RE: Dear Americans: What's the leading cause of death among the young?
November 20, 2014 at 4:56 pm
(This post was last modified: November 20, 2014 at 5:18 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Amusingly related. The majority of gun related deaths are suicides - so when you hear that gun violence is a problem that needs to be tackled with law after law, and it's backed up by how many gun related deaths there are in the US (and it's an appalling number)...it's good to keep that in mind and realize that at some level, you're being sold a bill of goods (because they're often including suicides........as "gun violence" or "violent death" when they quote gun related deaths - and we make a bunch of assumptions on that word). Gun suicides have outnumbered gun homicides ever since the CDC began publishing the data. Not even a new trend, far as we can tell, it's always been that way. Now maybe that's changed in the last four years, I didn't check this morning - but it would have to change a hell of alot.
MA, you got the last two reversed. Suicide then homocide. But you aren't the only one who would wager on that order (then again, by young we mean minors, right?). Apparently, it's such a common (and well known) misconception that people actually study that misconception -itself- to gain further insight into our minds...
We have this idea that gangs of kids are roaming the streets knocking each other off left right and center - but they aren't...relative to the number of children who put on their mascara for that last time and end it all (often enough with daddys pistol, of course, availability). We've always been suffering under that delusion. Every generation has been convinced that the youth are diving into lawlessness and violence and the world is falling apart. You find it first expressed in the earliest surviving written works and it's a narrative that has held it's audience -ever since-. Part and parcel of our apocalypse fetish and the myth of the golden age (which is conveniently placed at whenever the currently old remember being young). Long story short, if you want to see a reduction in kids who end up dead by gun...talking to kids is actually going to do more than leaning on guns...simply because there's a bigger pool of misery to drain there. Shit, talking to kids might even get a little overlap - since a few of them might decide that they don't want to shoot another kid after all....once they got some feedback on it, IMO.
MA, you got the last two reversed. Suicide then homocide. But you aren't the only one who would wager on that order (then again, by young we mean minors, right?). Apparently, it's such a common (and well known) misconception that people actually study that misconception -itself- to gain further insight into our minds...
We have this idea that gangs of kids are roaming the streets knocking each other off left right and center - but they aren't...relative to the number of children who put on their mascara for that last time and end it all (often enough with daddys pistol, of course, availability). We've always been suffering under that delusion. Every generation has been convinced that the youth are diving into lawlessness and violence and the world is falling apart. You find it first expressed in the earliest surviving written works and it's a narrative that has held it's audience -ever since-. Part and parcel of our apocalypse fetish and the myth of the golden age (which is conveniently placed at whenever the currently old remember being young). Long story short, if you want to see a reduction in kids who end up dead by gun...talking to kids is actually going to do more than leaning on guns...simply because there's a bigger pool of misery to drain there. Shit, talking to kids might even get a little overlap - since a few of them might decide that they don't want to shoot another kid after all....once they got some feedback on it, IMO.
(November 19, 2014 at 7:03 pm)Strongbad Wrote: Meh...I'll admit that my view may be skewed, because just about everyone I know is Christian, and they all own guns, and most of them, lots of guns. I'll still say that religious people are inclined towards gun ownership, maybe with a little too much enthusiasm.My bible thumping family in law are all vehemently anti-gun (and so were their parents.....and so on and so forth). I'm the gun nut (and so are my parents, and so on and so forth). There are more of them than me. I think what you may be seeing is that -americans- are inclined to own a gun -with enthusiasm-, and a large number of americans also happen to be christian.
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