Whats the difference between a homicide and a gun related homicide? If JoelUpchurch is correct that US homicide rates are similar to other countries then why should I be more worried about gun violence compared to other types.
The last sentence of the OP:
Obviously the argument that firearms don’t cause violence is a defensible argument.
You simply are trying to exclude data that contradicts you instead of refuting it.
Children Killed by Guns here are kids killed by guns in one year. Merely 3385.
You really want to argue that people that are old enough to vote are kids? This old chestnut only works on idiots that don’t bother to look at your cite.
Unless you have evidence of how many of the deaths in the 0 - 19 y.o. range were actually in the 18 - 19 y.o. range, your argument has no more weight than gonzo’s.
= = =
You would also do well to tone down the insulting language.
What are you trying to say with this snippy comment?
There were 632 firearm homicides for people under 18 in 2010.
If gonzomax wants to include accidents and suicides in his numbers, then he should state explicitly, since all the previous discussion were about homicides.
But is that more often on a per capita basis, or more often overall?
See post #43. I realize serial killers and spree shooters are somewhat different beasts, but it does seem that America is a more dangerous place than is average in the West.
Of course, it could also be that different countries have different ways of classifying their criminals (e.g. the criteria for defining someone as a serial killer could vary based on # of victims, # of separate incidents, delay between each incident etc…)
A handful of incidents a decade in a country with 300m+ people and you’re worried about the danger of being a victim of a spree shooter, rather than something more dangerous like, I dunno, running yourself over with a lawnmower?
Again, the scale of these things is almost negligible. It only matters if you’re driven by sensationalism rather than rationality in terms of the danger it presents.
I said nothing of being worried. **Spectre **asked if the OP’s premise was true and I pointed him to a cite showing it probably was.
The OP mentioned shootings. These are all, every damn one of them shootings. It is you who are using drive away goal posts. I am directly responsive to the OP.
The OP was talking about people shooting other people. There was nothing about suicides and accidents. If you want to start discussing accidental deaths and suicides, then I open by pointing out that there are 13 countries in Europe that have suicide rates higher than the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_suicide_rate
How many are done using guns?
Again, that’s irrelevant. If they are happening anyways, then obviously access to guns is not a cause.
I disagree. The discussion is about guns. Perhaps in other countries there are other reasons why. You just seem to want to handwave stuff away.
It was also interesting that the figures we’re given for “suicides and accidents” seemed to only consist of suicides. Anyone got the figures for accidents?
To be honest, it doesn’t really bother me. The US likes their guns and well, you’ll be glad to hear I’m cool with you having your guns 
You do your things your way and we’ll do ours ours. I just don’t like misrepresentation of facts and cherry picking of data to push an ideological agenda, which is how I see things like the magic dropping of accidents from “suicides and accidents” so the US maybe looks a bit better when compared to other countries, the comparison of “Americans of European descent” with “All Europeans”, the magic handwaving away of things just because someone declares them “irrelevant” …
In the United States, firearms are listed at #7 cause of accidental deaths with 1,500 compared to 43,000 automotive deaths.
http://www.soyouwanna.com/soyouwanna-top-ten-causes-accidental-death-america-4008-p2.html
The latest statistics indicate that drug overdoses have actually passed automobile accidents, while others consider medical errors the leading cause of accidental deaths with 225,000 deaths per year.
And that’s all little houses.
That doesn’t mean the people who aren’t from Europe, though: it means the people who do not have European citizenship and who are permanent residents.
Have an European passport because one of your grandparents was from an European nation which gives passports to children and grandchildren of emigrants? You don’t count in that stat.
Got naturalized? You don’t count in that stat.
Not a permanent resident? You don’t count in that stat.
Not officially in the country? You don’t count in that stat.
Tourists, wetbacks, returns, foreign workers on temporary visas… don’t count for that stat.
Do you actually have a cite for that? Some of the other references I checked seem to contradict what you are saying.
The problem with that is where do you stop? You do it for one thing…why not another?