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A little, tiny, shred of hope for the antis?

Rusty Young Man

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Found an article on an anti-Rights site where the author at least keeps a shred of objectivity and looks to what the numbers MAY say, vs what the antis WANT the numbers to say (and what they make the numbers say, even if the numbers say something else).

Suicides, not murders, are what pad the "gun violence" numbers the statist crowd keeps peddling.

http://www.vox.com/2015/12/4/9849390/mass-shootings-count

Article said:
The shooting in San Bernardino, California, on Wednesday was the 353rd mass shooting of 2015, according to the crowdsourced Mass Shooting Tracker that Vox uses for our maps documenting mass shootings. Or it was the 29th, if you use data from USA Today. Or it was the fourth, if you use a database maintained by Mother Jones.

How are three news outlets coming up with such different answers? It all comes down to definitions:

The Mass Shooting Tracker defines a mass shooting as an event in which four or more people were shot.
USA Today tracks mass killings, in which four or more people were killed.
Mother Jones tracks mass killings in which four or more people were killed but excludes "gang activity, armed robbery, or domestic violence."

There are other differences too — for example, Mother Jones says it generally only includes single gunman incidents, though it includes San Bernardino and the Columbine massacre in its database. But those are the main ones.

What's happening here a dispute not about the facts, but over what the appropriate definition is.

SNIP...

Mass shootings can and should be prevented, and their comparative rarity makes them no less monstrous or tragic. But the best case for gun control has little to do with mass shootings, and isn't necessarily focused on homicides at all. Of the 33,636 firearm deaths in 2013, 63 percent, or 21,175, were suicides. The evidence that the presence of additional guns contributes to more firearm homicides is persuasive, but research from the Means Matter Project at the Harvard School of Public Health (much of it done by Azrael and Miller themselves, along with Cathy Barber) shows that the evidence that guns contribute to higher levels of suicide is considerably stronger.

Suicide, contrary to popular belief, isn't typically planned and thought through extensively in advance. It's impulsive; one survey found that 90 percent of respondents deliberated for less than a day before attempting suicide. And 90 percent of people who survive suicide attempts end up dying by other means. They didn't make a considered choice and then seek to follow through by whatever means; they made an impulsive decision and got lucky. Ken Baldwin, who survived a jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, once told the New Yorker's Tad Friend that as he was falling, he "instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable — except for having just jumped."

SNIP...

The dominant focus of gun control efforts, then, should be on keeping guns (and particularly handguns) out of the hands of suicidal people....
 

utbagpiper

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Jul 5, 2006
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Utah
Found an article on an anti-Rights site where the author at least keeps a shred of objectivity and looks to what the numbers MAY say, vs what the antis WANT the numbers to say (and what they make the numbers say, even if the numbers say something else).

Suicides, not murders, are what pad the "gun violence" numbers the statist crowd keeps peddling.

Thank you for the link and article. A good read. Definitions matter a lot. Like when some sources define "children" as everyone up to age 25 or so including known gang members shooting each other.

On the one hand, preventing suicides seems a worthy and moral goal. Of course, those are my outdated and out-of-fashion Juedo-Christian morals speaking. Even there, is infringing RKBA the best way to go about it? Or might we focus on other methods both less offensive to our rights and perhaps even more effective?

On the other hand, if an adult wants to end his life the liberal gun grabbers have been more than happy to say that society has no business preventing him from doing just that. Seems, however, the liberals are only happy if suicide is carried out via doctor prescribed drugs rather than handled in a DIY manner without government intervention.

On the third hand, how many suicides are carried out with guns purchased immediately before the suicide takes place? There have been a couple of high profile suicides using gun rentals at shooting ranges. And in a nation of 320 Million persons I'm sure we can find a few cases each year where someone doesn't plan very far ahead but just far enough to walk into a gun store and buy a gun and ammo to use sometime in the next 36 hours.

Put simply, how many suicides would actually be prevented by a 1 to 7 day waiting period even if we were to ignore constitutional protection of our RKBA?

Remove suicides and "gun deaths" drop dramatically. Remove what seems to be socially accepted criminal violence in a few major, inner cities, and we have a very peaceful, law-abiding society it seems.

Charles
 
Last edited:

davidmcbeth

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Jan 14, 2012
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earth's crust
I think that there were 475,947,211 mass killings in the past 6 months alone !

I count : where 4 or more people were shot at (killed, hit, or not) and I include TV show viewings, dreams, random thoughts, etc.
 
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