Alcohol vs gun deaths? See details...

I’m going to take a stab at this…

Probably because the point of a gun is to penetrate the flesh of a living and breathing potentially and most likely ending it’s life, while the intention of alcohol is initially to have a good time.

So people that use their firearms for sport and recreation must be punished,after all they are using their firearms for a good time, while someone that gets behind the wheel piss drunk and kills a bunch of people is fine because he/she was just out for a good time?

But there are laws about driving and drinking so your question has a basic fallacy. We have acknowledged that issus which is not to say it is solved yet.

@janbb There are laws about shooting someone as well but people still do it, and yes there are laws about drunk driving but people still do that as well.
The anti firearm crowd is always in a tizzy about wanting to ban guns in the hands of civilians, and all that would do ,is punish the people who do use their firearms responsibly.
The same would be true for those people who drink and use the vehicles responsibly as well.
So why pick on the law abiding gun owners?

This has been argued to death on here so I’m not really going to engage in a back and forth but it’s a little hard to see why “law-abiding” gun owners are not willing to consider more gun control such as registry, stricter background checks and limits on types of guns and amount of ammo. I don’t think anybody is talking about taking guns away from hunters.

Our Canadian (conservative) government just got rid of our long gun registry they found it wasn’t working and far to costly, we have had handgun registry for a great many years and that does seem to work.

Well…booze and bullets are a problem. I have lived on rural properties for 23 years here in the Sierra Nevada foothills and have had many experiences with jacked up shooters in these hills.
I have had a drunken neighbor drop pine tree branches om my head randomly shooting across his 20 acres onto my 5. I have fended off 4 redneck bubbas with theie rifles and 100 pak of Coors Lite that became aggressive with me when I would not allow them to follow a buck onto my property.

I have had my dogs legs blown apart by a 30–06 by a hillbilly rancher that shot him when his cows escaped and my dog chased them back onto his property. He later discovered the hole in his fence and paid half the vet bill.
I have had a bow hunter zing an arrow at my horse and I on trail, that ricocheted off a tree about 18 inches from my head. O-O ( He was drinking and luckily a ranger was patrolling the logging trails I was riding on and arrested his stupid ass but not before my horse was injured panicking and slipping on a hill of pine needles that resulted in him becoming lame for 3 months. )

I also know a woman whose horse was shot in the neck on trail as well, he lived but c’mon…how the hell can you mistake a horse and rider for a freaking deer?
I think all gun owners should undergo alcohol and mental health testing, it only takes one moron to kill an innocent person.

Oh and I must point out here in Canada we have on average a half dozen or less murders a year committed with legally registered hand guns.

@SQUEEKY2 I imagine that Canada’s gun control laws are more effective or maybe the general population is less crazy.trigger happy. You are lucky to live there.

It’s not an “either/or” situation. And when you look at the effective of efforts against drunk driving, you’ll see that there was huge outcry against alcohol deaths back in the 80s. And it worked. Drunk driving deaths are down by 35% over the last twenty years, despite an increase in population.

And you are wrong when you say there are “far more innocent people are killed by alcohol and drunk driving than firearms”; there are 6 times as many handgun deaths each year than drunk driving deaths.

Alcohol by itself is not designed to kill anything. Neither are automobiles. Guns are designed to kill things, they have no other purpose that could not be met better by another tool.

Nobody is calling for an outright ban, just tighten up the laws. There are laws governing vehicles to ensure they’re safe to drive on the road (not counting the driver.)
And what @zenvelo said ^^^^.

Guns sole purpose is to kill. They were invented specifically to kill humans.
Alcohol’s is not. Besides, there is a ban on drunk driving.

More people are killed every year from bee stings than nuclear bombs. Therefore nuclear bombs should be legal and all bees should be exterminated. Sorry but your argument is crap.

@ragingloli There is. The problem is, well depending on where you live, some offenders might not get a harsh punishment. I know this dumbass who had to get caught drinking and driving five times before finally going to jail. (not sure he went actually, but last I heard of him, it’s what he was telling us) You get your license taken away, are forced to pay a fine or whatever…but the punishments are never as harsh as they should be. But go in a place with a gun and shoot someone, you’re sure to go to prison.
I suppose getting caught drinking and driving before you hurt someone is seen as less dangerous, since you were stopped by police, as opposed to outright shooting someone…eh. I’d make the punishment harder for drinking and driving though. It kills people all the time. If I was a cop or a law maker, I’d have absolutely no fucking sympathy for these people.

Then again, I’m of the mind that fuckers who park their car on the sidewalk should have their license revoked for like five years, maybe I’m just too harsh don’t y know.

So your saying that there are more gun deaths than drunk driving deaths in North America, sorry but your going to have to provide a link for me,to even start to believe that one.

If you’re talking to me, I didn’t say nothing like that. The fact is though, people die from drunken driving and from guns; I was making an observation on the punishments for each, not which one kills the most. Which should not matter which kills the most, as it’s still dead people.

Well IMO the majority of gun owners do not need to keep weapons.
I think it is reflective of an old west mentality when, in reality, unless you live in a ghetto or are hiking in the Alaskan wilderness with Grizzly bears around the odds of needing to defend home & hearth are slim. I have managed to live on rural mountain properties for decades and short of having a couple of menacing rattlesnakes shot under my deck stairs by a neighbor, I have NEVER had a reason to own a gun nor need for one. Every city guy I have ever dated insisted on trying to get me to keep a gun.

Pffft…..made them feel macho or something I guess. lol
One guy put a rifle in my closet and it sat there for 2 years untouched. Sorry but I think gun rights have reached overkill. Pun intended.

Place an immediate blanket ban on drunk drive by shootings, dem fucking buletts are sprayed all over the damn place.

@ucme Reminds me of Total Recall, where the only thing the bad guy ever does in the movie is run after Arnie with his goons, spraying bullets absolutely everywhere. I couldn’t stop laughing, it’s like dude, settle down lol.

@Symbeline Haha, I swear at one point that guy closes his eyes when shooting :D

Ignoring cars for a second, here’s a partial explanation: gun control almost certainly reduces gun violence, while proscribing alcohol almost certainly increases violence (gun violence included). That’s not to say there is no link between legal alcohol/drugs and violence, but it’s probably overwhelmed by the problems creating by banning those things. Also, that’s not to say other mostly socioeconomic factors don’t utterly overwhelm the gains/loses of limits on guns (comparing New Hampshire to Alabama or Texas, I’d say that’s almost certain). But the directions of those respective correlations are pretty defensible.

Then, there is the raw death rate. Alcohol is “linked” to many deaths, but only directly attributable to a subset (I’m not sure how many). Guns that kill people are pretty easy to link directly to the death.

Now, cars: you’re saying there is no talk of making car access more restrictive even though cars actually kill more people than, well, pretty much anything that isn’t a disease? I think they actually kill more people than guns or alcohol by themselves, at least directly. Well, you got me there, but I can comment a little on the psychology behind it. Cars have avoided becoming a moral issue. Cars cause a lot of deaths, but the deaths they cause are sublimated into “accidents” so they can be socially acceptable. Gun accidents are still homicides. Alcohol overdoses are not “accidents” – they’re just overdoses.

@Bolwerk Gun Control does not reduce violence.

@cheebdragon THANK YOU!

@SQUEEKY2 “So your saying that there are more gun deaths than drunk driving deaths in North America, sorry but your going to have to provide a link for me,to even start to believe that one.”

Yet you likewise offered up no link to support your claim that drunk driving kills more people than guns.

@cheebdragon: Let’s see…imprecise terminology, shoddy comparisons, loaded conclusions about onuses(?!). I hate to break it to you, but while it may meet the standards of right-wing “journalism,” that’s not a peer-reviewed study. This is. There are hundreds of other studies on this topic available on EBSCO in most libraries.

@Darth_Algar: that’s a tough one actually. Big Gubbermint sez, “In 2010, 10,228 people were killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for nearly one-third (31%) of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.”

9,403 gun murders in 2010 (source). But there is some risk that the alcohol is incidental in a lot of those crashes.

You should take some time to familiarize yourself with MADD

@Bolwerk In summary, the Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence. References and key findings are listed
Damn the CDC and their right wing propaganda….?~

@cheebdragon: does it bother you that it contradicts your previous link? I mean, you went from hrurr!!1! no effect to hurr the CDC can’t be right-wing when it’s being inconclusive can it!?!? (well, that is a Bush era task force, so sure it can – and Obama is to the right of Bush on domestic policy).

In any case, you’re fishing for something that confirms your bias. I only glanced at it, but it is not a peer-reviewed study either. It even says what it is: it’s a task force report. Considering it apparently deems everything “inconsistent” and “inconclusive,” yeah, I can see where it might have bias that comes with using committees to reach decisions. It probably just doesn’t want to offend anyone.

It does offer one rather startling statistic though: “500 (1.7%) [homicides] were legal interventions or of undetermined intent.” Probably tells you how much safety gun proliferation actually brings. But, inconclusive, right?

@bolwerk do you need a dictionary? Look up “sarcasm” first, read it a few times and comeback when you figure out how it works. Both links say the same shit, there is no evidence to support your claim that “gun control almost certainly reduces violence”.....I’m just going to pretend you didn’t suggest the report had anything to do with bush being president because its sad to think anyone could be That fucking stupid. If you want to attack my first source, that’s fine, but don’t use the APHA who is a major advocate of gun control, that’s like using the LAPD’s mission statement as evidence that they wouldn’t beat Rodney King.

I could be wrong but here is my guess. Perhaps a lot more people drink than own and use guns. When a gun is the cause of death, I think it is assumed more often than not that it was intentional, whereas if alcohol is related to the cause then it is assumed accidental due to impairment. (I have no data to back this up. It is just what I assume.)

I have heard a similar question about swimming pools. A lot more children die from drowning in a pool than from a gunshot. (So I am told) Why then are we trying to put more regulations on guns rather than on swimming pools? I guess they were trying to say that whenever you see an article about a child dying from a gun, people want more regulations on guns, but they don’t ask for more regulations on swimming pools whenever a child drowns. It falls into the same category.

@pleiades Instead of a “stab”, don’t you think it would have been more appropriate to say you were going to take a “shot” at this question? lol

@cheebdragon: if I had to correct every factual error, faulty assumption, petty snipe, straw man, and fallacious argument you diarrhea at me, I’d have a post the length of a dictionary. Trust me, I realize you were trying to be sarcastic. Pro tip: if you’re going to use sarcasm, at least try to use it to make a point that has some basis in reality. You aren’t exactly Oscar Wilde. And please stop making loaded comments. Where the fuck did I say the APHA took a position on anything? Read for comprehension.

Yes, my point should be fairly non-controversial: gun control almost certainly reduces gun violence. It’s a small effect, at least in the USA (probably simply owing to the checker-board nature of gun laws), but there. The bigger effect stems from gun possession, which seems to clearly magnify gun violence – it’s why Switzerland’s rate of gun violence is relatively high compared to much of western Europe, even though it’s lower than the USA’s.

I’m just assuming you didn’t actually read the two links you posted. Hint: the first one draws a pretty sweeping (if fallacious) conclusion, the second one pretty much says “inconclusive” about everything.

@cheebdragon: This study has not been released yet, but INTERESTING HUH?

An unreleased study that hasn’t been peer reviewed???~ youre really big on double standards aren’t you?

@cheebdragon: You’re doing it again. Stop making unsubstantiated comments. Just stop. In the first place, I only mentioned peer review because it looked like that first link you posted was trying to pass itself off as a study rather than a political rant. Then the second link basically said nothing beyond contradicting the first link. Are you really going to lecture me about standards?

Journal of Urban Health is a refereed journal – studies don’t go into it if they aren’t peer-reviewed. The study’s result made the mainstream press before the paper about was published – like, wow, what a terrible thing I did acknowledging it hadn’t been published yet. I know you, and presumably the OP, are just interested in confirming your preexisting bias rather than learning something but, for anyone sincerely interested in the subject, it is still a rather interesting result.

Does all that mean I should give up my firearms because some depressed person somewhere might end it all with a gun, or some thug will commit a violent crime with a gun?
My firearms are all legal ,have been bought legally and are used in a safe manner, so does that mean I should give them all up,because someone somewhere isn’t going to use their firearm the same way?

Don’t worry there @SQUEEKY2, no one’s coming for your guns.

@SQUEEKY2: you’re a big boy. I leave it to you to evaluate if the risk of firearm ownership outweighs the potential benefits for you. That’s probably true for most people, but I don’t know what your situation is.

I answered your question. You can work out the implications of the answer on your own. FWIW, if this is what you were getting at, I happen to agree that there is a bizarre disconnect between how people react to automobile fatalities and how people react to firearm fatalities. But it doesn’t change that what @cheebdragon is claiming is somewhere between highly suspect and complete bullshit (depending how one defines firearm violence).

Isn’t it time to just shoot this horse? lol

I agree with a comedian, who I wish I could name, but I can’t remember when/where/who. Instead of gun control, make bullets $400.00 each. It might not stop killings, but it sure would cut them back.

@Jonesn4burgers you know that would be the way to do it, firearms are personal property, some are family hand me downs for generations, the real way to make gun control really work leave the guns alone and go after the ammunition , make it hard to own or buy ammo, the real firearm enthusiasts will jump through those hoops ,the thugs and depressed people will not.

@SQUEEKY2, if thugs can get hold of weapons illegally, wouldn’t they also be able to get a hold of ammunition illegally? However I think it would limit suicides, as ammunition wouldn’t be as easy to obtain. But they may just find other means… then again maybe not.

Makes you wonder how an unpublished study ended up being leaked to the press while Obama pushes for more gun control.

Either way, the study doesn’t actually prove your statement, if it were true then evidence would be seen across the map, not just a single location. California has some of if not the most restrictive gun laws in the US, yet it still has one of the highest rates of crime involving firearms.

What push for gun control has Obama really made? sure he’s issued an executive order or two basically suggesting that the relevant agencies under his power be a little more active in enforcing the laws already on hand, but I’m unaware of any new laws or regulations he’s pushed for. The only actual law he’s dealt with during his tenure in the White House actually strengthened gun rights.

@cheebdragon: I was talking about violent death from guns in general, but if you’re asking about only gun crime, the question isn’t whether states with high rates of gun crime have or don’t have gun control. The question should be, what effect will removing gun control have on crime? In the case of California, yes, it has an unusually high rate of gun crime (still lower than several states with the most flippant gun laws including, famously, Florida) – and an unusually low rate of total firearm deaths.

If you actually read my original comment, rather than react to one tiny part of it you didn’t like, you might have noticed that I even said other factors overwhelm the presence of gun control – which would still be true even in the incredibly unlikely event that you’re right and I’m wrong.

Personally, I think crime is just overplayed. Taking the totality of things that have a chance of killing you into account, you’re simply safer even in a relatively gun crime-ridden large city than you are in a low-crime suburb or rural area.

@Darth_Algar: ODS.

@bolwerk “in the incredibly unlikely event that you’re right and I’m wrong” Do you need a glass belly button? It can’t be easy to navigate through life with your head so far up your ass…..poor thing, but it was my bias that was making me unable to learn something, right?
”: gun control almost certainly reduces gun violence, while proscribing alcohol almost certainly increases violence (gun violence included). That’s not to say there is no link between legal alcohol/drugs and violence, but it’s probably overwhelmed by the problems creating by banning those things”
Your words, not mine.

How cute, a link to mother jones about ODS, funny how they don’t mention BDS.
Let’s try an actual source of information today…..

@cheebdragon

What exactly was that link suppose to prove? That Obama has PR writers? Can you cite an actual law that the President has proposed?

@cheebdragon: you notice how you literally did not even make a feeble attempt at addressing and refuting a single point? You’re angry because your own standards were used to discredit your fallacious argument (again), so you try to insult me.

Whatever you think “BDS” is, it certainly doesn’t inspire the paranoia or lack of grip on reality that inspires ODS delusions about about Black Bush running up deficits, destroying capitalism, and coming to take away all your guns. You can relax. He’s either on your side, or doesn’t give a shit. Seriously: I probably like Obama less than you do.

Oh jeez you guys…forget all this dueling ego crap, right/wrong/truth/proof/win/lose.
Just have someone take a shot at you, your dog, your horse, and the stats and laws don’t mean squat.
The only thing that counts is being on the frontlines of reckless fucks and their guns.
My opinion, fuck the stats, is that 9 out of 10 people that own firearms just shouldn’t.

@Coloma: I dunno. I’m actually sympathetic to firearms as a right. It’s just the claim that liberalizing them brings about a safer society is, well, demonstably bullshit. The crime reduction argument is a little stronger, but still incredibly dubious.

That said, the high rate of firearm fatalities in some places vs. others is probably more pathology than law. In places like Alaska or Oklahoma, the culture of gun nuttery creates the liberalization and the flippant firearm use; the liberalization doesn’t cause the nuttery. Meanwhile, Texas has a significantly higher gun murder rate than Vermont, but both have fairly middling fatality rates.

@Darth_Algar I said he was pushing it, I never said he was passing it.

@Bolwerk what do I have to be angry about? Where your head is stuck, doesn’t effect me at all. You made the statement about gun control, I just pointed out the lack of evidence supporting your statement. I don’t own any guns, I don’t care if anyone else owns any guns. I’m just not dumb enough to believe that restricting the legal purchase of guns is going to have any positive effect on crime rates. Has the legal drinking age stopped teenagers from being able to obtain alcohol? Has the war on drugs reduced the amount of drugs availiable in the United States? There are more 100x drugs today than there were when the drug war began, and you can buy them at a lower price. Prostitution is mostly illegal in the US, hasn’t reduced the number of prostitutes. If you believe gun control will change anything, you are pretty fucking stupid, but that’s your own problem to deal with.

Before Obama Derangement Syndrome, there was Bush Derangement Syndrome, that’s where the term originated.

@cheebdragon: It’s not that I think gun control will change anything. It’s that a preponderance of empirical evidence strongly points in the direction that gun control effects lower rates of gun violence (probably gun crime too). Note my wording: ”...almost certainly….” I’m sorry reality doesn’t comport to your preconceptions.

And for fuck’s sake, Guns != Alcohol != Cars != Prostitution != Drugs. And not all drugs are the same for that matter. That’s an incredibly weak argument even for you.

If anything, Bush Derangement Syndrome is a good term for people who voted for the fuckwit.

@cheebdragon

Except there’s nothing on that page pushing further gun control. Nothing on that page amounted to anything more than fluff.

I stand corrected, Obama seems to be encouraging people to buy more guns..

We should just elect a Republikan to sate all the mentally ill people.

I wouldn’t say Obama is encouraging people to buy guns, I just don’t think it’s much of an issue to him ether way. Yeah, someone shoots up a school and he’ll issue a statement like maybe should should have a discussion about guns, or maybe various agencies could do better at sharing information, something non-committal when it comes down to it. That basically fulfills the Presidents “obligation” to acknowledge it, but I don’t think guns are an issue he takes much of a real stance on one way or the other.