Wednesday, January 30, 2013

We Fear Unlikely Things, But Constantly Do Dangerous Things

The chances of a school being a target of gun violence are negligible, but we have marches and mass pestering about a non-existent threat.

But people take showers and drive cars every day.  Now, THOSE things are dangerous.

And Jared Diamond, to his credit, recognizes this.

It's fun to yammer about guns, precisely because it is a trivial risk.  We can show how much we care by being irrational.

2 comments:

Squarely Rooted said...

"The chances of a school being a target of gun violence are negligible, but we have marches and mass pestering about a non-existent threat."

Yes, but this is an extremely misleading way to phrase this. Here is the CDC's very thorough and surprisingly compelling data on how people die (from 2010):

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/deaths_2010_release.pdf

In 2010, 29,551 individuals aged 15-24 died. 3,889 were from "Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms," 2,046 were from "Intentional self-harm (suicide) by discharge of firearms," 145 were from "Accidental discharge of firearms" and 53 were from "Discharge of firearms, undetermined intent." Add those up, you get 6133, or over 20% of all deaths in that age range. Note that I didn't include "legal intervention" in this count, though you could certainly make an argument for it.

Also note that, while they don't include race/age breakdowns, the rate of firearm homicide deaths among blacks is 7.6 times higher than that among whites, and 9.5 times higher among black men than white men. Assuming, quite reasonably, that most of the black victims of gun homicide are young, it is not unreasonable to speculate that it may in fact be the leading cause of death among black male youth, and even black youth altogether.

And look at that!

http://www.blackyouthproject.com/2012/03/report-gun-homicide-is-the-leading-cause-of-death-among-black-teens/

"In 2008 and 2009, gun homicide was the leading cause of death among black teens."

Jared Diamond is examining his priors; as an old, wealthier, white male, he should be worried about the shower! But if I were black, and I were young or had kids? Well, I'd be worreid about guns. A whole lot.

Hasdrubal said...

How many of the proposed regulations would affect the incidence of gun homicides? It seems like most of the press coverage is about "assault rifles," high capacity magazines and schools. But none of those are even a blink on the statistics. Pistols account for the vast majority of homicides, and how much does gun availability affect suicide rates?