CNN is claiming that CDC statistics show guns kill more children than cars

[.38 Special]

My question is, how as a group of gun owners are we going to stop these school shootings?

You make a number of very astute points, but I disagree with this. It is akin to noting the trend of criminals intentionally driving through crowds and then demanding sports car enthusiasts do something about it.

 

[bearcreek]

I suspect that removing the number of shootings in the big Blue cities by known and previously apprehended gang-bangers then those statistics would be drastically changed.

I've heard the "Democrat run cities" thing mentioned a fair bit in these discussions. Are there any major cities that aren't run by Democrats? If so, are the crime rates there significantly lower?

 

[bwalker36]

I've heard the "Democrat run cities" thing mentioned a fair bit in these discussions. Are there any major cities that aren't run by Democrats? If so, are the crime rates there significantly lower?

That's a good question, the only reason I ever mention Democrat run cities in these conversations is they are the ones pushing for control and their cities cause a majority of these numbers with the strictest regulations.

 

[theotherwaldo]

My understanding is that, if you subtracted the murders from the top five big cities in the U.S. then the country drops from the top five deadliest countries to the bottom four.
Last year, the top five deadliest cities were Chicago (697 total homicides), Philadelphia (516), New York City (438), Houston (435), and Los Angeles (382).
Many of the most murderous big cities try to downplay their murderousness by stating deaths per 100,000, which pushes the relatively depopulated cities like Detroit and Cleveland to the top... .

 

[Pudge]

The CNN article stated the Nashville shooting in it.
Also the nineteen babies that were killed in Uvalde they are nineteen deaths that are part of the statistics.

I understand this. And I don't want you to think that I don't see those events for the unmitigated horror that they are. I have dealt with the loss of the very young in my personal life, and still I can't imagine the pain of those families. That said, would eliminating 100% of school shootings, or cutting suicides by 30% make a bigger difference in the overall numbers? Which is a more reasonable goal?

 

[WisBorn]

I understand this. And I don't want you to think that I don't see those events for the unmitigated horror that they are. I have dealt with the loss of the very young in my personal life, and still I can't imagine the pain of those families. That said, would eliminating 100% of school shootings, or cutting suicides by 30% make a bigger difference in the overall numbers? Which is a more reasonable goal?

They both are results from mental health issues. Which is the root cause.

 

[Pudge]

They both are results from mental health issues. Which is the root cause.

Honestly, that leads me to ask why you'd suggest that we, as a group of gun owners, have a special duty to stop one aspect of what is a greater mental health issue. Mental health isn't parenting or education, it isn't static, and it isn't solved through the penal system. If we could improve overall mental health, we'd lower crime rates, divorce rates, dropout rates, poverty rates, abuse, drug use, homelessness, suicides and school shootings. The issues aren't static, they are dynamic, they can come and go, manifest at different times of life, be caused by genetics, substance abuse, trauma, overall physical health, and disease. This is a complicated and difficult issue, often with no good solution, and quite frankly it feels beyond me.

But I (as a member of a group of gun owners, a citizen of the US, or a member of the human race) am very open to suggestions as to how I could help.

 

[Otto]

Fentanyl Is the No. 1 cause of death for those 18 through 45 in the US.
And last year 2,231 adolescents (10-19) died of fentanyl…a 110% increase from the year before.
Funny how the CNN article never mentions the drug or where it’s coming from.

 

[WisBorn]

Honestly, that leads me to ask why you'd suggest that we, as a group of gun owners, have a special duty to stop one aspect of what is a greater mental health issue.

We don't have a special duty, except that they will come after our guns! If the problem is mental health and the tool is a AR15. How do we fix the problem? Anti gun groups say get rid of guns. As a gun owner and someone that wants to fix the root cause lets fix our mental health problems.

At the same time we can reduce deaths caused by the opioid crisis. There are two reasons people take opiods. One pain management. The other is need to feel better a mental health issue.

 

[Chief TC]

The way they present the data makes it seem accurate but I don't believe this is accurate. The amount of children that die in the US due to all reasons other than firearms is substantial. Seems to me they cherry picked certain causes to show firearms was the biggest reason. Statistics and numbers can be manipulated to serve ones purpose. The raw data can be factual but the method can be flawed. Also, I read all major news outlets but CNN and Fox are 2 that really can't be trusted with actual news and facts. So reading news that primarily presents facts and not opinions is very important.

 

[WisBorn]

Fentanyl Is the No. 1 cause of death for those 18 through 45 in the US.
And last year 2,231 adolescents (10-19) died of fentanyl…a 110% increase from the year before.
Funny how the CNN article never mentions the drug or where it’s coming from.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/health/drug-overdose-deaths-slowing/index.html

Here is an article for deaths caused by overdose from CNN.

 

[hso]

If I could end all school shootings tomorrow, what impact would that have on the statistics we are discussing?

Less than 1% because mass shootings in schools are so rare (assuming you are referring to attacks on schools vs. a gang related shooting after school outside or nearby). Attacks like Nashville or Uvalde are catastrophic, but rare. They shock and terrify the public, but are a tiny fraction of deaths of "children" involving firearms. They rightly get public attention, but draw efforts from areas that might prevent more deaths.

 

[wayneinFL]

We don't have a special duty, except that they will come after our guns! If the problem is mental health and the tool is a AR15. How do we fix the problem? Anti gun groups say get rid of guns. As a gun owner and someone that wants to fix the root cause lets fix our mental health problems.

They're going to come after the guns one way or the other. The idea that out of 300 million people there isn't one nut that's going to slip through the cracks- that's not going to happen. There have been mass murders in schools since forever. Worst one was in 1927.

You could put the most extreme measures in place and it will still happen one time and it will make the news.

 

[Thomasss]

Anybody notice the percentage in the chart only adds up to 56.7% for 2020. Does that mean the parents killed the other 43.3% while being quarantined with them weeks on end during the Covid shutdown?

 

[Mark_Mark]

Anybody notice the percentage in the chart only adds up to 56.7% for 2020. Does that mean the parents killed the other 43.3% while being quarantined with them weeks on end during the Covid shutdown?

twisting numbers to please your sleeps is as old as time. Know this 4 sure, we are in the calm before the storm. Keep stocking up! especially books!

 

[MEHavey]

Attacks like Nashville or Uvalde are catastrophic, but rare. They shock and terrify the public,

And because there is a knee-jerk emotional insistence that "Gun-Free"
somehow invokes the righteousness of Divine protection...
such attacks will always be with us.
...virtual shooting galleries.

Consider how the Nashville headlines might have been different had the school staff been armed....
That vaunted '14 minutes response time' might well have been reduced to 60 seconds.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Orwell was never more prescient....
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because
rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
... and even Peter carried a sword.

 

[bearcreek]

My understanding is that, if you subtracted the murders from the top five big cities in the U.S. then the country drops from the top five deadliest countries to the bottom four.
Last year, the top five deadliest cities were Chicago (697 total homicides), Philadelphia (516), New York City (438), Houston (435), and Los Angeles (382).
Many of the most murderous big cities try to downplay their murderousness by stating deaths per 100,000, which pushes the relatively depopulated cities like Detroit and Cleveland to the top... .

Certainly more murders happen in bigger cities. I'm just not so sure that's necessarily a function of being Democrat run as opposed to just being a city. I'm not sure there's really a conclusive way to determine that since I'm pretty sure that there is no such thing as a major city that is run by Republicans.

 

[theotherwaldo]

Don't call them 'Gun-free zones'.
Call them 'Defenseless zones'.
It's more accurate.

 

[Mark_Mark]

Don't call them 'Gun-free zones'.
Call them 'Defenseless zones'.
It's more accurate.

I hate that! were are peoples brain?

 

[theotherwaldo]

The ten most conservative cities in the U.s.:

1. Jackson, Mississippi
2. The Woodlands, Texas
3. Coeur D’Alene, Idaho
4. Gainesville, Georgia
5. Provo, Utah
6. Fort Smith, Arkansas
7. Rapid City, South Dakota
8. Clermont, Florida
9. Great Falls, Montana
10. Greenville, South Carolina

None of them are particularly large, though.

 

[TomJ]

Note: Data shows the top five "injury mechanism and all other leading causes of death" as collected by the CDC Wonder database, as of 2021.

So when Automobile accidents deaths decrease do to better safety equipment. And cancer deaths decrease do to better science it will reduce the percentage of deaths for those causes. When that happens the percentage of children that die do to other mechanisms will increases. It necessarily doesn't mean that the number of deaths increased by the mechanism. Just the percentage.

If I child dies do to suicide by firearm they died by a firearm. If they die by suicide from drug overdose they die by drugs.

It's not the data that is bad it is how the data is interpreted and/or presented.

My question is, how as a group of gun owners are we going to stop these school shootings?

One of the main issues we face is that we are not working with anti's who want to solve this problem, as evidenced by their refusal to do anything about violent crime and the murder rates in the cities they run, and add to that problem by refusing to prosecute violent criminals. They have made it clear that human life has no value to them and care about the children being killed in these shootings to the extent that it's an opportunity to push for more gun control.

As far as how to stop these shootings, that's a complicated issue. The first thing that comes to mind is hardening schools. My youngest son's high school recently upgraded the physical security of the school and has a LEO in the school while it's in session. One of the things we frequently hear from mass shooters is that they bypass hard targets and go towards targets with little to no security. Secondly we often hear that someone knew the shooter was planning something, but remained silent as was the case with the shooting in Nashville. How to address this issue without creating the opportunity for abuse, such as we see with red flag laws which allow for gun confiscation with no due process is something I'd be for if, and only if it could be done without the possibility of abuse. My last thought is that we need to address the root causes of this, which has much to do with a society that's going downhill fast. How to address the social ills plaguing us is something I wish I had an answer for but don't.

 

[bearcreek]

The ten most conservative cities in the U.s.:

1. Jackson, Mississippi
2. The Woodlands, Texas
3. Coeur D’Alene, Idaho
4. Gainesville, Georgia
5. Provo, Utah
6. Fort Smith, Arkansas
7. Rapid City, South Dakota
8. Clermont, Florida
9. Great Falls, Montana
10. Greenville, South Carolina

None of them are particularly large, though.

Right. Guess we'd need to determine what the definition of "major" city is.

 

[TomJ]

Here on this forum, the first thread about the Nashville shooting was not about the horror or the sadness of the tragic deaths, but the lamenting of "Here comes another gun/ammo shortage!".

I can't speak for everyone on this forum, but as a father and grandfather of course my heart breaks for the victims of these shootings and their families and I'm assuming that's true for most, if not all forum members. I'm guessing us focusing on 2A issues as opposed to the horror and sadness of these deaths may be due to this being a gun forum, not because we don't care about the victims and their families.

 

[theotherwaldo]

Right. Guess we'd need to determine what the definition of "major" city is.

-One that I don't want to live in.

 

[Chief TC]

I can't speak for everyone on this forum, but as a father and grandfather of course my heart breaks for the victims of these shootings and their families and I'm assuming that's true for most, if not all forum members. I'm guessing us focusing on 2A issues as opposed to the horror and sadness of these deaths may be due to this being a gun forum, not because we don't care about the victims and their families.

Agree. And I think it's healthy to discuss both. We can pray and have good thoughts but we always need to be thinking what action can be taken to prevent these events. If not, then prayers and thoughts mean nothing. I've come to the conclusion that mass shootings is a relatively unsolvable problem from a legislative//management standpoint. I have some personal beliefs regarding responsible gun ownership that i think could help but it doesn't solve the problem. Bottom-line is that these evil doers and mental defects will obtain their resources as necessary to carry out their will. With mass shooting and school shootings in particular, it always seems these people acquire the weapons legally, so the masses cry out for broad gun control thinking that is somehow going to prevent it. Even if there was some robust psych eval system to obtain a license to buy firearms, that would still not work. Many people would not get identified as a problem and some of these mass shooters borrow/take weapons from family. Comparing our country to European countries in impossible. Even France and Italy that allow owning firearms and have significant populations and organized crime, still don't have the proliferation of weapons for criminals to acquire as we do here. Other than security measures and criminal background checks, what else can we do? I have yet to see anyone come up with a holistic solution to solving the problem.