Quote:
Originally posted by DBPM04:
In one year, firearms killed no children in Japan, 19 in Great Britain, 57 in Germany, 109 in France, 153 in Canada, and 5,285 in the United States... More than 800 Americans, young and old, die each year from guns shot by children under the age of 19."
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This is misleading in a number of ways:
First, there are about 11,000 TOTAL firearm related deaths in the U.S. excluding suicides. Therefore they must be including suicide deaths in their figure. We know from looking at the suicide rates in Japan that firearms do NOT have a causal effect on suicide. Japan has a greater number of suicides than the U.S. and half the population giving them a suicide rate of more than double that of the U.S.
Second, the figure also includes 'children' who are in fact adults in an attempt to pad the number and play on emotion. Note that the CDC identifies children in a category of ages 0-14 in the study found at:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4845a1.htm and show only 630 firearm deaths in 1997, far fewer than the 5285 stated. The next CDC category is 15-24 years old. The higher death count from this group is needed by certain organizations to bump up their claims of 'children' being killed, so they 'borrow' some numbers from this more adult group. The intent is to associate the higher figure with the term 'children'. This is an attempt to put the emotional image in the mind of people who do not question what they read into thinking that the babies we see in diaper commercials on TV (children) are being killed with guns when in fact it isn't happening. In Texas an adult is 17, 18 year olds are allowed to vote and to be sent off to die in wars everywhere in the U.S. Hardly children. These 'children' that they count are also frequently in 'high risk' groups, such as being members of gangs or involved in drug activities. (This was shown as THE SINGLE MAJOR factor in firearm related deaths by the Kellerman study back in 1986. Kellerman was trying to prove a casual effect of firearms, but with the raw data that he did provide it showed that 'high risk behavior' was the actual causal effect.) As a result we see a higher incidence of firearm related death in the 14-19 year olds than in the 0-14 year olds. This tells us again that guns have no causal effect. If it did we would see a even impact across all age groups to adulthood as we would see with something like an anthrax virus infection or the effect from radioactive fallout. To see the cause we would need to look at a study of, parental influence in the home, economic standing, criminal background, drug involvement, and general 'high risk' behavior.
Third, the statement neatly tip-toes around countries that do not fit such as Israel and Switzerland. Both countries have higher rates of private firearm ownership than the U.S. yet have lower firearm related child deaths and lower firearm related child death rates. It also does not mention those countries with lower private gun ownership rates yet have more firearm deaths, the masacre of refugees in, I think, Ruwanda a few years ago comes immediately to mind.
Fourth, using the logic in that statement we could also say that we have a much higher number of deaths of children in the U.S. due to automobile accidents. The U.S. a higher number of deaths due to drowning in swimming pools. Why is that? It is because the U.S. has 275 million people, a larger population than any country mentioned. We also have more automobiles, more highways, more streets, drive further due to spread out urban areas, and have more privately owned swimming pools. It is a case of you couldn't die of a heart attack if you didn't have a heart. Sure we could do away with all the deaths that doctors and hospitals cause (a much higher rate than gun related) by doing away with them, but the benefit of having them outweighs the risks. Same with cars and swimming pools. We accept a certain death rate for the convienience of having them. The misuse of roughly 260,000,000 guns in the U.S. equate to about 10,000 NON-justifiable homicides and accidental deaths in the U.S. (.00384%) versus the lawful 2,500,000 to 3,000,000 uses each year to prevent a crime and a multitude of lawful uses daily for shooting, hunting, and competition purposes. As I stated in an earlier posting I personally accounted for two of those self defense uses in 1989.
[This message has been edited by Jeff OTMG (edited April 18, 2001).]