# Girl, 4, shoots herself with grandmother's gun in Sam's Club **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 10, 2008, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-4-shoots-herself-with-grandmothers-gun-in-sams-club/452427 "2008-06-10T11:25:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2008, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-4-shoots-herself-with-grandmothers-gun-in-sams-club/452427/81 "2008-06-13T21:55:49Z")
[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright] You’re welcome to do so, but those are just about the worst citations I’ve ever seen. The first one is an op-ed piece which doesn’t mention gun crime at all - just violent crime. There are plenty of violent crimes in Britain; beatings, stabbings, and so on - but there are hardly any gun crimes, which is obviously a big difference. The second one appears to be about the NYPD and doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Britain 😕 The third one is another op-ed piece written by… a dentist and an optometrist. And published in NewsMax, which is one step above the Iraqi propaganda minister for accuracy in reporting. The fourth one doesn’t specifically mention gun crime at all. [/QUOTE] They adequately illustrate the proclivity of beleaguered pols to tamper with the official numbers to achieve the desired results. Or have you forgotten the “13 children a day die to gun violence” lie that had to count as “children” 24 year olds to shore up their numbers? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2008, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-4-shoots-herself-with-grandmothers-gun-in-sams-club/452427/82 "2008-06-13T22:05:27Z")
[QUOTE=ExTank] They adequately illustrate the proclivity of beleaguered pols to tamper with the official numbers to achieve the desired results. Or have you forgotten the “13 children a day die to gun violence” lie that had to count as “children” 24 year olds to shore up their numbers? [/QUOTE] Well, sure, but they certainly don’t count as any sort of evidence that gun crime in Britain is rising. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2008, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-4-shoots-herself-with-grandmothers-gun-in-sams-club/452427/83 "2008-06-14T01:13:27Z")
[QUOTE=ExTank] Or have you forgotten the “13 children a day die to gun violence” lie that had to count as “children” 24 year olds to shore up their numbers? [/QUOTE] Yes, 19 year old gangbangers do not count as “children.” Those statistics are always fudged somehow. A wise man once said, “data that has been sufficiently tortured will confess to anything.” ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2008, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-4-shoots-herself-with-grandmothers-gun-in-sams-club/452427/84 "2008-06-14T06:34:22Z")
[QUOTE=Argent Towers] Yes, 19 year old gangbangers do not count as “children.” Those statistics are always fudged somehow. A wise man once said, “data that has been sufficiently tortured will confess to anything.” [/QUOTE] Are you perhaps thinking of 19th century British PM Benjamin Disraeli’s famous quote, " There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, And Statistics?" ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2008, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-4-shoots-herself-with-grandmothers-gun-in-sams-club/452427/85 "2008-06-15T00:30:09Z")
[QUOTE=Hampshire] Guns don’t shoot 4 year-olds, 4 year-olds shoot themselves. [/QUOTE] If we take away all the hand guns from 4 year-olds, only grandmothers will be left armed. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-4-shoots-herself-with-grandmothers-gun-in-sams-club/452427/86 "2008-06-16T21:19:16Z")
[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright] I didn’t expect to have to explain that, and now that I have to it’s hard to put into words - but here goes. 1. Shool shootings account for a large proportion of the “mass” shootings that take place (in the US). 2. Schools are not shot up because they’re “soft” targets, but because they’re full of kids, and kids do stupid things. ( I suppose that’s a bit of an assumption on my part, but I think a fair one since we haven’t seen a rash of senior-center shootings and so on) 3. Seems a bit unfair to count school shootings when we analyze the data, on those grounds. 4. It would be particularly unfair given that AFAIK the really draconian anti-gun-near-school policies were enacted after Columbine, Paducah, etc., and we’re presumably talking about statistics that go back much farther. Of course, this is purely hypothetical at the moment since I can’t actually find any statistics grouping shootings by location type. :mad: [/QUOTE] [School shooting myths debunked by MSNBC](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15111438/). Of particular interest to this discussion is #10 only: > [@](#): > > **"Myth No. 10. “School violence is rampant.”** > > It may seem so, with media attention focused on a spate of school shootings. In fact, school shootings are extremely rare. Even including the more common violence that is gang-related or dispute-related, only 12 to 20 homicides a year occur in the 100,000 schools in the U.S. In general, school assaults and other violence have dropped by nearly half in the past decade. So, it would seem that schools, when you consider the whole of them rather than the very, very few in which a shooting occurs, are indeed gun-free zones. Or at the worst, if guns are indeed present, they’re not being misused. ---
**Author:** ![NurseCarmen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5daacb/32.png) [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2008, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-4-shoots-herself-with-grandmothers-gun-in-sams-club/452427/87 "2008-06-17T18:20:38Z")
**ExTank** , I’m going to have to agree with **RNATB** , those cites are terrible, and your logic for using them is tortured. I think you’d best cede that point. ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2008, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-4-shoots-herself-with-grandmothers-gun-in-sams-club/452427/88 "2008-06-17T21:41:57Z")
[How’s](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1528040/Home-Office-attacked-over-crime-figures.html) [these](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1528040/Home-Office-attacked-over-crime-figures.html) [apples?](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1534475/Crime-figures-%27don%27t-add-up%27.html) ---
**Author:** ![rayh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@rayh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rayh)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2008, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-4-shoots-herself-with-grandmothers-gun-in-sams-club/452427/89 "2008-06-17T22:03:18Z")
[QUOTE=ExTank] [How’s](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1528040/Home-Office-attacked-over-crime-figures.html) [these](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1528040/Home-Office-attacked-over-crime-figures.html) [apples?](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1534475/Crime-figures-%27don%27t-add-up%27.html) [/QUOTE] You posted two links to the same site saying crime reports should be handled by an independant body and the other site says violent crimes are over reported. How does this support your position? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-4-shoots-herself-with-grandmothers-gun-in-sams-club/452427.md?page=4)