Keep chanting that like a mantra, make it true for you.
The “danger of guns” is indeed overestimated in terms of a source of accidental injuries to young children (although the promotion of safe storage is so quick and easy to do with documented efficacy, that doing it makes a fair amount of sense anyway). The “danger of guns” to society as a whole however is not being overestimated and is not hysteria. How to address that danger rationally and in ways that fully respect the rights of gun owners is a matter of some (to put it mildly) debate.
Pool exposure (which includes at home) is a mixed bag as the benefit of knowing how to swim is over time greater than the risk or drowning in early childhood. Advocating elimination of pools would very likely cause more harm than good at multiple levels. The analogy is a bad one and by now you really should just give it up.
As for your comment about Sandy Hook … would there have been no impact if the shooter’s mother had her guns locked up with the ammunition locked up separately and out of access of her son who she knew was not completely stable?
Why the special federal level effort for guns? Guns are fungible. Guns bought by the dozens legally in one state with just a state ID showing you are over 18, can be easliy brought to another state and diverted into the illegal market. That’s less of an issue with trampolines or pools. Gun deaths overall, not just accidental deaths, are a bigger issue than pool deaths. The Federal level activity is addressed at those deaths more than the accidental death numbers.
I don’t know about this. Your comment made me go to check the CDC WISQARS injury report database.
In 2011, there were 2,332 instances of unintentional non-fatal firearms injuries to individuals 18 and younger (a similar amount, 2313 was reported for 2010).
By way of comparison (recognizing that the rate of exposure to risk will vary significantly), 953 youth 18 or younger drowned in 2010. There were 6,012 instances in this same age group of non-fatal near drownings.
I don’t think we should suggest that the risk of injury or death associated with unintentional firearms incidents is overstated.
I’m equating the volume of discourse with the size of the body count, and suggesting it would be the same for pools.
I never said you were for dead kids, I said you should suck it up that your ped is pushing gun safety just because you, personally, don’t happen need the info.
Did I miss the cite where pediatricians are trying to ban guns at the federal level? All I recall is your pediatrician asked about guns in the home.
It’s not what she said, it’s the way she said it.
It’s true. Even on this board, when someone posts something like “I feel there should be better safety regulations for storage of guns, and maybe a better system of checks to make sure that known psychos can’t buy guns.”
It seems to go through some kind of translation matrix, because some folks seem to see that post as saying:
“I want to ban all guns and make sure we grab them away from any law-abiding citizens. Grabby grabby grabby.”
It occurred to me that this is may have something to do with subtle reads on the part of the pediatrician. If the patient looks like Ted Nugent she may ask about guns, while a Michael Phelps lookalike might get asked about pools. Did you wear your Cabela’s cap or your Speedo to the apointment?
On a more serious note, if you live in an affluent area, trampolines and pools would be reasonable things to ask about, as well as guns. In a poorer area, guns would still be important to ask about, the other things may be less so.
Huh?
Your numbers quote almost 3 times as many non-fatal drownings as non-fatal firearm injuries. The thread and discussion however has been focused on deaths. There you only quote the drowning death rate.
Most recent data is 2010. Over 10 times as many deaths due to accidental drowning (not all at pools, natural bodies of water to bathtubs and buckets included) than accidental firearm deaths, 1-14 yo: 687 to 62. 22 million children in 11 million homes live in households that contain at least one firearm. That means the risk that having a firearm in a home will result in an accidental death of any particular child so exposed is one out of 177,000. This is nonzero and nontrivial and again safe storage is an easy and effective health promotion. But yes that risk tends to get exaggerated in these discussions (as do charges of “hysteria” for promotion of safe firearm storage).
Of course I agree that restricting the danger of guns, and the benefit of safe storage promotion (or indeed removal from the household), to the prevention of accidental deaths only, is also not completly reasonable. But the other benefits are harder to quantify would be a source of much contention.
Well, my sense is that most pediatrcians are interested in preventing firearms injuries even when they don’t result in death. I know my public health friends are. Non fatal gun shot wounds can still be very impairing.
The OP is about pediatricians warning about firearms safety, without being specific to preventing death.
Missed the edit window:
By the way, what is the denominator for drownings? How many kids swim, boat or take baths? Or even just live in households with baths?
And again, by the numbers you quoted, almost three times as many non-fatal drownings as accidental childhood firearm injuries. No data to cite but as an impression many non-fatal drownings are associated with significant brain damage; most non-fatal firearm deaths are not. Minimally many more non-fatal drownings are hospitalized. Unless you have severity of sort of injury using raw number there is meaningless (number one non-fatal in childhood is “fall”, followed by “struck against”).
Reasonable point as far as the denominator goes. All kids are at risk of drowning, true, even with no pool exposure. So sure one could take those drowning deaths and divide them by about thee since “only” 1/3 of households contain at least one gun. Elimination of exposure to drowning risk (by say not owning a pool) is not an option and learning to swim is protective over the long term.
Still it is valid to compare the visceral response about accidental gun deaths to thinking about airplane disaters and how so many are more scared about flying than driving even though statistically driving is riskier. Doesn’t mean we should not care about air safety. Or firearms in the home. It is true that just because those both grab the headlines when they occur does not mean that they are the most important item about and that they are still reasonable issues to address.
And a FEMALE pediatrician at that! Which of course changes the entire dynamic. Had it been a man, he would’ve said “you know I’m supposed to ask you about guns in the home, so let’s just say I did.” And they’d exchange laughs and back slaps, and part ways with “see you at the range!”
But a man, a proud gun owner, a rootin’-tootin’ defender of our Constitutional rights, being questioned by the weaker sex? The effrontery! Insult upon injury! Would a lowly slave girl dare to ask a Roman centurion whether he stored his sword safe from the reach of his children when he wasn’t protecting the empire from the Barbarian hordes? Tchah right, as if!
Sure I agree. Its not like I’m offended by gun safety.
The danger of accidental gun injury seems to be overestimated (At least with young children… and assault weapons), we’re not talking about the effect of guns in society are we? I thought we were talking about the risk of accidental death by having a gun in the home.
The AAP doesn’t advocate getting rid of guns (except the super duper dangerous assault weapons :rolleyes:) they advocate against having them in your home. Swimming pools outside the home tend to be safer than swimming pool int the back yard because they have life guards.
I don’t think you need a pool in your back yard to learn how to swim, I didn’t have one growing up and I can swim well enough to stay afloat if the boat sinks. Back yard swimming pools are particularly dangerous for younger children and become less dangerous as the kids get older.
So maybe I should have been clearer that I was talking about back yard swimming pools. But in light of that, is advocating getting rid of back yard swimming pools still a bad idea?
I don’t think separating ammo from the firearms would have made a lick of difference. What might have made a difference would have been a gun safe, you can get a cheap one from Costco for under $1000 but if you can get into most home safes if you have a lot of time, a power drill, a fire axe and a crowbar. The actual steel on those things are usually less than a 1/6th of an inch, most are closer to 1/10th of an inch of steel. You can literally chop your way into a 12 gauge gun safe with a fire axe, it takes some time and a strong back. A wood splitter and a sledge hammer will probably get you into a 8 gauge safe in a reasonable amount of time. A good diamond saw will get you into just about any safe. If you want quarter inch steel you are talking about thousands of dollars for a safe. A good one that notifies the police if someone tries to break in is even more expensive.
I don’t know the details of how her son got her gun and I don’t know if anyone could have reasonably predicted that the Newtown shooter was going to kill his mom then kill 20 little children. AFAICT, he was autistic (diagnosed with aspergers), he was not diagnosed with mental illness and wasn’t considered to be a danger to himself or others. Are autistic kids more likely to become mass murderers? I don’t know but I am afraid of a stigma attaching to autistic kids unnecessarily.
I think you are conflating child safety in the home with the effect of guns on society. Fungible or not having a gun in the home is being discouraged. Having pools in the home is not. I don’t think the AAP wants to ban any guns other than Assault Weapons (which doesn’t make sense to me). If the AAP is trying to reduce gun violence generally, then they need to rethink their approach.
Lets try to limit our discussion to children under 14 and compare deaths with deaths and injuries with injuries.
The body count is higher with pools. Both on an absolute basis and reletive to the number of homes with pools/guns.
There was a cite upthread with the AAP policy positions on guns and I believe they want to ban assault weapons at the federal level. My pediatrician also advised us to get rid of guns int the home.
I don’t think my pediatrician would know what Cabela’s is.
Northern Virginia is a diverse area and I think she takes blue cross so just about anyone with a job that provides medical benefits could go to her.
It seems to me that the proper fractions to use is number of young kids accidentally shooting themselves over the number of households that have young kids and guns versus the number of kids who drown in back yard pool over the number of homes with young kids and back yard pools.
It seems pretty clear that the rate of drowning to death in a back yard pool among kids who live in homes with back yard pools is higher than the rate of accidental shooting death among kids who live in homes with guns.
Do you write romance novels or porn scripts? 'Cause if not you should look into it.
So you don’t think that young kids accidentally shooting others should be something we concern ourselves with here?
Why do you want to exclude 15, 16 and 17 year olds?
Why only backyard pools?
How is it clear? You have this habit of just expressing your opinion as if it were established fact and expecting everyone else to agree.
You need to show me the numbers and sources for your assertion.
I mispoke, I meant any accidental death of a minor in the home.
I exclude 15 16 and 17 year olds because my child is only 3. I tried using partial data that nonly coverede kids up to 4 but you complained about incomplete data so I started using the 14 year old and under data because it was more complete. If we talk about gun deaths generally, then the 15, 16 and 17 year olds tend to be homocides that occur irrespective of guns in the homes and based more on gang activity.
I would have thought limiting the number of pools in the denominator would be helpful to your side. I was just trying to be fair.
First off it is only reasonable to promote a behavior that might actually be done. Soft sell of gun removal is reasonable because some might actually do that. Safe storage more will. Removing a pool, honestly no one will. Using it safely? They’ll try.
Numbers are here, here, and here. I’ve crunched them making some assumptions (such as that almost all home pools are in households with children and that the relative rate of deaths in public to private are relatively proportionate to the nonfatal injuries. Also the same 2 children per household that the gun numbers use.) It is of note that 4 and under roughly 15% of drowning deaths are in bathtubs. I am not advising removing them.
Bottomline comes to roughly 1 in 120,000 risk per child. A bit less than the number for gun deaths and also a nonzero but not huge risk. And a very rough number based on some assumptions that seem reasonable but may not actually reflect reality, so a huge grain of salt. Could be off by quite a bit either way. I am open to other sources if you got em.
Probably (possibly) a pediatrician who advises not having a gun in a household should also advise against having a pool*, and in either case a pediatrician who is aware of either being in a household would being doing some good to promote an awareness that these items come with some risk and promoting safe practices in both cases.
As to the issue of fungibility, you are doing some shell game moving here. The health promotion is soft sell, better not to have a gun, hard sell store them safely if you got 'em, and pretty solid gun controls at a Federal level. It is the latter that the fungibility issue motivates. It is the lack of advocacy for Federal level action (as opposed to asking pediatricians to advocate at local levels for fencing laws and inspection laws) for pools that you were complaining about.
*I am not sure I really believe this though. The pool also gives benefits to the child. Exercise and family fun. The gun does not. The benefits of pool ownership to the child likely offset that small risk; not so with the gun. Life is not risk free; the goal is to rationally choose what risks are worth what benefits.
Families can’t have fun shooting? Hunting doesn’t result in some degree of aerobic fitness? Shooting an intruder isn’t of any benefit?
Err… in my state at least, children as young as six can shoot under adult supervision. I’ve seen gradeschoolers at my local gun range shooting with .22s at zombie targets, and they sure as hell looked like they were having fun. Further benefits that might be supposed are demystification of guns and safety training.
Given the absurd hysteria over children even pretending to use guns (gun pastry anyone?), the over-reaction of child protection services, and the general hostility of liberal progressives to gun ownership, some worry that the day could dawn where having a gun in the household will be defined by the state as child abuse. So having pediatricians grill parents about their household guns sounds disquieting.