It’s a clear medical issue, because many AMA member spend their careers trying to remove bullets from kid’s skulls without killing them, or spending hours trying to save swiss cheese. As far as what the AMA does, everything I’ve seen is phrased around the idea that having a gun in a home poses a risk to children in that home. I don’t think that is all that controversial. Their tips to “pester” people with are things like making sure that if you are sending your kid to play at someone else’s house, you first find out if there is a firearm there and make sure the parents have it safely locked away, or else seriously consider the risks involved to your children by sending them over there. It’s not as if we’re talking about some imaginary situation: we’re talking about thousands of kids blowing themselves and their friends to hell every year because of a gun that wasn’t properly hidden and secured, and AMA members having to wade around in buckets of blood because of it. It’s a little hard for them to not see it as a public health issue. Can you show me that putting a gun in a home makes it more safe, in terms of its impact on a family member or innocent person getting shot? Because in general, my guess would be that it would make it less safe, not more. Accidents, fights that much more easily escalate to murders of passion, easy-as-pie suicides, are all more common than the rare and fairly contrived situation of a home invasion being stopped by getting to a gun in time.
Thousands huh?
Hmmm
Now I just might be doing this wrong but according to the CDC website I just visited the number of unintentional gun deaths among minors age 1-17 as of the year 2000 was 150. If you widen the search to include homicides of children involving firearms, suicides ect that number goes up to a bit over 1500. I think you overstate your case just a bit, accidental deaths due to children playing with firearms are very rare and tragic but nowhere near the epidemic of ‘thousands’ you seem describe. I’m sure doctors get sick of dealing with gun wounds no matter how they occur. I’m sure they’re also tired of car accident victims, drug overdoses and cancer as well but I will thank them not to attempt to curtail my rights and freedoms because of the stresses of their chosen profession.
If you were the one causing the car accidents, drug overdoses, or cancer, I think the rest of us would be perfectly justified in curtailing some of your “rights and freedoms.”
You are correct: I said thousands, and then later added “every year” in a later revision without going back and rethinking the thousands part.
If you can explain to me how a non-governmental organization counseling people to be wary of firearms, especially around children, affects your rights, perhaps we can have a more productive discussion. I’m happy to defend anyone’s right to own weapons within certain limits of reason, but having seen firsthand the just absolutely horrendous things that bullets do to human beings, and most often the utter, sheer pointlessness of those wounds, as well as the fact that they wouldn’t have existed if not for a firearm lying around for the latest heat of passion, I can certainly understand the position of people who think the country would be better off without so many of them around, and that we were more like less armed nations. One of the reasons I don’t drink is that I spent my teenage years as an EMT, and I won’t ever forget washing a DUI’s blood off a backboard. So I understand how shocking personal experience can lead to very passionate positions. Just as I can understand the position of people who think that hurtful speech should be curtailed (though obviously, it’s far from as harmful). I personally don’t agree that utopian hopes are worth some forms of liberty, but I understand that this is a fuzzy line, and how some people can stand on various places.
Which sounds perfectly fine until it’s a right or freedom you cherish that is deemed to be dangerous to ‘us’. Drugs are illegal, drug offenders make up the majority of our prison population and millions of lives are impacted by ‘the war on drugs’ and their use yet there are still thousands of overdoses. We’ve banned smoking from just about everywhere public, put out warnings, sued the makers and spent millions on education yet people still choose to smoke and get cancer. We spend billions on car safety, education, police ect and people still get behind the wheel drunk and cause terrible accidents. We have legal firearms, of which the overwhelmingly VAST majority are used responsibly and without notice all while navigating the various federal, state and local laws required to own them… and your solution is to make guns more restricted. Hmmm.
Yes, the AMA is a non-governmental organization. Yes, they council people to be ‘wary’ of firearms. They also as responsible for the positions they take on issues as any other group or entity, especially when they advocate abridging rights guaranteed me in the constitution. How about this as a theoretical, say Lockheed Martin was to put out a public announcement saying that they were going to lobby for the repeal of the 4th amendment. They say that the 4th amendment has unfairly sheltered countless criminals and made their job as a government military contractor for intelligence agencies difficult. They spend money on lobbyist, put out anti 4th amendment propaganda with misleading statistics, fund studies to prove how the 4th amendment is used by criminals to protect themselves while preying on ordinary citizens ect. Wouldn’t you be concerned about the power of this large and influential private organization’s effects on your constitutional rights? You would be right to be concerned. You would be right to seek boycotts and do everything within the law to oppose them because of their position. I feel the same way about the AMA taking an anti gun stance.
I will gleefully admit to not having read the entire thread out of my lack of time, but aren’t at least some of these organizations shooting themselves in the foot (egads that was horrid) so to speak? I mean, the folks I see here who actually profit from thier works, get a lot of their money from gun owners, and, quite frankly victims, such as…
-
American Medical Association
made up of doctors, who fix people who get shot -
U.S. Catholic Conference, Dept. of Social Development
(here, i got nothin’ except perhaps defending yourself from an oncoming priest) -
American Association of Neurological Surgeons
(again with the doctors) -
National Association of Chain Drug Stores
(these folks sell band aids and medical supplies to help heal the shot) -
National Association of Public Hospitals
(once again with the bloody doctors) -
YWCA of the U.S.A.
(??) -
Blue Cross Blue Shield - Kansas City
(ok, I see the point here, I mean it costs money to treat GSW’s, but honestly, if BCBS thought for a second that they could MAKE money shooting people, they’d own gun stores, you know I’m right) -
Hallmark Cards
(they sell the get well soon/sorry about your loss cards man!) -
Kansas City Chiefs
(this befuddles me, unless they mean that fewer guns would keep their players out of the pokey) -
Sara Lee Corporation
(someone said it, and i don’t know who, but it’s clear that somebody doesn’t like sara lee, but really, here again, somebody shoots you, and you happen to not die, a little comfort food goes a long way toward healing, and I ask you friends, what is more comfortable than coffee cake?) -
St. Louis University
(ok they’re Jesuits, but I wonder if they have gunsmithing courses?)
All said and done, the NRA is just as fringe as some of those who oppose them, and like most groups, the good is shouted down in scope by the bad, squeaky wheel and all that. They like the whole enemy thing because it’s pleasingly myopic to the membership on the whole, and frankly, they know their audience. Then again, so does the ACLU.
Well, since the AMA wishes to minimize gunshot wounds by making firearms less available to responsible owners, I would suggest the onus is on them to show that a reduced availability of guns indeed makes homes safer. And this is something that in all the heatlh advocacy literature through the years, they have been singularly unable to do. That’s what gun owners have been saying all along and that’s what that recent CDC study confirms.
I suspect you may be thinking of that long since discredited Kellerman study that proclaimed, “Handguns are 43 times more likely to kill a family member than a criminal.” This study was conducted solely in Seattle, WA and consisted of a grand total of 43 gun deaths. 37 of which were suicides and several others we’re the result of arguments between family members over drug deals gone bad. The study is fatally flawed and no conclusion about the relative safeness of gun and non-gun homes can be drawn from it.
If you’re really interested in this issue, I recommend the book,
Armed: New Perspectives in Gun Control - by Don kates and Gary Kleck. Particularly, chapters 2 & 3 by Kates. Chapter 3 very makes a very strong case that nearly every of firearm study published in JAMA & NEJM is crap. Flawed statistical methods, cherry-picked data, ignored contradictory studies, outright false assertions - the authors of many of these articles even refuse to release their inital data for independent analysis.
quote]Can you show me that putting a gun in a home makes it more safe, in terms of its impact on a family member or innocent person getting shot? Because in general, my guess would be that it would make it less safe, not more.
[/quote]
Well, since the AMA wishes to minimize gunshot wounds by making firearms less available to responsible owners, I would suggest the onus is on them to show that a reduced availability of guns indeed makes homes safer. And this is something that in all the heatlh advocacy literature through the years, they have been singularly unable to do. That’s what gun owners have been saying all along and that’s what that recent CDC study confirms.
I suspect you may be thinking of that long since discredited Kellerman study that proclaimed, “Handguns are 43 times more likely to kill a family member than a criminal.” This study was conducted solely in Seattle, WA and consisted of a grand total of 43 gun deaths. 37 of which were suicides and several others we’re the result of arguments between family members over drug deals gone bad. The study is fatally flawed and no conclusion about the relative safeness of gun and non-gun homes can be drawn from it. It shows nothing about the effect of guns in the home of ordinary responsible people.
If you’re really interested in this issue, I recommend the book,
Armed: New Perspectives in Gun Control - by Don kates and Gary Kleck. Particularly, chapters 2 & 3 by Kates. Chapter 3 very makes a very strong case that nearly every of firearm study published in JAMA & NEJM is crap. Flawed statistical methods, cherry-picked data, ignored contradictory studies, outright false assertions - the authors of many of these articles even refuse to release their inital data for independent analysis.
What is this supposed to mean? Gun owners, as a whole, are responsible for the negligence of a few, but not all drivers are responsible for causing car accidents?
You didn’t see my point. You asked him/her why, even if he/she did have a personal stake in owning a gun, he/she’d boycott Citigroup as it had no direct impact on her.
Well, most people are willing, in the same way, to defend their right to free speech. Censoring the KKK, unless they’re part of a hate group, isn’t going to affect them personally, but they might feel just as strongly in opposing it - on general principle, because it might set a precedent for censoring more speech, or whatever the reason.
Citibank refusing to deal with gun dealers doesn’t directly affect him/her. But it affects something they might stand behind on general principle. You might not agree, I guess, but I’m trying to demonstrate why someone might feel that way towards something that doesn’t directly affect them with that analogy.
Yeah, it’s a hopelessly weak analogy, but it was a hopelessly weak analogy when lokij made it in the first place:
I guess what I was trying (weakly) to object to was the notion that one has a right to unfettered gun ownership no matter how much death and destruction guns cause.
There really is no good analogy to guns. Sure, cars cause deaths and injuries. Sure, recreational drugs cause deaths and injuries. But guns are different. Their primary, and some would say only, function is to cause death and injury. There’s nothing else quite like it.
**
-And what you continue to either forget or ignore, is that the right to own a firearm hasn’t been largely “unfettered” since 1937, and in fact has grown only more and more restricted, controlled and regulated ever since.
-And again, you either don’t know or ignore a crucial point: ‘death and injury’ to whom?
More handguns are used to defend against potential death and dismemberment, than are used to inflict it. There’s certainly some debate over the numbers; the popular, though certainly flawed one, states guns are used defensively over two million times a year. Even if that’s off by two orders of magnitude- and none who have debated the number will say what the number might actually be, they just refuse to believe it on principle- that’s still a hundred thousand “defensive gun uses” a year.
Rifles can inflict death and injury as well. And, most often only to game animals. There’s a hundred million rifles in the US, and in the few thousand firearms-related fatalities every year, long guns (including shotguns) account for something like three percent or less.
So that’s literally tens of millions of rifles not being used to “inflict death and injury” on people.
Logic would assume, then, that a rifle might- just might- have some use besides inflicting death and injury, wouldn’t you think?
I’m well aware of that. But lokij was objecting to the idea of anyone trying to “curtail my rights and freedoms,” which sounds to me like a demand that the existing fetters be removed.
Turning to you other point, I should have been more clear in differentiating between handguns and rifles. I usually try to restrict my comments to handguns. While I’ve never hunted, and can’t fathom the appeal of that activity, I don’t really object to it, and I don’t think that rifles represent the same kind of threat that handguns do. (In fact, given the near plague proportions of the local deer population, we could probably use a little more hunting - tough in a suburban environment, though!)
The fact that handguns may be used in a defensive manner doesn’t change their essential character; their sole purpose is to cause death or injury. Oh, I suppose, they can be used to threaten to cause death or injury (they wouldn’t be much use for defense otherwise). I’d call that a distinction without a difference.
Finally, any discussion of the defensive uses of handguns inevitably lands one in a circular argument:
[ul][li]Why do handguns need to be widely available? So I can get one to defend myself.[/li][li]Against whom do you need to defend yourself? Against armed criminals.[/li]Why do the criminals have handguns? Because they’re widely available.[/ul]
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Early Out *
**Finally, any discussion of the defensive uses of handguns inevitably lands one in a circular argument:
[ul][li]Why do handguns need to be widely available? So I can get one to defend myself.[/li][li]Against whom do you need to defend yourself? Against armed criminals.[/li][li]Why do the criminals have handguns? Because they’re widely available.[/ul] **[/li][/QUOTE]
Why, that’s sure a purdy circular are-gue-ment you got thar, ma’am.
Only problem is that point three dosen’t follow points one and two. Criminals have guns because they are an effective tool for coercing their victems. They’re already breaking the law buy shooting/robbing/whatever, what makes you think they’d blanch at breaking the law by carrying a gun? If every law abiding gun owner turned in his or her guns, criminals would still be armed because they won’t obey the law requiring them to hand in their guns!
**But, you will prolly argue, if all law abiding citizens turned in their guns, their would be no more guns for criminals to steal. **
Unfortunately, millions and millions of guns are already in the hands of criminals, which they wouldn’t turn in, and then would be able to use against the now disarmed citzenry at large who now lack the most effective means to protect themselves.
Well, the cops will confiscate the gun when they arrest the criminals Fine. How long is it going to take them to confiscate millions of guns? A month? A year? Decades? How many will die unable to defend themselves while this is goin on? Also, as guns become scarcer, they will become more expensive on the black market. How much increase in crime ( by the only segment of the population still armed ) are you willing to put up with as criminals steal to get money for guns? ( And make no mistake, it will happen. No item that people desire has ever been outlawed without a criminal black market springing up to meet that demand. That’s human nature ) How many cops, ambushed and killed for ther guns? How much smuggling of guns into America, destined for criminals? Have you really thought this through? A disarmed America sounds like a pretty unplesant place to me.
So, Weirddave, can I sum up your argument like this: “Since there are already so many handguns out there, there’s nothing we can ever do about it, so we should just throw up our hands. In fact, let’s get even more handguns.”
Frankly, a completely disarmed America sounds like it would be a much better place, to me.
just to interject a thought here - there exists a ‘black market’ for legal items as well. The existence of illegal sales of stuff is independant of the legality of the item.
QUOTE]*Originally posted by SenorBeef *
**You didn’t see my point. You asked him/her why, even if he/she did have a personal stake in owning a gun, he/she’d boycott Citigroup as it had no direct impact on her.
… but I’m trying to demonstrate why someone might feel that way towards something that doesn’t directly affect them with that analogy. **
[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the clarification on what you were getting at.
And thanks to the discussion, it’s clearer to me why some who object to gun restrictions feel that these causes rise to the level of changing their consumer behavior.
What I am completely failing to get across is that my comments to catsix were to follow up with what she expressed–that part of her advocacy against Citigroup is due to her fear that ultimately, she won’t have a gun to shoot violent burglars. This is clearly a direct effect she’s describing.
What is working against me now is not my inability to understand why some gun owners are so passionate about their cause, but rather my lack of imagination when it comes to the relationship between gun control advocacy and the ultimate repeal of the Bill of Rights. Call it naivete or possibly too much faith in the will of the people.
I just don’t personally believe it. Therein lies our difference. I’m not, at this point, trying to convince you of anything (and am not asking you or others with this concern to explain it to me).
My refusal to do business with Citigroup or any of its subsidiaries so long as it had a policy against issuing credit to federally licensed firearms dealers was based in the fact that I believed it to be an unfair business practice. The only thing that should matter to a potential creditor is whether or not the person desiring the credit will be able to satisfy debts in a legal manner. The completely legal means by which such person or business earns the income to satisfy the debt should be of no concern to the credit issuing company whatsoever. Had they refused to do business with people who were black, who drove sports cars, who had goatees, I would have had the same desire to exert pressure upon them to change their ways and deal fairly.
Because it’s not that I think there are so many people working to repeal the Second Amendment, it’s that I think there are a few people who’d like that to happen and there are many, many more who don’t care enough to defend it at all. There are millions and millions of people who just don’t get what all the fuss is about right now, but they say they’d step in if it ever came to house-to-house collections. It’s not some vast conspiracy with these huge numbers of people participating. It’s a few extremists with a lot of money and a lot of publicity, and the general public is so apathetic about it (because it doesn’t directly affect them) that the tiny group of extremists doesn’t have all that many hurdles to cross.
If (doubtful) it ever gets to that point, it’s too late. I wish more people defended the entire Bill of Rights, not just 9/10 of it.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Early Out *
**Finally, any discussion of the defensive uses of handguns inevitably lands one in a circular argument:
[ul][li]Why do handguns need to be widely available? So I can get one to defend myself.[/li][li]Against whom do you need to defend yourself? Against armed criminals.[/li][li]Why do the criminals have handguns? Because they’re widely available.[/ul] **[/li][/QUOTE]
Absolutely not. The second assumption is ridiculous - why would people only care to defend against armed criminals? Take guns out of the picture and we still have criminals, only it becomes the physically strong against the physically weak.
This is a faulty assumption that’s often used to try to assert that the need for guns is circular reasoning. As if we took all the guns away from the people who feel like they should protect themselves, crimes would stop, because without guns, the whole cycle is interrupted.