crushbup
Need some info to use for argument
I've been talking to someone who is somewhat anti (isn't necessarily against gun ownership, but is afraid that a normal person could just "snap" and start shooting people). I would like to remove that fear, as I read somewhere on THR that sane people cannot suddenly "snap" and go wild.
Is it a reasonable fear to expect one in a billion on any given day to go berserk and randomly start killing?
If that is something this person fears, how does that person leave the house? Does that person drive a vehicle, fly in a plane, or see a doctor and take meds? These three choices are much more likely to get that person killed than someone "snapping" on the order of a thousand times more likely. Someone "sapping" and killing people only happens a few times per year in the U.S.; not daily.
"In Hospital Deaths from Medical Errors at
195,000 per Year USA"
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/11856.php
# 2000 — 41,945 — 282,216,952
# 2001 — 42,196 — 285,226,284
# 2002 — 43,005 — 288,125,973
# 2003 — 42,643 — 290,796,023
# 2004 — 42,836 — 293,638,158
# 2005 — 43,443 — 296,507,061
# 2006 — 42,642 — 299,398,484
Vehicular deaths in the U.S. have exceeded 40,000 per year for a long time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year
in 2000
10,801 homicides
776 unintentional
270 legal intervention
http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/ficap/forum/docs/sept04lemaire.pdf
776.4 deaths per 100,000 in the U.S. from all causes in 2005.
10.3 deaths per 100,000 in the U.S. firearms death rate in 2005. If you removed suicides from this number it would be less than 5 per 100,000.
http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparemaptable.jsp?ind=58&cat=2
Gary Kleck, Ph.D. is a professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University in Tallahassee and author of "Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America" (Aldine de Gruyter, 1991), a book widely cited in the national gun-control debate. In an exclusive interview, Dr. Kleck revealed some preliminary results of the National Self- Defense Survey which he and his colleague Dr. Marc Gertz conducted in Spring, 1993.
American civilians use their firearms as often as
2.5 million times every year defending against a confrontation with a criminal, and that handguns alone account for up to
1.9 million defenses per year.
http://www.rense.com/general76/univ.htm