I did not realize the numbers were that high. You’re right, this is a probable as significant an issue as gun control and alcohol control.
However, I brought up alcohol control because I think it is a very close analog to the gun control situation, and gun control is currently in the news. The analogy between cigarettes and guns is harder to make, and so I’m not going to pursue it in this thread, although I concede it is of equal or greater importance from a public health perspective compared to gun control.
It’s not nonsense! It was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I’m actually genuinely interested in hearing why these arguments are considered “nonsense” when applied to alcohol but taken quite seriously when applied to gun control.
I think the cigarette analogy to a number of public health issues is very good, based on what you wrote here:
Cigarette smoking is primarily a recreational activity, not necessary for life, that a large fraction of the population partake in harmlessly, but a significant percentage nevertheless cause widespread harm. There is no practical application for smoking. Each cigarette is harmful, even if it does not cause death. Think of the children!
So, shall we require people to register to smoke cigarettes? Limit the sales of cigarettes? Hold cigarette companies liable for the harm that is caused? Restrict smoking in public places? Limit the number of cigarettes one can buy each week? Regulate the content of cigarettes to insure that they do not cause any more harm than what is necessary?
I wouldn’t. They wouldn’t shut the fuck up about how silky smooth the steering wheel is, or would be fascinated by their own *awesome *blinkers going on. And off. And on again. Hey, off again ! Oh, on again. Off-what was I saying ?
At least drunk drivers fall asleep at the wheel and kill all involved quietly.
I don’t agree with the cigarette <-> guns/alcohol analogy and I’m not going to defend it. Cigarettes do not cause acute harm, guns and alcohol do. You are welcome to do so if you wish but I don’t see the relevance.
Of course you don’t agree. Because whatever you may propose (or not propose) to do with respect to the greater danger of cigarettes doesn’t fit into your narrow little gotcha OP.
Here’s a news flash: cigarettes are not exactly like alcohol. Alcohol is not exactly like a gun. A gun isn’t exactly like plutonium, acid rain, Drain-o, or mental illness. The existence of superficial similarities between dangers does not require identical responses to mitigate those dangers. What restrictions one may suggest for cigarettes does not need to be equally applicable to guns, alcohol, Tylenol, airplanes, or any other dangerous thing.
Therefore, your whole OP is crap. But you knew that already.
I genuinely disagree that alcohol and guns are merely superficially similar. They are not identical, but they are more than superficially similar. Bringing up a third thing that is superficially similar to both of them does not disprove this. If you can rationally explain to me why guns and alcohol are so different, I’m interested to hear it. “Guns are different because gun owners are all irrational careless psychopaths” is not such an explanation.
Ever used vodka in self-defence ? Assaulted someone with a Budweiser (not the bottle - the piss itself) ? Heard of some kid who’s dead because they accidentally drank themselves in the head with their father’s Jim Beam ? How about mass boozing sprees or gang-related intoxication-bys ? Have innocent bystanders ever been tragically sloshed in a case of wrong place, wrong time ?
Alcohol can sometimes be the motive or the drive behind harm, although it’s really not its primary purpose. Guns are *enablers *of harm, even though they can be used for different secondary purposes. In that, they are fundamentally different.
E.g. I might want to punch you in the face while drunk when I wouldn’t sober, but I can’t punch you *more *in the face when I’m blitzed. In fact, I’m probably worse a facepuncher when I can barely stand. OTOH, were I actually inclined to punch you in the face sober, a gun would also allow me to shoot you in the nuts at three hundred paces. Which is way better as far as I’m concerned (if only because it saves me the trouble of walking that far), but you might enjoy it less.
This is silly. If you can’t tell there’s substantive differences between drunk driving and crimes involving guns, you’re going to reject anything anyone tells you.
Suffice it to say that I’ve said my peace that one cannot in any seriousness expect potentially dangerous items to be regulated in the same way. Your OP isn’t exposing hypocrisy and double-standards of those who advocate for gun control, it makes you look absolutely silly for trying and failing to convince us that gun crime is just like drunk driving, and then not even having the decency to back away from the notion when called on it.
Yes, the purpose and “mechanism of action” of alcohol and guns are different. But both are mostly unnecessary, recreational products, both are enjoyed by roughly equal fractions of the population, and the results of the legality of both are similar - tens of thousands of people needlessly killed each year.
Since the results of both are the same, I still fail to understand why we should regulate alcohol less strictly simply because it has a different “primary” purpose than guns. The 100,000 deaths from alcohol are acceptable but the 30,000 deaths from guns are not? Because guns are a direct enabler of harm and alcohol is an indirect enabler? That’s a pretty weak argument. If the number of deaths from alcohol were an order of magnitude lower, as opposed to 3x higher than those from guns, I might consider it.
Your claim would be more credible if you actually provided a substantive difference that I could reject. I have explained the substantive similarities at great length. In terms of the effect on public health and the risk to the average citizen, gun crime and alcohol consumption are analogous. Yes, the motivations of the gun criminals and alcohol consumers are quite different. But the results are the same, and this is not English Lit class - I don’t care about motivation. I don’t give drunk drivers a pass because they didn’t mean to.
I do not expect all potentially dangerous items to be regulated the same way. Despite the fact that I have no love for cigarettes either, I have declined to argue that they should be treated in the same way, despite your efforts to drag me into it. Your own posts are proof against your claim.
I have outlined many ways in which gun ownership and alcohol use pose similar risks to public health. As far as I can tell, the only substantive difference is that the deaths of innocent people (several each day) due to drunk drivers are common and accepted, and the deaths of innocent people due to random gun violence are still rare and newsworthy enough that Big Media can exploit them to provoke an emotional response and ratings boost. Additionally, gun ownership is taboo in many circles, but alcohol consumption is widely accepted.
As I pointed out on the previous page, the primary use of firearms is not recreational. If it was, nobody would have a problem with being forced to keep their guns in safes.
So, how do you get to the 100,000 alcohol related deaths per year if you don’t include non-acute deaths due to long term health consequences associated with alcohol?
This tortured analogy of yours spans multiple threads in Great Debates and the Pit. The amount of revision, cherry picking and special pleading you have to do to try to prop it up ought to tell you what a failure it is.
Not to mention that it’s entirely possible to heavily control gun ownership and carrying rights, while still allowing for hunting and target shooting. France does it, England does it, I would assume most of Europe does it actually. In Japan, almost all personal gun ownership is 100% forbidden, a ban that is most strictly enforced by their incredibly dysfunctional police - they still have shooting ranges and shotgun hunting. But their criminals, of which they have *very *many, mostly don’t use 'em - gun homicides occur around once or twice a year, and they make the front page.
So the idea that absent the Second Amendment and lax gun laws, people wouldn’t be able to shoot recreationally (or for subsistence/invasive critter destruction) any more is either misdirection, disingenuous, or very much mistaken.
I have a counter-proposal. Driver’s should be rated according to the BAC that they pass the drivers’ test with. For example, I pass the test cold sober. I then have 3 drinks in an hour, and achieve a BAC of, let’s say, .1. If I pass the test, (a different course, so I haven’t practiced…) my license is rated .1, and I’m good to go If I ever get pulled over with a .1 or lower.
41,000 deaths per year caused acutely by alcohol. This is still significantly higher than the 30,000 deaths of all kinds caused by firearms (including 17,000 suicides).
First - the fact that some people object to storing their guns in safe does not disprove my claim that the primary purpose of guns is recreation. But this is just a nitpick and I concede I can’t prove my claim either. That aside…
Second - plenty of people treat “self-defense preparation” as a kind of hobby, principally gun nuts. Gun control advocates argue that this is not necessary in today’s society and merely a form of recreation for macho morons and insecure people trying to feel tough. I tend to agree.
Third - I have already stated several times that guns have a practical purpose in addition to recreation, while alcohol is solely recreational. Since alcohol has no practical purpose, this is an argument for regulating it as or more strongly than guns, not less.
Are you now going with the 100,000? Or are you going with 41,000? You’re all over the place with this, and it’s just because your argument doesn’t work to begin with.
I’ll consider it a failure when someone explains a difference that does not boil down to one of the three following complaints:
“I think guns are bad and alcohol is not.”
The difference is obvious.
Guns are not exactly the same as alcohol therefore it is impossible to draw any analogy between them.
Unfortunately, no one has ever done a study intended for this exact purpose, or gathered the precise statistics that would allow a direct comparison. Your point that the 100,000 number I found earlier included deaths from chronic alcohol abuse was valid, so I found a cite for the number of acute deaths and it is still comparable (in fact, still greater) to the number of deaths from all firearms. And if you are going to exclude long-term deaths from alcohol abuse from the alcohol figure, you should probably exclude suicide from the gun statistics as well, bringing it down to 13,000 deaths from firearms homicides.
The statistics indicate that the death rate and exposure rate are roughly the same. 30,000 gun deaths in the US. Greater than 30,000 deaths due to acute injury caused by alcohol abuse. Other than giving you something to continually pick at while you avoid addressing my actual point, does the exact number really matter? Regardless of what exact statistics you compare, it is clear that the US per capita death rates due to gun violence and alcohol consumption are roughly equal.
