The transportation geography of the US has been consciously constructed in such a way as to force us to drive whether we’d really like to or not, and the accident rate can quite reasonably be blamed on the culture without denying the importance of individual stupidity. (The cultural element is particularly important with respect to metropolitan areas, in which public transport would have been easiest to build.) Eisenhower’s cabinet-buddy Charlie Wilson (no, not that Charlie Wilson), former GM chairman, (in)famously declared that what was good for GM was good for the country, then proceeded to make the converse hold also. Transportation policy was pushed toward Autobahnen, single-passenger auto commuting, and the replacement of street rail and interurbans by buses–and look what happened to the buses. Some of drive-or-die is due to this part of our political culture. Moreover, there are parts of the country in which public transportation has never existed and the winter weather precludes walking or riding your bicycle. I live in one of these, settled by my subsistence-farmer antecedents in the early 19th c. If ogremk5’s planet has no such regions, he might consider watching the movie “Fargo” to get an idea of what the weather can be like here in the US of planet Earth.

Note that I have not argued against guns, or certainly not against long guns, particularly as used in agriculture. Anybody who is of age and does not suffer the usual disabling conditions can buy them in most states including my own. Firearms accidents do not require pistols and can easily be implemented with the “safer” shotguns of, e.g., New Jersey. It’s nice to know that Texas has stringent concealed-carry laws, but in the context of my comment that’s something of a red herring.

It is true. It works as ta healine, and it is just a headline. It being a headline does not have to do all the work a longer comment or essay does. “People” need not mean all people or some people. “Allowed guns” is vague and “stupid” is an obvious case of sniping from a position of frustration and, yes, even anger.

Hardly anybody is stupid all the time, but those that are seem not to be systematically excluded from gun ownership by any existing rules and seem to exclude themselves either by chosing to not own a gun or owning one for a while and then killing themselves with it by accident. Otehrwise they are just a menace.

Hardly anybody (maybe more than the above category, maybe not, I am not sure) will never make a mistake with a gun because of their own qualities (as opposed to random chance).

Most people are quite capable of doing something stupid at some time or another. Most people who drive (and though I can’t cite the studies, they exist, I blieve a guy named “ellison” is author of one) claim that they are better than the average driver. The average driver (on average) can’t be better than the average driver. but on average they make this claim. Same for gun safety. Most people are quite capable of doing something tupid at some time or another, but a lot of them claim they are not.

And that is probably the vast majority of gun owners.

If you screw up using the toaster you get bad toast. If you screw up using a gun, you probably don’t get a really bad outcome most of the time but when you do the cute little four year old who lives across the street is laying there convulsing in a pool of blood. Or whatever. So it is serious.

So yes, we will START quite reasonably with the statement “people are too stupid to be allowed guns” and then work out from there with various caveats. We’ll recognize the extremes and we’ll recognize the potentially huge safety gap that exists in the main and try to fix both.

I’m not sure how to fix the extremes other than with more of the same and better implementation of laws that keep guns from people who like to play with them while drunk or who are mentally unstable, and to identify those people, but I have no idea how to advance that without doing things I’d prefer to not see happen. But in this huge middle … the average person who is quite capable of making a misake ranging from getting mad and pulling a gun out of a glove compartment to not securing a gun so that the 8 year old gets it … and figure out how to reduce those incidents.

And currently (blog wise) I’m focusing on accidents. Previously, I’ve focused more on suicide. We’ll get back to that later. But, it is about to be hunting season so accidents are good to contemplate just about now!

I’m pretty sure I’d rather go with “The Entire Human Race is Stupid” than “The Entire Human Race is NOT Stupid” but of course, the truth in this case lies in between. Or more exactly, the truth lies beyond the headline.

I am not being dishonest, but again, I really do think you are demanding that I hold one of the positions that you know about and feel everyone should decide among. I’ve never held a position on guns that is like one of the standard positions, and I won’t just because you want me to! Really!

My super secret thesis is cleverly hidden in the blog post, above. Try looking there instead of inside your head.

No. Not when I see you responding to people with stuff like this:

ogremk5, state, with a quote, where I’ve told you can’t own a gun.

You expect people to be able to reference your position with specific quotes – but you refuse to provide any explicit statement of your position. This is not reasonable, nor is it honest.

So many people here are way off topic. We are talking about real negligence, not just a freak accident. Target shooting in a field without knowing if people could be behind the targets should be criminal negligence; target practicing at a gun range and having some stray ricochet hurt or kill someone is a freak accident. Driving your car down the road, running a red light and killing someone should be criminal negligence; having a tire blow out and being in a fatal wreck is a freak accident.

I fully agree that people should behave responsibly, but we both know they won’t.

1) Nice dodge on not answering either question OR showing where I made the claim that you seem to have claimed. If you think that you did not make a claim against me, well, I guess you’re a good enough writer to avoid declarative statements.

2) I picked three posts at random from your list that you sent me to… one of the comments actually asked you what you wanted to accomplish and you declined to answer there as well. I’m sorry, I’m not going to read 30-40 posts that don’t have the info I’m asking for. You posts in all that category are just news article and rants (Texans=Morons… really?). At least two of them have information that is countered by data I linked to.

If you don’t want to say what you want, that’s fine. I guess we’re done.

What’s very interesting is that I cannot find a single statistic for deaths, homicides, accidental deaths, or suicides that are reported the same in any document (pro gun or anti-gun) for the same age group or even area. It’s very frustrating for someone like me who wants useful information.

Your right to own a gun is constitutionally protected. At the moment, there is no reliable way to sort out people cited above who clearly should have never owned a gun in the first place from those who can do so responsibly. I would like to see that problem worked out. Wouldn’t you?

In the mean time, since we can’t tell the geniuses who understand that you MUST lock guns away from the children as well as the gun nuts who insist that we not lock the guns away from the children because it violates their false sense of “rights” from those people who chose to own guns AND lock them away, the title of this post is appropriate, the facts presented are sad, and my position on gun ownership (which is not represented in this post but is well known to my readers, check it out here if you like … http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/politics/gun_ownership/ .. stands.

What I still don’t understand is why you are so against guns and not against cars.

Really, really, bad idea to place the thoughts that are in YOUR head into MY mouth. Again, that never, ever ends well.