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 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.

Relapse wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:

Corpsesarefun wrote:Is the point of this statistic to somehow make guns seem less dangerous?

Yes. That is exactly what the OP's misguided intention appears to be.

To repeat for the fourth or fith time from other posts this thread where I stated the same thing,

I....am.....pointing.......out.......hypocricy

It has nothing to do with trying to make guns seem safer.

Pointing out the hypocrisy of who exactly? It seems to me that alcohol is quite heavily regulated and demonised as it is.

Relapse wrote:

 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.

I love how no one is actually reading the thread.

 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:

http://t.nbcnews.com/health/terrible-tally-500-children-dead-gunshots-every-year-7-500-8C11469222

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:


http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/underage-drinking.htm

Over 4,000 dead with 186,000 sent to emergency rooms yearly


Of course alcohol is all right because the advertisments have a half mumbled "drink responsibly" blurb at the end.

Relapse wrote:
They have never run anything like that about alcohol deaths.

No, but the NYT consistently runs stories regarding the negative consequences of alcohol.

This may be worth perusing.

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.

 Hordini wrote:

 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.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

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)

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Hordini wrote:

 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.

Person per person, guns kill almost twice as much as alcohol...

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?

Relapse wrote:
There are

Roughly 31, 000 gun related deaths yearly

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm


A little over 11,000 are homicides


http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm



Around 19,000 are suicides



http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm


Alcohol kills 88,000 yearly and comes with other lovely side effects as detailed in the CDC report

http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm

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.

 sebster wrote:


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.

Talking sense isn't allowed on Dakka.

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.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 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.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

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%.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

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?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:
Talking sense isn't allowed on Dakka.

And if you do talk sense, no-one is listening.

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.

Relapse wrote:

 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:

http://t.nbcnews.com/health/terrible-tally-500-children-dead-gunshots-every-year-7-500-8C11469222

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:


http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/underage-drinking.htm

Over 4,000 dead with 186,000 sent to emergency rooms yearly


Of course alcohol is all right because the advertisments have a half mumbled "drink responsibly" blurb at the end.

Again, this is all irrelevant to guns. This is a classic STRAW MAN ARGUMENT.

 Surtur wrote:
Again, this is all irrelevant to guns. This is a classic STRAW MAN ARGUMENT.

I don't know why, but I'll try.

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.

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.

 Seaward wrote:

 Surtur wrote:
Again, this is all irrelevant to guns. This is a classic STRAW MAN ARGUMENT.

I don't know why, but I'll try.

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.

No point in trying, Seaward. They are so stuck in what they want to say they haven't bothered reading any posts.

(get it, shot? It's topical to both guns and booze, double zing!)

 LordofHats wrote:

(get it, shot? It's topical to both guns and booze, double zing!)

I'll take it!

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.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 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.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 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.

 sebster wrote:

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.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 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...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

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...

Well clearly the passenger was so drunk that his electromagnetic field messed with the brakes.

 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.

 Seaward wrote:
That'd be a valid point if I were talking only about coverage of crimes or incidents.

If you aren't saying that then you aren't saying anything.

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.