Gun Control

You say you like reading death statistics?? Try this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/26/AR2006122600775.html

Quote:

Deadly Story We Keep Missing

By Peter J. Woolley
Wednesday, December 27, 2006; Page A19

The non-story of 2006 was also the non-story of 2005. It is a non-story every year going back decades. Yet the number of people who die in car crashes in the United States is staggering, even if it is absent from the agenda of most public officials and largely ignored by the public.

When all is said and done and the ball begins to drop on New Year's Eve, 44,000 people, give or take several hundred, will have died in auto accidents this year. To put that number in perspective, consider that:

? At the 2006 casualty rate of 800 soldiers per year, the United States would have to be in Iraq for more than 50 years to equal just one year of automobile deaths back home.

? In any five-year period, the total number of traffic deaths in the United States equals or exceeds the number of people who died in the horrific South Asian tsunami in December 2004. U.S. traffic deaths amount to the equivalent of two tsunamis every 10 years.

? According to the National Safety Council, your chance of dying in an automobile crash is one in 84 over your lifetime. But your chances of winning the Mega Millions lottery are just one in 175 million.

? If you laid out side by side 8-by-10 photos of all those killed in crashes this year, the pictures would stretch more than five miles.

? If you made a yearbook containing the photos of those killed this year, putting 12 photos on each page, it would have 3,500 pages. If you wanted to limit your traffic-death yearbook to a manageable 400 pages, you'd either have to squeeze more than 100 photos onto each page or issue an eight-volume set.

Somebody want to talk about outlawing cars??

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Absolutely. I'm all for strict car-control measures.

Ours are much more strict and limiting than yours, I understand. We have had compulsory national seat belts since the 1960's. You guys still don't. We also have random breath testing...over .05 blood alcohol and you lose your licence...no reason needed to test you, police will test every car that passes a random point.

These things limit our freedoms but increase our overall safety. To me, it seems to be a matter of balance. Most countries have less difficulty curbing freedom in such ways, because the concept of freedom seems sacrosanct in the USA.

AUS 8.8 deaths per 100 000
USA 14.9 deaths per 100 000

Source:
http://www.driveandstayalive.com/info%20section/statistics/stats-usa_indiv-states_per-capita_2003.htm#table-2

You see where I'm goin' here....?

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Eorl wrote:

Absolutely. I'm all for strict car-control measures.

Ours are much more strict and limiting than yours, I understand. We have had compulsory national seat belts since the 1960's. You guys still don't. We also have random breath testing...over .05 blood alcohol and you lose your licence...no reason needed to test you, police will test every car that passes a random point.

These things limit our freedoms but increase our overall safety. To me, it seems to be a matter of balance. Most countries have less difficulty curbing freedom in such ways,
because the concept of freedom seems sacrosanct in the USA.
AUS 8.8 deaths per 100 000
USA 14.9 deaths per 100 000

Source:
http://www.driveandstayalive.com/info%20section/statistics/stats-usa_indiv-states_per-capita_2003.htm#table-2

You see where I'm goin' here....?

Yes; absolutely.
We choose to keep the neck of our
lowly servant, government,
firmly under the boot of the individual citizen.
That is what America is all about.
THAT is the most important thing.
FREEDOM is more important than life itself
David

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You say that as though freedom was an absolute. Yet, it is still a relative and negotiable thing, even in the USA.

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Surely anybody can see the difference between a couple of thousannd gun deaths a year not including suicides and gang-on-gang stuff which is basically a drug problem and not a gun problem, and fifty or sixty thousand deaths a year on the road which is viewed as an unavoidable cost of doing the nation's business. If the greater is commonly viewed as not worth doing anything about, and it is, how could the lesser be viewed otherwise??

Consider what might happen were you to try to run a country of 300 million people without cars and trucks. How many deaths would there be from malnutrition because food was not being distributed reasonably? How much poverty-related/induced death? The basic answer is that it would be in millions and not thousands.

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Eorl wrote:

AUS 8.8 deaths per 100 000
USA 14.9 deaths per 100 000

Source:
http://www.driveandstayalive.com/info%20section/statistics/stats-usa_indiv-states_per-capita_2003.htm#table-2

You see where I'm goin' here....?

Certainly. The only place anybody ever goes in Australia statistically, i.e. from some point A in the little SouthEast corner of your island to some other point B in the same corner of it.

The comparison has to be deaths per passenger mile and not per person. If Americans lived in one little corner of North America and let kangaroos, crocodiles, and poisonous reptiles have the other 95% of the place, we wouldn't have much in the way of highway death either.

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The average Australian drives 15 000 Kilometers per year.
The average American drives 13 400 Kilometers per year.
Australia is the size of the USA without Alaska...kind of biggish for an island.

But all of that avoids the point....namely - would more restiction of freedoms be worth better safety and a better standard of living?

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Eorl wrote:

The average Australian drives 15 000 Kilometers per year.
The average American drives 13 400 Kilometers per year.
Australia is the size of the USA without Alaska...kind of biggish for an island.

But all of that avoids the point....namely -
would more restiction of freedoms
be worth better safety and a better standard of living?

NO,
but it wud be worth overthrowing the government
n holding its malefactors to account.

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Eorl wrote:

The average Australian drives 15 000 Kilometers per year.
The average American drives 13 400 Kilometers per year.
Australia is the size of the USA without Alaska...kind of biggish for an island.

But all of that avoids the point....namely - would more restiction of freedoms be worth better safety and a better standard of living?

This year I'm looking at 100K Km/year or more. Much of it through less than desirable urban areas and even more of it through the middle of nowhere where "help" isn't exactly a few minutes away.

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Eorl wrote:

The average Australian drives 15 000 Kilometers per year.
The average American drives 13 400 Kilometers per year.

Bullshit.

Here's a picture of Australia at night from space, notice the lights in the Southeast corner and the darkness everywhere else:

http://www.ozemap.com.au/ozemap/wallpaper/ozfromspacenight.jpg

Why would anybody need to drive at all in such a place?

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gungasnake wrote:

Eorl wrote:

The average Australian drives 15 000 Kilometers per year.
The average American drives 13 400 Kilometers per year.

Bullshit.

Here's a picture of Australia at night from space, notice the lights in the Southeast corner and the darkness everywhere else:

Why would anybody need to drive at all in such a place?

Because walking would take forever.

That's a bit of a dumb question gungasnake. I've posted the facts. If you've got better data, I'll accept it. At the moment, you're just making incredulous declarations out of ignorance.

I grew up in a town very much towards the centre of the country. The nearest doctor was 300 kilometers away.

You still seem to be dodging the question, though.

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Anything other than what I just described has to be statistically insignificant.

Don't take my word, bring up Google Earth and look at the place yourself. You've got Melbourne and Sydney and Canberra and then Brisbaine and Adelaide off a lilttle bit in the one corner of the place and everything else is basically just outback and kangaroos. Anybody driving more than a thousand miles or so a year is just driving around looking at the kangaroos out in the outback, and there really wouldn't be much of a chance of running into anything doing that.

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Repressionists want to remove guns,
saying they are sometimes used to facilitate crime.
They fail to understand that the actual weapon is the HUMAN MIND,
whose cleverness has not been controlled nor restrained (even in prison).

This mind expresses itself perseveringly,
into the manifestation of its felt needs or desires,
and it has FOREVER to do the job that it selects
(e.g., the art of the gunsmith/merchant). Prohibition is futile.

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You trying to tell us that Jack the Ripper and Lizzy Bordon never owned a gun between them??

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Eorl wrote:

The average Australian drives 15 000 Kilometers per year.
The average American drives 13 400 Kilometers per year.
Australia is the size of the USA without Alaska...kind of biggish for an island.

But all of that avoids the point....namely - would more restiction of freedoms be worth better safety and a better standard of living?

Same area, not nearly the same population density though. Australia has what, 20, 21 million people living there?

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McGentrix wrote:

Same area, not nearly the same population density though. Australia has what, 20, 21 million people living there?

Apparently all of them basically in four places.

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When faced with the violent depredations of criminals or animals,
the victim must decide whether to accept them in a DOCILE, submissive manner
( not in keeping with the American character; I offer no opinion, of the Australian character )
or whether to fight back.

I 'd rather go down fighting;
better yet, I 'd rather STAY UP, winning the fight.

What with Man being the tool making species that he is,
I am cognizant that the probability of WINNING over losing
is closely connected with the quality and effectiveness of the equipment that is employed in this enterprise.

The question of whether to fight or give up
( consigning evey minute of his future life to the discretion of the violent predator )
is a very PERSONAL one, that has not been delegated to any GOVERNMENT to decide.
It is a decision upon whose outcome one 's existence depends.

In deciding this, the victim literally bets his life.

David

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FINDING THE GUILTY PARTY:

http://www.newsleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Site=AA&Date=20061130&Category=OPINION09&ArtNo=1130001&Ref=PH&Params=Itemnr=6

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Yes david, I too have always found that there are only 2 potential solutions to any given situation/problem. Perhaps that's beacuse I am as dim-witted as you are.

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gungasnake wrote:

Anything other than what I just described has to be statistically insignificant.

Don't take my word, bring up Google Earth and look at the place yourself. You've got Melbourne and Sydney and Canberra and then Brisbaine and Adelaide off a lilttle bit in the one corner of the place and everything else is basically just outback and kangaroos. Anybody driving more than a thousand miles or so a year is just driving around looking at the kangaroos out in the outback, and there really wouldn't be much of a chance of running into anything doing that.

Right, so your assumptions are obviously right, and my statistics are obviously wrong.
Ok then. Can't argue with that. Ignorance wins again.

(Of course, you could use google earth to see if there any roads outside those cities....for the ten million people who don't live in them)

Still, beside the point. Do you accept that there are aspects of other democracies (or even non-democracies) that the USA could learn from, to become a better country? (Those Australian cities do take 4 of the top 10 most liveable cities....and the USA kicks in at number 25....)

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