Posted on 10/16/2006 12:12:28 PM PDT by neverdem
Hear that? It's the deafening silence of politicians not talking about how the way to deal with gun violence is to deal with guns.
A Baltimore 8-year-old brought a loaded gun to school last week that his classmate accidentally fired about the same time an Amish school in Pennsylvania was being razed in memory of five girls shot to death there by an intruder the week before. Those events closely followed fatal school shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin and the arrest of a Missouri middle-schooler armed with an assault rifle.
Official reaction to these outrages has focused on calls for greater school security, such as installing metal detectors and arming teachers. President Bush hosted a school safety summit in Maryland last week that featured notions such as drafting strong school emergency plans, urging fathers to get more involved in school, and providing character education for kids.
There seems to be a bipartisan conspiracy to ignore the obvious: Gun violence is so high in this country at least in part because there are so many guns so easily available. The United States is home to more than 200 million firearms, with one or more available in at least a third of American households.
No amount of beefed-up security, better parenting or improved access to mental health care can offset the danger posed by the sheer proximity of these weapons.
Yet the Republican-led Congress has spent the past decade derailing gun-control measures and dismantling those on the books. And Democrats, seemingly so close to regaining some measure of majority control, appear in no mood to take on the gun lobby at this critical juncture.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
Not to mention what does a 8 year old child uneducated in firearm safety accidental discharging a firearm have to do with violence.
Butt sculpture, you say?
Does anyone remember the questionaire for MD's who ask how many guns are in the household? I can't find it anymore.
What country is this guy living in?? I want to live there. Name one gun law that's been "dismantled" other than the one that came with a built-in sunset clause (and thank God the 1994 Pubbies had the guts to demand one).
hmmm, why dont the flip out over swimming pools too?
Op-ed piece on swimming pools vs. guns as the most dangerous weapon
Posted by Tim Lambert under files
by Steven D. Levitt, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago
[Editor’s note: A version of this piece was published in the Chicago Sun-Times on July 28, 2001 under the title “Pools more dangerous than guns.” ]
What’s more dangerous: a swimming pool or a gun? When it comes to children, there is no comparison: a swimming pool is 100 times more deadly.
In 1997 alone (the last year for which data are available), 742 children under the age of 10 drowned in the United States last year alone. Approximately 550 of those drownings — about 75 percent of the total — occurred in residential swimming pools. According to the most recent statistics, there are about six million residential pools, meaning that one young child drowns annually for every 11,000 pools.
About 175 children under the age of 10 died in 1998 as a result of guns. About two-thirds of those deaths were homicides. There are an estimated 200 million guns in the United States. Doing the math, there is roughly one child killed by guns for every one million guns.
Thus, on average, if you both own a gun and have a swimming pool in the backyard, the swimming pool is about 100 times more likely to kill a child than the gun is.
Don’t get me wrong. My goal is not to promote guns, but rather, to focus parents on an even greater threat to their children. People are well aware of the danger of guns and, by and large, gun owners take the appropriate steps to keep guns away from children. Public attitudes towards pools, however, are much more cavalier because people simply do not know the facts.
It takes thirty seconds for a child to drown. Infants can drown in water as shallow as a few inches. Child drownings are typically silent. As a parent, if you let your guard down for an instant, a pool (or even a bucket of water) may steal your child’s life.
The Consumer Products Safety Commission offers a publication detailing some simple steps for safeguarding pools (available on the internet at http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/359.pdf). The advice is mostly common sense. Included among the suggestions are installing fences that entirely surround the pool, putting locks on the gates, keeping house doors locked so toddlers cannot slip out of the house unmonitored, and installing power safety covers for the pool.
If every parent followed these steps, perhaps as many as 400 lives per year might be saved. This would be more lives saved than from two of the most successful safety-interventions in recent decades: the use of child car seats and the introduction of safer cribs. Potential lives saved from pool safety are far greater than from child-resistant packaging (an estimated 50 lives saved per year), keeping children away from airbags (less than 5 young children a year have been killed by air bags a year on average since their introduction), flame retardant pajamas (perhaps 10 lives saved annually), or safety drawstrings on children’s clothing (two lives saved annually). Simply stated, keeping your children safe around water is one of the single most important things a parent can do to protect a child.
As a father who has lost a son, I know first-hand the unbearable pain that comes with a child’s death. Amidst my grief, I am able to take some small solace in the fact that everything possible was done to fight the disease that took my son’s life. If my son had died in a backyard pool due to my own negligence, I would not even have that to cling to. Parents who have lost children would do anything to get their babies back. Safeguard your pool so you don’t become one of us.
Steven Levitt is a professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and a research associate of the American Bar Foundation. [Editor’s note: John Lott has claimed that this op-ed was written for the express purpose of concealing Levitt’s “rabidly anti-gun” views. ]
BTTT
My conclusion? Screw Baltimore. Half of the city revels in their poverty, drugs, and crime as if it's something to be respected for while the other half sits on their fat socialist ass getting a hair weave while wondering "how come ain't nobody did nothin'?".
Baltimore is a Eastern liberal-ass Yankee city thousands of miles away from where I live. I take no responsibility for how screwed up the place is, nor do I share or respect it's culture or civic troubles. Anyone from Baltimore who doesn't like my attitude can choke on a piece of Lake Trout.
A new Cabela's opened here in Wisconsin and I hear the good news that the sales of all types of firearms, bows, crossbows, knives, ammo and even paintball guns are way up.
I propose the ManLaw that boys need lots of toys, tomgirls too!
Remember...gun control is holding it in both hands... letting out half a breath...and squeeeeeeeze.
I live here and it's a mess.
Does the 200 million count the military and law enforcement? If it's going to do so the story should focus on how many are in households? But, no, they'd just rather throw that number out there.
And 1/3 of Amewrican households have guns. I'd be willing to be it was far greater between 1776 and 1960. But leave it to the Baltimore Sun to skew the facts.
Hey, Baltimore Sun, how about the fact that when people are given more access to guns and can carry them, crime goes down! What about that undisputed FACT, huh!
Idiots...
It appears we need to teach gun safety in school because:
Kids are going to do it anyway,
Kids need all the information,
(Insert other reason why sex ed needs to be taught here),
He just broke about a half-dozen laws right there.
Is your penis registered? Does it have serial number? It does have DNA coding in all the bullets!!!
A creative teacher could combine condom and gun day.
Thanks for the graph!
It's me. I apologize. We've only got four. Will definitely try to do better when our finances improve.
Yep. Just like the solution to traffic accidents is to ban all vehicles from public roads. Dims seem incapable of thinking these things through. Their universal solution is suppression through oppression.
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