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InvisibleBlack -> RE: Defended my home (12/11/2009 12:44:44 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy
quote:
ORIGINAL: InvisibleBlack
I agree with you it's stupid and dumb. I agree with you, it's irresponsible and the results are tragic. I'm asking how you intend to ensure that it's impossible that it could never happen to anyone in the country under any circumstances.
You can't. That still doesn't support a total ban on guns.
I'm not talking about a total ban on guns. The point I was trying to make way back pages and pages ago, is that there's some level of risk that you just have to accept. You've already accepted it.
According to the same page where I got the accidental firearm statistics, 650 children die in America each year from "accidental poisoning". That means they probably ate or drank something in the house that killed them - lacquer remover, furniture polish, Mom's valium, whatever. Most medications now come with child safety caps. I'm sure most homes in America have cleaning fluids, bug spray, or whatever in them and in most of them they're kept under the sink or in a cabinet or the basement or whatever.
Since there hasn't been a huge outcry I've heard anytime in the past decade to "make households safer for children" or to deal with the "child poisoning epidemic" (except when it comes to eating lead paint chips for some reason) - it looks to me that here in America we just pretty much accept that 650 children are going to die every year from accidently ingesting poisons. At some level we judge the current risk of a child being accidently poisoned as not worth the time/effort/impact of preventing it. If you haven't ever said anything about it, then I sort of tacitly assume it doesn't bother you.
Individual parents might assess that risk differently and keep all their cleaning solutions in a locked chest with one key. Or put all the automtive fluids in a locked room which their children don't have access to. Most don't and I'm not aware of any federal, state or local law or ordnance mandating how you should or should not store poisonous items around your home - so society as a whole would appear to be comfortable with these risks.
Accidental child deaths due to automobile accidents were 7,677 children and I believe I read somewhere that about one third of child deaths in automobile accidents could have been prevented by proper use of a child safety seat. We'll run with that as accurate and say then that 2,559 children die every year due to their parents failing to use or failing to properly use a child safety seat. If you're willing to charge the parents with a crime and give them mandatory jail time if their children accidental shoot themselves, the shouldn't there be an equal or greater punishment for every accident involving a child where there wasn't a car seat? I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be hard to track automobile ownership and hospital birth records and proactively track down parents who drive and mandate that they provide proof of purchase of a car seat and demonstrate that they've passed a course in its proper usage. That alone might save thousands of children every year.
If we don't judge the risk to children from improper use of car seats as important enough to do something about - if we're comfortable with that level of risk to a child and it's potentially killing thousands of children every year - why is it that improper safety with firearms, which is a far lower risk and which causes the death of hundreds of children every year so much more vital? Are those 151 children more important than the 2,559 who die from their parent's inability to obtain or operate a child's car seat? Is death by being mangled in a car accident viewed as so preferable to death by shooting that we're okay with twenty times as many children dying that way?
Or is it that we just don't really think about it and, well, guns are bad, and a child getting shot with a gun is worse and we need to stop it no matter what?
(As an aside, looking this stuff has changed my opinion about one thing. I was pretty dismissive of child car seats. I mean, when I was kid, we didn't have no stupid car seat - you road in the back and you took your chances. Looking at the numbers, I've changed my opinion. If I ever have children (and I hope to), I'm buying car seats for them when they're small and I'm making sure I know how to operate them properly. Apparently they make a real difference.)
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