Rebuttal to the argument about gun deaths annually

The inanimate object argument is without force - if you read my post early on. It is only a choir argument. The inability of gun folks to realize that our own internal slogans sound specious outside of the choir is a terrible weakness.

 

Could not agree more.

 

I read your post, I don’t know why you don’t think I did. Your post did not address the OP’s original contention, you talked about disagreeing with their beliefs and what they assign blame to. You did not make a connection between that and comparing the number of gun deaths to hospital infection deaths. You still have not.

Let me try a different approach.

What the number of deaths from hospital infections drops below 30,000? Would you then say “OK!! Now the number of deaths is even and we can start enacting gun control!”?

OR

What if the number of firearm deaths rose to 70,000 next year? Would you then say “OK!! Now ENOUGH people are dying, we should enact all those gun control laws!”?

 

Actually, it is pretty simple. Just ask them:

Was no one killed before the advent of the gun?

Best

J

 

To say advocates of gun control should be equally or more concerned about automobile fatalities or deaths from hospital infections is utterly absurd. One would be hard pressed to find individuals who actually believe that the benefits to people and societies from cars, much less hospitals, do not greatly outweigh the costs. An incalculable greater number of lives are saved by the existence of hospitals than deaths by medical errors or nosocomial infections combined. Such is not the case with guns in spite of valiant efforts to inflate statistics to say otherwise. If one perceives no upside to an item that they perceive as a critical element to thousands of deaths each year, its not hard to believe they would support regulation or banning. I don't know why this concept seems so hard to grasp. It should go without saying, but my comments above do not mean I advocate or support gun control. Acknowledging flaws of attempted pro-gun arguments is not advocating gun control.

What exactly is it that you think he is trying to persuade you of?

 

Walkalong, i am confused.

All of my posts have been addressed at the OPs stance and stating my belief that it is not a valid argument, that it does not have a strong logical basis.

You keep replying with things unrelated to the OPs stance OR my critcism of his stance.

I AM ignoring the portions of your posts not related to the OPs stance or my criticism b/c i am trying to stay on the topic originally posted in the thread.

So this, for example....

May or may not be true, but, it is not relevant to the topic of the thread. It has nothing to do with the commonly used pro-gun argument that "you should be focusing on issue X instead of guns, bc issue X causes more deaths than guns."

So, sticking to the original topic, do you think the OPs original argument is valid?

Do you think that the fact that there are 70,000 hospital infection deaths annually has some bearing on issues surrounding gun control?

 

Again, the problem with the OP's line and with all subsequent permutations thereof is the belief that 1) the issue is one in which facts play a significant role and 2) that relative death rates are somehow relevant.

It is an ideological and emotional debate. Either one accepts that the defense of individual life and liberty, aided by the 2nd Amendment baring legislation that would infringe on our natural right to bear arms, merits the deaths caused by illegal use of firearms or you believe that the removal of the threat of violence deriving from their illegal use merits violating the Constitution. Comparing death rates is a losing argument as Justin notes rather well above. Illegally used guns cause a significant number of deaths a year. Illegally used cars cause a significant number of deaths per year, and are the leading preventable cause of death among under 14 year olds.

Neither set of deaths is better or worse than the other. Either you can make the undecided believe that the right of defense, individual or collective, merits the cost to society from deaths caused by illegal use and accidents with firearms, or you can't. "Guns don't kill as many people as hospital infections" is just going to piss people off.

When the utilitarians argue "but if we could save just one life...", then relative harm to society has some relevance. As noted above, a huge number of lives could be saved by banning left hand turns, but we don't. A huge number of lives could be saved by prohibiting anyone who has used alcohol from owning or operating a vehicle. But we don't. Given that more people were killed with hammers than rifles last year, perhaps licensing and registering hammer ownership would be of benefit to society and it is not a constitutionally protected right after all. When the utilitarian argument is raised, there are points to be made about how we regulate any number of things in society. But deaths caused by accidental infections in hospitals has as much relevance to gun control as intelligence does to elected office.

 

Do you think gun control has anything to do with saving lives?

 

Well.... No, not really.

But, the rest of your post is pretty accurate.

 

"Do you think gun control has anything to do with saving lives?"

As an extension of this thought, a rebuttal, though perhaps a bit too undiplomatic for certain scenarios, may be to illustrate how touting gun control measures/philosophies using lives (as they always call the statistics) --which have been thoroughly shown to be, at best, totally uncorrelated with gun control measures-- demonstrates a lack of concern for the deceased in the first place. Kind of a "thou doth protest too much" type of rebuttal, wherein we show that they really don't care one whit about all those dead people, so long as their deaths can be put toward a purpose they find deserving. "We have to make these deaths count for something, while doing nothing to stop them!"

TCB

 

Yes, it should have read ..." in New York State". I am unfamiliar with national figures but I believe rifle related firearms death are well under 5% even at the national level.

 

maybe in NY state, but hammers vs. rifles nationally.... Rifles account for more.

Rifles don't account for a high percentage, for sure, but neither do hammers.

 

Yes it will

The vast majority of people that support gun control do.

 

2011, latest year of national FBI crime statistics: homicides by hammers and clubs: 496; by rifles: 323. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/uc....-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-11

Again, no need to get too hung up on details. The point is that when the utilitarian argument is raised, more lives would be saved by hammer control legislation than by banning AR 15s. That still takes us back to the fact that if people can't be convinced that the right to bear arms in the individual or collective defense from enemies both foreign and domestic merits the cost of accidents and homicides with firearms, then all is lost with that individual.

 

Well, that stat is for any blunt instrument, not just hammers.

Hammers, clubs, rocks, mugs, chairs, frying pans, bats frozen halibut, sticks, bicycles, pretty much anything that goes "thud" when you hit someone. So, unless hammers account for 70% of all blunt instrument deaths, rifles beats hammers.

I see your point, but you really can't point to any single object in that category like 'hammers,' it is a whole cateory of various objects. But, wandering off topic. Still looking for somepne to explain the connection between hospital infections and guns.

 

I still want to know how many people hospitalized with gunshot wounds die of infection contracted in the hospital.

 

If someone attacks me with a frozen halibut, they are going to have a very bad day...

 

Ha ha.. I included that b/c of a story in one of those "dumbest criminals" books i read as a kid. Thief enters home just as unassuming housewife begins dinner preparations. Robber startles her in the kitchen amd she comes out swinging with nearest object.... The hard frozen halibut she had just removed from the freezer. One smack and the robber is down and out with a skull fracture.

True story? No idea (obviously i hope so), but the hilarious image stuck with me.

 

My rebuttal is the numbers of deaths by shooting are awful, but is there any reason to believe that the gun control strategies will impact those deaths? Take crime:

The hoods in my neighborhood in the 1950s and 1960s who had guns did not buy guns at stores or by mail order. They bought guns from fences, drug dealers, bootleggers and other dealers in illegal contraband.

Crininologist Marvin Wolfgang studied 588 homicides in detail going into the background of the murderer, background of the victim and circumstances of the crime, and concluded that few homicides due to shooting would be avoided by the mere absence of a firearm, since the motive would be just as strong and the opportunity just as advantagous to the attacker, substitution of a "lesser" weapon would probably result in the same outcome. He could only cite shootings between armed criminals and police officers as an exception in the cases he studied. And Wolfgang was not bashful about declaring "I hate guns"; however, he did believe that weapons substitution negated the idea that the absence of a gun would change the outcome. He also noted that firearms used in his sample were often acquired off the streets and not by retail sales.

Local cops have confirmed to me that street hoods told me: most criminals acuire weapons illegally. As professors James Wright and Peter Rossi point out in their 1986 analysis of the federal armed felon survey, criminals acquire weapons from hard-to-regulate sources in hard-to-regulate ways. Samples of criminals in inmate surveys published by the National Institute of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Statistics for 1991, 1997 and 2004 consistently show that the majority of criminals do not get their guns from controllable sources.

Given the crime triad of motive, opportunity and means, motive is the real killer. Means is tertiary.

 

"...more lives would be saved by hammer control legislation than by banning AR 15s."

Recently a local Iraq war vet was found dead from being beaten with a hammer and stabbed with a knife by home invading druggies looking for pain meds and money to buy drugs; they also said they believed he owned guns they could steal and trade for drugs.

I do not believe that hammer control legislation would have any impact on hammer crimes, except maybe increased theft of hammers from construction sites to be fenced on the black market. The money wasted on hammer control policy would be better spendt on hiring additional police or funding up-to-date forensic training.

 

Carl, those are all fine arguments.

I am focused on trying to figure out if smart pro-gun advocates really think that the "X kills more ppl than Y" argument presented by the OP is an argument with any logical basis.

You find it a LOT from pro-gun ppl attacking gun control advocates:

"If you really care about saving lives, you should be focused on....

(take your pick)
Traffic Fatalities (most common)
Medical Malpractice
Heart Disease
Hospital Infections
etc. etc.

...because that kills more people than guns."

I think that is a weak, illogical argument. Traffic/Medical/Etc. deaths have nothing to do with gun control, but pro-gun ppl bring them up repeatedly. I can understand your argument. I may disagree, but at least their is a logical connection between your argument and gun laws. I don't see any connection between guns and traffic accidents.

Do YOU think it is a worthwhile argument to make? Why?

Also, I'd be interested in that study you cited.

 

Well pizzaguy has 451 posts on this forum. Roughly 290 of them are pushing his anti gun propaganda. Yall are wasting your time with him.

 

My last effort, based on hard won experience over 20 years as a lobbyist, issues, and crisis management professional. Relative death rates is a total fail because in a debate you will be stopped dead in your tracks from a media impact perspective by this: "No guns mean no gun deaths. That means thirty odd thousand Americans whose lives were taken by firearms would still be alive. You tell their mothers, wives, sisters and brothers that they should be focused on traffic fatalities instead." After that everything you say is playing catch up and you have lost the ability to influence the undecided.

One reason the gun owner discrimination advocates are so effective is that they understand this. They don't get hung up on the truth. They focus on emotional arguments peppered with inaccurate or downright lying "facts" and statistics. Meanwhile our side castigates them for not knowing the difference between a clip and a magazine or perhaps for lumping frozen halibut in with hammers. RKBA proponents are among their own worst enemies in public debate because they can't decide whether they want to be effective or just smarter than the other side.