1. Gun nuts say guns in the home are no more dangerous -- even less so -- than other common household amenities, like swimming pools.
However, I have never heard of two friends getting in an argument and drowning each other in their swimming pools.
I will go so far as to say this will never happen.
2. Rightwingers campaigned against Obamacare for 7 years because, among other things, it would lead to rationing of care.
So now Paul Ryan is bragging that the rightwing replacement law will put a hard cap on health care.
Expect rightwingers who voted for Republican candidates because they objected to rationing care to explode with indignation in 3, 2, 1 . . .
(That's a joke. Rightwing voters are too stupid to know when they've been given a noogie.)
Gun nuts say guns in the home are no more dangerous -- even less so -- than other common household amenities, like swimming pools.
ReplyDeleteName one, and provide the direct quote.
OK:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.m1-garand-rifle.com/gun-safety/firearms-versus-swimming-pools.php (This guy actually uses some decent statistics to make his case).
https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=990_1356520472
Need to read the comments in this one, where you'll find the BS "protect my family in the middle of the night" line: http://freakonomics.com/2006/04/16/are-you-ready-for-swimming-pool-season/
http://jacksonandwilson.com/which-is-more-dangerous-a-gun-or-a-swimming-pool/
(Statistical arguments are all looking the same to me at this point: they equate 1 pool with 1 gun, which is questionable. Generally also only uses statistics for accidental gun deaths, leaving out the murders and suicides).
I could go on, but I would assume that you have the ability to Google too, if you could bother yourself to look up the obvious. I mean, I didn't even have to wallow in the fringe for any of this.
1. Gun nuts say guns in the home are no more dangerous -- even less so -- than other common household amenities, like swimming pools.
ReplyDeleteThis is going to be like explaining relativity to a cat, but I'll endeavor nonetheless.
First, anyone who isn't a complete internet tyro would take it for granted that including substantiation for such an assertion is a given; by that standard your tyrosity is epic.
Looking at your post, your comment, and the first link, and importantly, the meaning of the word "dangerous".
Starting with the last first. Clearly, your first link is using the concept of "dangerous" as that which might, perhaps with negligence, but without intent, produce an injurious or fatal outcome.
Which, except for zealots like you, makes absolute sense. After all, given intent anything can be dangerous, including the strap on your wife's purse. Indeed, you have to ignore all the fatalities and injuries intentionally inflicted with all manner of objects to focus on guns the way you do, and all those that would have been inflicted with something other than a gun had a gun not been available. But then you are a zealot, and therefore have left reason's provinces, so none of this will make any sense to you.
Taken sensibly, therefore, your link makes you look a right fool. The odds of a fatal mishap involving a gun are significantly less than a pool -- even your zealotry can't contradict that, unless (okay, because) you have a progs hatred of evidence when it rubbishes your narrative (see waremenism, feminism, socialism, et al)
Your Freakonomics link makes the distinction, and the truth of "gun nuts" assertion even more distinct, just as does the third.
Statistical arguments are all looking the same to me at this point: they equate 1 pool with 1 gun, which is questionable.
Harry, behold the power of the direct quote, the relevant table from your first link:
4.147 Swimming pool drownings per 100,000 residential swimming pools.
0.166-0.214 Accidental firearm deaths per 100,000 households with at least one firearm
.039 Accidental firearm deaths per 100,000 firearms
So, no, they do not ever equate 1 pool with one gun; moreover, the statistical argument is sound no matter from which direction it comes.
QED: Your ability to understand statistical arguments is rubbish.
I could go on, but I would assume that you have the ability to Google too …
Now I know why you don't link to anything — because every time you do, you promptly prove yourself a fool.
Okay, your turn: Tell us how gun nuts are wrong. Then, having (not) accomplished that, explain why you are so addicted to non sequitur.
And we haven't even gotten to number two. Obamacare's bursting into flames is, in fact, already rationing care.
Heck, the GOP, if they cared so little for people as you insist they do, would be best served by very loudly proclaiming they had nothing to do with it, and won't fix it.
Rationing like you wouldn't believe. (Okay, silly sentence. You never believe anything that contradicts your religious beliefs.)
(Pro-tip: stop using "rightwinger". Every time you do, an EKG would pronounce you brain dead.)
[Hey Skipper:] So, no, they do not ever equate 1 pool with one gun ...
ReplyDeleteCorrection, they do.
However, they lead with the least favorable number: any household with a firearm.
Apologies for typing too quickly, but you are still clearly incapable of understanding simple statistical arguments.
I am not M. I appreciate his or her comment, but it ain't me, babe
ReplyDeleteDid this get on the right thread?
DeleteWow, that there was some serious expectation bias.
DeleteYou referred to M.'s comment in your comment; it's the right thread
ReplyDeleteM, my apologies. I didn't suss you wrote that instead of Harry, so please ignore the sarcasm he so richly deserves.
ReplyDeleteOK, but really, why the haranguing on statistical knowledge? I mean, I am a scientist, so I have at least a passing familiarity with statistics. The only comments I made along those lines were:
Delete"This guy actually uses some decent statistics to make his case"
and:
"Statistical arguments are all looking the same to me at this point: they equate 1 pool with 1 gun, which is questionable. Generally also only uses statistics for accidental gun deaths, leaving out the murders and suicides."
I stand by both, as wishy-washy as they may be. Basically, I think in the quest for a statistical basis for an assertion that guns or swimming pools are more dangerous, there's a lot of wiggle room, and everyone uses it as they see fit.
The point, however, was that it's really, really easy to find people online arguing that swimming pools are more dangerous than guns. And the earlier point, made by Harry, was that he has never heard of 2 friends drowning each other in an argument. Shootings in such situations, it should go without saying, are rather common.
These things are all so obvious as to be banal. I'm left to wonder why you're arguing so strenuously about them.
M:
ReplyDeleteAgain, I apologize. I was instantly very critical because Harry is famous for grossly misunderstanding statistical arguments, and then changing the subject when someone points out his buffoonery.
Statistical arguments are all looking the same to me at this point: they equate 1 pool with 1 gun, which is questionable.
As I pointed out, they don't. Their lead numbers equate drownings per swimming pool and accidental gun deaths to households with guns, no matter how many. Almost no households have multiple pools, and no matter how many guns a household has, only one gun can cause an accidental death. Therefore, the comparison is between households, those with pools, and those with guns; not pools to guns.
Harry implies that gun nuts believe a foolish thing: pools are more dangerous than guns.
Yet it is clear that households with pools are 20 times more likely to have a death by drowning than households with guns are by gunshot. Harry is fond of trotting out the circular logic statistic that households with guns are 10 times more likely to experience a death by gunshot than those without. I shall remember this next time he trots out that knock-kneed nag.
Generally also only uses statistics for accidental gun deaths, leaving out the murders and suicides.
Rather than repeating myself, I shall quote myself:
Starting with the last first. Clearly, your first link is using the concept of "dangerous" as that which might, perhaps with negligence, but without intent, produce an injurious or fatal outcome.
Which, except for zealots like [Harry], makes absolute sense. After all, given intent anything can be dangerous, including the strap on your wife's purse. Indeed, you have to ignore all the fatalities and injuries intentionally inflicted with all manner of objects to focus on guns the way you do, and all those that would have been inflicted with something other than a gun had a gun not been available. But then [Harry is a zealot], and therefore [long since] left reason's provinces, so none of this will make any sense to [him].
Would you agree that running chain saw is far more dangerous than a spoon?
Of course you would, only a fool [Harry] would say otherwise. Yet both, with intent, can put out an eye. Applying the term dangerous to intentional actions does violence to the English language and common sense.
The word you are looking for is "lethal". When used with intent, guns are indeed quite lethal. However, so are other things. Used with intent, a noose is a lethal as a gun, which is no more lethal than a bat, or a fourth floor window. Harry relentlessly mashes together means and ends, in the way only zealots can manage.
People intent on killing themselves will kill themselves. Suicide rates are correlated with culture, not gun ownership. Korea and Japan, with practically invisible gun ownership rates have suicide rates far exceeding the US. The UK and Australia imposed gun confiscation programs. Their suicide rates were unchanged. If someone has murder in mind, bats and knives are just as lethal as guns.
So of course they left out murders and suicides, because they are irrelevant to the question: which poses the greatest hazard of accidental death: pools or guns?
Pools, by a mile.
I stand by both, as wishy-washy as they may be. Basically, I think in the quest for a statistical basis for an assertion that guns or swimming pools are more dangerous, there's a lot of wiggle room, and everyone uses it as they see fit.
ReplyDeleteNo, there isn't. It is clear as can possibly be that if you were to select at random 100,000 households with pools and without guns, they would experience 20 times more accidental drownings than 100,000 households with guns would experience accidental deaths by gunshot.
According to Harry, believing the glaringly apparent is tantamount to being a gun nut.
The point, however, was that it's really, really easy to find people online arguing that swimming pools are more dangerous than guns. And the earlier point, made by Harry, was that he has never heard of 2 friends drowning each other in an argument. Shootings in such situations, it should go without saying, are rather common.
It is never so easy for Harry to find something that he will take several seconds to substantiate it. And when Harry resorts to defamation, his superpower, apparently, he will become Prevaricator, his other superpower.
Now, as for that earlier point. Anyone who equates a statistical fact with an anecdote is either comprehensively ignorant (it happens, and is curable), painfully stupid (it happens, and isn't curable), or a spittle flecked zealot (Harry.)
And, just to reiterate, equating means with ends is a fools game.
Harry is, once again, some more, abusing those poor crickets.
ReplyDeleteHarry, still very curious about how gun nuts are nuts for believing something that is verifiably true.
ReplyDeletePoor, poor, crickets.
ReplyDeleteSuch a shame that they are worked to exhaustion whilst you scarper.