With tragic stories like the one below, it is tempting to believe that banning guns would make the world safer. But just as keeping the finger off the trigger and not pointing a gun at somebody would have saved this boy’s life, basing public policy on unsubstantiated, emotional reaction can create unintended consequences.
Atlanta: Ed Stone | Austin: Howard Nemerov | Boston: Ron Bokleman | Charlotte: Paul Valone | Cheyenne: Anthony Bouchard | Chicago: Don Gwinn | Cleveland: Daniel White | DC: Mike Stollenwerk | Denver: Dan Bidstrup | Grand Rapids: Skip Coryel | Los Angeles: John Longenecker | Minneapolis: John Pierce | National: David Codrea | Phoenix: Douglas Little | Seattle: Dave Workman | St. Louis: Kurt Hofmann | Wisconsin: Gene German
Comments
Education is the key to avoiding firearm accidents altogether. If you can teach children the safe a proper way to handle guns no one will ever have an accidental shooting. Keep your finger off the trigger. Always point the gun in a safe direction.
This should be shared by everyone involved with gun laws. Even those trying to ban them. Even though they are not trying to ban unsafe guns or ammunition. All guns are on the chopping block and none will be left for people to enjoy if they get their way. If they really want to make people think they care about gun deaths and not just a bunch of socialist gun grabbers then teaching safe gun handling should be on their list of propaganda to teach.
Thanks for another great story Howard. You are stone that keeps the rhetoric from getting to far gone.
David
"It" the gun did not accidently fire, the gun WAS accidently fired by pulling the trigger and the other boy was killed as the gun was pointed in his direction. Basic rules for handling guns was completely ignored and a preventable tradgedy happened.
More guns, more gun owners, more gun carriers (perhaps an increase from under one million to between four and five million), but fewer accidents? How can this be. Yeah, I wonder--NOT.
Credit the NRA, Eddie Eagle, and Cooper's Rules for starters. I talk to old timers now and again who seem to think they know more than the Colonel when it comes to firearms safety. As times goes by, I find fewer and fewer of them.
There is no such thing as an accidental shooting. Only negligent shootings.
But then again, look up the definition of an accident...
"An unplanned, and uncontrolled event caused by unsafe and negligent circumstances."
this statistic - as posted - is utterly and completely useless .. it is a waste of paper and/or electrons .. it only serves as a demonstration case on how not to do it
1. it makes NO mention of:
whats the sample size? sample location? how was the sample selected and the data gathered?
it does not define "accidental death" .. it does not tell if that defintion stayed the same for the selected data over time
the grapic even neglects to define the vertical axis ... what IS it?
megadeaths per earth population and year? number of neccessary bandaids per adult and month? children younger then three months killed per year?
the only comment my old statistics teacher would have made in this regards would be a big, red "F"
Marcus: Had you clicked through to the sources I cite, you would notice that the sample size is the entire American population.
Had you read the text you would clearly see that the Y-axis is rate per 100,000 population.
But since you intended to have a diaper-wetting event from the outset, you saw only what you wished.
I hope you are not a teacher.
Clearly an "F" is what Marcus received from his 'old statistics teacher'.
Wow, Marcus couldn't even come up with something original here. He just basically copied and pasted his comment from my site.
Isaiah 57:1 The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.
http://stevej6x7.blogspot.com
I came here on a Google search trying to find somebody who had some absolute numbers of accidental firearms deaths since I stopped tracking the number about a decade ago (when it was about 800). I don't know what kind of data rot hit this article, but there is no "article below" and no graph apparent anywhere here, just one paragraph from Howard. What happened?
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