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Aliyah Shell's Mother (courtesy huffingtonpost.com)

user3369 writes:

According to childstats.gov, there are approximately 48.6 million children under the age of 12 in the United States. msnbc.com and Mother Jones are jumping on a study on children who were killed in gun homicides in 2012/2013 since Newtown. They’re “appalled” that roughly 200 (173 in MSNBC and 194 in Mother Jones) died this way. While every life is precious, if you do the math properly, that means the following . . .

1) .000412 % of children in America were killed with a gun in 2012/2013

2) There are an estimated 300 million firearms in the United States. So .000067% of firearms were used to kill children in 2012/2013 (This assumes one gun per crime, which of course Newtown throws out the window)

3) This means that 299,999,800 guns didn’t kill any babies last year. And when you take into account the annual gun homicide number of approximately 11,000, that means 299,989,000 guns didn’t kill anyone else either (again not factoring in multiple homicides with the same weapon)

3) The gun homicide rate in America for children under 12 is .41 per 100,000. The gun homicide rate for all of America is a touch over 3 per 100,000.

So that push for gun control…was that for the children? really? or was it for something else?

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106 COMMENTS

    • The usual reply to that is, “yeah, after you were born”. This can get convoluted, but over the years the quality of potential parents has deteriorated. They are born further from the country, and their kids are born further away still. There are no examples of civility, responsibility, respect, knowing the hard realities of life other than their own self interest. So many somehow get by, but, they never know life outside malls, computer games, unemployment line, drugs, or the mind numbing confines of school, (aka, baby sitting service 0-12). The more the big city states rule, the more the quality of life suffers. Want to do something for the children? Make sure their prospective parents are adults. No idea how we can do that of course, a little late in the game. (My opinion only, no government research, feel free to differ).

      • And from smaller (less kids) families; Be arounnd a mother with only one kid when the rugrat gets a booboo? Tow kids better. three or more and better grip onb reality. And to my theory more likely to be conservative. Familly being a life choice vs one/two just replacing themselves.

        Note that the Obuma admin has decided they are children until age 26 (but are allowed to vote as teenager).

    • Ban high capacity assault moms. Limit wombazines to 2 children. Ooooh yeah. [Please read this comment in mattv2099’s voice for added effect]

  3. “This is my rifle, this is my gun…”
    How much would she complain if the gun left the toilet seat down while in use?
    Ya just cain’t please some folks.

    • When a former girlfriend made such complaints in my house, I did the “fair”, dog owner style, fix. Put the seat and the lid down every time. Then everyone has to lift something, every time, to use the commode. She objected to that as well, so she now pees in someone else’s house. I don’t miss her.

  5. Let’s see if I have this right – You have a better chance of either being struck by lightning or winning the Powerball than an American child has of being shot to death?

    • CHILDREN make decisions based on emotion. (When was the last time you saw a five year old make a wise decision without help?) Adults use intellect.

  9. “If it saves just one child’s life, it is not too high a price to pay.” At least this is the gist of some commentators on NBC. Personally, I do not see the enslavement of 350,000,000 people as a fair trade off for a single child’s life. Or 173 childrens’ lives. Sorry, life is not precious. How many millions of children die in the world every year of disease, abuse and starvation? How many die in preventable accidents? How many are murd because they were born girls and not boys? And were are going to spend untold billions of dollars, threaten the security of hundreds of millions of Americans, over the sad fact of a few hundred crimes? Crimes that will be punished by existing laws?
    Want to know what your life is worth? It’s exactly the amount your spouse would have to pay to get you bumped off, and I rather think that in most places that is under $10,000. In many countries in the world (pretty much anywhere in South America, Africa or Asia) it is a lot less than that. I bet in Afghanistan, a few American dollars will get the job done. If thousands of years of human history is any guide, human life has little value.

    The world is not a perfect place. It is not a safe place. Banning guns will do nothing to make it safer or more perfect.

  10. I try to tell the children “don’t touch mommy’s guns after taking the whole bottle of mommy’s Valium.”

    Driving home from a pre-trial conference and stuck in Christmas traffic from a major mall, I listened to the NPR “children dying by guns” crisis feature story today. Media co-ordination, anyone? Of approximately 180 deaths, 50 are parents shooting their kids, 60 are kids shooting kids, and the rest are accidents. Thank god they’re not using knives or ………carelessly stored medications, which cause more than twice the child deaths that guns do, and at a climbing rate:

    “Today Safe Kids Worldwide released a new research report that found while the death rate among children from poisoning has been cut in half since the late 1970s, the percentage of all child poisoning deaths due to medications has nearly doubled, from 36 percent to 64 percent.”

    95 percent of medication-related poisoning visits to emergency departments are caused by a child ingesting medication while unsupervised.

    “More than 60,000 children are treated in emergency departments due to accidental unsupervised ingestions of medications each year.” And of these you can be sure many many of these children suffered irreversible brain, kidney, or liver damage as a result of the poisonings.

    http://www.parents.com/blogs/parents-news-now/2012/03/22/safety/study-medications-top-cause-of-accidental-child-poisoning-deaths/

  11. Nearly 3,300 unborn children are killed every year in the US. This is, in most instances, not only legal but is often subsidized by taxpayer dollars. Where is the justice for these kids? Where are the reforms to save them?

    Over 1,500 children die each year from child abuse and neglect. Do these kids not matter? Where is their justice? Their reform?

    How many kids were killed in the wedding party the US annihilated in Yemen?

    This kid of crap from the left just flat out pisses me off!

    • If they are unborn, they are not children. Just ask a Rabbi. [In traditional Judaism, a fetus receives its soul, and becomes human, when it takes its first breath. I don’t recall that Jesus said anything to change this tradition, so it must be a product of that famously liberal institution, the Catholic church.] And thankfully these “unborn children” didn’t survive to become unwanted children.

      • “I knew you when you were in your mothers womb.” He did not say, ” I knew who you would become when you were in your mothers womb.” Me thinks the Jewish tradition is now wrong.
        We will know for sure when we stand before GOD in heaven. Until then, better a millstone…

        • ” Until then, better a millstone…;”

          Yeah, as long as you can hang it on a woman’s neck, summarily condemning her to 20 years’ hard labor to punish her for the mortal sin of loving without permission from the priest.

      • It also has been Jewish tradition for some Rabbis to teach others to do certain things… must follow these rules, regulations, traditions, and rituals to make it into heaven, while not doing the same. Remember the Jewish Temple leaders (high priest, et al) HATED Jesus for not just his popularity, but because he called them on the carpet for their hypocrisy as well

    • The same people supporting gun control to save the children, also support Democrat politicians that support abortion. Go figure.

  12. We’ve done the same type of math in the fight against pit bulls for many years. It’s all the same thing.

    At the end of the day it’s a good exercise but you’re still simply responding to their game cry – their battlefield, their rules.

    They want to win people’s opinions to agree with their false premise. They don’t care how accurate or inaccurate it is.

    • Then you already know what jobs a pit has had in the past (i.e. nanny-dog… child was SAFE as long as the dog was around) and that just like any other breed, how they’re raised and trained has a lot to do with how dangerous and violent a dog can be.

      • What I know is that the same tired arguments trotted out to forward gun control are the very same tired arguments trotted out to forward “pit bull” bans. Exactly the same in every way. Including the math.

        The point is, we can be right all day long. The fact is that drawing on people’s emotions, sympathies and personal biases work better, as evidenced by your position on pit bulls (yes I have been paying attention.)

        Clearly, even with smart people who think about things this false premise strategy works. And works very well.

        That’s why they do it.

        • Well, fortunately there’s no right to keep and bear pit bulls. The solution to that, of course, is to hold the owner of the dog accountable for the damage it does, as if its owner had committed the crime, from aggravated assault through mayhem to murder.

          And does it need to be repeated that the same should apply to guns? Rather than blame the instrument, punish the one who wields it.

        • Well, fortunately there’s no right to keep and bear pit bulls.

          Actually there is and it’s called the 9th Amendment. Which is used quite often to cover personal property rights. Dog and pets being personal property of course.

          But try not to get hung up on the fact that you folks don’t like “pit bulls” and hate “those types of people that own them” – and ignore the fact that some people don’t like “assault weapons” and hate “those types of people that own them” and try to focus on the point.

          It’s really not that hard to get past your personal feelings on a topic and try to pay attention to the data and the facts. Which is of course precisely my point.

      • ah yes the Captain. He and I have had some conversations about the Anonymous Conservative and he’s become quite the fan.

        AC says that Liberals want one and only one things: to amass public consensus for their false premise. And that is where we should fight them. AC even has documented techniques, specific phrases and affectations designed to hijack liberal brains and give you the edge in debating against them. Good stuff.

        http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/touching-the-raw-amygdala-an-analysis-of-liberal-debate-tactics-preface/

      • after giving what you said more thought, what is exactly their main false premise? That more guns means more people die.

        the good news is that all of the facts and data are in and they all point in our direction.

        that works with the pit bull thing, too, and that conversation should be long over but it’s not. why? because the pro-pit bull people won’t let it die. they keep responding to the antis false premise and reacting positively to every request to come and play their game. IMO the argument would be over and done if the pro side would just stop and refuse to play.

  14. 200 children died from gunshots this year. Let’s put this appalling statistic in perspective.

    In 2011 (the most recent numbers I could find in a quick search), 1,570 children died from abuse or neglect. More than 4 children die EVERY DAY from parental maltreatment.

    According to childwelfare.gov, 26.4% of those deaths were caused solely by the mother. That’s 415 children who were basically tortured to death by their own mothers in 2011.

    Sources:
    https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/fatality.cfm
    http://www.childhelp-usa.com/pages/statistics

    So let me ask you this, Mother Jones. Precisely what and who should we be restricting, again?

  15. I want gun reform for the children. I want my kids and now my grandkids to have the right to constitutional carry. No waiting periods. No GFZ’s. That’s reform for the kids I can get behind.

  16. Got any stats as to what percentage of those political pawnsprecious children were killed in so-called “gun-free zones?”

      • Yep. You nailed it. If you take out of the numbers the kids that were gang-related collateral damage, and the kids playing with other kids in unsupervised druggie homes, and the kids shot by raging alcoholics and meth head parents, there are probably five unfortunates left in the numbers. 48,587,343 kids (just to get rid of the zeroes), and probably 5 children a year not explained by some true evil, not by the tool.

        • And the number of people murdered by the drug warmongers themselves. It’s just prohibition all over – declare a whole class of citizens criminals by the stroke of the pen, giving the psycho cops from hell carte blanche to kill whoever they want to, along with the occasional family dog or parakeet..

  17. My daughters guns have not killed any adults. Not even the semi-automatic compressed air varmint vaporizers.
    Can’t make that claim about varmints though.

  18. I am also tired of the “we must do this for the children” mentality. The “if it saves one child it is worth it” thought pattern is worthless. I don’t carry a gun because I like it, I carry it because if it saves one child it is worth it. That is the better logic. If you don’t have a gun and the bad guy does, like Newtown, it WONT save one child.

  20. If they spent all that energy on something fruitful…yah know, since data has shown that there is no correlation between gun quantity and children’s death’s from evil or incompetence with a gun. Perhaps, like, oh I don’t know, children’s cancer, if they actually gave a shit about the children

    • If that were true, where are the 3200 infanticide cases?

      You have no legal or moral rationalization for violating the boundaries of anyone else’s body, nor compelling her to use her body in the manner of YOUR choosing. That would be involuntary servitude, based on the theocratic dogma that women are chattel property, and not human beings at all.

      When an expelled fetus breathes, then it’s a living being. Before that, it is property.
      Genesis 2:7: “Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

      Or are you saying God is wrong?

        • “Did God write that down personally, did anyone see him/her do it?”

          Well, SOMEBODY wrote down Genesis 2:7 – “Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

          So I figure that if God defines the beginning of a living being as when the lump of substance receives the Breath of Life, that’s good enough for me.

          But apparently you think God was wrong or something, right?

  22. Here’s the thing – the lady holding the sign in that picture and all the people who empathize with her don’t give a damn about statistics. If we’re going to be fully honest here, I also empathize with her. I don’t blame the gun – I blame the asshole who hurts or kills children with one – but the anger and pain from victims and families is going to go somewhere.
    When you try to counter that with statistics you just look like an insensitive ass.

    How do we counter it?
    Serious question – I’m not sure.

    • Let them grieve and wail. Whatever they say, they have the right to say it. Whatever the pain, they have the right to feel it. But the instant they begin taking “political” action to limit or infringe on our rights, based upon their pain, then crush them ruthlessly.

      It should go something like this: “so 200 dead beautiful children isn’t enough for you? You want to disarm responsible moms and dads so they can’t protect their own children? What kind of a heartless, evil person are you?”

      • Yep. Hammer them ruthlessly on that one.

        Ask them why, if every child is so precious, there was NO ONE present to defend all those kids at Sandy Hook elementary against one scrawny little psychopath. Ask them what they would have wanted to happen if their children were in that school on that day. Wouldn’t they have wanted someone to save their children? If the answer is yes, then why are they so dead set on making it harder for millions of Americans to protect their own children and their own schools? If the answer is no, then they might as well have personally condemned those children.

        You don’t have to get super angry to make emotion work for you. Present the most emotionally charged case possible in the calmest way possible.

        If they start going on about how more children die in accidental shootings than in school shootings, expand that line of logic into general gun safety; as this post points out, 180 million-plus gun owners and nearly 300 million guns didn’t hurt anyone at all this year. Swimming pools, cars, common medications…all claim more children than guns, and they’re not even considered to be inherently deadly. (What was that about “for the children” again?)

        Stay calm, keep the facts flowing, and remind them how much they really *don’t* care about kids if they don’t care even more about those things. If they’re working solely on emotion, then help them overload themselves with it.

        • Yes. 5,000 children injured with guns? 60,000 end up in the emergency room every year poisoned by medications they got their hands on unsupervised. About 500 of them die, but many of the 60,000 suffer permanent brain or organ damage as a result. Many many of the medications the kids get their hands on are anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. There’s a problem all right. It’s in the unlocked medicine chests of America.

      • Hammering grieving parents and repainting them as the bad guy looks heartless.
        Because it is.

        Going out of our way to be heartless is not a winning solution.
        Sure, it may look OK to a lot of people on here, but consider who you guys are. I’ve never seen someone in favor of gun control post on TTAG. Not accusing the mods of not being fair – it’s just that most of our discussions entail a lot of preaching to the choir.

        We have to figure out a way to not look like a bunch of heartless assholes to everyone else… Because we’re not.

        • We need to let the grieving parents know, in no uncertain terms, that it’s the insanity of the antigun nuts that allows these shootings to happen.

    • “Isn’t it tragic that those anti-gun nuts want to protect the kind of psychopathic killers that do these horrible horrible things, by disarming the responsible adults who could have protected your children, making them as defenseless as the children are?

      “Maybe someday someone will discover what mental defect makes those people prefer dead children and live psychos, to live children and dead psychos, so they can get the help they so desperately need.”

  24. Until the Left actually cares about ALL children, I will pay exactly zero attention to this kind of emotional manipulation. Except, of course, to call them out on their hypocrisy.

  25. Aliyah Shell was collateral damage from a gang related drive-by in Chicago. I guess it’s easier to blame her death on a gun than on the scumbags who shot her. Especially when the scumbags are friends, neighbors, boyfriends and relatives.

    And why don’t any of these selfless Munchhausen Mommies have the same last name as any of their children?

  26. I could have written a 10 page analysis of gun violence and its absurd rarity for law abiding (non-gang related youth) citizens.

    The statistics for “assault weapon” homicides are equally miniscule. (~42 per year according to DiFi…you can get a rough estimate based on the above math)

    Gun grabbers love polls but hate statistics.

  28. And more people fall and die in the bathtub every year, So the Answer is ban all bathtubs, swim pools, and let us not for get auto deaths ,, So ban the auto, ban everything … HOW DO PEOPLE BECOME SO MIND LESS .. Start with our COMMUNIST PUBLIC EDUCATION , /media!!!!!

  29. Whatever happened to blaming psychotic or reckless individuals for the crimes they commit?

    For example: “Lawless gangbangers killed my daughter with stray gunfire.”

    That would at least make more sense than blaming an inanimate object.

  30. I am a little offended that my fellow gun owners are minimalizing the death of ANY children. That is cold, heartless, and sad. The point is, and should always be, that no gun ever killed a child. Some monster of a human did or some tragic accident from some moron who left their guns unsecured.

    • I am not apathetic to the pain felt by the families and victims of gun crime. I understand they are upset and that they absolutely feel their beliefs are valid.

      However, what you see as cold and sad, i see as rational and logical. I seem to minimize the deaths of a few children in order to illustrate the context under which our rights are under siege. When something terrible happens, it seems like the entire world is crashing down. It is eventually necessary to realize that your single tragedy is not an international crisis, and you put it back into perspective.

      200 children killed by firearms equals 200 individual tragedies which influence a limited extended group of people. The disarming of 180 million gun owners represents 180 million personal losses, untold numbers of personal tragedies, and 350+ million individual tragedies when the defense of liberty is removed completely.

      I personally believe it is far more reprehensible to see Americans crying over 200 dead children, when untold millions die from starvation worldwide. When was the last time hunger and malnutrition saved a life? Because no matter what number you look at, far more than 200 children’s lives are saved with firearms every year.

      So if it seems I am minimizing the death of a child, while not my point, it is eventually the only conclusion. Because when it is all said and done, 200 deaths in a year, in the world we currently live in, is barely back page news. So if you are looking for sad, cold, and heartless, look no further than the families and survivors of gun violence who believe their personal tragedy is more important than anything else in the world.

      • It is my personal situations and life experiences that drive me towards my convictions so yes, a child’s death will be monumental to the parents. By minimizing child deaths, even if unintentional, you will gain no support from the other side. It is through empathy that you make the most inroads. Losing a child must be one of the most horrible things that can happen to a parent. To try to justify or rationalize that is simply not the issue. The issue is that they project their grief onto the easiest thing possible. It is far easier to think that an emotionless device killed their child rather than come to terms with the fact that there are absolutely evil people capable of such acts or that they themselves made a mistake and made their gun accessible.

        • Your error is assuming I am trying to gain support of the other side. My logical and rational approach is targeted at those with enough intelligence to make their own decisions independent of media influence. Specifically, those who know nothing about the topic but want to have an informed opinion, or who enter the debate with only televised talking points.

          I have no interest in winning over the minds of those who make emotional decisions.

          I have every interest in calling out the hypocrisy of groups like MAIG and MDA, as well as politicians, who attempt to exploit emotional tragedy in pursuit of an agenda that clearly has nothing to do with child safety.

        • But you are correct. You will make no friends by going out and saying “I don’t care about your dead kids”, even if you don’t actually care about their dead kids.

          Not because the dead kids actually matter, but because no one wants to side with someone who says that, even if they are right.

        • I care about kids, and that’s exactly why I’m so vehemently opposed to gun control. We should really hammer on that “Well, another mass shooting caused by the insanity of gun control.”

    • Yes, it’s sad. So is misery in the world, so are starving kids in Africa, so is the existence of Kim Kardashian. Shit happens.

      Rationalizing isn’t being insensitive.

    • There is no such thing as an accident. Other than equipment failure (in the case of cars and heavy machinery), every single bad outcome is directly caused by some person’s negligence. And I really have never ever heard of any gun spontaneously firing. Dropped guns maybe, but some negligent human dropped it.

    • Sorry you view it that way Kerry, I fully sympathize and agree with you partially. I feel compelled to speak out on this and not stay silent.

      What I find despicable in this situation is the exploitation of the dead to push a political agenda that does not allow open discourse of fact that are critical to understanding the problem, and moving toward a real improvement in the problem. Also it is an exploitation of the dead to suppress questioning the motivations of the people driving the political agenda.

      This issue should be open and the facts released so that real, rational, factual assessment can be made. If there are legislative changes they should be made based on fact, reason and effectiveness.

      It is verging on criminal that facts surrounding these mass murders have been hidden, suppressed and blocked and that the legislation that has been passed was passed without regard for the facts and rational assessment. This is what happened in CT and seems to be what has happened in other states. Why is this important? Because the “solutions” enacted do not objectively address the root causes and problems, and therefore will result in our having to suffer through this again and again. That is what is disgusting about this.

      Exploiting the dead to stir up emotion and fear to drive changes in society that miss the opportunity to do real justice to the solving the problem is unconscionable and immoral.

      • “What I find despicable in this situation is the exploitation of the dead to push a political agenda that does not allow open discourse of fact that are critical to understanding the problem, and moving toward a real improvement in the problem. Also it is an exploitation of the dead to suppress questioning the motivations of the people driving the political agenda. ” – Couldn’t have said it better myself. Very good.

  33. People of America, you are being mislead. This is not about kids getting shot, crime or social enlightenment. This is about MONEY. Your money, my money and the Governments desire to have it. Gun control lobbyist are nothing but a bunch of extortionist and hired “guns” for the IRS. You sheep following them are just that, sheep. Nose to ass and dumbly following the shit maker in front of you. Selling your constitutional rights down the tube.

    –> Congress has no enumerated power to require registration of firearms. However, since registration of firearms may assist in the collection of revenue, Congress passed the National Firearms Act in 1934 pursuant to its power to tax. <–

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