If you find that kids in a certain school district have a high rate of death by self-inflicted gun shot, you don't ignore it and say "Well, that's statistically insignificant compared to the number of people who die of cancer every year".
It's still a problem and still needs to be looked at and solved.
And the answer is, largely nothing. Because this is nationally statistical noise.
(And on the subject of noise, giving crazed gun men this level of attention I would think is probably one of, if not the; largest factor in causing these incidents to happen.)
It doesn't happen everyday, but there are without a doubt lots of people who are stocking up on guns. Many of them are at least a little wacky, and long-guns are nearly unregulated in most US jurisdictions.
You can call these events statistical noise, but the general public put you in the category where folks who claim that nuclear reactor meltdowns are no big deal are.
Please stop.
All semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines are functionally identical.
The suspect had a rifle, shotgun and handgud. that is 'loaded up'?
Since when does 'requires federal background check' == 'nearly unregulated'?
I take your point. However, the cartridges fired by those guns may differ significantly in their effect, and the media persists in calling the killer's AR-15 a "high-powered assault rifle". This is demonstrably false. If anything, it's a "low-powered assault rifle".
The AR-15's 5.56mm NATO ammunition [1] is designed to be light and portable, and to injure rather than kill. Compare that to, say, the AK-47 and it's 7.62x39 ammunition [2]. The energy of the AR-15 ammo is about 1300J, while that of the AK's is 1500J or more.
The media is causing a certain degree of the fear here. I see three possible reasons:
A. They've got a specific agenda
B. They expect that sensationalism will get them better ratings
C. They're lazy. "High-powered assault rifle" is a hackneyed phrase that just springs to mind, and they don't care enough about accuracy to check it. (of course, the reason it's hackneyed is itself the media's overuse)
7.62x39 is not a NATO round only because it's Russian in origin. It's generally the same is the 5.56 (basically a .223) in that it's a non-expanding bullet typically due to the FMJ (full metal jacket). The light and portable part is mostly due to history - the arms race of more shots equaling more kills, and mobile infantries. Compare that with say the .30-06 or 7.62x54 which are big rounds shot from big, heavy rifles (M1 Garand and Mosin-Nagant, respectively), a holdover from trench warfare.
You can purchase non-NATO 5.56/.223 ammo for hunting, and are typically required to use it when hunting game. The opposite of warfare, it's considered more humane to kill an animal than to injure it.
The fact that they're typically jacketed is where the similarity starts and ends. They are loaded differently, spin at different rates, and so on. But most obviously, 7.62x39 is almost twice the diameter of 5.56.
7.62x39 is probably much more comparable to the .308 Winchester [1] typically used for hunting larger game. According to wikipedia, "the .308 Winchester has become the most popular short-action, big-game hunting cartridge worldwide".
Now, circling back to my original point about the AR-15 (or, really, the 5.56mm cartridge it shoots) being low-power, wikipedia lists the energy of the energy of the .308 bullet at 3600J-3900K, nearly triple the power of the 5.56mm.
So I stand by my claim that the AR-15 is a low-power rifle.
You can purchase non-NATO 5.56/.223 ammo for hunting, and are typically required to use it when hunting game.
This is absolutely false. 5.56mm ammunition is too small for hunting deer, bear, etc. You've got to be a very good shot to take down large animals with something bearing so little energy. That's why hunters tend to use rounds in the .30cal range -- like the .308 I mentioned, and also very commonly the 7.62x39 from the AK, but when hunting it's probably being shot out of an SKS [2]. Wikipedia verifies that "In the early 1990s, the Chinese SKS rapidly became the "poor man's deer rifle" in some Southern areas of the United States".
So there are a variety of larger cartridges used for hunting larger game, generally in the .30cal neighborhood or more, because the 5.56mm/.223 cartridge just doesn't carry enough energy to take down the big animals.
(looks like someone changed the wikipedia link on me! The new link for 7.62x39 is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62%C3%9739mm )
I re-read my sentence and it didn't come out quite right. I agree that 5.56/.223 isn't your typical hunting round. What I meant by my sentence is that you can hunt with it but it isn't generally legal to use non-expanding rounds for hunting.
So I stand by my claim that the AR-15 is a low-power rifle.
No need to move from your position, you are correct. It's an instrument of war and not utility.
There are slight ups and downs depending on the size of game but I agree that the .308 is probably the de-facto starting round for big game.
Disagree, at least depending on the situation.
If you're defending yourself in your home, the most appropriate weapon is likely a short-barreled shotgun. The short barrel is advantageous for being able to quickly maneuver around corners, etc. And the shot requires less (but not zero) accuracy in aiming, and if you use the right size shot, is less dangerous to bystanders because of minimal risk of over-penetration.
While we're on the topic, the gun control people are irrational in trying to ban rifles with pistol-style grips. Such a grip gives no advantage to the bad guys: in Aurora, he was equally able to fire the AR-15 (which had such grips) and the shotgun (which probably didn't). However, pistol grips are useful to a home defender. It would allow the defender to hold the weapon covering the bad guy with one hand, while using the other hand to dial 911. Without the pistol grip, the defender couldn't do that.
PS: Statistically gun owners are less safe. I expect that with reasonable precautions you can cross the threshold into overall safety. But, clearly you need to approach things from the perspective that owning a gun is a larger risk by default and then deal with the new risks.
When the team looked at shootings in which victims had a chance to defend themselves, their odds of getting shot were even higher.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17922-carrying-a-gun-i...
EX: "owner that was armed with a shotgun got shot with his own gun" http://texasfred.net/archives/2671
PS: As to why you have not heard of this. The final appropriation language included the following statement: “[N]one of the funds made available for injury control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control”. These words appear in every CDC grant announcement to this day. [5]
Consider, for example, that people who are more likely to be injured by a gun at the outset are probably more likely to own, and even to have to use, a gun themselves. A drug dealer, for example, is more likely to have a gun because of his line of work. But having the gun isn't what makes it more dangerous; rather, it's more dangerous, so he feels he needs a gun.
Thus, the gun owners have a higher Bayesian prior. It would be very wrong to interpret this to say that owning a gun causes your likelihood of it being used (maybe even accidentally) against you.
I suggest that many people who actually do such studies understand this, and that is a better reason for it not to be in the headlines.
Anyway, did you read the any of the studies or are you filtering new evidence though your basis in such a way that you don't need to reconsider your stance? In proper Bayesian reasoning you need to consider how much this information even if flawed adjusts your probability estimates. Deciding that the risks of some activity is worth it is one thing, deciding that some activity is good and therefore ignoring the risks is not. I just linked a specific case where someones owning a gun resulted in there being shot by that gun so the situation exists. The question becomes how common is it and how common is it to defend yourself with a gun and then compare them. And to do that you need actual evidence not a hunch.
Yes, being shot with your own gun is a rare event, so is using your gun to defend yourself. And at the level of paranoia where spending money on a gun so you can defend yourself becomes reasonable you need to consider other low probability events. The largest downside is how having a gun tends to escalate the violence of a situation, but when evaluating types of guns that takes a back seat to losing control of it.
PS: I am pro gun despite the expectation that it reduces safety. Arthur Kellermann overestimates the risks, but he is a good starting point for the research.
But let me note that we're not just passengers on the probability bus. All those possibilities of accidents or otherwise being harmed by your own weapon are avoidable. I can mitigate all of those dangers by taking responsibility for myself (and imposing the same on my family) to be properly trained and practiced.
On the other hand, there isn't so much that I can do to mitigate the danger I'm in should I or my family find ourselves in the (admittedly very unlikely) situation of being attacked (yes, I can try to avoid some situations to begin with, but I claim that ordinary prudent behavior is the most that can be expected here without getting to diminishing returns).
If I'm under attack, there's little else I can do to protect myself. But ahead of time, I can prepare myself and family to defend ourselves, and at the same time ensure that we won't get ourselves into trouble. I much prefer being the one driving the outcome, rather than the bad guy.
However, I think the parent meant that owners either are shot by someone they know who is using their guns maliciously or non-maliciously, or have the gun somehow removed from their control by an assailant and then killed with it.
Absolutely! One needs to learn how to properly wield the weapon, and to do so safely. But "knowing" this stuff isn't sufficient to be able to do so successfully. You must train: practice at least until you can feel comfortable with the weapon: you know what the trigger pull and the recoil feels like, you are comfortable with the grip in your hand and smoothly bringing it up to position, etc.
For anyone crazy enough to believe what they see on television: you won't be able to just pick up a gun and shoot it properly without some experience. You just won't. Some of this is "book learning". But some of it is "you just need the practical experience". In particular, you will be very surprised at how difficult it is to use a handgun to hit a person-sized target in the far corner of your living room.
If you don't learn and practice with your gun, you're no more likely to be successful than you are at programming without actually doing a real project.
Good advice. In particular, it's too easy to view the gun's style. Do NOT consider that it looks cool, tough, etc. The fact that the .50 Desert Eagle looks menacing is not going to save you from the fact that you (or me, at least) just can't properly shoot a gun that's so big and powerful. Being able to use it properly is much more important.
Also, don't just assume that it's going to be an auto like a Glock, etc. IMHO a simple dual-action [1] revolver is probably a better choice for defensive situations, precisely because it is so simple. A revolver will never let you down: you can always just pull the trigger again to get to the next chamber. By contrast, autos are prone to jamming, not to mention a misfired bullet; either way, you're now at the mercy of the bad guy. Your primary concern in this area is dependability.
[1] "Dual action" means that you may cock it for better trigger pull, but if you don't, you can still fire it with just the trigger
A much harder thing to do is decouple firearms from masculinity - that link is everywhere in the US, from Hollywood to patriotism to those 'defend your daughters against home invading gangbangers' ads.
We don't teach people about actual risks, but we sure hit them with hysterics. We can do this because people feed off what breaks the pattern and then assume it is the pattern.
Massachusetts also is second only to Hawaii in the lowest firearm death rate:
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-death-rate-...
The firearm death rate in MA is 1/5 - 1/6 the rate of high death rate states.
I looked into what it takes to get a gun permit in MA and was surprised by how common sense it is. As long as you have a record of no violent felonies and no current restraining orders you must take a gun safety course. Then you need to submit a signed statement to the chief of police in your town from two adults saying you are an upstanding person. This way the police know who has a gun and they are probably best able to judge if you should have a gun.
The Supreme Court has always said (even in cases where they held a collective right, like Presser v. Illinois) that an attempt at elimination of gun ownership by a state would run afoul with the militia interest by the federal government. This is because the militia interest can only be served by an individual right. You have to be able to bring your gun when you join a militia so you must be able to own one outside this, and so the right has to be broader than the mere militia interest. And I disagree with groups like the NRA here but I think that if the state put forth an inexpensive program for people to learn and be certified regarding gun safety, they could probably require such certification before allowing them to own guns.
Again, I don't see anything in the text or history of the second amendment that would preclude eliminating nuclear weapons ownership. Now, big guns on private warships? That's a more interesting question ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-re...
US has a score of 10.27 per 100,000
Canada has a score of 4.78 per 100,000
Australia has a score of 2.94 per 100,000
England/Wales has a score of 0.46 per 100,000
Japan has a score of 0.07 per 100,000
Also, the grandparent claim of 400x does not stand up to scrutiny. The rate of gun related homicide in the U.S. is approximately 4 or 5 / 100,000. In Australia, it is about 0.5 / 100,000. That's 10x. Which is still quite a difference.
(BTW, your century of gunmen racks up four million. Heart disease in one US year gets to about 600k.)
Oh, my eyes missed a zero.
Actually that was a mistake, see edit above. And post below.
> Ergo... what?
At the rate that this actually happens, you shouldn't worry about it. Is it scary? Yes. Is it tragic? Yes. Is it a probable threat to you or your loved ones? Not really.
If there was a cause X that randomly killed 5 people in the US every year, and there was countermeasure Y that prevented those deaths, you wouldn't implement Y because X isn't a meaningful threat to any single person?
I think the answer should be: it depends. It depends on the costs associated with Y (not just the monetary ones). If it costs multiple billions that would otherwise have gone to, say, cancer research it's probably not worth it. If implementing Y involves installing a 10 PM mandatory curfew for everyone, it's probably not worth it. On the other extreme, if it costs nothing, you'd be negligent to not implement Y.
The point is, your argument is not valid if you don't consider the downsides. Arguably, there is a minimum threshold that needs to be exceeded in order to even make these evaluations, ie. if X only caused 1 death per decade, it might not be worth talking about it, even if it'd cost us almost nothing to implement Y. But I think that threshold should be really low and it really does not apply here.
Arguably? How many separate things are there in the world that kill 5 or more people in the US each year? An awful lot. IIRC the number of people killed in newspaper related accidents in the UK is about that high.
Society only has so much attention, people only spend so much time learning about the world every day, and people only have so much capacity for worry. To the extent that we use up our worry on things that aren't important we lose the ability to worry about the things that are. I don't expect all the ink spilled on this shooting to save a single life, but if a similar amount of popular attention was devoted to teaching people what drowning really looked like it would probably save about 50 lives every year[1].
If you're going to cross the street it doesn't make sense to split your attention between looking to either side for oncoming cars and looking up for falling objects. Falling objects are very rare, and to the extent that you waste time worrying about them you're more likely to get run over.
Well that's a hard question to answer, we still don't know how to evaluate the value of a human life. So in the general case I would say no I would, if it wasn't prohibitively expensive. (Relative to the number of actual damages caused.)
> I think the answer should be: it depends.
Okay. I didn't cover the kinds of issues you talk about in the following paragraph because in context everyone reading should know about them by this point. I could go on about the civil costs of gun control, the material costs, weighed alternative options like better mental health treatment, or not naming the shooter on national TV; etc.
But all that stuff could fit into a form letter. [0]
[0]: http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt
EDIT: I accidentally said "yes" when I meant "no" in the first response paragraph. That is, in the general case; no I would implement countermeasure Y to prevent 5 annual deaths.
Assuming a nuclear attack kills half a million people (small nuclear warhead detonated, for example, in a port), you'd have to have one of those in the US ever decade before it would be significantly more of a risk than being behind the wheel of a car.
And Anthrax? How many people died as a result of the Anthrax attacks in 2001? How scared are people of that? Heck how many people died when the USSR released weaponized anthrax over a small population repeatedly?
There are many risks which aren't worth worrying about.
Thank you for letting me know you have no idea what you're talking about.
If it's not, I would love for you to correct me.
[0]: https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/calculate-perc...
total = 4874326
amount = 4015000
4015000 ÷ 4874326 = 0.823703626
1/5 = 0.2
4/5 = 0.8
Unless you mean it's an awkward phrasing, in which case you would be right.
(No, I haven't taken a statistics course, but the percentage algorithm is taught in like 5th grade, and I don't really need anything more complex than that here.)
(I would also like to note that if I have said something stupid/I said what I wanted to say in a stupid way, theres no way to fix it now even if I wanted to.)
Edit: There is also an edit button if you wanted to fix your wording.
That's understandable.
>Edit: There is also an edit button if you wanted to fix your wording.
You can't edit a post after it's been unchanged for more than an hour. (Or somewhere in that vicinity.)
If a gunman were to go out every day and shoot up a movie theater of say, 110 people, for the next century; the death toll[2] would be:
(110 * 365) * 100 = 4015000
Which is a little more than 4/5ths of double the annual fatalities in 2009. [0]
[0]: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
[1]: Of course, if our hypothetical gunman only targeted movie theaters, going to any single movie theater on a given day might be a risky proposition. If someone can find the number of people who see a movie every day in the US I'd love to know.
[2]: Actually, shot != death; so the death toll would be lower. Of course then you have to think about things like permanent debilitation and traumatic memories, not to mention healthcare costs.
According to this table:
http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/wv8t1/comprehensive_ti...
There were 60 victims, and 38 have been released from the hospital. 8 are still in critical condition, so we can't know if they'll live or die.
I'm going to assume, just for the sake of being on the pessimistic side of estimations (I don't actually believe this.), that everyone in critical care dies.
So presumably that would mean:
60 - 38 = 22.
Depending on the lethality of the shooter and random chance, the death toll may be as much as 2/3rds lower than the total number of those injured.
EDIT: This post originally said:
Which is still lower than the amount of people killed by heart disease in a single year here in the US. [0][1]
At the first citation.