is there a point being made here?

is his point. I do not agree.

more kids die in pools than with guns. Kids dieing of accidental gunfire makes national news, accidental drownings do not.

Do you have evidence to support the claim that more kids die in pools than by guns?

has a nice interactive website that you can use to adjust for age groups and regions.
Here is a nice easy one
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2001/07/27/levittpoolsvsguns/

and we'll be set. I like it.

it would be even better but there are no culture war brownie points for that. Besides, it would not lower murder nor suicide rates.

A child that age has a much greater chance of being murdered with bare hands or a club than being killed with a gun for any reason.

as the mighty gun lobby. Your effort at equivalency is a transparent fail.
Don't worry. Guns will never be banned. Every last child in this country could be slaughtered and people will still be deflecting with this kind of nonsense. We have no pretense to imagine there is actually a shred of humanity on the part of the gun lobby. It's about profits, and murder only increases profits. Every shooting is an opportunity to sell guns. Evil triumphs above human life. Our country will destruct in a smoke of violence, but you'll still have guns, and that's really all that counts.

Actually, every proposed gun ban sells guns. If gun bans saved lives, Jamaica, Mexico and Bermuda would be paradises. USVI, DC, and Chicago would be the safest places in the US instead of El Paso and Lincoln Nebraska.

No one believes that crap. If you need to deceive yourself, that's your problem, but some the rest of us can actually think and check facts.

Over 10 x more people die every year from firearms as from drowning.

The only issue is if Americans actually care about human life. While most Americans do, the gun lobby and their lackeys obviously do not.

Your arguments are weak. This is at least the fourth time you've tried to peddle that same false propaganda to me.

And tottlers, not suicide and murder. Try to keep up

dismiss the deaths that don't fit your agenda. It's not like those people's lives actually matter. When was the last time someone put a pool in their pocket and killed someone? That is the point. Guns exist to kill. Pools are to swim in. Besides, that figure is for ALL drownings. Not just pools.

What do you think you're accomplishing here? No amount of false propaganda is going to convince me that corporate profits matter more than human life. So save your breath.

you have no valid point to make.

what complete bullshit. Actually we might have a low murder rate like Japan. That exactly what the gun lobby fears. Since I haven't been lobotomized, I'm not going for it. Peddle that crap elsewhere.

You think El Paso is safe? Holy mother of God. You really need to read something besides pro gun sites. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_homicides_in_Ciudad_Ju%C3%A1rez
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/world/americas/wave-of-violence-swallows-more-women-in-juarez-mexico.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

And FOID.

You can buy guns in the suburbs. Your continued falsification of murder stats is getting old. Countries with gun bans have very low murder rates. Pretending that guns can't be transported across municipal lines is ridiculous.

Your point about El Paso is unreal. Are male deaths suddenly the only ones that count? How is it possible you haven't heard of the incredible numbers of murders of women there? There are only dozens of documentaries and books about. Talk about not keeping up. Good grief.

I doubt the average murderer can get a FOID. An Illinois resident can explain it better than I can.

Article 10 of their constitution allows Mexicans to own guns. It is a complicated process, however.

It is a ban if you can't make the trip to the one store. It is to disarm the 99 percent.

swimming pool makers have to up their pay-off to the NRA.

I suggest we just buy up all the water.

are working on that now. IIRC, Nestle is one of the biggest ones.

for gun extremists. If it makes profit at the cost of human life, they love it.

Is because swimming pools aren't black and scarey-looking. But it is a fact that more pre-teen kids drown in pools than are killed by guns...despite there being many more guns than pools.
I can only conclude that DUers aren't interested in reducing deaths... they care only about gun control, whether or not it reduces deaths.

the point is human life. I understand the concept of respecting life violates everything the gun lobby holds near and dear, but that is the concept. When someone can take a swimming pool and enter my home and kill me with it, I'll worry.

Then there is the obvious point that people can learn to swim and protect themselves from drowning. I swim quite well. I do not, however, have teflon organs. More blatantly false garbage you all invoke in desperate effort to deceive yourselves.

100 million gun owners, 4 million NRA members. The same percentage of gun owners who support the gun lobby is the same percentage of African-Americans who support the GOP. Do you also paint all AAs with the same broad brush?
And, as has been pointed out before on DU, the lobbying arm of the NRA is separate from the membership arm. The lobbying dollars come primarily from manufacturers, retailers, and RW funding groups. None comes from member's dues.

Gun extremist isn't a protected class. The Straight Story already tried that and got locked out of his own thread. You post on a Democratic site, you're going to encounter Democrats who support Democratic positions. Deal with it.

I have no problem with gun owners. My issue is with gun extremists. Most gun owners are quite reasonable people and don't spend their time working to promote gun proliferation. They support background checks and even assault weapons bans. They don't invent bullshit about the dangers of swimming pools. That's NRA swill.

Most homicides are committed by previously convicted felons, per FBI statistics. They already aren't legally permitted to own guns, and their weapon of choice isn't a rifle or assault weapon, but a cheap handgun. While background checks would be an effective deterrent, and get a few guns off the streets, the only 100% foolproof way of keeping guns out of their hands is keeping the perps locked up. That has been the primary factor in the decline in homicides despite number of guns and owners going up.
The gun extremists, and sales of assault-style weapons, is being fueled by weapon ban talk. Their identity is centered around embracing anything liberals are against. Targeting them, and the responsible gun owners, is not going to make much of a dent in gun-related homicides...but it will fire up 100 million gun owners to become more politically organized and active. Obama only got 60 million votes...
Keep in mind, about 90% of the rhetoric being used by gun-control activists sounds the same to gun owners as the GOP's talk of "legitimate rape" does to women....and will likely have the same result.

Never owned a gun. However, unlike you gun-banners, I'm realistic enough to recognize that 100 million gun owners includes a whole lot of Democratic voters. Calling for legislation that targets them, rather than targeting the street criminals that are committing the majority of gun-related homicides, is a surefire way of losing elections. Then, we not only lose the opportunity of effective gun-control legislation, but a whole lot more.

Where are all of your anti-suicide help threads?

but you are essentially correct. I don't know the statistics on how firearm suicides got their weapons...probably most were legally obtained. They would be unaffected by most gun-control legislation... and even if some of those guns were removed from their possession, it is reasonable to assume they would resort to other means. It is an impulsive act, using whatever means are immediately at hand. Gun control advocates don't care about saving lives, they just want to piss off Bubba by taking his toys away. Not the best rationale...

I know 6 suicide victims. None owned a gun, nor even took the time to acquire one. They killed themselves by whatever means was immediately at hand- 3 ODs, 2 jumped, and one hung himself. While all had some degree of depression, the actial decision to act was in a very short time frame. No one had an idea an hour before they killed themselves. If suicides were carefully planned well in advance, then suicide hotlines would be useless. This is not trivializing suicide, but merely stating the reality.

2) The gun-control sentiment, at DU at least, centers around "I hate guns", and "I hate gun-owning Bubbas"...so we should take away their guns. Frankly, that is an idiotic basis for legislative proposals. It males no more sense than the person who buys guns merely because liberals want to ban them. It also mostly targets gun-owners who aren't committing homicides, while doing little to target those who are. A victory over gun-owners and the gun lobby might be widely cheered on DU, but it's a hollow victory in my view if there's no reduction in gun deaths. And such legislation will no doubt be repealed in the future for being ineffective, as the AWB was.

Were all six of those people first-time suicide attempts? If so, then that's a statistical anomaly.
If they had made previous attempts, then it can hardly be said that their final attempts were truly impulsive. The act itself may have been undertaken in a rush, but I don't believe that the idea popped suddenly into their heads and then they acted on it without planning.

I've known a handful of suicide victims, all but one of whom planned the event in advance. The ones who didn't plan ahead were the ones who (thankfully) failed, at least in that first attempt.

I was perhaps too abrupt in accusing you of failing to understand, but I maintain that your sampling is not representative of the overall phenomenon.


In addition, the prevailing sentiment at DU re: gun control appears to be:
1. Guns are too easily obtained by people who intend to use them for violence
2. The worship of the 2nd amendment is anachronistic and inconsistent with modern society
3. The irrational fear that Liberals will "take their guns" is too easily used by Republicans to motivate their base

There is indeed some backlash against "gun-owning Bubbas," but in my view this a reaction to a particular species of gun fetishism rather than a self-contained argument for gun control.

The six suicide victims I knew are certainly a small, anecdotal sample. One was manic-depressive, another had long-term depression. I didn't know them well enough to know of previous attempts, but it wouldn't surprise me. The 4 others were completely out of the blue. If the goal is to reduce all suicides, which it should be, then efforts spent towards mental health treatment is likely to be more productive than taking guns away from all owners. And of course, better mental health treatment might also reduce the number of mass killings.

I agree with targeting those who would use guns for violence. About 2/3 are previously convicted felons, mostly young males, who already aren't allowed to possess guns. DOJ numbers. Better background checks, and closing the gun-show loophole, would make it harder for them to get weapons and reduce the number of weapons on the streets. Its my understanding that a large majority of gun-owners would support this. An AWB would have next to no effect, since they mostly use handguns.

Yea, Bubbas and yahoos make easy targets. And they're probably responsible for a sizeable percentage of the accidental shootings, and some of the homicides. Education and peer-pressure from responsible gun owners might be the most productive strategy with them. Lumping millions of responsible gun-owners in with the irresponsible yahoos and criminals is not going to be productive, and will cause a huge backlash.

I'm itchin' for a fight!

more children die from swimming pool accidents than from guns.

You will, at least, ADMIT that, won't you?

They are roughly the same number. Both are preventable.

Drowning:

http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/water-safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html

use the CDC interactive site to look up children in that age group. smartgunlaws.org is in the advocacy business. Critical thinking 101, take them as seriously as you would the NRA.
BTW, here is their legal director under its former name explaining how stricter gun laws and crime reduction.

teach your kids how to swim....don't buy them guns....show them what a hot flame on a stove is....don't play with matches....stay in your yard and don't run into the street

are parents this stupid these days?

I was taught how to swim as a toddler in Buffalo NY in the the 60s. I speak with my nieces, who each have 3 kids, all the time....they are smart girls.....sure, accidents happen, but when did we lose all common sense?????

An NRA talking point was parroted at around 7 pm on Sunday on the otherwise progressive message board Democratic Underground. This event occurred in the midst of an upswing of such talking points, as NRA-friendly DUers attempt to downplay the significance of gun violence in America in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.

This sect believes that, because some people are killed by other things besides guns, then efforts to reduce gun violence are unwarranted. Members of this sect are also known to hold other equally irrational beliefs, for example, that there is no point to having laws because they might be ignored, or that guns are the only thing preventing the US from turning into a Communist dictatorship like Canada or Australia.

If you don't show the same outrage I do you are a rw nut with talking points.

You can't possibly reach your own conclusions, and if you do I will dismiss them by calling you names (like a humper/nut/etc) and won't have to respond in an intelligent way to your arguments on an issue.

You want to reduce gun violence? Fund enforcement of laws. When 99% of gun owners are not the problem maybe you should look elsewhere for a fix.

But then that won't fuel the hatred people want to develop towards one group of people here, and if you aren't on the 'let's foment hatred' bandwagon you must not be a liberal.

Right wing assholes? Because I've been mad at right wing assholes, fuel-free, for decades.

If you want a meaningful dialogue, you need to make serious points. If you start with the "swimming pools" and the "bigotry", you can't really be surprised when people just dismiss you.

When it comes to guns, the situation in, say, Canada or Australia, is far preferable to what we have in the US. If you disagree, please explain what we get in return for the 30,000 people killed by guns every year. And don't say "freedom".

didn't cause this economic disaster we are in either.

http://www.houstontx.gov/health/Environmental/residentialpools.html#Common

In Houston, it appears fencing is not required.

Algae and bad fencing are major issues. This is:


Houston needs more pool regulation. That won't happen with governor good hair.

He's the one percent with guns, and business.

and you know it

You see, unlike RW gun weirdos, normal people can see that has nothing to do with guns. Only in your twisted imagination can they be connected in any way.

of the child shooting his sister to ghoulishly score political points?

Oh, wait. That's different.

That's about GUNS.

You're too busy eating the NRA bullshit, your mind has been poisoned. The OP made it about guns, not me.

Just like a Republican.

I'm disappointed that a prolific poster like The Straight Story would resort to this.

Yep.

Typically, fences are required around swimming pools to prevent this sort of tragedy.

to check if you have a fence with proper working locks around your pool.

My BIL and SIL have only one child and she was 16 when the council forced them to put a fence around their pool after they'd built it. Even keeping in mind that they only had one child that was old enough to drive, didn't matter. She was a minor and they needed a fence according to the "gub'mint". They were pissed. But they got one.

even when you explain in simple words what the poster is doing & why. That's one of the reason DU has so many RW trolls - especially on the gun issue.

(And, yes I know the "t" word is VERBOTEN. But it doesn't make it any less true.)

You can tell one side of an arguement is winning when the other side tries to silence them. GC is the single biggest source of abuse of the jury system...if you can't beat 'em, alert on them. The jury saw through the childish behavior.

uses increasingly shrill & specious talking points - like guns are exactly the same as swimming pools, so if you think we need reasonable gun control then you should want to ban swimming pools also. Blatant, immature trolling behavior like this, using a child's death to try to score some crass political point, is just plain offensive and should be hidden.

But, as I said - sometimes juries are dimwitted.

I guess it pays to be nice to the bouncer or something. Stinking up the joint for years.

that they cost too much money, why should non-murdering gun owners have to pay taxes to support background checks when they don't kill people anyway. Then he said he would accept them at the state but not federal level.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022800490

because people are constantly throwing that in another member's face, when he supports the Democratic Party on just about everything. This is the first I've heard of this member being a former freeper.

And I have an exceptionally good memory.

Also had no problem hitting up DU for a fundraiser.

Bullets are at the center of two-thirds of U.S. murders, making assault by firearm the ninth most common cause of death in America, accounting for 1 out of every 300 deaths.

By comparison, drowning comes in twelfth (1 out of every 1,072 deaths) and airplane accidents come in a distant fifteenth, responsible for just 1 in 5,862 deaths. Unintentional firearms discharge comes just behind airplane crashes at sixteenth (1 in 5,981 deaths).

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/19/murder-by-numbers-digging-into-the-data-of-americas-gun-cultur/

But please, pay attention to Straight Story! He's got it all figured out, you liberal fools!! Swimming pools!! Freedom!! Plus you're all bigots or something.

I probably just don't drink enough.

I never got a chance to ask him about the 4500 kids that die of SIDS every year. I'm sure he had a lot to say about that.

I don't have a link to the post, since it was hidden which makes it harder to find, but I remember awhile back he also tried comparing his choice over owning a gun or not to a woman's right to choose if she had an abortion.

Anyone else starting to see a pattern here?

edit: with a little googling, I did find this other gem of his, but it's not the one I was thinking of
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2078487

Gungeoneer apologists have been manipulating "statistics" for so long that they actually believe their own bullshit. Their main argument always comes back to a variation on a theme, however: people are injured and killed in many different ways, so we shouldn't do anything about gun violence if we can't address ALL causes of death and injury at the same time.

Their second most misused talking point is to promote the myth that effective gun control measures will somehow negatively affect ALL gun owners -- both the responsible owners, and the not-so-responsible owners. The NRA, and its apologists, attempt to inflate their representation by insinuating that they speak for 76 million American gun owners (including many Democrats) who are NOT NRA members.

Have you heard the one about the government conspiracy to confiscate ALL guns in the USA? It must be true, because I read it on the Internet.

I bet you still won't be able to keep up with accidental gun deaths.

Your agenda is getting to the shrill state.

It sure does convince the folks on the fence that you gun lovers are mentally fit to own weapons!

I have yet to see any gun control advocates come up with anything more logical.

We need our weapons so adding guns to the cause of death of innocent people is good! It's gun logic!

Incredibly, gun owners are becoming more marginalized every day despite all their death logic. How can these gun haters not understand?

People drown in pools = get a gun!

People die in car accidents = get a gun!

People slip in the bathtub and die = get an AK15! get lots of them! Get a gun for your 7 yr old child! Sell guns out of the trunk of your car and don't let anyone know who you are selling them to!

It's all so logical!

The more gun press there is...the more this insanity becomes apparent to most Americans.

but then, I have a hard time grasping emotional rants.

it is sometimes the refuge of the rational argument impaired.

22 month old should never wander off on their own.

The first thing Hitler did when he came to power was register all the swimming pools. They can take away my swimming pool when they prey it away from my cold dead hands.

here in the phoenix area. even though gates are mandatory when you have children, sometimes they manage to get through them or they're at a friend or relatives house where there are no gates.

I just got ours online last weekend....still way too cold, and it's not looking good for memorial day weekend this year. Normally every year we're in the pool on that weekend, but it's been crazy cold and wet this spring.

That propaganda has been played earlier in this thread.

the humpers have, it's gone beyond pathetic.

please, proceed.



RL

I keep reading about people using guns to commit murder, while nearly all of the swimming pool murders are ignored by the media. It's not fair to the gun humpers that swimming pool owners get a free pass.

Or did you have some other agenda?

I won't hold my breath waiting for a reply

the difference between a pool and a gun
a pool is built for enjoyment
a gun is built for death

accidents happen but without a gun, 100%, no gun deaths

why anyone who doesn't favor getting rid of 100% of bullets from the hands of private citizens should argue about peace and war is beyond me.

it starts with one person, one gun, one bullet.

when the gun problem is eradicated, then we can talk about mundane war and peace issues.

guns kill more in a few months than 2x the number of all drone deaths ever.
in a year, probably it will be 4x the total number of all drone deaths
in a decade, more than all wars put together.
(total number dead from a gun).

You should send this story along with a Hallmark card to the parents of every child who died due to gun violence to better assuage their grief...

A quiet loner filled a backyard swimming pool, dragged it into an elementary school, and drowned over two dozen children and adults with it.

Why does the media remain silent about these horrific drowning sprees?

I'm outraged that people want to be clean, so many people are killed in bathrooms every year, the bathroom is the most dangerous room in your home.

There is no right to be clean in the Constitution.

it did not mention if the family had taken proper precautions such has a fence around the pool itself.