Child victims of gun violence

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LongingSoul

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theguardian.com/global/gallery/2015/apr/04/child-victims-gun-violence-remembered-easter-church-project?CMP=soc_567

‘How many children do we have to sacrifice to the right to own a gun?’ That was the question Rev Winnie Varghese asked as more than 70 T-shirts fluttered on makeshift bamboo crosses in the churchyard of St Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery in New York City. Each shirt is inscribed with the name or story of a child killed by a gun since Easter of last year. As the congregation prepared to celebrate a holiday steeped in the themes of sacrifice, redemption and rebirth, the project in the East Village community is a memorial to those killed.
Although there are no reliable statistics documenting the number of children who are killed and injured by guns each year, reports have found that the number is likely grossly underrepresented’.

Is the collateral damage really worth the right to own a gun?
 
LongingSoul said:
…a child killed by a gun…
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Guns are inanimate objects. They cannot kill by themselves. Someone pulled the trigger and it is them who should be blamed for killing.

How many children drown in swimming pools each year? Is that damage worth your ability to own a pool?
LongingSoul said:
Although there are** no reliable statistics **documenting the number of children who are killed and injured by guns each year, reports have found that the number is likely grossly underrepresented’.
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How do you expect anyone to take these reports seriously when by their own admission the numbers used are not reliable? I think it is more likely the reports are written to fit the agenda the author is trying to push.
 
Kids dying from guns how ever sad is the result of living in a free society. I find it silly to go after guns but not alcohol and tobacco, when a family of four gets run off the road by a drunk, then burns to death you will not hear a national out cry to ban booze, same with cancer inducing cigarettes. People like to drink and smoke because it’s fun, how did probation turn out? How is the War on Drugs going? The government has a less then stellar record when it comes to legislating morality, if it couldn’t get rid of something that people like to do for fun then how on earth will they ban something that millions of people hold dear for patriotic and philosophical reasons?
 
Statistics on “kids killed with guns” include many teenagers in urban areas who are themselves violent thugs, shot by other gang members.

Yesterday in Georgia a woman was carjacked, and was on the hood of the car as the thug sped off. A citizen who had a permit to carry a gun saw this, and shot the carjacker in the shoulder, saving the woman. This was all caught on video, and was in the news yesterday. If he hadn’t been armed, she would probably have been killed.
 
npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98055567

Seems traffic accidents are number one cause of child deaths. Do we ban cars? No, we try to make them safer. Much like how cars don’t drive themselves, guns don’t pull their own triggers. Banning guns, and preventing people from protecting themselves is not the answer…better training to reduce accidental gun deaths is.
 
People kill with guns. People save lives with guns. There is “collateral damage,” if you want to call it that, but there are also real, good effects - sort of anti-collateral damage. It takes more than sad stories (and they are truly sad, I’m not being flippant with that description) about one side of the balance to actually show that that side comes out on top. To figure out whether guns cause more harm than good (or whether banning guns would actually result in a total drop in violence) requires looking at lots of statistics.

I haven’t personally verified the statistics on this page, but they’re in line with what I’ve seen elsewhere: crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/2013/12/murder-and-homicide-rates-before-and-after-gun-bans/. (It’s definitely a site with an agenda, so it is worth verifying that the statistics are good, I just don’t have the time right now.) They suggest that banning guns would not necessarily help.

And that’s only part of the picture, there are also issues like the fact that criminals tend not to obey laws. This makes banning guns problematic on the grounds that it doesn’t weaken the position of those who live a lifestyle of violence and disregard laws nearly so much as the position of the innocents they prey upon. And a whole host of other things.

Of course, most of these arguments sound kind of dry in the face of someone mourning the loss of a child due to gun violence. A tragedy prevented doesn’t have the same emotional power as a tragedy that happens, so it’s easy to here stories and assume that gun rights should be done away with. But as is often the case, the most emotionally powerful stories don’t present the whole picture.

The truth is that we are a fallen species, and will do terrible things to each other with whatever is around. For this reason, associating the terrible acts of violence that happen too strongly with the tools used to accomplish them, especially without regards to the good that is done with these tools, is generally a mistake.
 
Apparently there is a correlation between pro-life, pro-gun ownership and pro-death sentence attitude. There seems to be an inconsistency, to put it politely.
 
If the progressives are really concerned with the deaths of innocent children, why are they not campaigning to stop abortion?
Oh, wait, I remember, that is a choice.
I realize that facts do not work on these type of people, but every measurable catagory from the doj and the fbi show a significant decrease in violent crime committed using firearms while the number of privately owned firearms continues to increase. For over 10 years this has been the case. we now have more,citizens with concealed carry permits than ever before. And the number of citizens stopping violent criminals by using legally owned and carried firearms is growing exponentially. But you will not see this on the nightly news. The same people that gave us abortion on demand, femenism, and now homosexual marriage are the same ones that wish to disarm the citizens of this country. Think about that. Think about why a billionaire with his own personal security force wants you to be disarmed. Think about the fact that our President has sent millions of dollars worth of weapons into the middle east, many of which wound up with isis and other militants, but he wants to ban your right to defend yourself and your family. It is not about guns, it is about control.
 
Coincidental to this thread: Over the weekend a 9 year old boy was shot in the back (he’s in critical condition) while he played in his backyard, when an adult relative playing around with a gun in the basement of the house fired it, and the bullet went out through a window.

Whatever.

I’ll never own one. So come on over, rob my house. I’m unarmed. 🤷
 
on_the_hill said:
Coincidental to this thread: Over the weekend a 9 year old boy was shot in the back (he’s in critical condition) while he played in his backyard, when an adult relative playing around with a gun in the basement of the house fired it, and the bullet went out through a window.

Whatever.

I’ll never own one. So come on over, rob my house. I’m unarmed. 🤷
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That is terrible, and obviously it is your choice whether or not to own a gun, but if you try to extend the fact that you do not want one of these particular objects because they can be dangerous to children when handled irresponsibly to a broad statement that people in general shouldn’t own objects that can be (as) dangerous to children when handled irresponsibly, then you’d have to purge bath tubs, household chemicals, and a wide variety of other things as well.

I don’t want to diminish any tragedy that happens to a child, but while admitting that they are tragic, we shouldn’t pretend that these tragedies imply things they don’t.

In 2012, for example, 78 children died in the U.S. from firearm related accidents. 851 children drowned. To be fair, the same site says that firearms are in ~one third of american households, whereas presumably all children have access to water in some form. One (statistically lazy, but good enough for trying to get a general idea) way of trying to account for this difference in exposure is to divide that 851 by 3, so that you get roughly that 283 deaths by drowning among households that also have firearms, as opposed to 78 from firearms - meaning that drowning is still more than 3 times as likely. (Source: childdeathreview.org/reporting/)

Stories like the accidental shooting that you referenced to highlight the need for safety, but by themselves they do not show that any particular object is inherently too dangerous to keep around.
 
Pulvis said:
If the progressives are really concerned with the deaths of innocent children, why are they not campaigning to stop abortion?
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👍 OH HERE YA GO!

The question that never gets answered (because of The Agenda!) :rolleyes:
 
Iron_Donkey said:
Tbut if you try to extend the fact that you do not want one of these particular objects because they can be dangerous to children when handled irresponsibly to a broad statement
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I pretty much agree with you, which is why I’m not 100% anti-gun.

On the other hand, cars, bathtubs, swimming pools, all the other potentially dangerous stuff have a lot of day-to-day, essential uses. Guns are fairly targeted in their focus. Personally, I want to remove as much dangerous stuff from my life as is practical.
 
Tigg said:
👍 OH HERE YA GO!

The question that never gets answered (because of The Agenda!) :rolleyes:
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I was a member of Right to Life in the late 70s/early 80’s and only let my membership lapse in the 80’s when the Americans began bombing abortion clinics and shooting abortion doctors. I have always been extremely anti abortion/anti contraception and have recently written to a local newspaper on a current subject regarding abortion.

Sorry to burst your bubble.
 
on_the_hill said:
I pretty much agree with you, which is why I’m not 100% anti-gun.

On the other hand, cars, bathtubs, swimming pools, all the other potentially dangerous stuff have a lot of day-to-day, essential uses. Guns are fairly targeted in their focus. Personally, I want to remove as much dangerous stuff from my life as is practical.
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I under stand and respect your opinion. You have that choice. Where i get on my soapbox is when the unnecessary, totally preventable death of a child by either a careless firearm owner, or by the bad timing of being in the middle of a drive-by, is used by those with an agenda to demand restrictions and confiscations of legally owned weapons.
 
Pulvis said:
I under stand and respect your opinion. You have that choice. Where i get on my soapbox is when the unnecessary, totally preventable death of a child by either a careless firearm owner, or by the bad timing of being in the middle of a drive-by, is used by those with an agenda to demand restrictions and confiscations of legally owned weapons.
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What other reasons are there to introduce more controls on a thing than the senseless deaths and injuries of innocent people? Driving a car is one of the most restrictive practices you can undertake. We are fined for not wearing a seatbelt or parking right or having obscured plates… let alone for speeding, driving drunk or running red lights. On the other hand you can carry guns in your pants to Church and in your handbag to Walmart for a toddler to play with. Where are the common sense restrictions? The ones that really make a big difference in the death toll?
 
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