Some Suggestions For Your New Individual Right to Bear Arms
Jun 26th, 2008 | By Jonathan | Category: Your RightsA well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Enjoying your recently expanded rights under the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution? Wait, let me adjust that quote above to reflect the Roberts-court interpretation:
A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
Ahh, with those pesky commas out of the way, we can finally get down to business and discuss the meaning of your new rights–the only rights we’re likely to see expanded in our lifetimes.
If you get a firearm:
1. You have a reasonable chance of shooting yourself:
Between June 1, 1992, to May 31, 1994 about 34,485 accidentally injured themselves non-fatally with a firearm. This averages out to about 18,000 non-fatal injuries a year.
2. If you manage to not shoot yourself, you have a reasonable chance of harming yourself with the gun anyways:
Not counting those who shot themselves, about sixteen-thousand people injury themselves with firearms each year in the United States sufficiently to require a visit to the emergency room. Usually these injuries were the result of the routine handling of firearms, with 43% from recoil.
3. About half of children unintentionally shot–don’t worry, the majority of children intentionally shot are minorities–are shot in their own homes, with their parents own gun. Another 40% are shot in the house of a friend or relative. To those of you working through the math, 90% of children injured by firearms are injured by a parent, relative or friend’s gun.
4. Somewhere between 2% and 12% of children live in a home with a firearm.
Four practices, in combination, can dramatically reduce the risk of these children injuring themselves with the household’s firearm:
1. Store the gun unloaded.
2. Store the gun away from the ammo.
3. Lock up the firearm.
4. Lock up the ammo.
5. Programs that teach children gun safety–like the NRA Eddie Eagle Gun Safety Program–do not decrease the chance that young children will handle or attempt to fire a handgun they stumble upon.
Have fun! Try to not to blast away too many of your children, your neighbors or yourself–even if is your Constitutional right.
“Have fun! Try to not to blast away too many of your children, your neighbors or yourself–even if is your Constitutional right.”
Lying is wrong.
Lying on the internet, to people who obviously have access to the internet, is simply stupid.
Everyone has a different truth, and I respect your right to have your own truth, but Facts are immutable things.
Learn the facts.
http://www.gunfacts.info/
3. About half of children unintentionally shot–don’t worry, the majority of children intentionally shot are minorities–are shot in their own homes, with their parents [sic] own gun. Another 40% are shot in the house of a friend or relative. To those of you working through the math, 90% of children injured by firearms are injured by a parent, relative or friend’s gun.
Much as I agree with your implied point that it would be better if there were fewer guns out there, your third point is focusing on the wrong statistics. You seem concerned that 90% of children injured by firearms are injured by a “family” gun. But would it make a difference to you if these children were injured by “non-family” guns, instead? I doubt it.
You seem to be focusing on (1) “given that a child was injured with a gun, what’s the probability of X [gun was owned by their parents]?” But what’s important is HOW MANY CHILDREN are injured. What we should be interested in is, (2) “total probability of child’s injury by gun”, or possibly (3) “total probability of child’s injury by a parent’s gun”. The latter is calculated as (3a) “given that a child’s parents own a gun, probability of injury from that gun” times (3b) “probability of parent owning a gun”.
Your implied interest (1) is the inverse of (3a) – so I think you’re committing a classic prosecutor’s fallacy.
I don’t take Freakonomics as gospel, but I do believe their basic numbers: From http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2001/07/levittpoolsvsguns.php, in 1998, there were something like 60 children under age 10 killed by a gun in a non-homicide (which I interpret to mean, generally, accidentally). 60 kids. In a country with 200 million guns. Including all deaths by gun, the numbers are 175 in 1998.
The numbers under 10 aren’t the whole story by any means, but they are indicative. The problem is actually quite small in absolute size. Every single one of those deaths is horrible, without a doubt. But the actual public health concern here may get overplayed.
Wow, didn’t realize this post was two years old.