"The macabre truth of gun control is that toddlers kill more people than terrorists do"

The macabre truth of gun control in the US is that toddlers kill more people than terrorists do

This week, in my country, considered by some of its more embarrassing denizens to be the “greatest country in the world”, an outspoken Florida “gun rights” advocate left a loaded .45 calibre handgun in the back seat of her car and was promptly shot and wounded by her four-year-old child. Truly a pinnacle of human potential, much like the invention of paper in second-century BC China, or Aristotle holding forth in the Lyceum, or whoever first pointed out that Florida looks like America’s penis.

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Growing up here myself didn’t prepare me for how distinctly, viscerally frightening it would be to raise children in a gun-obsessed nation. My step-daughters go to school in a borderline-rural suburb, whereas I was educated in central Seattle. They already know of at least one friend-of-a-friend who was killed in a school shooting. Many of their friends’ parents are gun owners. Not only that, but, over the past few decades, the National Rifle Association has been aggressively and successfully rolling back firearm restrictions, making gun ownership as quick and easy for anyone’s irresponsible, drunk cousin as their meticulous, gun-safety-trained dad. When we send our kids to friends’ houses for sleepovers, it sometimes feels like a leap of faith.

In the US in 2015, more people were shot and killed by toddlers than by terrorists. In 2013, the New York Times reported on children shot by other children: “Children shot accidentally – usually by other children – are collateral casualties of the accessibility of guns in America, their deaths all the more devastating for being eminently preventable.”

And I’m supposed to believe that frightened Syrian refugees – or whomever becomes the next rightwing scapegoat du jour – are the real threat to my children? I’m supposed to be afraid of sharks? Heavy metal music? Violent video games? Horse meat in my hamburger patties? Teenagers pouring vodka up their butts?

States with more guns have more gun deaths. Keeping a gun in your house increases your chances of accidental death by shooting, but does not make you safer. A woman’s chance of being murdered by an abusive partner increases fivefold if the partner has access to a gun. “Good guys with guns” are a fantasy. How much longer will we keep participating in this great collective lie that deadly weapons keep us safe?

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Source.

Do you agree with this lady!?

Besides from outright banning guns, what restrictions would people impose to prevent things like the toddler shooting his mom?

@lostrib: That's the problem. It won't be solved by laws, people will just have to be smarter with their guns and I don't think that will happen. Less guns would probably help too but people can't get enough of them for some reason. They are downright obsessed with them.

A form of gun safety course?

As an outsider looking in I would say that I agree with her. There definitely seems to be a problem with people having such easy access to guns in America. The NRA loves this though since all they really care about is making money.

It's evolution taking course.

I say let it happen.

and a few days ago another woman was able to save her life with a gun.

http://www.local10.com/news/homeowner-shoots-kills-burglar-at-nw-miami-dade-home

what do you want to do? throw the baby out with the bathwater?

that was like the 50th dangerous career criminal home invasion guy gets his ass executed story in the last 2 months.

there is going to be tragedy and there is going to be triumph.

that is how responsibility works in the real world. you take the responsibility and you get the consequences.

good or bad.

ID tagged guns.

@KungfuKitten: do you mean like guns that only work for a specific person?

Any law can only do so much when there are so many stupid people who don't seem to care enough about the safety of their family and friends. I'm loathe to let my son go to a friends house because I have no idea whether or not there are competent gun owners in the house. Guns are pretty widespread in my area and though I don't mind gun ownership, I do worry if a gun is just being left around. How am I to know if that will be the case or not?

What do state laws say about kids getting guns and discharging them? Child endangerment for the parents? Are they stripped of gun ownership if they allow a 2 year to get a gun and shoot it?

I'd consider it a case of gross negligence on the parent's part of a kid gets a gun and shoots anyone with it. I'm not sure if there's any real deterrent in place for these scenarios.

Guns. The cause of and solution to all of America's problems.

@thegerg: in the British comic book 2000ad there was a comic strip called judge dredd. His gun had a feature that was a palm print on the gun wich would allow only him to shoot it. If anyone else tried it would blow up in their hand. Today we are developing that tech without the blowing up part.

@thegerg: that is the way I take the term id tagged guns. I assume that is what is being referred to. If not let me introduce it.

@thegerg: You aren't getting it. There was this awesome sci-fi comic in the seventies that had this gun that was awesome and now in the future we are making a real version of it. I don't like guns but am trying to be friendly and talk about them anyway with you.

@thegerg: I can totally see why that might be. Lol.

A culture shift.

Less "'Murica!"

And more gun safety

@mattbbpl: Excellent, I've wasted so much time typing in the past just trying to say what you did there so simply!

@mattbbpl said:

@lostrib said:

Besides from outright banning guns, what restrictions would people impose to prevent things like the toddler shooting his mom?

A culture shift.

Less "'Murica!"

And more gun safety

Gun safety!? Why that's fascism!

Glad to have saved you some time :-P

The irony of "good guys with guns" -fantasy, is that to get that, you need to control who gets guns. I keep saying that if you give every idiot a gun, then bad things will happen. If you want to take that risk, then you also have to accept the consequences.

If you want to start controlling guns, starting with people with mental issues and criminal records is a start. Also to make people go through some kind of responsible gun owernship and safety training would be nice too. A driving school of sorts, but for guns.

They could make it illegal to not store your gun in a secure cabinet.

Old adage is Guns don't kill people. People kill people. I live in Texas...a third of my friends go to shooting ranges twice a week. Their kids are fine. Mine too. It's not the guns. It's the people.

Wow, where to start with this piece of fear and paranoia driven propaganda piece written clearly by a stay home mom who has nothing better to do than to overreact to her neighbors or parents of her kids friends. It's no better than the 1960 stepford wives scared about a minority family moving into the neighborhood.

Here's the real truth about children fatalities:

These are the same soccer moms that drives 50mph in a 25mph school zone while talking on the cellphone with three kids in the back. Yes, let's be concerned about the parents of your daughter's friend because they are gun owners, because that's the REAL danger.

You took guns away from the mass society of people, then commences a tyrannical regime. You optate to live in a North Korea type society be my conjecture, but if you optate to get to the massive quandary it's the "bLACK Market. Do You optate to fine-tune malefaction? How about you go down to malefactor areas, and commence taking action. Most people who shoot others with guns are incapacitated, phrenic, malefactors , or just people not of this country. My advice would make background checks more vigorous, and have former Mayor (JuliannI ), emaculate the streets.

You don't believe the US has a gun problem?

No it doesn't. US has a lot of problems, cultural, drugs, poverty, education etc. Violence, whether it's gun related or not, is just one of the symptoms.

Could it be that far less shootings by terrorists are actually recorded or in the news?

The problem is, that's not really "prevention". I was under the impression that most of that shootings that get peoples' jimmies ruffled tend to be the ones that are already illegal.

@comp_atkins said:

@TheHighWind said:

Could it be that far less shootings by terrorists are actually recorded or in the news?

If you knew what really happened in the world you'd be a lot more afraid. Also, In wars I don't think they record every shot fired. Who knows, they might.

@TheHighWind said:

@comp_atkins said:

@TheHighWind said:

Could it be that far less shootings by terrorists are actually recorded or in the news?

If you knew what really happened in the world you'd be a lot more afraid. Also, In wars I don't think they record every shot fired. Who knows, they might.

soooo you're implying that a terrorist shooting that occurs in the US is not being recorded? i'm no newsman but i think that would qualify as noteworthy..

I don't think a comprehensive gun "ban" makes any sense, nor does some of the idiotic gun control legislation (bans on rifles with pistol grips, high-capacity magazines, demonizing certain firearms for what color they are the shape they take, etc).

We just need to be smarter, stricter, and ruthless in our enforcement of the gun laws. We need to take the law to the point where if you own a firearm, it is because you need it. No one should be a collector of firearms any more than they are a collector of backhoes. If you own a firearm and your kid so much as happens to open the gun safe, let alone hold or fire the gun, you are fined and have your license and firearms revoked permanently.

You want an AR15? Fine. Want to mod it so it looks like something capable of sharpshooting a squirrel at 1000 feet? That's fine, too. Maybe a pistol too, hell even a shotgun as well.

But if you want a closet of guns like that, well, you should have to apply for a sales permit because that is the only reason you should need that many firearms.

Own a firearm and have a kid? Special classes, special training, and mandatory "child proof" safes (I don't know...biometric locks?) installed and inspected by officials yearly.

We need to be responsible about gun ownership; it has approached gluttonous levels, and would be funny if so much death was not occurring as a result. It's not a right, it is a privilege; one that is conditional, and able to be revoked.

People bitch about entitlement in this country; well, you will never find someone so entitled as a 2nd Amendment-waiving gun nut. America needs to make gun ownership less of a joke, less of a tragedy.

@TheHighWind said:

@comp_atkins said:

@TheHighWind said:

Could it be that far less shootings by terrorists are actually recorded or in the news?

If you knew what really happened in the world you'd be a lot more afraid. Also, In wars I don't think they record every shot fired. Who knows, they might.

If anything, terrorism is over-reported ad nauseam. Some person spitting on a government admin and saying "I wish you were dead" is technically terrorism, and shit like that is reported, or at the very least makes it into statistical reports, all the time. I'd wager that by current standards, upwards of 5% of US citizens have committed a terrorist act of some sort.

You do not, however, over-report a kid shooting someone. Or a school shooting. Or someone going into a movie theatre and shooting people.

And I don't think war counts as terrorism; while terrible, and certainly capable of instilling terror in people, war and terrorism are two different things.

Guns should be everywhere. They are never bad in any situation and should be plentiful everywhere. There should be so many guns that no one is ever without one. Guns are the best thing in the world and make every situation on earth better. Don't listen to pinko leftist weirdo communists. Guns are great and that's all there is to it. Everyone needs to buy more guns, I heard Obama is going to take them away. Act now, buy all the guns!

@comp_atkins said:

@TheHighWind said:

@comp_atkins said:

@TheHighWind said:

Could it be that far less shootings by terrorists are actually recorded or in the news?

If you knew what really happened in the world you'd be a lot more afraid. Also, In wars I don't think they record every shot fired. Who knows, they might.

soooo you're implying that a terrorist shooting that occurs in the US is not being recorded? i'm no newsman but i think that would qualify as noteworthy..

You don't believe in cover-ups to stop the spread of mass hysteria?

@mrbojangles25: Just out of curiosity, is there any information on who's doing the most illegal shootings and how many guns they own?

As in, what percentage of illegal shootings are committed by people who only own one gun? What percentage of illegal shootings are only done by people who own two guns? And so on. I'm thinking that hypothetically, if people who have "a closet full of guns" proportionally aren't any more dangerous than gun owners with fewer guns, that "collectors" aren't really a problem that's worth focusing on.

@MrGeezer: fair enough.

still, a closet full of guns is a pretty good target for theft; you can get a pretty penny for guns registered to someone else (in other words, not able to be linked to the thief).

They say most of the guns used in crimes are bought illegally, wonder where they come from?

You need to add "In America by Islamic terrorists" to the title of your article. Right wing terrorists kill people in the US a lot. Im not gonna say every day, but it happens more than murdering toddlers. Of course, there are no gun restrictions that will stop an accident like that. There are sensible restrictions on weapons that should be in place, though.

@TheHighWind said:

@comp_atkins said:

@TheHighWind said:

Could it be that far less shootings by terrorists are actually recorded or in the news?

If you knew what really happened in the world you'd be a lot more afraid. Also, In wars I don't think they record every shot fired. Who knows, they might.

The hell are you even talking about? If anything it is the exact REVERSE in which terrorist attacks are covered more than any other issue to the point that it would give the impression that the entire world is burning.

If every body just agreed not want to own guns.. once and for all.

I guess I know too much...