Latest US shootings

[Phil Bunch]

The NY Times has an informative map and some articles about the status of US firearms laws today.   In recent years, many (most?) states have passed "shall issue" laws where the law enforcement officials cannot deny a concealed firearms carry permit without specific justification.    In some states, including Arizona, no permit is required even to carry a concealed firearm.

These laws must seem very strange to people who live in countries (such as Japan and the UK) where firearms are strictly prohibited without exceptions (as best I can follow such things).  

There are many other dimensions to crime rates, IMO, especially major cultural differences.  I gather that the Japanese just don't kill one another very often, for example.  I have a distant memory/impression that the UK also has a much lower murder rate than the US, but I haven't checked the statistics in a while.  However, the US imprisons a much higher percentage of its population than almost all other countries, mostly in pursuit of its star-crossed "war on drugs".

See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11guns.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

and here:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/10/us/guns-graphic.html?ref=us

Regardless of one's views on these and related issues, these multiple shootings are especially tragic and so discouraging, compounded by the unusually hostile political atmosphere we now have in the US.   Sighs...



Also see here for an editorial:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/10krugman.html?src=me&ref=general

[Will]

Selected USA death totals in 2006 (the last year I could find, from the CDC):

Deaths due to ...

Mass killings with handguns: 6
Homicide with firearms (total): 12,791
Homicide by means other than firearms: 5782
Automobile accidents: 45,316
Water, air, and space accidents: 1915
Accidental Drowning: 3579
Accidental exposure to smoke: 3109
Accidental exposure to noxious substances including poisonings: 27,531
Firearms accidents: 642
Septicemia: 34,234
HIV: 12,113
Cancer (all combined): 559,888
Diabetes: 72,449
Alzheimer's Disease: 72,432
Heart disease: 631,636

[Phil Bunch]

Will,

Thanks for the statistics.  An interesting set of numbers to put into context!  But, that's what we need human judgment for.  Dying in a mass homicide is all but impossible, much the same as dying of an asteroid impact.  You have to have really bad luck.

Along this line of thought (somewhat), I once read that if we eliminated heart disease and cancer, life expectancy in developed countries would only go up by 7 years.  We'd all just die of Alzheimer's disease or stroke!  Preventing "premature" deaths from heart disease or cancer are a different thing and easier for me to wish for.

With a background in the physical sciences, I've made a lot of attempts over the years to provoke my emotional persona into being at least somewhat consistent with statistical and probabilistic considerations.  Sometimes this is not so hard, but at other times it isn't so easy.   An aside, still somewhat in keeping with this thread - about 15 years ago I experienced a major GI bleeding episode and ended up in the ER (Emergency Room) in need of multiple units of blood for a transfusion.  The ER docs came in all prepared for having to persuade me that I should agree to this procedure.  I simply asked if my memory was correct in that the risks from blood transfusions were less than 1 out of 10,000.  They agreed with my memory, at which point I said I didn't need to know anything else and that further discussion of extremely low probability risks under my circumstances would cause me harm with no benefit.  They seemed relieved and jokingly wanted to know if I would explain our jointly held point of view to their other patients!  Fortunately, all went well and no further problems have developed.  

If I could change one thing about humanity's ignorance it would be to learn how to consider relative risks and how the combined risks from ALL of the lowest probabilities of dying are less than any one of the top handful of risks.  It's not lightning strikes or asteroids that will do most of us in.  It's heart attack, cancer, or stroke.  

But, still, I flinch and experience fear when lightning and thunder strike somewhat close by, and watching an asteroid strike science fiction movie also gets to me a little.

Speaking about asteroid impacts, if each person lives about 60 or so years, and as I've read somewhere a significant asteroid impacts the earth about every 600,000 years, one has a 1 out of 10,000 chance of dying from an asteroid during one's lifetime.  Does this mean we should be more afraid of asteroids than say dying from a car wreck?

Finally, the way the US is going, many crime scenes will resemble the Arizona mass shooting in that every other person will pull their concealed handgun and look for someone to shoot.  While the Arizona shooting only had one bystander who did this, it would seem to only be a matter of time until this is more and more common.  I wish that armed citizens were professionally and rigorously trained about how to responsibly participate in a gunfight involving say one criminal and multiple armed bystanders.  It doesn't seem so simple!

Of course we all know that the least likely way to die is from an airliner crash.  It must literally be the safest place on earth (as long as it avoids in asteroid impact).  Should we stop most or all FAA inspections and licensing and pilot training?!?!  (insert friendly grins here)

[Jeroen D]

Having moved 18 months ago from The Netherlands to the USA, I'm still amazed about Americans and their guns. I have nothing against guns as such. Back in the Netherlands and the UK I used to hunt and I was a member of a riffle association for some years.

Still the US approach to guns/fire arms is very different from (most if not all) European nations.

Our three children came to visit us a few months ago. My two sons (21&25) were disgusted that this was their second visit to the US and they hadn't shot anything! So I found us a shooting range.

I told the guy my sons would like to do some practice shooting. Straight away he hands them a gun and a box of ammo and tells them; have fun!.

I tell him these boys have never fired a gun in their life! He tells my sons:
Boys, be careful and have fun!

Well, they certainly had fun.

Jeroen

[Will]

Phil, I agree with you.  The lawyers have a phrase that goes something like "bad cases make bad law," meaning that your shouldn't overturn precedent (or set precedent) based on one rare, remarkable case.  When it comes to guns, we should concentrate (in my opinion) more of our efforts on preventing some of the 12,791 deaths due to handgun homicide than the 6 deaths due to mass shootings.  That makes arguments like "the Tucson shooter used a 30-round clip, so we should debate making 30-round clips illegal" seem ridiculous.  Don't pass laws based on what kills only 6 people per year; that's a misallocation of national attention and resources.

Jeroen, I owned and shot several guns when I lived in Arizona, and frankly, it was a ton of fun.  I didn't own a Glock, but a friend of mine did, and when he would come over we'd trade guns, so I got to shoot his Glock quite a bit and he would shoot my Beretta.  In Arizona, I lived in the middle of nowhere and there was almost literally no crime at all.  Murders were non-existant.

Now that I live in the big city, I have an entirely different view.  Giving up handguns to make the streets safer seems to me like the proper bargain to strike.  It's a healthy debate to have.

[torrence]

An interesting example of perception of low-probably/catastrophic-results events in earth science is earthquakes and asteroid/comet impacts.  In 1906 San Francisco was devastated by a big earthquake.  Two years later a comet hit a mostly  uninhabited region of Siberia - the Tungusga event - with an impact energy estimated variously as equivalent to a nuclear or thermonuclear blast.

Thought experiment - imagine those two events reversed in space and time.  1906 - a big earthquake in Siberia interests geologists, and in 1908 San Francisco is wiped off the map by a comet impact.  Same objective statistical probabilities of occurrence, but I suspect the public and societal perception of the risks and how much to spend on mitigation would be different  

Cheers,
Torrence