Kids and Guns - Statistics

familyeducation.com ^ | unknown | familyeducation.com

[butter pecan fan]

Moron alert.

E. Pluribus Unum

member since November 22nd, 1998

You know, you people really annoy the s*** out of my who immediately label as a TROLL any relative newbie who didn't join way back in 1998, and who shows ANY evidence whatsoever of being an independent thinker rather than just a "YEAH, BABY, ME TOO!" dittohead who just automatically SECONDS every single damn thing that is said in this forum.

I may have only officially joined this forum post-911, but if you BOTHERED to actually READ any of the posts and other meaningful information I've contributed, you would know that not only am I not a troll, I've contributed a HELL of a lot more to this forum lately than you have.

[discostu]

To me the only thing this shows is that suicidal children that have access to guns are more likely to succeed. Notice they only mention the successes (nothing about attempts) and they don't give you how many involve the gun. Looks like simple physical math to me. As anyone in the medical profession can tell you it's actually very difficult to make the human body stop being alive. Most of the methods that are available (short of guns) are either very slow to accomplish the task or very difficult to wield against yourself. Because of this the vast majority of suicide attempts fail, handguns are very quick to kill and not that hard to point at yourself the success rate with guns is sure to be higher. This is borne out in my circle of friends during those highly emotional teenaged/ young adult years, I know people with a suicide attempt total of about 30 (2 people account for a lot of this and really screw up the stat), only 3 attempts were successful 2 of those used guns (the third was in prison and couldn't get a gun). That right there gives the 2-1 ratio the article talks about, and completely ignores (much like the article) the one friend who tried a lot, never succeeded but also never used any of the guns in the house (step-father was a cop, mother was an enthusiast, no shortage of firearms in that house). Like all arguements to convince the most important part in these "statistics" is what they don't say.

[gundog]

Twenty-nine percent of high-school boys have at least one firearm; most are intended for hunting and sporting purposes. Six percent say they carry a gun outside the home. The National Institute of Justice, 1998

From which I deduce that 23% of high-school boys hunt and discharge weapons for sport inside their homes.

I live in a town of approx. 20K people, in a region that is charitably regarded as "rustic". I believe it is one of the five poorest counties in the nation, it is chock full of guns, and we had what I believe was our second homocide of the year last week...both were stabbings.

[butter pecan fan]

Pardon the rant, folks, it's just that this place isn't always very welcoming to those of us who didn't join in 1998.

[philetus]

Here`s the source>BR> <A HREF="http://www.cato.org/dailys/05-13-00.html</A>

[butter pecan fan]

To me the only thing this shows is that suicidal children that have access to guns are more likely to succeed. Notice they only mention the successes (nothing about attempts) and they don't give you how many involve the gun. Looks like simple physical math to me.

A highly intelligent reply. The more I think about it, the more that's what I'm thinking, too.

[philetus]

all thumbs I am

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Hysteria just proves you're a troll.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Admit it. Your former identity was Eschoir, wasn't it?

[coloradan]

Everyday, about 75 American children are shot. Most recover –- 15 do not.

"Children up to age 19, including legal adults who can marry, drive, and die for their country. Most of these "children" are gang-bangers killing each other in turf wars. When the police shoot and kill fleeing teens, these deaths are included in this total.

The majority of fatal accidents involving a firearm occur in the home.

The majority of car accidents also occur very close to home - guess we should ban homes, they are so dangerous. A hunter might spend some few days or a week in a year hunting, compared to the other 358 days at home. Where do think the accidents are most likely to occur?

Gunshot wounds are the single most common cause of death for women in the home, accounting for nearly half of all homicides and 42 percent of suicides.

Murder is illegal, and suicides are a personal choice. Neither has to do with guns. Suicide is twice as common in Japan where guns are banned - people there tend to drown themselves. Murder happens where guns don't exist, too.

An adolescent is twice as likely to commit suicide if a gun is kept in the home.

This "fact" confuses correlation with causation - is it because of the gun that the suicide occurred, or is it because people who wish to commit suicides decide to get guns, just for this purpose? This "fact" doesn't say.

More teenage boys in America die from gunfire than from car accidents.

Most of these teenage boys, again, are gang members killed over turf wars. For the typical American household, with a typical American teenage male - that male is more likely to die in a car accident than from a gun shot, because the typical teenage male isn't a gang member. However, this "fact" is stated in such a way as to confuse this issue.

Gunshot wounds are now the leading cause of death for teenage boys in America (white, African-American, urban, suburban).

--- all combined. But when you break them down, is this still true? Let's see the numbers. (And, don't include suicide since they will still kill themselves if they really, really want to anyway.)

Researchers at familyeducation.com have collected the following statistics on kids and guns:

Twenty-nine percent of high-school boys have at least one firearm; most are intended for hunting and sporting purposes. Six percent say they carry a gun outside the home. The National Institute of Justice, 1998

And nearly 100% of them own books, and carry them outside the home. Researchers are still puzzled why high-school boys like to exercise the First Amendment so much more than the Second Amendment.

From 1980 to 1997, gun killings by young people 18 to 24 increased from about 5,000 to more than 7,500. During the same period, gun killings by people 25 and older fell by almost half, to about 5,000. The US Department of Justice

The War on (some) Drugs provided lots of buisness opportunities to America'a diverse youths. For some reason, they can't all just get along, especially when huge drug profits are at stake.

There are about 60 million handguns in the United States. About 2 to 3 million new and used handguns are sold each year. US Senate Statistics

"That every man be armed..." Well on the way, I see!

Nearly 500 children and teenagers each year are killed in gun-related accidents. About 1,500 commit suicide. Nearly 7,000 violent crimes are committed each year by juveniles using guns they found in their own homes. Senator Herb Kohl, sponsor of the safety lock measure.

Education can reduce or eliminate the accidents; why do so-called "safety" groups oppose programs like the NRA's Eddie Eagle? Suicides are personal choice, and don't depend on guns anyway. As mentioned, Japan has twice the suicide rate of America, but they drown themselves rather than shooting themselves. (In other words: "Studies show that countries which disarm their citizens experience twice the suicide rates of countries that trust their citizens with arms.")

In 1994, every day, 16 children age 19 and under were killed with guns and 64 were wounded in this country. National Center for Health and Statistics, 1996

"Children" 19 and under who can vote, marry, and serve in the Army. And the number 16 became 13, and then 12, then 11, then 10. However, the research finds the old number, not the latest one. Nothing like cherry-picking your data for the greatest emotional impact, is there?

[discostu]

I'm with you on that one. I always thought 2 weeks was the "distruptor" period (ie, anybody that stuck it out for 2 weeks isn't here to disrupt but to discuss). And, any skimming of your posts in the threads shows you're in for info, not grinding an axe. EPU can be kind of a toad sometimes.

[Moebius Quagmire]

I read one time that the number of deaths contributed to high school athletics drastically dwarfed any number of deaths by firearm accidents. Does anyone have that statistic handy? It may have just been high school football, I can't recall. I seem to remember the number of drowning deaths for children was also MUCH higher. Anyone? Anyone?

...and I know what you mean by the newbie bashing!

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

Might want to try this link for 1999 stats.

National Vital Statistics Report

[discostu]

It all depends on how you slice and dice the statistics. High school football is the culprit in something like 29 deaths a year. If you rule out all the non-accident/ murder stats from guns (and actually end childhood at 18) then yes drowning is #1 and driving is #2.

The big thing all these gun control nuts do is include criminals. Most of their "stats" count you a child until 21 (some take it all the way to 25), and they don't remove self defense related deaths. That's an important reason (IMO) why they count someone as a child for so long. The most criminal age bracket is 17 to 25 (accounting for a little over half of all violent crime in this country), so by grabbing as much of that age bracket as they can they get to include gang bangers killing each other, muggers and rapists being killed by their intended victim, bad guys fleeing from cops, and drunk morons playing Russian Roulette. Assuming an even distribution in that age bracket each additional year you include in your stats gives you 6.25% of all the violent criminals in the country (1/8th of 50%); this is shown above (somebody gave hilights from the CDC site) because the lion's share of the deaths are in the murder/ legal intervention category.

It's the equivalent of trying to ban airplanes by skewing your crash statistics to get stunt pilots crashes treated like jet liner crashes (or something equally silly).

[Dan from Michigan]

Most of that stuff is all debunked here at the Tennesee Law Review by Don Kates.

[dmz]

you know the old saw, there are 3 kinds of lies...
lies
damn lies
statistics

i personally do not believe the numbers provided by any group with a partisan stake in the issue, be they pro or anti gun.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

It has long since been proven those who commit suicide are NOT swayed by availability of a weapon. People who want to die by overdosing never try to slit their wrists or to shoot themselves. That is why ER's may see the same suiciders OD time and again, or why they see the same people with slashed wrists over again. Someone who wants to die by slitting their wrists would almost never chose to shoot themselves instead, just because a gun is handy.

Sorry I can't provide the source for this proof, but I know this to be fact.

[FreeTally]

If it's "correct" as stated, then it's not silly - since it's a "twice as likely to" statistic instead of a "twice as MANY" statistic (which is a kind of statistic people often lie with).

When they say "twice as likely", they mean "twice as many". All they can use is raw numbers to come to that conclusion. The entire intent is to make some correlation between having a gun in the home, and someone wanting to commit suicide as a result. Or that abscent a gun, a person would not find another way to kill themself. Its nonsense. Plain and simple.

[butter pecan fan]

Hysteria just proves you're a troll.

Actually, it proves I'm annoyed by people who insultingly accuse me of being a troll without having done any homework.

Your stupid reply, coupled with your absolute failure (on two occasions, now) to actually read anything I've ever written (including the highly useful original contributions I've made), simply proves you're a moron.

[butter pecan fan]

It has long since been proven those who commit suicide are NOT swayed by availability of a weapon.

This is new news for me, if true. I've love to see a source on that.

I would SUSPECT (intuitively) that people WOULD be swayed SOME by the ready availability of a weapon - but that the effect would NOT be as large as some might think.

But I could be wrong here... especially given that there is SOME ready availability of a weapon for anyone older than 16 who would contemplate attempting such a thing - in the form of automobiles and concrete overpasses.

And of course there are always razor blades and closed-in garages, too.