Here's an overview of the statistics related to firearm violence in the United. All numbers derived from the Centers for Disease Control Fatal and Non-Fatal Injury Database for 2004, the most recent year available. All rates indicate the crude per capita firearm death rate per 100,000 people.
From http://www.washingtonceasefire.org/
General Numbers
* Total Number of Firearm Injuries: 64,389 / Rate: 21.93 / 100,000
* Total Number of Firearm Fatalities: 29,569 / Rate: 9.94 / 100,000
How Are Victims Killed?
* Homicide: 11,624 / 39% of All Fatalities
* Suicide: 16,750 / 57% of All Fatalities
* Unintentional Death (Accidental): 649 / 2% of All Fatalities
How Are Victims Injured?
* Assault Injury: 43,592 / 68% of All Injuries
* Unsuccessful Suicide Attempt: 3,352 (may be incorrect -- actual number may be larger, see CDC website) / 5% of All Injuries
* Accidental Injury: 16,555 / 26% of All Injuries
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
THE FREEDOM TO NOT BE SHOT SHOT DOWN
The NRA may pretend to be disappointed that AK47s have not been made as easy to buy as rat poison, but Supreme Court Justice Alito just handed them a reason to bankrupt cities with suits over gun laws. Alito loves to chisel and narrow laws without seeming to "overturn" them, as long as corporations as individuals and individuals and individuals as vigilantes are protected. Who is the activist judge now?
In his reasoning he claims:
The Founders wrote the 2nd Amendment to protect state and local militias. After the Civil War, it protected freed slaves in the South during Reconstruction. Therefore, the right to a handgun has grown since the original intent of the Founders, and both rights apply now.
Individuals deserve handguns in their homes because they cannot expect law enforcement that makes them unnecessary. The Founders intended no constitutional right to personal safety except to own a handgun.
Voters can regulate some guns and some uses of guns, but gun owners can sue and sue FOR THE RIGHT TO SHOOT SOMEONE WITH A LEGAL HANDGUN MORE EASILY THAN I CAN SUE FOR THE RIGHT NOT TO BE SHOT.
In his reasoning he claims:
The Founders wrote the 2nd Amendment to protect state and local militias. After the Civil War, it protected freed slaves in the South during Reconstruction. Therefore, the right to a handgun has grown since the original intent of the Founders, and both rights apply now.
Individuals deserve handguns in their homes because they cannot expect law enforcement that makes them unnecessary. The Founders intended no constitutional right to personal safety except to own a handgun.
Voters can regulate some guns and some uses of guns, but gun owners can sue and sue FOR THE RIGHT TO SHOOT SOMEONE WITH A LEGAL HANDGUN MORE EASILY THAN I CAN SUE FOR THE RIGHT NOT TO BE SHOT.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
The NRA calls a wrong number
It’s a scary world out there.
First the woman who identified herself on the phone as “an NRA member” insisted on asking for and calling me “Mr.” – even after I said I was “Amanda” – not a man’s name in any English-speaking country I know of.
She said she has a taped message to play me before she asked me to answer her poll.
Then I was subject to a 45 second warning that the UN – with Secretary Clinton’s and Iran’s help – were trying to “ban guns worldwide.” The worst case scenario: we would end up just like “Australia or England.” Horrors!
“Did I think North Korea should have a say in my right to own a gun?” she asked. I said she was phrasing the question in a way that was hard for me to answer accurately. I told her, “I do believe there were International Laws protecting Human Rights which all countries should support.”
Not surprisingly she quickly said goodbye, since she probably believes that the Nuremberg trials was about protecting good capitalists like BP from extortion from “Hitler-like” President Obama, not about universal individual human rights and the rule of law even in wartime – pinko propaganda if you ever heard any!
I want to ask the “moderate independent” NRA members who protest they just want to “hunt legally:” “Why do you give money to a group who uses it to tell people any UN effort for “arms control” is a ploy to take over America?
These NRA lobbyists “birthers,” and “English-only” xenophobes may hunt, but rifles are not the guns they believe all Americans (felons and terrorists alike) need to be able to buy at Gun Shows, with no background checks. In fact, these are the same people fighting the laws to keep terrorists on the “watch list” from being denied machine guns at Wal Mart – not just Gun Shows.
If you agree with the Supreme Court that the Second Amendment does allow for “reasonable” restrictions on gun ownership (as even the majority did when they overturned the DC ban), how can you call yourself a “moderate” when you chose to vote with WELL FINANCED-EXTREMISTS who spread this vile bull****?"
The 1964-era John Birch Society (some of whom I grew up living next to) couldn’t be more dangerous! Do they think we didn’t really defeat the commies when we won the Cold War? Isn’t that an insult to Saint Ronald Reagan?
You can’t make this stuff up – because some other American nutcase already has!
First the woman who identified herself on the phone as “an NRA member” insisted on asking for and calling me “Mr.” – even after I said I was “Amanda” – not a man’s name in any English-speaking country I know of.
She said she has a taped message to play me before she asked me to answer her poll.
Then I was subject to a 45 second warning that the UN – with Secretary Clinton’s and Iran’s help – were trying to “ban guns worldwide.” The worst case scenario: we would end up just like “Australia or England.” Horrors!
“Did I think North Korea should have a say in my right to own a gun?” she asked. I said she was phrasing the question in a way that was hard for me to answer accurately. I told her, “I do believe there were International Laws protecting Human Rights which all countries should support.”
Not surprisingly she quickly said goodbye, since she probably believes that the Nuremberg trials was about protecting good capitalists like BP from extortion from “Hitler-like” President Obama, not about universal individual human rights and the rule of law even in wartime – pinko propaganda if you ever heard any!
I want to ask the “moderate independent” NRA members who protest they just want to “hunt legally:” “Why do you give money to a group who uses it to tell people any UN effort for “arms control” is a ploy to take over America?
These NRA lobbyists “birthers,” and “English-only” xenophobes may hunt, but rifles are not the guns they believe all Americans (felons and terrorists alike) need to be able to buy at Gun Shows, with no background checks. In fact, these are the same people fighting the laws to keep terrorists on the “watch list” from being denied machine guns at Wal Mart – not just Gun Shows.
If you agree with the Supreme Court that the Second Amendment does allow for “reasonable” restrictions on gun ownership (as even the majority did when they overturned the DC ban), how can you call yourself a “moderate” when you chose to vote with WELL FINANCED-EXTREMISTS who spread this vile bull****?"
The 1964-era John Birch Society (some of whom I grew up living next to) couldn’t be more dangerous! Do they think we didn’t really defeat the commies when we won the Cold War? Isn’t that an insult to Saint Ronald Reagan?
You can’t make this stuff up – because some other American nutcase already has!
Thursday, June 17, 2010
When consumers can't afford to buy
The worker / owner dichotomy of the beginning of twentieth century has been replaced in America with an equally unequal consumer / investor split.
A combination we once thought had defeated communism forever -- mutual funds and cheap luxury goods -- is now disappearing, taking with it our own economic miracle only decades after the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
Will we simply revert to a world of citizens with capital and those without? Will those without (i.e. those we used to call workers) be able to continue to consume what those we used to call owners can profit from?
Or will only those that have continue to get?
A combination we once thought had defeated communism forever -- mutual funds and cheap luxury goods -- is now disappearing, taking with it our own economic miracle only decades after the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
Will we simply revert to a world of citizens with capital and those without? Will those without (i.e. those we used to call workers) be able to continue to consume what those we used to call owners can profit from?
Or will only those that have continue to get?
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