Again, though, the cite did not compare raw totals of deaths. It compared a ratio.
Do you have a response that acknowledges that aspect?
Hey dummy, you are using a unit (number of pools) as the denominator, not the frequency of usage (number of occasions swimming). Do you understand that?
Can you puzzle this one through: Which of two otherwise identical children is more at risk for drowning, one who swims once or one who swims every day?
No? Then try understanding this: Essentially every house has a roof, but relatively few children die each year due to falling off the roof because children use the roof far less often.
(a) as others have pointed out “get rid of your guns” and “get rid of your pool” are not equivalent actions people can take
(b) suppose you’re right, and they are motivated by something other than clinical criteria. Well, so what? Should they not be allowed to be?
An action that was pretty clearly ILLEGAL, and thus basically irrelevant to a discussion of what the LAW should be.
I guess my point is this:
Suppose you’re voting in your primary congressional election. One candidate is someone who you agree with about taxes and schools and gay marriage and, I dunno, corn subsidies. But you disagree with him about guns. The other candidate you disagree with about most things, but you agree with about guns.
If you believe the NRA hype that we are CONSTANTLY on the VERY EDGE of TYRANNY blah blah blah, you might be tempted to vote for the second guy, because at any moment his vote might be the deciding one to stop the sweeping confiscatory gun control legislation that is SO CLOSE blah blah blah. Which would actually be against your own best interest, because the odds of such legislation being proposed and then passing and then being upheld by the supreme court (and being passed by exactly one vote) is insanely tiny, whereas the first candidate might actually be able to do a lot of good supporting positions you care about on other issues.
Clearly the constant-paranoia approach is effective, but it’s also fundamentally dishonest… particular with respect to the lesson of events like Newtown.
Actually, I don’t usually like to play dueling cites with you, because when you lose, you simply don’t acknowledge it, as we learned recently in the thread where even your ideological ally MaxtheVool admitted you were simply weaseling out of an admission of error.
But let’s do it again, because I get paid by the word:
The second story is about Barron Alexander. This story does not explicitly say he attacked anyone; it says "a struggle ensued. This link says:
So – what’s your point? He didn’t attack anyone? The struggle wasn’t his fault?
Charges dropped “in the interests of justice.”
So what does that mean? You mention it, but don’t actually make a concrete statement that anyone can refute. This guy, who was charged with criminal offenses but then the charges were dropped, found himself in a situation in which he needed to defend himself.
What, specifically, are you saying?
How does this refute anything in the story. The answer is no: nothing seems “off” to me.
And I agree. That’s why I have insurance – to replace things that are stolen. I am well-armed, and if a burglar showed up at my house I’d retreat to safety and call the cops. But I would shoot – not happily, and undoubtedly haunting my nightmares for ever afterwards – an intruder if my safety, or the safety of my family, was threatened.
And of course you are entitled to believe both. Conflating the two; positing that “liberal contortions” are required to agree with one and disagree with the other, is the issue.
That said the issue with the pharmacist “conscious clause” was pretty exclusively the circumstance in which such action would effectively eliminate the ability of a patient to have a prescribed treatment. No one would have any problem with a pharmacist calling over a co-worker to fill that particular script so (s)he did not have to.
I wonder how it would be handled if the pharmacist had a sincere belief that calling someone over would be deputizing them to sin and so refused to do even that.
The esteemed Vool is perfectly capable of speaking for himself, as am I. As soon as I feel moved to accept that people who tend to agree with me can make admissions on my behalf, I’ll let you know. Hold your breath.
You said: “…Then they awoke to find a burglar in their midst who physically attacked them…” An embellishment, just as I said.
You know perfectly well what I’m suggesting, but I do find your batting of the big brown innocent eyes charming.
For one thing, that you are less than strictly honest. You are eager to suggest that innocent homeowners everywhere are under constant threat from random attacks, yet your examples are somewhat fishy, when they are not artfully embellished. Pretty sure you know that.
Why, no, of course not. Happens every day, an entirely innocent homeowner who was inadvertently charged with drug manufacture has his door kicked in by an armed intruder. Of course, you didn’t know that, because you didn’t pursue the question, you simply accepted the premise you found most inviting, and assumed I would as well. You were wrong. Again.
And that is why you are armed, against that perfectly reasonable likelihood. Yet, in your eagerness, you sought out examples that are suspicious on the face of it, and one in which you felt compelled to add a bit of spice to the facts. As I pointed out in the paragraph you chose to ignore:
Put baldly, Counselor, you are dishonest in debate and not to be trusted, your self proclaimed stern opposition to hypocrisy is a sham and a lie. If, as you imply, violent and life-threatening home invasion of perfectly innocent homeowners were a common occurrence, you would have much better examples at your very fingertips. And yet, this.
Just out of curiosity, which website did you copy and paste these from? I’ll pretend to expect an honest answer, the triumph of hope over experience. You are as slippery as a catfish in a barrel of motor oil, and yet, you publicly grieve that you are not trusted.
That’s my point, though. You were factually refuted, and then simply started dodging the issue. As you are here, by pretending that a struggle is not a physical attack.
So “a struggle ensued.” What is a struggle? It’s a physical attack, a physical fight between people. Cite.
Not embellished. Accurate.
Well?
Then state it. I have no interest in constructing your arguments for you.
No embellishment. A struggle is a physical fight, and is fairly described as a physical attack.
What’s fishy? Specifically?
So what are you saying? Specifically?
What?
No, these are not every single example of defensive gun use in the country going back to May.
I don’t either say or imply that it’s common. I say that it exists, and it’s real, and there are appropriate strategies to mitigate the risk.
I linked to each news story.
And remind me what you found unacceptable about Husband and wife shoot at gunmen who try to enter their St. Louis home, killing 1, police say as an example?
Yes, you do, you imply that arming yourself is an utterly ordinary exercise in caution, like buying homeowner’s insurance from State Farm. Yeah, sure, you can take out your policy from your desk drawer and use it to punch holes in somebody. Uh huh. Right. Hugh Betcha.
Not what i asked you. You can answer the question, not answer, or substitute an answer for a question you would have preferred. If either of the first two options would have given you an argumentative advantage, you would have done so. You are transparent, Counselor, but still operating under the delusion that you are smarter than the people you are talking to.
Above is the link to the GunFail blog, if anyone wants to play dueling anecdotes with Bricker. Each week contains about 40 to 50 accidents involving people who are NOT better off that there was a gun around.
FWIW, speaking as the pediatrician in this thread, I find that expressed as a national average the risk to kids from accidental gun death is low enough to not be a major issue for preventive care. And the potential risk reduction gained by defensive gun use is also low, likely even lower. I can’t get excited about either as a standard item for discussion in well care visit across all practices. Anecdotes regarding each make for dramatic stories but neither really is of any major risk or benefit across the scale of this country.
Of course discussing pool safety in Alaska makes little sense but makes more sense in Florida. None of us have average practices any more than we have average households with 2.54 individuals. Each practice takes care of populations who are a different sets of risks.
Rural America in particular has a high rate of teen suicide and suicide attempt by firearm is much likely than other methods to result in death. In truth the largest number of child deaths associated with firearms are suicides. Accidents, mostly MVAs, are the number one of cause of death in teens, of course, but suicide is number two. In rural areas firearm associated deaths are up at 10.4/100k, not far behind the deaths by MVA rate of 14.9.
For those who think that a suicidal teen will kill themselves just as well with a razor or in the garage with the car running than with a gun … you are wrong. It is well established by now that reducing access to the method that first comes to mind, that making a suicide attempt require more effort, reduces the numbers of attempts and the number of successful attempts.
Simple reality here folks - dramatic anecdotes from all sides be as they may, the odds that your family will be protected from harm by a gun at easy access is infintessimal compared to the risk that a teen will be seriously depressed without your being all that aware of it and die of a suicide attempt that would less likely have resulted in death, or possibly even have happened, if it was not for that easy firearm availability.
What each of you as possible gun owning parents do with that information is up to each of you. But dang, if I was practicing in a rural county with both higher than typical teen suicide and gun ownership rates, I’d think that making sure gun owning parents knew those facts was something I should do.
Of course better access to quality mental health services would be nice too …
Yes. I agree: arming myself is an utterly ordinary exercise in caution.
The answer is: I didn’t copy and paste the stories from anywhere other than the links I provided.
Thing is, Bricker, you go the dance contest and nail one of your shoes to the floor. You have exposure to liberals frequently, and utterly misunderstand their nature.
They want to agree with you, they ache to see your side of things and nod their heads. If they don’t, that means they aren’t open-minded, that means they are partisan and opinionated, Lehrer forbid!
But you make it impossible, you could have the applause and approval you crave so desperately if you’d stop playing shifty and insulting their intelligence. That they will not stand for, their open-mindedness is proof of their intelligence, and you refuse them the opportunity to preen it and show it off!
Radicals blaze the trail and clear the site, progressives build the cabins and start the campfire, the liberals show up once the hot showers are installed and there’s a secure place to park the mini-van.
The thing is, everyone can count to 5. That is the number of votes on SCOTUS necessary to change the law. Heller was not a sure thing and could easily have gone the other way.
At the local and state level, and less so at the federal level, there are always efforts to curtail gun rights. The viability of these efforts is directly related to constant vigilance over who we elect and what we support and advocate for.
The myth is that gun rights are safe and there’s no one trying to limit gun rights.
Unless something is completely whacky - I am nearly a single issue voter. Whoever supports gun rights, gets my vote. It’s the most effective way to be an effective lobby and it has worked, is working, and will continue to work.
Which, I suppose, argues strongly for voting for anti-gun PRESIDENTIAL candidates, as they’re the ones who appoint supreme court justices… but suppose (assuming you’re a Republican) you were voting in a primary election between someone who was 100% pro-gun but otherwise a bit of a douchebag, and someone who was about as tepidly pro-gun as a Republican could be, but you otherwise really liked. How likely do you think it is that that one single congressman will actually change the path of national gun control legislation?
Is that because you think Gun Control is WAY more important than any other issue? Or because you think that that’s the issue which is actually affected by your vote WAY more than any other issue? Or for some other reason?
Laws are not only adjudicated at SCOTUS. Laws are passed at the local and state level as well. For a law to get to SCOTUS, there would generally need to be years of previous activity and a period of time where the unfavorable laws were in effect. And not only that, there is no guarantee that SCOTUS would both take a particular case or rule favorably. I had hoped they would take Kachalsky or Woolard - both were denied cert and those districts currently have no right to carry.
Not only does it actively prevent those things from coming to pass, it also serves as a deterrent to other lawmakers in passing anti-gun legislation.
Gun control is not only a national issue. Cities pass ordinances that restrict their residents. It takes quite a bit of time and resources to litigate all of them. It would be a more preferable scenario where such litigation isn’t necessary. So while a single congressman may not be able to impact national gun control - you can say the same about any other issue - or any single vote really.
If my city passes an ordinance that is unfavorable, I have few choices. I can comply, relocate, litigate, or violate. All of these are bad choices that I’d rather not have to make.
I’m not sure really. I don’t think gun control is the most important issue the country faces. I think gun control and advocacy is strongest when their supporters act together and I do my part. I am trying to think of an issue that would have a stronger direct impact. I can always pay more - I can’t possess firearms when they are made illegal at any price.
I honestly have no idea what the heck you are talking about.