Gun Safety Rules

[Lupo]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

I just assumed that only 1% or something like that wouldn't own a car in the US and figured I could throw it out as negligible.

In the US (or any other country), there is a percentage of population far greater than 1% which could never own/use a car, due to extreme poverty, mental/physical disabilities and so on.

Just the prison population of the US is about 1% of the total population, and about 0,5% of the total population is at least occasionally homeless...

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Lupo

In the US (or any other country), there is a percentage of population far greater than 1% which could never own/use a car, due to extreme poverty, mental/physical disabilities and so on.

Just the prison population of the US is about 1% of the total population, and about 0,5% of the total population is at least occasionally homeless...

True, I was conflating "own a car" and "in a household where someone owns a car" in my mind. I think around 20% of the population is under 16, and they can't own cars either.

That said, I wonder what the percentages are on households where someone owns a car. The US actually has about the same number of guns and cars (roughly 250 million registered firearms and passenger vehicles) but I'm guessing it's more than half of households that have a car, like it is with guns.

EDIT: Looks like roughly 95% of US households have a car. So my original guesstimate was about right.

[rosignol]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

That said, I wonder what the percentages are on households where someone owns a car. The US actually has about the same number of guns and cars (roughly 250 million registered firearms and passenger vehicles) but I'm guessing it's more than half of households that have a car, like it is with guns.

I don't know how valid that assumption is. It's fairly common to have one vehicle per working adult in the US, but it's also fairly common for firearm owners to have several firearms. Some of us have many.

Then there's the detail that some of us aren't inclined to be entirely truthful when someone we don't know calls us on the phone and starts asking questions about our guns.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by rosignol

I don't know how valid that assumption is. It's fairly common to have one vehicle per working adult in the US, but it's also fairly common for firearm owners to have several firearms. Some of us have many.

Then there's the detail that some of us aren't inclined to be entirely truthful when someone we don't know calls us on the phone and starts asking questions about our guns.

Meh, seems pretty much everyone agrees (both pro- and anti-gun) that 40-45% of US households have a gun in them. If it's good enough for both sides in a fairly acrimonious debate, it's good enough for me for eyeballing statistics.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

The US actually has about the same number of guns and cars (roughly 250 million registered firearms and passenger vehicles) but I'm guessing it's more than half of households that have a car, like it is with guns.

It looks like it's about 1.2 vehicles per 1 driver in the the US:
http://picasaweb.google.com/PeakVT/P...06316294467282

Keep in mind though, that unlike unregistered cars which can't be taken out on the roads, unregistered guns work fine despite not being registered.

Lots of guns don't need to registered, they're too old, blackpowder, antiques, or they have questionable provenance, like all the old skorpions showing up these days coming back from Afghanistan.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

It looks like it's about 1.2 vehicles per 1 driver in the the US:
http://picasaweb.google.com/PeakVT/P...06316294467282

Sure, by defining "driver" as someone with a license. I'm not sure if that's a useful metric.

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

Keep in mind though, that unlike unregistered cars which can't be taken out on the roads, unregistered guns work fine despite not being registered.

Lots of guns don't need to registered, they're too old, blackpowder, antiques, or they have questionable provenance, like all the old skorpions showing up these days coming back from Afghanistan.

That's a fair point. But positing that there's some number of households with unregistered guns that don't show up in the statistics just means the ratio is even lower than 1 to 20. In 2006, there were 642 accidental gun deaths. In the same year, 42,708 traffic fatalities, with about 5,000 of those pedestrians.

Oh hey! In 2006 there were around 17 accidental deaths per 100,000 registered vehicles. Since we know there are roughly the same numbers of registered firearms, that gives you roughly 0.26 accidental deaths per 100,000 registered firearms in the same year.

As you note, this doesn't account for differences in usage. We're not Yemen with everyone and their mother wandering around with AKs. But having a gun in the house doesn't appreciably increase your likelihood of accidental death.

[Dewey]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

Lots of guns don't need to registered, they're too old, blackpowder, antiques, or they have questionable provenance, like all the old skorpions showing up these days coming back from Afghanistan.

Most states don't require you to register guns at all. New York and Illinois do, and I wouldn't be surprised if Massachusetts and Calfornia require registration, but in the other states you don't have to register your guns.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Dewey

Most states don't require you to register guns at all. New York and Illinois do, and I wouldn't be surprised if Massachusetts and Calfornia require registration, but in the other states you don't have to register your guns.

I actually called up my local police station when I moved from NC back to CA and they said I didn't need to register the guns I had purchased in NC. Which is weird, because I could have sworn registration was mandatory in CA.

Hmph. Apparently very few states actually require you to register the things. Looks like it's guesstimated at ~200 million privately owned firearms. I'm not sure how many more gov-mint owned firearms there are.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Lupo

Actually, organized crime is known to organize shooting lessons for its members.
According to the book Gomorra, the camorra (the mafia of Naples) even trained young boys to overcome fear and surprise caused by enemy fire... by having them wear bulletproof vests, and repeatedly shooting them with handguns.

So if it is true that a drug-dealer won't be a sharpshooter (a drug dealer outside of the U.S. isn't even likely to own a firearm), a dedicated thug working as "muscle" for a criminal investigation is likely to have received some sort of training.
He might very well be more used to actual gunfights than all those policemen who work mostly at their desk (and who arguably have only Guns (sport), not actual Guns skill).

You are talking about pros, not some punk slinging rock.
Eye-talians got style.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

That's a fair point. But positing that there's some number of households with unregistered guns that don't show up in the statistics just means the ratio is even lower than 1 to 20. In 2006, there were 642 accidental gun deaths. In the same year, 42,708 traffic fatalities, with about 5,000 of those pedestrians.

I was just pointing out that we're playing with numbers, we really aren't actually making any valid comparisons.

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

As you note, this doesn't account for differences in usage. We're not Yemen with everyone and their mother wandering around with AKs. But having a gun in the house doesn't appreciably increase your likelihood of accidental death.

It does appreciably increase that likelihood, if you can measure it, which you just did, that it's an appreciable increase.