Too many gun deaths going on.........

[CathyA]

Besides all the criminals using guns in this area almost every day, now a 3 year old found the father's gun on the kitchen counter and shot himself and died and a teenager was playing with guns, insisting that a girl in the room hold it. She refused, and he removed the .....I'm forgetting the word...."magazine"? and must have thought it was empty, forgetting the bullet in the chamber, and pointed it at her and shot her. She died. All you gun owners probably would never be in these irresponsible positions.. But how do we stop the irresponsible ones?

[IshbelRobertson]

You move to a country where guns are strictly controlled, like mine, for instance.

[bae]

It is my experience that you can rarely "stop" irresponsible people.

What you can do is educate most of the people, and punish the irresponsible ones.

I'm not even sure punishment accomplishes much though, unless it is severe enough punishment to keep people locked up away from society so they can't re-offend, but we seem unwilling to do that even for murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and drunk drivers.

If your concern is accidental gun deaths, well, take a look at the statistics, the numbers are pretty darned low, you'd be better off focusing your efforts on ladder control and swimming pool restrictions.

[CathyA]

bae, you've mentioned looking at the numbers before. But if shooting and death is going on a fair amount around you, I don't really give a rip about the "numbers".
I'm saying these 2 "accidental" shootings happened just 2 days apart here............and that is in addition to all the all-to-common shootings during drive-bys, robberies and murders here.
I don't really care about the numbers if reality tells me bad things are happening way too often close to me.

[bae]

Well, you sort of need real data to make intelligent public policy decisions.

[Simpler at Fifty]

My 2 nieces and nephew were raised around guns. My nieces hunted once they went through Hunter's safety. None of them shot at each other or another human being. DBIL comes from a family of 13 and every one of them had at least one gun growing up. His Dad has several. None of them or now their children and grandchildren shot at each other or another human being. My Dad had a rifle in the closet that we knew about as kids because he took it out once a year to clean it. We were taught like the other 50 or more of DBILs family to respect a gun. They weren't left lying around.

I agree with Bae, you cannot stop the irresponsible people.

It is like the people that leave their kid in the car when it is below zero or 100 degrees and they die. You just cannot change that. It makes people more aware after it happens and the borderline irresponsible may think about it for a while but it will happen again. How do you stop college kids from drinking til they pass out and/or die? There is always going to be a group of people that are just irresponsible.

[catherine]

From what I have read,

a) bae, you are correct that in the United States, your child is much more likely to die from an accidental drowning in the backyard pool than shot accidentally by a firearm

b) Cathy, you are correct in that per capita, the US has a much higher rate of death by firearm than a lot of other countries, including all European countries and Asian countries such as India, China and Japan. We're down there with countries like Mexico and Argentina and Colombia (well, Colombia's a little higher).

Maybe we just have a lot more irresponsible people.

[gimmethesimplelife]

You move to a country where guns are strictly controlled, like mine, for instance.

Good answer as far as I am concerned! Rob

[gimmethesimplelife]

From what I have read,

a) bae, you are correct that in the United States, your child is much more likely to die from an accidental drowning in the backyard pool than shot accidentally by a firearm

b) Cathy, you are correct in that per capita, the US has a much higher rate of death by firearm than a lot of other countries, including all European countries and Asian countries such as India, China and Japan. We're down there with countries like Mexico and Argentina and Colombia (well, Colombia's a little higher).

Maybe we just have a lot more irresponsible people.

My thoughts are too that we have a culture in the US that tolerates violence - even pays money to sit in movie theaters and watch movies that have a high degree of violence and considers this entertaining. Couple that with the expectations of material and financial success in a society bleeding good paying jobs to countries with lower wages and regulations, add the resulting anger and the availability of weapons and walah (sp?) - there's a recipe for senseless deaths/gun violence. To me it is very easy to understand the whys - What is sticky for me is the how to fix it? Given the amendment to the constitution that allows citizens to bear arms and given what US society has become today, I don't see a fix. Ishbel's advice a few posts up makes a lot of sense to me - but not everyone can or even wants to leave. Rob

[Tradd]

Besides all the criminals using guns in this area almost every day, now a 3 year old found the father's gun on the kitchen counter and shot himself and died and a teenager was playing with guns, insisting that a girl in the room hold it. She refused, and he removed the .....I'm forgetting the word...."magazine"? and must have thought it was empty, forgetting the bullet in the chamber, and pointed it at her and shot her. She died. All you gun owners probably would never be in these irresponsible positions.. But how do we stop the irresponsible ones?

This is not a new problem. Kids getting their hands on guns they shouldn't have access to and shooting themselves/sibling/friend did not start yesterday.

A gun forum I frequent has a long thread going currently about the least safe people you run into at the range. The consensus is that it's the old guys. I saw this recently myself with a friend's husband. 65, grew up with guns, and extremely casual. His muzzle discipline, to say nothing of his trigger discipline, made me cringe constantly.

My pistol actually has a mag disconnect. It can't be fired if there's not a mag inserted in the gun. Made in Argentina, of all places.

You can't stop stupid, irresponsible people. Just look at all the drunk drivers. DUI has a pretty stiff penalty here in the US, yet people still do it. MADD has been around since the early 80s. DUIs have decreased, but I don't think they'll ever go away unless you outlaw alcohol. And look how that worked out with Prohibition.

Ignorance can be educated (most of the time), but you can't fix stupid. And some people are so stupid they're beyond fixing. Your only hope is that they won't reproduce or that the stupid doesn't get passed on. And hope if they do something fatally stupid that it only takes them out, not anyone else.