Since one child under 10 drowns annually for every 11,000 pools and one child under 10 each year is killed by a gun for every 1 million guns, according to research outlined in the book "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side to Everything," by Steven D. Levitt - swimming pools are 100 times more dangerous than guns.
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/related/79388.php
And according to the National Safety Council, in 1995 there were about 30 fatal gun deaths of kids aged 0 to 4 and fewer than 40 of kids aged 5 to 9.
Any parent knows that a single child's death is unspeakably tragic. Yet the number of toddlers who die from gun accidents is smaller than the number who die from drowning in buckets. And it's much lower than the 500 who die in swimming pools.
http://www.cato.org/dailys/06-01-99a.html
I will be waiting for your editorial on how we should next ban swimming pools. How they should all be filled in or torn down. Is having swimming pools in this country really worth all these deaths to these kids? Someone please tell me, why are protecting fun summer days? Is there a right to unbearable grief? What freedom? The freedom to splash around and play Marco Polo and put our loved ones in needed peril?
And why have guns? Well, conveniently ignoring the Right to Bear Arms is enshrined in the US Constitution you know, the same document protects has the Freedom of the Press, guns do save lives and prevent crime every day. According to data collected by the anti-gun National Alliance Against Violence, handguns are used about 645,000 times a year for protection against crime. Separate polling, by researcher Gary Mauser, finds that guns of all types are used about 691,000 times annually for protection.
http://home.speedsoft.com/theashes/koppel.html
And I have never seen a pool stop a mugging or a rapist.
Best Regards,
2banana
Freedom of the Press is a relic of a era long ago...let's ditch it. - sarc
did you post this question to him via
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/columnists/john_grogan/qa_forum.html ?
id love to see:
a. if he'd actually post this question on his web page
b. how he'd answer it
I would say that the exact opposite is true. It's one of the few states in the country that ISN'T a national embarrassment.
I guess that will be the last book of his I'll buy. (Marley and Me)
"This much is certain: Another child found another gun. "
Yeah becasue some idiot left a loaded gun where an unsupervisd juvenile could get it.
And by the way, as you point out, kids die everyday from auto accidents, pool drownings, drug overdoses, diseases, etc.
Its sad, but its a part of life.
Liberals want the government to guarentee that everybody who wakes up in the morning will be alive to fall asleep that night. Even God can't do that.
Yet to achieve the unachievable they are willing to attack every right and freedom that we formerly enjoyed in a once free society.
And if that right is closely associated with traditional America - the America of a past when criminals were eliminated with ropes and bullets instead of supported by tax dollars and protected by attorneys, when attacks on American citizens by criminals and foreign hostiles were met with lead and steel, when men acted and thought like men instead of through their "feminine selves", that right is all the more targeted by morons like this individual.
Among other things, your right to publish drivel like this.
The safest place for a loaded handgun is in a holster, on its owner's hip. Too bad so many places forbid this life-saving measure, forcing people to leave them at home where they could get stolen, or worse, found by a child with tragic consequences.
It's probably Gary Kleck you're thinking of, not Gary Mauser. Are you getting him confused with Tom Mauser, the rabidly anti-gun father of a slain Columbine kid?
What. A. Mindless. Moron. This is what happens when schools don't teach people how to think, only to "feel," and when all of society seems to be geared toward feminizing boys and men.
I'm tired of standing over coffins. Of seeing schoolchildren caught in the crossfire and little boys killing playmates. Of teenage pet-sitters found with bullet holes in their heads.
Grogan, do you ever go to the funerals of people killed in ordinary muggings, or in home invasions, or do you reserve your funeral time only for the sensational cases, the ones that allow you to emote and to condemn those who have decided to take responsibility for themselves and their families? Do you ever even consider the fact that the possession and use of firearms for self-defense has, and will continue to, save far more lives than are lost through accidents (which, BTW, have declined quite a lot over the decades)? I know the answers, but the questions need to be asked.
Hey, Grogan, you want my guns? Come and get 'em...YOU, YOURSELF, not some guy that you've hired to do your dirty work on my tax dollars.
Obviously your right to be a naive bleeding heart.
Well then, JG, maybe you shouldn't be dancing on them so much.
What a dumb bastard.
I will be waiting for your editorial on how we should next ban swimming pools. How they should all be filled in or torn down. Is having swimming pools in this country really worth all these deaths to these kids? Someone please tell me, why are protecting fun summer days? Is there a right to unbearable grief? What freedom? The freedom to splash around and play Marco Polo and put our loved ones in needed peril?
Indeed. How many parents walk in to the local pool store every summer and buy a pool? By answering a few rudimentary questions and submitting to an instant credit check (or submitting a credit card) they have their pool. No required water safety courses. Are the owners of these pools certified in CPR? And how many actually lock up their pool to keep not only their own children safe, but those in the neighborhood as well?
Spot on post, 2banana.
Funny, that's how I feel about gun phobics wetting their pants over firearms
Bang
ping to myself for later read.
Philly had fewer murders last year than it did in '94 before shall issue CC permit requirements were extended to the city by Harrisburg.
Seems like a lot of children fall out of windows these days. Evil Gravity?
"I figured there would be photographers and I wanted to get there before all the good backdrops were too crowded."
Outside, the undertaker paced, waiting for the family to arrive, and a priest smoked a cigarette, ready to pray.
"I waited inside where the lighting favored my complexion. I had to turn off a couple of the overheads, because they were throwing unflattering shadows."
Inside, I stood alone beside a small casket holding an 8-year-old boy, shot through the forehead by his best friend.
"I think it made for a dramatic pose, even though the family wouldn't let me take the body out of the casket and carry it around with me. But I think I come off looking pretty sympathetic. In one shot, the light hits my eyes and it looks like I'm crying. I've still got the pictures, wanna see?"