I’m sure snide jokes like that are really appreciated by the parents of all the little kids who accidentally wander into neighbors pool’s and drown.
But hey, since no one reported on that in CNN I guess more people died in the Aurora shooting than died in accidental drownings last year.
But luckily this isn’t a thread about mourning pool parents, but apparently a thread to mourn the loss of a police officer (which Dopers hate) and an innocent person in Texas (which dopers also hate), so your snide joke hasn’t interrupted any pool mourning in this scenario.
It’s actually not important at all how many people get killed by drunks as innocent bystanders either, what’s important is how dramatic someone’s death is. That’s why thousands killed by drunks every year is no reason to ban alcohol, but 12 nobodies killed in a theater but in a really exciting way is a reason to have a gun debate.
If you even think about having a public policy debate based on anecdotal stories like this you are a complete fucking moron.
I had no intention of that; don’t assume that you know my stance or the manner in which I express it (when I choose to).
If I had elaborated on my first post, which I should have done, I would have been proud to use a metaphor like **Martin Hyde **did. The rest of his opinion and language is his, but I think that is a fine example.
In addition, my nitpick is specifically that the media, in their rush to sensationalize every event in general and firearm-related events specifically, automatically (ha, see what I did there?) reports the most dramatic information they can get their hands on that is even the least bit vetted.
In this case, I have a feeling that there was not an automatic weapon involved…and if this story follows the pattern, only people who bother to pay attention later will see that accurately reported. Most will just remember reading ‘automatic weapon’ as the story broke and assume it was reported correctly.
Hamlet is a tragedy, a few dead people in Texas is just another day. Where do you guys live? Candyland? In the real world people die all the time and it’s not high drama.
A life is, liberally speaking, worth at most a few million as calculated by various “value of life” metrics used by different organizations (everyone from plaintiffs lawyers to tobacco companies to the EPA.)
A gun is typically worth anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.
The right to own guns however is worth a lot more, much more than a few lives. Even a few thousand lives.
I make the same valuation on the right to drink alcohol, it kills a shit ton of people who fall victim to alcoholism and its related ills, and it kills thousands of innocents in the form of drunks beating and killing their wives and drunks killing people by driving drunk. Societies value literally thousands of things more than human life, including the right to own firearms.
The only reason we’re focused on firearms is liberals are afraid of them.
It’s really sad. It’s too bad they can’t do anything like require fences to reduce pool deaths, but pools are protected in the Constitution in case the British should come back and we need to drown them to preserve our freedom.
Of course being a doper, I was happy to see the story the other day about a policeman who drowned in the backyard pool while trying to serve a warrant in Texas. It was a twofer. It was especially hilarious when the media referred to it as an “Olympic sized” pool when we all know they are 25 *meters *long, not yards. Morons.
I was really sad that day I read about a gun owner driving 80 mph down the wrong lane of the interstate before crashing into a family of 5 and killing them all.
Computer: $300 at the same pawn shop where your TV is sitting in pawn.
ISP Bill: $45/mo
SDMB Membership: Free for guests. (Aside from any time you spend removing the ad delivered malware)
Drawing the conclusion that everyone who owns guns engages in survivalist freedom fighter fantasies: priceless.
So, I assume you are giving up your car. Right? On average 93 people die every DAY in car accidents. Since ‘there is simply no rationale where your right to own dangerous items > the need to protect innocent life’ I assume you will be selling your car tomorrow. First thing.
Tell ya what, instead of me sitting here listing all the things that people use everyday that are dangerous and kill people and have you sputter ‘But that isn’t what I meant’, why don’t you list all the things that you want to ban? I can get you started:
Cars: 32,885 deaths in 2010.
Fire (lighters, electricity, stoves, etc): On average, one person died by fire in the U.S. every 169 minutes in 2010. Cite. Hell, this ought to be on top of your list.
Stairs: 25,000 people fell to their deaths in 2010. Cite.
Then we will all be safe. What a wonderful world that will be.
This incident sucks. I feel for the families of everyone involved. However, the shooter in this incident could have used a whole bunch of other weapons to achieve the same result. People started killing each other long before guns were invented.
Sleestak what you’re forgetting is if we just banned guns it would immediately save the lives of everyone ever killed by a gun. Because bans on things like hijacking airplanes and flying them into skyscrapers, driving homemade explosives into Federal buildings and detonating them, and distribution of anthrax in the mail system have totally protected us from those things.
When you know all it takes to stop bad things from happening is to ban the tool used in the bad thing, it’s immoral to not ban that tool. Hero policemen will be the only ones with guns, and will save us from all the bad in the world.