Some facts about guns in the US

No, I'm not. You do in plain fact and repeatedly, after repeated correction, continue to assert that you have a 1% chance of dying by gun, and that the possession of guns by other people is to blame. I quoted you asserting that.

Your abuse of statistics, as in that one typical example, is at the level of climate denialists, racial supremicists, intelligent design proponents, and so forth.

Your actual odds of dying by gun are probably (unless you have a clandestine drug or sex problem) around the level of dying by earthquake, lightning strike, food poisoning, falling, etc. They are far below your odds of dying in a car crash, even after you lowered your crash death odds by raising other people's with your heavy and unstable and visibility curbing SUV.

Apparently you think your neighbor's population averaged odds of suicide by gun are appropriate matters for State intervention - even Constitutional amendment to allow preemptive ("precrime"?) confiscation of his firearms from his home - while your boosting of that neighbor's odds of being killed by your car is nobody's business but your own.

 

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suicide is a right
not a privilege
and
gun deaths by suicide account for only a tad over a third of suicides, while accounting for almost 2/3 of gun deaths.
for suicide, you are more likely to die of poison, or hanging
and for violent deaths by automobile, unless you're a farmer, then farm machinery and exhaustion are the main manglers.

 

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suicide is not a right... it is a terrible "option" that people "choose" only when society has failed them so completely that they honestly cannot see what they have to live for...

Note: I do NOT consider "death with dignity" to be suicide...

 

People with terminal diseases, often in agonizing pain, will sometimes choose suicide over continuing to live in pain. They do this even when within loving families and with all the support society can muster. I think they should have that right.

 

suicide can be said to be the ultimate act of a man of action

I had a colleague once: He was a handsome and intelligent young man and seemed to have a great future ahead of him. We had worked on a project for hundreds of hours, then took a break. When we were due to resume and bring the thing to fruition, I was told of his suicide, to which i responded "rotten stingy bastard, hundreds of hours wasted".....................I suspect that I'm a tad more compassionate now. May he rest in peace.

 

Venn Overlap

I would assert that these two conditions are not necessarily mutually exclusive. That is to say, I disdain suicide by Sisyphan resolution, and certainly would not deny the valid psychoemotional appeal of your characterization, but the ability to die is a fundamental right of the human condition. It is not a right to be celebrated, but, rather, reserved for the most sacred of considerations. And we must bring the sacred to the sunlight; if we do not understand suicide—and, as a society or even in the context of the general human endeavor, we do not understand suicide—we cannot hope to resolve it.

 

I am largely in agreement.
But what if someone is suffering uncontrollable severe pain?
Pain that is not relieved by Morphine.
It isn't much spoken about, but many cancer patients have periods of uncontrollable pain.
What if that pain was continuous?

In that case, would increasing the dose of Morphine until the patient dies be acceptable?
If I had a relative suffering such pain, I would prefer that to be done.

 

Again, I do not consider Death with Dignity to be Suicide - in a situation like this, where the prognosis is death anyway, allowing the person to choose to die at their time on their own terms, instead of living with a poor quality of life and in pain, is something that SHOULD be granted.

This is a sad case indeed, but I reckon there was some underlying cause that, had it been resolved, would have prevented him from wanting to take his own life. Depression is NOT a natural state of being - it is something that happens due to outside forces or, occasionally, from an internal chemical imbalance. If the person is able to put out a cry for help, and those around him/her are capable of recognizing it, then they CAN be helped. Trust me... been there, done that, survived several suicide attempts.

Again, the right to die is, as you said, a fundamental right; the CAUSE of that death is what needs to be addressed. Suicide is not an answer - it is an escape. It is the option one turns to when they believe they have nothing left worth living for, nothing to gain by fighting anymore, and no reason to try to make things better. It is a pivotal decision that must be made with a level head, but is often forced upon a person when they are at their weakest. Death with Dignity is not suicide - death with dignity is allowing a person whose standard of living has fallen to the point of being completely undesirable due to illness, injury, or otherwise incurable, irreparable circumstances.

Please understand - I'm not trying to condemn those who commit suicide... again, I've been there. I know just how deep that hole goes, how hopeless you can feel, and how pointless continuing on can seem. I also know that it CAN get better, if the right people can discover you are feeling like that. In death with dignity, there IS no way for it to get better, be it because of a shortcoming of science, medicine, or the passage of time.

If someone were in pain, then the source/cause of that pain should be found and remedied. If this is impossible (fatal injury, disease, etc) then Death with Dignity should be an option.

For someone such as a cancer patient though... my grandfather beat cancer several times. It sucked at times, as the treatment took his strength, his hair, and his mobility... but afterwards, when he was cancer free again... it was all worth it.

If he had chosen to simply be put down, instead of beating the cancer, he would have missed out on so much... including the birth of his second grandson, seeing his first grandson (me) get married, and so much more.

If the cancer is unable to be treated with a poor prognosis, then give the option... but terminating a life should NEVER be the first option.

 

No. That is silly.

You posted 1% as your risk of death by gun. You were quite irate that your risk of death by gun is 1%. That rate includes the 2/3 (not 1/2 - look at your own numbers) of gun deaths that are suicides (minimum - provoking one's death by gunfire, throwing reason to the wind and ending up getting shot, and similar quasi-suicides, are not counted). You are including the rate of other people's suicides by gun in your risk of death by gun.

Why yes. We noticed. That means that the calculation of your chances of death by gun starts at around .3%, and drops significantly from there as you avoid joining an inner city drug gang, renting a slum apartment in Newark, addicting yourself to meth, etc.

Now you are claiming your risk of suicide by gun is made higher by the chances that somebody else's gun could be purloined by somebody else and end up killing somebody else. I can't parody that.

You posted that your risk of death by gun is 1%. And you want to get guns out of those other people's homes based on that "unacceptable" level of risk to yourself.

You made the statement that your chance of death by gun was 1%, and that you wanted the guns removed from other people's houses because of that "unacceptable" fact. No twisting required.

And that was just the one example of your use of statistics in the issue, the most obviously nuts.

This kind of abuse of statistics, whether from incompetence or calculated deception, is typical of the extremist positions in many arenas - but is not usually found in the main stream public discussion on "both sides". Normally one side is flinging the bogus stats, and the other side is using reason and evidence. In the gun control issue, this kind of batshit plays a major public role on both sides.

Most people have little chance of ever gaining protection from owning a gun, and most people are at very little risk of being killed by other people's guns. Although category the first, there, includes many more people than category the second, since almost everyone in the second is in the first but not vice versa.

 

Indeed... the chance of me ever having to use my gun to defend myself is slim... but you know what they say in the boy scouts: Better to have and not need, than need and not have.

 

Love peace and happiness. Do I love my sheep, do I kill for them? Or is there something more for us?

 

I'm the one pointing out that you should use such numbers as starting points for calculating your own risk.

You have (it's posted and linked above on this very thread and in many places, in numerical form - of 30k gun deaths, 20k are suicides). And no, it did not include "suicide by cop" - specifically and explicitly did not, as that was brought in to add to it.

This is not complex reasoning.

Your psychological need for "safety" from guns above everything else may be where that silly !% came from. But nevertheless I supplied you with at least two orders, above - you don't have a gun in the house, aren't in a gang or living and driving in a gang neighborhood, presumably have no addictions or habits that require risky company, are not a racial target of the police, do not work the overnight shift at a gas station or drive a cab in a city, and so forth. So we're down to random murder by a psychotic stranger or stray bullet in your community - that's lightning strike, plane crash, drowned while swimming, hit by tree territory, just as you requested.

There is no "legitimate useful purpose" for allowing swimming without a life jacket, biking without a helmet, or drinking a beer, then. And any of those is more likely to kill someone than your neighbor's firearm is likely to kill you.

Your SUV is more likely to kill your neighbor than his gun is to kill you. Do you have a "legitimate useful purpose" for such extra risk imposition on somebody who never did you any harm?

Yes, I have. I have observed that trying to include purloined gun deaths of other people in your own suicide risk, for example - seriously, not as a joke - is weirdly bizarre. Nuts.

All I've got to go on is what you post here, like this in defense of claiming your own risk of death by gun is 1/100:

and this

where "the probability" was of your own suicide.

Like I said, no parody possible. And I'm sorry to see Beta Gamma Sigma's image is suffering here as well, possibly unfairly.

I don't know whether you want the inevitable means and consequences of your program (" Obviously doing away with our ridiculous drug laws is a good start, but doing away with the guns is also mandatory. ") or not - it would not surprise me if you didn't see them coming. But gun owners are more alert than you are, in that matter.

 

[video=youtube;GjukzUOM0ac]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjukzUOM0ac[/video]​

 

Young (wo)men should have the freedom to develop skills with firearms. I started pre-puberty, first with a 22, then shotgun, then more powerful rifles.
By the time I was mid teens, I simply did not miss(more'n 2-3% of the time). Once the skill is developed, it remains for a lifetime of successful hunting.
The weapon became an extension of my body, as simple as pointing with a finger.

My sons and brothers never learned the skill and do not hunt. Kinda sad, but ............c'est la vie.

 

I disagree. a "childrens book" should be about fun in order to present a serious/necessary topic or an important topic that should be learned: like say "farts" or "everyone poops" or "scabs"... http://www.amazon.com/Childrens-Books/b/ref=sv_b_4?ie=UTF8&node=4
Therefore WHY NOT start telling your children about safety, gun safety, the constitution early on in a fun and friendly manner that children can respond too? or perhaps that is only for topics like "not taking out the garbage and getting killed for it" or "losing a phalange for picking your nose" (Silverstein) ? is THAT any less psychotic when you really think about it? heck... just look at fairy tales and really think about them...

but its ok to sell a book about (and essentially supporting and teaching) little girls who break into other people's homes and steal their stuff? (Goldilocks and the three bears)
Some people can see negative in anything... or cannot see positive in anything. There will always be people complaining and turning the little things into big things (while I was in school, the Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn books were banned for racism)

not necessarily.

Personal Conjecture reinforced by (and based upon) fear and not really relevant

:-D

 

Well, our most traditional children's stories are pretty gruesome. Read the original Snow White, which contains a parable about how women are willing to do almost anything - including mutilate themselves - to get "the prince." (And that's not the most disturbing stuff in the book.) Or Hansel and Gretel, about a cannibal witch who eats children (and is eventually burned to death by children.) The details about her screaming in agony until her death were particularly creepy. Or, heck, any children's book by Dickens. The "all sugar and sweet" kid's stories are a fairly recent development.