere near as educated as you in the area of gun law and gun ownership, which is why I threw out what I did speculatively. Honestly the fact this issue is so hotly debated just shows how important it is.
I understand, Ill think of this when posting in the future about guns. Although I think the amount of guns you can own should be based on the type.
Steve steveson wrote: Equally however, seeing some of the laws I can see why people are paranoid. I tis very difficult in the US to get a suppressor. It is far easier to get a rifle with a suppressor or something over .50 in the UK than the US.
It sort of depends on where you live. Your local chief LEO can put a stop to the tax stamp process pretty quickly, but my impression is most don't.
It wasn't difficult for me to get a suppressor, it just involved an annoyingly long wait. The ATF isn't exactly speedy with the background check involved.
I was under the impression most didn't like to issue them. I guess it depends on which state and county you live in.
Guns on the other hand, I dont consider positive in any way. At least, _real_ Guns. Marksmanship Competitions can just as easily be held by using nonlethal variants, and I dont mind those at all. The things are just way to dangerous in my eyes to be just carried around by everyone and used so casually. Thus I think the whole debate around the things is justified. You'd also have a hard time arguing with me about this, as we have Gun regulations over here and everything works out just fine, not to mention i've never seen someone over here complain that he cant run around with a loaded gun all day long.
Spoken by someone who hasn't had a need to defend themselves...
Yeah, maybe you should wonder about why so many people appearantly need to defend themselves in your country, instead of handing everyone a gun.
??? Ain't never going to be a utopia brah.
donkey-caves exist in this world... and some people will need an equalizer when defending themselves, their family and property.
EDIT:
Also, maybe then wonder if giving everyone a gun is the correct response EVEN after ignoring underlying issues.
Not EVERYONE needs a gun...
But to assume that we'd all get along is crazy pants.
Alexzandvar wrote: I did not say there couldn't be a revolution of sort, say, peaceful demonstration to change something.
Also advocating violent revolution is silly, and insane in our current world, not every quote from a famous person can be taken literally in modern context.
You should read the rest of the letter it's from sometime. Jefferson was the honey badger of the founding fathers, in that he just didn't give a gak.
Most definitely the honey badger of the founding fathers.
Alexzandvar wrote: Although I think the amount of guns you can own should be based on the type.
If you're worried about a couple pistols and a shotgun, I won't even talk about the stuff I got to play with before entering the private sector.
I am not worried about a couple pistols and a shotgun.
I don't like to talk about it because it tends to drop a nuke on the argument of what you can safely personally own.
My family owns a t-34/74, we own it out on our farm property because a friend wanted to be rid of it and we had the space so we got it on the cheap. We even own a couple of shells for it. Apparently it's pretty easy to own such a thing if you claim the whole historical relic thing
And if your wondering, the shot locker has 4 armor piercing, and 4 explosive.
Democrats frequently claim they support Second Amendment rights. Politicians claim a lot of things that aren't true.
A big part of the problem is that Democrats and Republicans perceive the breadth of the 2nd Amendment's right very differently.
I would guess the majority of Democrats aren't in favor of the outright banning of guns. I would also guess that the majority of Republicans aren't opposed to some basic restrictions on purchase, sale, and carrying of firearms.
The problem is, the fringes take any consensus and possible compromise and gak it up. To the far right, ANY restrictions on ownership, sale, and purchase (aside of restraining violent felons from buying them, because no one would be foolish enough to support that publicly) are violations of the 2nd Amendment, while to the far left, everything (including, up until that SC decision a couple years ago, outright banning of guns altogether) is fair game for restrictions.
Has anyone broken down the 88000 alcohol deaths to see how many of them also included firearms or was that put into the firearms deaths portion on the statistic.
How many deaths were attributed because someone was operating a firearm while intoxicated, be it suicide or killing someone else. A lot of people like using drunk driving as a prominent argument for this topic.
Alpha 1 wrote: Has anyone broken down the 88000 alcohol deaths to see how many of them also included firearms or was that put into the firearms deaths portion on the statistic.
How many deaths were attributed because someone was operating a firearm while intoxicated, be it suicide or killing someone else. A lot of people like using drunk driving as a prominent argument for this topic.
I suspect they will show in both though. On the one hand you can argue would that person have done that if not drunk. On the other hand you can say, if they had not had easy access to the gun. It will just go round and round, and I suspect is a minor issue overall.
I don't know if the data is there to accurately determine how many incidents involved a combination of alcohol AND firearms.
And while that information would certainly be interesting, it's worth pointing out that even if that data were readily available, in order to assign any sort of significance to that data, we have to determine:
- if they would have shot the person in the absence of alcohol AND/OR
- if they would have still killed the person in the absence of a gun.
After all, they could have planned the homicide and the alcohol could have been incidental, and likewise they could have used a gun, but would have just as easily strangled/stabbed/whatevered the person to death.
That information will be really tough to pull out, since that tends to go to the mental state of the attacker, which can't be easily gauged, if determined at all.
Alpha 1 wrote: Has anyone broken down the 88000 alcohol deaths to see how many of them also included firearms or was that put into the firearms deaths portion on the statistic.
How many deaths were attributed because someone was operating a firearm while intoxicated, be it suicide or killing someone else. A lot of people like using drunk driving as a prominent argument for this topic.
Just curious
I know at least one of those suicides involved alcohol coupled with a gun. A coworker and his wife got into an argument while they were drunk and he ended up blowing his brains out in front of her and his children.
@Sebster,
That's an interesting concept, with the cigarette packs. I wonder what kind of studies they did to consider it's initiation.
I've read and seen enough anti-gun activism to know that death by firearm is, again and again, the statistic endlessly trotted out. You can go on claiming otherwise, I suppose. Enjoy?
Alexzandvar wrote: I think I should say, regulation should be placed on the most amount of harm something could cause in a regular situation.
Obviously as heavy machine gun such as a .50 cal could be more dangerous, than say an old tank you can't even get machine gun ammunition for
It all comes down to how practical a weapon is, I don't think you can rob a house with a armor piercing shells.
You can however blow it up .
But you can't hold it up, blowing it up would burn all the money!
I remember one time our civil war reenacting battery was parked outside a KFC, and of course our cannons were on trailers, totally secured, and the manager called the police because they thought we were going to use these ancient fething things (on trailers mind you) to hold the place up! Crazy!
Alexzandvar wrote: I think I should say, regulation should be placed on the most amount of harm something could cause in a regular situation.
Obviously as heavy machine gun such as a .50 cal could be more dangerous, than say an old tank you can't even get machine gun ammunition for
It all comes down to how practical a weapon is, I don't think you can rob a house with a armor piercing shells.
I wouldn't call a .50 cal more practical. 50 cal rifles are heavy and very expensive. If you want cash your probably better off selling the gun and the ammunition and not have to lug the sodding thing around than trying to rob someone with it. A .50 cal rifle starts at around $8000 usd, and ammunition is about $5 a round, and you won't be wanting to carry more than a few around with you. Unfortunately the most dangerous are also the most practical for legal uses.
Alexzandvar wrote: I think I should say, regulation should be placed on the most amount of harm something could cause in a regular situation.
Obviously as heavy machine gun such as a .50 cal could be more dangerous, than say an old tank you can't even get machine gun ammunition for
It all comes down to how practical a weapon is, I don't think you can rob a house with a armor piercing shells.
You can however blow it up .
But you can't hold it up, blowing it up would burn all the money!
I remember one time our civil war reenacting battery was parked outside a KFC, and of course our cannons were on trailers, totally secured, and the manager called the police because they thought we were going to use these ancient fething things (on trailers mind you) to hold the place up! Crazy!
I can just see it... "Hand over the money or wait there whilst I prime, load and light this cannon! Just give me 5-10 minuits before you call the police, it takes a while!!!!"
Stuebi wrote: Yeah, maybe you should wonder about why so many people appearantly need to defend themselves in your country, instead of handing everyone a gun.
Probably because there are almost as many guns in the US as there are people. I believe it's roughly a .9/1 ratio.
Holy Feth, really? I never knew it was actually that many.
Stuebi, if your country flag by your name is correct.... What are you on about there are MORE guns in Switzerland (per capita) than there are in the US. Heck, you practically get issued them for life once you're of age
Stuebi, if your country flag by your name is correct.... What are you on about there are MORE guns in Switzerland (per capita) than there are in the US. Heck, you practically get issued them for life once you're of age
I've looked at it and see a few holes. Firstly, I presume that the number of firearm deaths does not take into account military conflict, as it's confined to the US. Because of the way the studies are conducted, there could be any number of firearm related incidents that are categorized under alcohol. Whether that's rightly so or not is not for me to determine, but I guarantee you that that kind of categorization can hide stuff. The CDC lists 88'000, but following through on reports lists a number of 25692. Tell me where they got the other 53K from? Alcohol and: firarms, driving, machine operation, inattention in dangerous environments, etc. It's not enough to have a reference to a number and shout and yell and complain, but you need to look deeper at where they got their numbers from. Following through and reading the details, the 25.7k number is exclusively alcohol related, not something that involved alcohol impairing someone's mental faculties resulting in a terrible decision. So we compare 25.7K from alcohol against 31.6K Firearm reated deaths (way to round down to 31K there...not politically motivated AT ALL!). The reason firearms are a hot topic is because those 25.7K alcohol related deaths, a large number of those are not instant, but the result of alcohol over a protracted period of time. Therapy, treatment and support networks can work on reducing those numbers. With firarms, most of those deaths are instant. There's a lot less detection and mitigation you can do there....
It may not have been mentioned here, or it may have been in the last 8 pages, but, I'll carry on as though it hasn't been mentioned. Consider also how many lives are the result of alcohol. It's.... not.... a particularly healthy way of looking at it, but the number of births that can be attributed to two people having had too much to drink, while unquantifiable, is probably more than 5.....
poda_t wrote: I've looked at it and see a few holes. Firstly, I presume that the number of firearm deaths does not take into account military conflict, as it's confined to the US. Because of the way the studies are conducted, there could be any number of firearm related incidents that are categorized under alcohol. Whether that's rightly so or not is not for me to determine, but I guarantee you that that kind of categorization can hide stuff. The CDC lists 88'000, but following through on reports lists a number of 25692. Tell me where they got the other 53K from? Alcohol and: firarms, driving, machine operation, inattention in dangerous environments, etc. It's not enough to have a reference to a number and shout and yell and complain, but you need to look deeper at where they got their numbers from. Following through and reading the details, the 25.7k number is exclusively alcohol related, not something that involved alcohol impairing someone's mental faculties resulting in a terrible decision. So we compare 25.7K from alcohol against 31.6K Firearm reated deaths (way to round down to 31K there...not politically motivated AT ALL!). The reason firearms are a hot topic is because those 25.7K alcohol related deaths, a large number of those are not instant, but the result of alcohol over a protracted period of time. Therapy, treatment and support networks can work on reducing those numbers. With firarms, most of those deaths are instant. There's a lot less detection and mitigation you can do there....
It may not have been mentioned here, or it may have been in the last 8 pages, but, I'll carry on as though it hasn't been mentioned. Consider also how many lives are the result of alcohol. It's.... not.... a particularly healthy way of looking at it, but the number of births that can be attributed to two people having had too much to drink, while unquantifiable, is probably more than 5.....
19,000 of those gun deaths are suicides, around 11,000 are homicides
poda_t wrote: I've looked at it and see a few holes. Firstly, I presume that the number of firearm deaths does not take into account military conflict, as it's confined to the US. Because of the way the studies are conducted, there could be any number of firearm related incidents that are categorized under alcohol. Whether that's rightly so or not is not for me to determine, but I guarantee you that that kind of categorization can hide stuff. The CDC lists 88'000, but following through on reports lists a number of 25692. Tell me where they got the other 53K from? Alcohol and: firarms, driving, machine operation, inattention in dangerous environments, etc. It's not enough to have a reference to a number and shout and yell and complain, but you need to look deeper at where they got their numbers from. Following through and reading the details, the 25.7k number is exclusively alcohol related, not something that involved alcohol impairing someone's mental faculties resulting in a terrible decision. So we compare 25.7K from alcohol against 31.6K Firearm reated deaths (way to round down to 31K there...not politically motivated AT ALL!). The reason firearms are a hot topic is because those 25.7K alcohol related deaths, a large number of those are not instant, but the result of alcohol over a protracted period of time. Therapy, treatment and support networks can work on reducing those numbers. With firarms, most of those deaths are instant. There's a lot less detection and mitigation you can do there....
It may not have been mentioned here, or it may have been in the last 8 pages, but, I'll carry on as though it hasn't been mentioned. Consider also how many lives are the result of alcohol. It's.... not.... a particularly healthy way of looking at it, but the number of births that can be attributed to two people having had too much to drink, while unquantifiable, is probably more than 5.....
19,000 of those gun deaths are suicides, around 11,000 are homicides
I agree what relevance does that figure have, we are now talking about the possibility of robbing a bank with a tank and a KFC with cannons, keep on topic people.
Stuebi wrote: Guns on the other hand, I dont consider positive in any way. At least, _real_ Guns. Marksmanship Competitions can just as easily be held by using nonlethal variants, and I dont mind those at all.
The basic, primal enjoyment of a thing is the physicality - there's fun to be found simply in the power of the shot, as much as there is in the challenge of making it accurately.
I mean, at what point do we stop hyper-focusing on how dangerous things can be and just have some fething fun? Are we really at the stage where we're going to let the tut-tut brigade stop us from getting absolutely plastered just because they can keep saying '80,000 dead' over and over again? And stop us going to a target range and firing an MP-5 on full auto just because it's a hell of a buzz?
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Relapse wrote: That's an interesting concept, with the cigarette packs. I wonder what kind of studies they did to consider it's initiation.
As was standard for our previous Labor government, very few studies
But then, very much unlike almost everything else our previous Labor government did, this actually appears to be working quite well. There was actually a short run conspiracy movement who honestly believed that the 'no packaging' thing was a smokescreen for the government secretly putting some new ingredient in cigarettes to make them taste bad... but it really was just the impact of no longer seeing that packaging when you smoke - it impacted the perceived flavour considerably.
There hasn't been large movement in total cigarette sales yet, but there has been a considerable drop off in new smokers, and a large increase in quit rates, meaning it is reasonable to expect in the medium to long term we will see a significant decline in smoking rates.
As to whether any of that is something government should be doing, I'm not sure. On the one hand, the smoker affects only himself, and should get to choose for himself. But on the other hand, there's clear evidence of irrationality on the part of the smoker, as something as silly as the colour of the packaging impacts how much he enjoys a product he knows is killing him, so...
An interesting story reporting on drinking and drugs use in the UK declining in young people compared to 10 years ago. I think it had links to the stats. It is a bbc mobile link so hopefully it works!
Just thought it might be interesting regards the reporting on drink and drugs and how they are viewed by society.
An interesting story reporting on drinking and drugs use in the UK declining in young people compared to 10 years ago. I think it had links to the stats. It is a bbc mobile link so hopefully it works!
Just thought it might be interesting regards the reporting on drink and drugs and how they are viewed by society.
That's some pretty cool stuff right there. Where I grew up as a kid, alcoholism was pretty rampant and it was common to hear about someone's parent going to the hospital, getting divorced, losing a job, or even dying because of alcohol. There were some friends I would visit whose parents I don't ever recall seeing sober and it could be seen that a toll was being taken on the kids because of it.
I had my own time with drinking, off and on, but the last one I ever had was in 1989 in New Orleans at the start of Madis Gras. I wasn't an alcoholic and maybe drank every couple of weeks, but I looked around me at the people there and decided that was not who I was or what I wanted to present myself as to any kids I would have down the line.
I put the glass down and never looked back.
An interesting story reporting on drinking and drugs use in the UK declining in young people compared to 10 years ago. I think it had links to the stats. It is a bbc mobile link so hopefully it works!
Just thought it might be interesting regards the reporting on drink and drugs and how they are viewed by society.
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It's like the alcohol version of the Brady Campaign...
