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 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.

Relapse wrote:

60% are.

Like I said, if 99% of gun-related deaths were suicides, no one would care. I'm not sure how "60% are" is relevant to my statement.

That said, how many alcohol related deaths are murders?

Exactly.

 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.

 dogma wrote:
Its almost like firearm ownership is a current, political issue; while alcohol use is not.

Yep. And I think Relapse's point is that that's fairly ironic, given that alcohol kills more Americans per year than guns do.

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.

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?

You use an interesting definition of dangerous.

I didn't start the thread, so I can't speak for Relapse.

Alcohol kills more Americans than guns. Guns are a contentious political issue. Alcohol is not. I find some irony in that.

So you admit that you think that this statistic proves that alcohol is more dangerous than guns as it is responsible for more deaths?

 Seaward wrote:

Yep. And I think Relapse's point is that that's fairly ironic, given that alcohol kills more Americans per year than guns do.

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?

 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.

Who said that was the goal, aside from you?

 Seaward wrote:
I find some irony in that.

I don't think you understand the concept of irony.

 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.

 Corpsesarefun wrote:

 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.

 Corpsesarefun wrote:

 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.


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 Seaward wrote:

 Corpsesarefun wrote:

 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.

And there it is:

Numbers don't matter because numbers.

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 agree with you, but you should calm down a bit sebster.

Although I think the real question here is how many gun deaths are alcohol related, that gets everyone on the same page!

That's actually a good question XD How many people get drunk and then shoot someone (including themselves?). We got stats for that?

Nothing I have found yet, but I did find that:
Gun ownership, carrying a gun linked to heavy alcohol use
Gun owners drink more and take more risks, study says
Edit: I also found that Drug-Induced Deaths More Common Than Alcohol- or Firearm-Related Fatalities
These hypocrites are focusing on alchol when they should really be focusing on drugs!

 Seaward wrote:

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.

 Seaward wrote:

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.

Type of accident

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.

 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.

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.

 dogma wrote:

 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

Clearly we know the answer;

 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.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I agree with you, but you should calm down a bit sebster.

Never!


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 LordofHats wrote:
Clearly we know the answer;

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.