NRA: Stop! Don’t touch! Run away! Tell a grownup!

[Brian Howell]

The NRA has put up a new animated YouTube video warning kids about guns. Do they really believe that kids will learn gun safety habits from it? Or is it simply a whitewashing PR stunt. Consider that the kids first have to sit through 2.5 minutes of inanity about a pick-up basketball game, and then the remaining six minutes are... hell, just watch it. (Notice that comments are disabled.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho36vonT3Rw#t=428

Given the opportunity, children just want to play with guns: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/11/children-protection-gun-violence/2079177/

Most parents believe their child is smart enough not to touch a gun, surveys show. Studies prove them wrong, Kellermann said.

 

In an experiment in which researchers observed how 8- to 12-year-old boys behaved when left alone in a room with a hidden gun, 75% of boys found the gun within 15 minutes. Only one of 64 kids in the experiment left the room to notify an adult. The gun was modified so it couldn't fire.

 

Of the boys who found the gun, 63% handled it and 33% pulled the trigger.

 

More than 90% of boys who handled the gun or pulled the trigger said they had received some sort of gun safety instruction, says Kellermann, co-author of the study, published in Pediatrics in 2001.

 

Teenagers, especially, are prone to play with guns they find: http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=132159

40% of American households own at least one gun.

[Craig Good]

Hey, they’ve changed the lyrics. It used to be “Stop! Don’t Touch! Leave the area! Call an adult!” I think the new ones are probably better.

The Eddie Eagle program has been a huge success. Yes, it actually works, and is credited with much of the steep decline in child-related firearms accidents since it started. Production values have never been its forte, but that’s secondary to the mission. The program isn’t just the video, but a collection of classroom materials that can be used in schools or the home.

Comments are likely disabled because a) too many people, completely ignorant about firearms, want to demonize the NRA, and b) the average IQ of YouTube commenters is a small negative number. The heat/light ratio is approximately “hot and dark”.

Gun safety is 99% a training issue. (The rest is hardware, and is pretty much a solved problem, even though lots of folks like their double-action revolvers.) If anybody is genuinely interested in learning about it, I can hook you up with some stunningly qualified instructors.

On Apr 24, 2015, at 09:46 AM, Brian Howell <bdho...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The NRA has put up a new animated YouTube video warning kids about guns. Do they really believe that kids will learn gun safety habits from it? Or is it simply a whitewashing PR stunt. Consider that the kids first have to sit through 2.5 minutes of inanity about a pick-up basketball game, and then the remaining six minutes are... hell, just watch it. (Notice that comments are disabled.)

--
--Craig WWJGD?
clg...@me.com http://www.craig-good.com
Res ipsa loquitur.

[Brian Howell]

Pew corroborates that firearm deaths fell dramatically for youths, predominantly teenagers, between 1993 and 2010. But an NYT study showed twice the number of reported accidents because of “idiosyncrasies” in how child firearm deaths are reported. Plus, we have no statistics concerning the number of deaths caused by children accidentally firing a weapon. It's also probably worth noting that American children are nine times more likely to die from gun accidents than anywhere else in the world.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/chapter-2-firearm-deaths/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/children-and-guns-the-hidden-toll.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/09/04/how-often-do-children-in-the-u-s-unintentionally-shoot-and-kill-people-we-dont-know/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/09/deaths-of-children-are-the-most-devastating-effect-of-our-gun-culture-the-nra-has-no-idea-what-to-say-about-them/

On Friday, April 24, 2015 at 10:30:03 AM UTC-7, Craig Good wrote:

Hey, they’ve changed the lyrics. It used to be “Stop! Don’t Touch! Leave the area! Call an adult!” I think the new ones are probably better.

The Eddie Eagle program has been a huge success. Yes, it actually works, and is credited with much of the steep decline in child-related firearms accidents since it started. Production values have never been its forte, but that’s secondary to the mission. The program isn’t just the video, but a collection of classroom materials that can be used in schools or the home.

Comments are likely disabled because a) too many people, completely ignorant about firearms, want to demonize the NRA, and b) the average IQ of YouTube commenters is a small negative number. The heat/light ratio is approximately “hot and dark”.

Gun safety is 99% a training issue. (The rest is hardware, and is pretty much a solved problem, even though lots of folks like their double-action revolvers.) If anybody is genuinely interested in learning about it, I can hook you up with some stunningly qualified instructors.

[Larry Rosenthal]

Pediatricians would like to advise gun-toting parents about risk mitigation.
NRA no like.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/15/pediatricians-take-on-the-nra-over-gun-safety.html

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[Craig Good]

Pediatricians would do well to stick to their area of expertise. Gun safety is an education issue, not a health problem. And everybody should be careful about drawing conclusions from small data sets. The AAP president’s use of Sandy Hook to score political points is shameful, and shows ideological thinking at work.

Phrases like “gun-toting” are why those YouTube comments are turned off.

But I know the Bay Area, and its attitudes. That’s why I don’t make much noise about it. But I will make a standing offer to anybody in this group who would like to try going to the range some time to learn (and have some fun).

On Apr 24, 2015, at 12:15 PM, Larry Rosenthal <l...@berkeley.edu> wrote:

> Pediatricians would like to advise gun-toting parents about risk mitigation.

--
--Craig WWJGD?
clg...@me.com http://www.craig-good.com

"The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably
among the two or three most serious and common errors of human
reasoning."
--Stephen Jay Gould

[jack saunders]

My sweet 25-year-old niece just graduating from the Johns Hopkins school of international relations proudly puts a bullet point RE Santa Clara Sheriff's Firearms Training on her resume.....and is getting lots of hits on it.  Her career path evidently will include a stint with U.S. international money laundering forces.  The gun thing gives such people cred.

 

---

From: Craig Good <clg...@me.com>
To: Brian Howell <bdho...@gmail.com>
Cc: Ipse-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, April 24, 2015 10:29 AM
Subject: Re: [Ipse Dixit] NRA: Stop! Don’t touch! Run away! Tell a grownup!

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[Craig Good]

Good training is always a plus! (Not to brag, but my daughter’s a pretty good shot, too, not that I anticipate it will have a direct impact on her career.)

On Apr 24, 2015, at 13:02 PM, jack saunders <jack...@pacbell.net> wrote:

> My sweet 25-year-old niece just graduating from the Johns Hopkins school of international relations proudly puts a bullet point RE Santa Clara Sheriff's Firearms Training on her resume.....and is getting lots of hits on it. Her career path evidently will include a stint with U.S. international money laundering forces. The gun thing gives such people cred.
>

--
--Craig WWWAYD?
clg...@me.com http://www.craig-good.com
Nuclear Free Zone = Brain Free Zone

[Nery Castillo-McIntyre]

Don't know the first thing about handling firearms, and doubt I'll ever own one. Nevertheless, for a very long time now, I've wanted to go to the range to both learn and have some fun. So, Craig, if you're serious, I'd love to take you up on your offer - you'll just have to educate me as to how to prepare, what to bring, etc.

Cheers!

Nery Castillo-McIntyre

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[Larry Rosenthal]

Happy to revise. "Gun-owning parents" is better. 
"Toting" is loaded verbiage. Unnecessary.
As is the comparison to YouTube trolls. Ad hominem is lowbrow and off-putting.
Regarding "the Bay Area, and its attitudes," this seems the wrong google-group for regional stereotyping. Let's stay evidence-based if we can.
None of us needs doubt that thousands of households (in a nine-county region of some 7.5 million souls) own firearms and value the constitutional right to do so.
««««««««
Here's one recent review of the evidence on gun safety and kids I found thoughtful:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/06/gun_deaths_in_children_statistics_show_firearms_endanger_kids_despite_nra.html
Would like to see a review countering this piece point-by-point, if anyone can find one.
I'm glad we can agree that gun safety is an education issue. Kids of all ages should respect the risks and understand how to reduce them.
But carelessness exists. And accidents occur. I'm not one who believes we can legislate common sense.
Nor is it a sure thing that things like gun safes, trigger-lock mechanisms, or smart-gun technologies would greatly reduce deaths and injuries were they more widely utilized.
However, it's hardly controversial to emphasize the importance of reducing harm to children caused by irresponsible storage and care.
I too would be happy to join a field trip to the range. Thanks for the kind invite!
LR
PS "WWJGD": What Would Jerry Garcia Do?

On 4/25/2015 12:39 PM, Nery Castillo-McIntyre wrote:

[Craig Good]

Oops! My bad. Groveling apology when I get to a keyboard.

--
--Craig
clg...@me.com http://www.craig-good.com

[Larry Rosenthal]

:-)

[Brian Howell]

Craig,

Could you provide some independent third-party references on the success of the Eddie Eagle program?

Also, I'm going to add stereotyping to the list of undesirables for Ipse Dixit postings. 

On Friday, April 24, 2015 at 10:30:03 AM UTC-7, Craig Good wrote:

[Craig Good]

On Apr 25, 2015, at 17:02 PM, Larry Rosenthal <l...@berkeley.edu> wrote:

> Happy to revise. "Gun-owning parents" is better.
> "Toting" is loaded verbiage. Unnecessary.
> As is the comparison to YouTube trolls. Ad hominem is lowbrow and off-putting.

OK, I apologize. My construction was ham-handed indeed if you thought that was meant to imply you (or anybody on this list) were a YouTube commenter. Sometimes I’m the bull in the diplomatic China shop. Very sorry to have caused any friction. Let me try again:

The NRA rather obviously shut off comments because they are regularly targets for ignorant vitriol. If you’re mining for ignorant vitriol, YouTube comments are the mother lode. Here I’m trying to channel xkcd, but you can’t tell because I can’t type in the right tone of voice.

http://xkcd.com/202/

https://xkcd.com/481/

> Regarding "the Bay Area, and its attitudes," this seems the wrong google-group for regional stereotyping. Let's stay evidence-based if we can.

Going to push back on this a bit. If I had said that someone in particular was exhibiting “Bay Area attitudes” that would indeed be ad hominmen stereotyping. (But since I messed up the YouTube part I may have made that error as well.) What I meant to express is the context a demographic reality, one of which I’m constantly made aware. There is, as a population, a definite skew in this area. Were this not so, the song my friend wrote wouldn’t be funny.

Trust me, it’s funny:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGDAjwTscmU


Addressing the slate article in detail will take some time, so I’ll defer that for a bit.

>
> I too would be happy to join a field trip to the range. Thanks for the kind invite!

Cool! You’re the second. Any others? Can we get critical mass for an Ipse-Shootit? Our local range (Richmond Rod and Gun Club) is open Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun 09:00 - 16:00. I think we’re currently looking at a Wednesday soon. Not that everybody needs to come at once. If we do this one or two at a time I won’t have to borrow any shootin’ irons.

> PS "WWJGD": What Would Jerry Garcia Do?

Heh. That could work. But I was thinking of this guy who lured a bunch of people to a kind of commune in Colorado.


Now guess this one:

--
--Craig WWSJD?
clg...@me.com http://www.craig-good.com

"They know enough who know how to learn."
--Henry Adams

[Craig Good]

Don’t know, but I’ll take a look.

Of course, we can tell from here it’s at worst chicken soup: "It couldn’t hurt."

On Apr 25, 2015, at 18:40 PM, Brian Howell <bdho...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Could you provide some independent third-party references on the success of the Eddie Eagle program?
>

--
--Craig WWJGD?
clg...@me.com http://www.craig-good.com

"He who attacks must vanquish. He who defends must merely survive."

[Craig Good]

A quick (but longer than I wanted) response to:


http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/06/gun_deaths_in_children_statistics_show_firearms_endanger_kids_despite_nra.single.html

I won’t be offended if you’d rather just skip it and go to the next topic.



Off the bat, I’m responding to a polemic. That’s what this Slate article is, and I’m not going to respond in a scholarly manner because it’s not a scholarly paper.


First straw man: The NRA. Be immediately suspect when someone arguing guns uses the NRA as the target. It is not the “gun lobby”, it is the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the country. It has a lobbying arm, which lobbies on behalf of gun *owners*. The gun industry in this country is too small to afford a serious lobby anyway. Much of it is mom-and-pop, and the biggest companies are small potatoes compared to the heavyweights in Washington.

Caroline Starks anecdote: They cherry picked a tragic case of bad training. Leaving a 5-year-old alone with a loaded firearm is just plain stupid, and even the most basic training would have her know this rule: It’s *always* loaded. (If you come to the range with me expect to have this rule drilled repeatedly. It is the basis for most gun safety rules.)

Guns for children: Personally I think about 12 is a better age to *own* one. But a gun “for children” doesn’t necessarily mean “for children to carry around unsupervised”. It can mean ergonomically appropriate for smaller shooters. Five is certainly not too young to start learning gun safety. My dad started me at about 3. Consider drowning, the leading cause of accidental deaths for boys age 1-4, second for girls in that age group. When should you start to “drown-proof” your child with swimming lessons? The answer is probably around 18 months, give or take, meaning as soon as practical. Since gun safety is practically 100% training, early training is better. So the implication that the NRA wants kindergarteners to own and carry their own weapons is a straw man. It’s a very safety-oriented organization, and the only way to get better safety training than you get from the NRA is to go with highly specialized instructors, nearly all of whom you’ll find are also NRA certified.

Look at it this way: Every accidental and child death involving a firearm is bad press for the NRA, and they know it. How many do you think they want?

“…measures the NRA and extreme gun advocates vehemently oppose, such as gun safes and smart guns…”

This deserves some unpacking. First, let’s toss out “extreme gun advocates” for what it is: an ad hominem straw man. Then let’s see what gun rights advocates actually advocate. Laws that require guns, even in the home, to be rendered useless as stored seriously reduce its utility. That’s why they’re often called “lock up your safety” laws. Some are dangerously counterproductive, such as California’s insistence on either safes or trigger locks. Now, a safe can be made safe, but trigger locks are inherently dangerous. Not only do they make it difficult to use the weapon in a defensive situation, they are *trivially* bypassed by even *very young* children. Really, if you decide to get a firearm do NOT use trigger locks. Find another way to comply with the law.

So-called “smart guns” are really absurd. They exist only in a fantasy, sci-fi world. The technology to make a gun reliably operate for one party and not for another simply does not exist, and there is no technology on the horizon to make it happen. What if you are wearing gloves? What if your hand is injured? What if you need to switch hands? That’s leaving aside a lot of other tactical considerations.

So no, I’m not impressed with the “Armatix”. Note that I said “reliably”. If you need to fire defensively you can have as little as a second or two to fire. So I have to wear this dumb watch and tell the guy with the knife to wait while I enter my PIN, then draw, and hope that there’s no RFI or dead battery between me and the first shot? An attacker with a knife can close a 20-foot gap and stab you before even a well-trained shooter can draw and fire a conventional gun.

Oh, this is hilarious. I just noticed that the Armatix is chambered in .22 LR. Let me respond with an appropriate anecdote. My dad grew up knowing a family friend as “Uncle Jack” Cotney. Uncle Jack had survived, as far as they knew, somewhere around 25 stand-up gunfights. (My dad was born in 1916.) When dad got his first gun at age 10 or 12, a .22 LR rifle, Uncle Jack scowled, “Junior, if you ever shoot me with that thing *and I find out about it*…”

Anyway, it speaks volumes about what Armatix doesn’t know about defensive handguns. Back to the article.


Eddie Eagle insufficient: Tacit in that statement is that it does work, just not enough to make the authors happy. Interesting.

75 percent of all children murdered - These stats get very slippery. Victims as old as 25 or so get counted as “children”, and if one drug dealer shoots another that’s counted by the FBI as a homicide “by someone known to the victim”, often used to convince people that a family member is going to murder them. And though it may be a trope by now, it bears repeating that the number of people killed by guns remains at zero. The number killed by other people using guns is much higher. Oh, and this 75% stat doesn’t seem to be controlled for population.

Not offset by defensive use. A lot of file-drawer effect here. They’re only counting when guns are fired, and inside the home. The vast majority of defensive uses are outside the home and are never reported because no shots are fired. When Gary Kleck (who was anti-gun at the time) tried in 1993 to determine that number he found it was nearly as big as its own error bars. Surveys put it somewhere between 800,000 and 2.5 million times per year. About all I will say with confidence is that it’s “a lot” and that nobody knows the real number.

Adolescent suicide: Maybe I’m missing something, but the abstract of the study they link to seems to say that suicides using guns happen where there are guns. Does that strike anybody else as tautological?

Back to Eddie Eagle: The study linked says that behavioral skills training worked better than Eddie Eagle, and that more study is needed. That sounds plausible. Things can always be done better. But this small study on 4-5 year olds, and I don’t know how much training the kids got or what kind. I should think that growing up in a home with recurrent training (like I got) would be more effective than whatever the study period was.

Redesigning guns for safety: This is back to the “smart gun” fantasy. If you can come up with a safer interface for a handgun than a good Model 1911 (which you’ll get to try at the range if you want) be my guest. Firearms are a very mature technology, and improved safety features *do* get added as designs progress. This is, as I said, a wetware problem, not a hardware problem.

School shootings: They say they used to be rare. True. And they still are. Vanishingly rare. Nobody has the slightest idea yet what, if anything, mass shootings have in common. There are literally more variables than data points. No matter what the pet theory someone has, it’s still pure conjecture. The weapons used in the worst mass killings in the US were box cutters. Before that day the record was held by a bucket of gasoline.

The elephant in the room? Prohibition. No law has ever kept people from getting what they want, especially people inclined to break laws. That’s just never going to work, except against the very people who shouldn’t be disarmed.

tl;dr - Demonizing a technology isn’t going to help. Teaching people to properly use and respect it can.


And that, honestly, is about all the time I care to spend on this article. Let’s set up range days for the curious, and perhaps think of some other topics to discuss. Like those New Jersey lawyers. What’s up with those guys?

--
--Craig WWSJD?
clg...@me.com http://www.craig-good.com

Craig Good: Almost human. Almost perfect. Almost under control.

[Brian Howell]

Okay, I want to shift the conversation a bit—though I don’t want to preclude other folks from commenting on Craig’s excellent post.

My experiences with guns is limited to rifles and shotguns. I was taught how to use a .22 caliber rifle when I was about 11, by a family friend and my father. Our friend was a thoughtful instructor and taught me many good and safe practices. Together they showed me how break down, clean, oil and otherwise care for the gun. (My dad regularly went hunting when I was small and owned a collection of rifles and shotguns for many years, including a 30-06.) But after plinking a bunch of cans and shooting at a handful of targets at Scout Camp, I decided I really didn’t enjoy shooting. I haven’t held a gun since; I’ve never picked up a handgun (I’ve had opportunities) and I don’t think I care to. (Though Craig did momentarily pique my curiosity a bit with his offer.)

I don’t feel a need for owning a handgun. Some of that is intrinsic of my upbringing and adult life, which has been lived almost always in nearly all white, suburban neighborhoods, often upscale. I’ve always felt safe. But also the statistics don’t give me reason to:

Michael Shermer, writing in Scientific American, stated that “Over the past quarter of a century, guns were involved in greater number of intimate partner homicides than all other causes combined. When a woman is murdered, it is most likely by her intimate partner with a gun... [A] gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, an accidental death or injury, a suicide attempt or a homicide than it is for self-defense.” Shermer is the founder and president of the Skeptics Society, and publisher and editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine.

The CDC reports that 2,596,993 Americans died in 2013. That computes to about 7,110 per day. So about 365 Americans died each day as a result of gunshot wounds roughly 5% (CDC, 2015). Discounting the suicide rate brings that down to approximately 142.35 per day or just over 2%. So you have roughly a 1:50 lifetime chance of being killed by someone with a gun. (Actually, those seem like pretty good odds.) But the vast majority of those homicides were committed by people each other (Webster, Vernick, ibid). 

According to FBI statistics, there were 8,454 gun-related homicides in 2013. 223 were adjudged justified, leaving 8,231 as unjustified (criminal). Just 0.31% of all 2013 deaths were due to criminal gun use. 5,265 of the homicides were by family members, friends, or acquaintances, so only 3,189 are attributable to unknown third-parties (and I’m not accounting for justifieds). I don’t have statistics on how many of those known-homicides were committed by persons who already owned a gun (as opposed to went out an purchased a firearm strictly for the purpose of killing), but I’m betting the percentage is quite high. I’m looking for numbers.

Taking homicides by known persons into account, only 0.12% of all deaths were the result of homicide by unknown persons; 0.28% of all deaths were homicides committed by persons known to the victim (the numbers have been rounded).

According to a study published by the Economist in 2013, the odds of dying from firearm assault are 1 in 24,974. You are almost three times more likely to die through intentional self-harm (1 in 8,447), 15 more times likely to die from an accident or injury (1 in 1,656), and more than 53 times more likely to die of heart disease (1 in 467). I don’t see a lot of people walking around sheathed in bubble wrap or changing their diets, yet over 40% of American households have a gun. This makes no sense to me. It smacks of hysteria.

As a point of comparison, NHTSA statistics show that 32,719 people died in vehicular fatalities in 2013. (2.3 million persons were injured.) In other words, you are almost four times more likely to die in a car accident than as a homicide, and nearly ten times more likely than as a homicide committed by a person unknown to you. These figures beg asking: when was the last time you drove or rode in a car? 

And we still haven’t controlled for context: a significant percentage of the 3,189 unknown assailant homicides are the result of gang violence and drug trafficking. (Statistics forthcoming.)

I should note at this point that the risk of dying from (accidental) firearms discharge, according to the Economist, is just 1 in 514,147. 

On balance, I just don’t see a need to own a gun. Statistically, it doesn’t seem justified. 

[jack saunders]

 

Was stunned to learn recently that more Americans died last year from heroin overdose than in auto accidents -- for the first time ever.  (NYTimes).  I'm for cutting down on accidental death where possible, but society's main goal at this stage of development should not be preventing death.  It should be encouraging joy and accomplishment.  Death wins in the end, 100% of the time.  Rarely, it's tragically early.  More frequently, it's tragically late.

---

From: Brian Howell <bdho...@gmail.com>
To: Ipse-...@googlegroups.com
Cc: clg...@me.com; bdho...@gmail.com
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2015 10:07 AM

Subject: Re: [Ipse Dixit] NRA: Stop! Don’t touch! Run away! Tell a grownup!

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[Craig Good]

On Apr 27, 2015, at 11:41 AM, jack saunders <jack...@pacbell.net> wrote:

> Was stunned to learn recently that more Americans died last year from heroin overdose than in auto accidents -- for the first time ever. (NYTimes).

That’s a sad statistic. I can’t find the NYT article making that claim, but I see lots of pages indicating that drug overdoses in general are outstripping auto accidents. I’m not sure those are all heroin, though they are increasing rapidly according to the CDC:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6339a1.htm

Anybody have the actual stats the NYT used?

--
--Craig WWJGD?
clg...@me.com http://www.craig-good.com

It's not my fault

[jack saunders]

 http://www.amazon.com/Baseball-Comes-Out-Revolutionary-ebook/dp/B00C2VCI82/

---

From: Craig Good <clg...@me.com>
To: jack saunders <jack...@pacbell.net>
Cc: Brian Howell <bdho...@gmail.com>; "Ipse-...@googlegroups.com" <Ipse-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2015 1:48 PM

Subject: Re: [Ipse Dixit] NRA: Stop! Don’t touch! Run away! Tell a grownup!

On Apr 27, 2015, at 11:41 AM, jack saunders <jack...@pacbell.net> wrote:

> Was stunned to learn recently that more Americans died last year from heroin overdose than in auto accidents -- for the first time ever.  (NYTimes).

That’s a sad statistic. I can’t find the NYT article making that claim, but I see lots of pages indicating that Here's the piece.  Heroin is the cheap form of oxytocin. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/opinion/sunday/serving-all-your-heroin-needs.html?_r=0

[Craig Good]

[NB: I changed the subject line]

On Apr 27, 2015, at 14:25 PM, jack saunders <jack...@pacbell.net> wrote:

> Heroin is the cheap form of oxytocin.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/opinion/sunday/serving-all-your-heroin-needs.html?_r=0
>

That claims that more than "8,250 people a year now die from heroin," which is still well under the 32,000-ish automobile accident deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year

I can believe that drug overdoses overall are getting to that number, though.


There’s at least a little good news. Automobile deaths are dropping.

--
--Craig WWJGD?
clg...@me.com http://www.craig-good.com

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."
--George Bernard Shaw

[Brian Howell]

Subject moved to new thread. Replies to the original NRA thread locked temporarily.

[Brian Howell]

In my screed yesterday, I didn’t address the deterrence effects of gun ownership and carrying one. I subsequently sought to do some research on the subjects. That turned out to be difficult: they are extremely polarizing. Even several scholarly papers I reviewed clearly had specific agendas (as is true for many scholarly works), either for or against. Finally, I found this article from the Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2014/0202/Gun-debate-Is-price-of-an-armed-America-a-more-dangerous-America-video, a source I’ve longed believed to have high journalistic standards.

The article relates data that shows there may be a deterrence benefit for an armed and carrying society. I’ll admit, it’s not what I hoped to read, but the claim does seem reasonable. More search is needed, though I won’t end up packin’ heat, regardless; I think the odds against finding myself in a situation where I’d want to point a firearm at another person, let alone fire it, to be low enough to justify remaining gunless. But I guess I’m glad to benefit from the herd immunity.

[jack saunders]

This is a subject that may be coming up for a re-think.

Why?  Personal "devices."

We find it easy to get why an iPhone is an ESSENTIAL device.

Millions think of a gun the same way.

I'd like to understand that better.

 

The ultimate communications device -- whether ever used or not.  It says....something.

Something very important.

I am prepared to kill you....and I've put quite a bit of thought into it.

That's a statement I'd rather not be hidden, or perceived in shadowy lore.

Let's get it all out there.

---

From: Brian Howell <bdho...@gmail.com>
To: Ipse-...@googlegroups.com
Cc: clg...@me.com; bdho...@gmail.com

Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2015 3:42 PM

Subject: Re: [Ipse Dixit] NRA: Stop! Don’t touch! Run away! Tell a grownup!

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[Craig Good]

On Apr 28, 2015, at 16:49 PM, jack saunders <jack...@pacbell.net> wrote:

> We find it easy to get why an iPhone is an ESSENTIAL device.
> Millions think of a gun the same way.
> I'd like to understand that better.

That’s pretty easy. One expects daily utility from a mobile phone. Weapons, on the other hand, are carried on the “parachute principle”: You hope like Hell never to have to use it, but if you need one you can’t go home for it. Being prepared to do violence is not the same as itching to commit it any more than having an ejection seat makes you want to get out of the plane early.

Or, at the risk of horn tooting, my CPR kit doesn’t mean I hope to have a chance to pound on the chest of a cardiac arrest patient. It’s emergency gear.

--
--Craig WWJGD?
clg...@me.com http://www.craig-good.com

Life is too short to drive a crappy car.

[jack saunders]

Peace of mind is "daily utility"....especially if you believe the stakes are life and death.

 

---

From: Craig Good <clg...@me.com>
To: jack saunders <jack...@pacbell.net>
Cc: Brian Howell <bdho...@gmail.com>; "Ipse-...@googlegroups.com" <Ipse-...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2015 4:59 PM

Subject: Re: [Ipse Dixit] NRA: Stop! Don’t touch! Run away! Tell a grownup!

[Craig Good]

I dream of being that pithy. Thank you.

On Apr 28, 2015, at 19:22 PM, jack saunders <jack...@pacbell.net> wrote:

> Peace of mind is "daily utility"....especially if you believe the stakes are life and death.

--
--Craig WWJGD?
clg...@me.com http://www.craig-good.com

It's pronounced "Throatwarbler-Mangrove".

[Matt Fish]

I'd like to highlight one aspect of this debate: A large majority of gun deaths are suicides. Looking at date from 2010, 61 percent of gun deaths were from suicides, compared with 35 percent for homicides. (Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/05/24/suicides-account-for-most-gun-deaths/

I can see the argument that widespread gun-ownership for self-defense can actually deter crime. I can also see the argument that owning a gun may help you defend the lives of your own family if attacked – although given Brian's previous post that looks like less of a probable threat. 

But what if high levels of gun ownership make death in your own family more likely? Is there evidence that high gun ownership is related to higher levels of suicide? There is. A study of seven New England Northeastern states with varying gun laws and suicide rates came to this conclusion:

"The strong and positive correlation between firearm prevalence and suicide was accounted for by substantially elevated firearm suicide rates in states with higher levels of firearm ownership. This association held for the population as a whole and for every age group. By contrast, aggregate rates of nonfirearm suicides in states with higher firearm ownership did not differ across the seven states."

(Source: http://www.healthandlearning.org/documents/milleronFirearmsandSuicideinNEJTrauma04.pdf)

One key reason is that of all methods of suicide, guns are by far the most effective in actually killing you:

"Of all suicide attempts, suicide by firearm accounted for only 5%, while poisoning/cutting/piercing accounted for 85%. However, the fatality rate for attempts varies wildly. Overall, 13% of all attempts were successful, while 91% of gun attempts were successful and only 3% of the poisoning/cutting/piercing attempts were fatal. Suffocation/hanging (6% of all attempts) was successful 80% of the time."

Another follow-up study with larger sample size came to the same conclusion:

"Almost twice as many individuals completed suicide in the 15 states with the highest levels of household firearm ownership (14,809) compared with the 6 states with the lowest levels of household firearm ownership (8,052). For each age group and for both sexes, there were close to twice as many suicide victims in the high-gun prevalence states, a finding that was driven by differences in firearm suicides (i.e., nonfirearm suicides differed little). Overall, people living in high-gun states were 3.8 times more likely to kill themselves with firearms."

(Source: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/risk/)

So here's at least one piece of evidence that having fewer guns in American houses would lead to far fewer successful suicide attempts. Another key quote:

"If 1 in 10 individuals who attempted suicide with firearms in 2002 were to have attempted with drugs instead, the number of suicides in the United States would decrease by approximately 1,700 suicides per year."

That’s a lot of lives saved. It’s worth noting at this point how many veterans have killed themselves with their own guns:

"Veterans commit suicide at a rate that is twice the national average. In fact, the annual military death toll from suicides has for several years exceeded the number killed on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan."

(Source: http://helenair.com/news/local/veterans-twice-as-likely-to-commit-suicide-as-civilians/article_109c133e-553c-11e2-a1d2-0019bb2963f4.html)

On Friday, April 24, 2015 at 9:46:54 AM UTC-7, Brian Howell wrote:

The NRA has put up a new animated YouTube video warning kids about guns. Do they really believe that kids will learn gun safety habits from it? Or is it simply a whitewashing PR stunt. Consider that the kids first have to sit through 2.5 minutes of inanity about a pick-up basketball game, and then the remaining six minutes are... hell, just watch it. (Notice that comments are disabled.)

[jack saunders]

This is a very grim subject.  I hasten to stipulate that I am in sound health and of sound mind, at the moment.

That said, I think suicide can be an entirely legitimate use of a gun.

We all see at once the possibility of premature or addled decision making.  But when people buy a gun to do that job, I do not consider myself well positioned to dispute their reasoning.

 

What the health care industry sweetly calls "treatments" can look and feel like pointless torture.

---

From: Matt Fish <mattfi...@gmail.com>
To: Ipse-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2015 11:46 AM
Subject: [Ipse Dixit] Re: NRA: Stop! Don’t touch! Run away! Tell a grownup!

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[Craig Good]

On Apr 29, 2015, at 11:46 AM, Matt Fish <mattfi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> "Veterans commit suicide at a rate that is twice the national average. In fact, the annual military death toll from suicides has for several years exceeded the number killed on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan."
> (Source: http://helenair.com/news/local/veterans-twice-as-likely-to-commit-suicide-as-civilians/article_109c133e-553c-11e2-a1d2-0019bb2963f4.html)

That article greatly inflates the actual figure, which is still distressingly high.

http://www.annalsofepidemiology.org/article/S1047-2797(14)00525-0/abstract

It’s more like 41 - 61% higher risk. Interestingly, deployed troops were at lower risk than non-deployed.

And because a weapon is effective doesn’t mean it’s the cause of a behavior. I’d be surprised if the presence of a certain technology made suicide attempts more likely.

This is all sad stuff.

--
--Craig WWJGD?
clg...@me.com http://www.craig-good.com

"In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths,
or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must
depend."
--Alexander Hamilton

[jack saunders]

It would be shocking to me if vet suicide rates were not high.  It's a very fatalistic way of living, day after day, year after year.  I spent a year in Vietnam once.....after spending the prior year volunteering for every non-Vietnam assignment in the world, frantically trying to stay alive.  Vietnam came up.  At that moment fatalism seized me.  I was a dead man.  Soldier on.  The night I flew into Saigon from San Francisco, I drank myself into a stupor....the whole plane's bar tab was on the Commander-in-Chief.....and they did not run out.  They knew exactly what was going on in the back of that chartered airliner.  This war had been going on for years.  It was 1970, May 3.  

As I drank I planned.  Unlike stateside, seeing new places was not my purpose here.  It was to stay alive.  I was a tower operator.  I vowed I would go to work, then back to the barracks. And nothing else.  I would live a year under cover and hope not to get rocketed.  As I dumped my duffel bag on a bed, somebody yelled, "Wanna go downtown?" 

"I'll go," I said.  You simply can't stay afraid for long, even if you're a self-certified coward who desperately wants to be afraid.  You can't keep it up, even if you're spread-sheeted the project.  Fear seeps out.  Like steam, it needs continual fuel.  That night, after midnight, I found myself on the handlebars of Papasan's cycilo, drunk, stoned out of my mind, and alone in a brightly lit Saigon.  He dumped me off at the base gate and I stumbled to bed, once again, consciously ready to die. 

I was a lucky one, spending only one year in real war.  But multiple that story of one day by years and years.....and you find a psyche that has been badly bent.

 

---

From: Craig Good <clg...@me.com>
To: Matt Fish <mattfi...@gmail.com>
Cc: Ipse-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2015 2:45 PM
Subject: Re: [Ipse Dixit] Re: NRA: Stop! Don’t touch! Run away! Tell a grownup!

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