Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

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.

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

11000 firearms deaths, 10000 Alcohol deaths... suspicious...

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.

 Seaward wrote:

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?

When did I claim that was not the case?

 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 .

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 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.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Alexzandvar wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 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:

 Seaward wrote:

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

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

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

No, there aren't.

Unless you're including military arms. In which case, we still win by a considerable margin.

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

Relapse wrote:

 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

relevance?

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?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

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...

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25652991

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.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25652991

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.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25652991

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.

Yup.

(NSFW)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n34eeXWjUQ