There is a risk in many things. Some are easily avoided like a seat belt while driving or a gun locked. Some we have no control over and are silly to worry about.
Appropriate Age for a Gun?
- Thread starter JazzGal
- Start date
There is a risk in many things. Some are easily avoided like a seat belt while driving or a gun locked. Some we have no control over and are silly to worry about.
Statistics show little to no risk of babies being around loaded guns. Would you let your baby play with a loaded handgun? Seems like if you could just give them another toy to play with you should but that might be a lot of precaution to you and make your kid coddled if you dont let them play with whatever they want.
I'm not hearing what the positives of an unlocked gun are. Do you not want a dangerous weapon that can kill locked because they might use it to do something heroic or learn a valuable lesson?
reignman40
Well-Known Member
I started shooting a .22 at 4. With the help of my dad of course. He got me a BB gun at 7 or 8 but I must have been about 11 before I could take it out to shoot random things with a friend/cousin. Away from houses, people, cars ect.
reignman40
Well-Known Member
Hated mom that much for not taking care of things, I see.
Ha ha.
Libs need return fire on sarcasm.
Seriously, without anyone having the right or power to infringe, Darwin's laws will naturally work wonders, maybe in a million years babes will be born with assault rifle appendages and unerring instincts for social justice.
Pretty highly evolved at last. Yay.
I don't know where you are getting your numbers from. From what I've read, there's a 10% less likely chance to commit suicide by gun if the guns are locked up. Regardless, my disagreement is not in the prevalence of suicide in the presence of guns. My disagreement is in caring about something that has such a small chance of affecting me.
What else could be the cause? Utah's rate has recently skyrocketed from 3 per 100,000 to 8.5 per 100,000. This obviously is not due to an 3x surge in gun ownership. The most likely cause is a Mormon culture combined with the public LGBT debate. A lot of LGBT have been killing themselves.
So again, getting back to the numbers (and if Utah suicides have the roughly 50% gun rate), Utah's rate of suicide by gun was about 1 in 70,000 youth prior to the most likely LGBT spike. I don't think I need to worry about teen suicide by gun at that rate.
LOL I'd love to meet the person with the guts to perform those studies. That would take some balls.
If by loaded you mean loaded but not chambered then I wouldn't care if someone let their infant sleep with a gun.
Developing responsible adults is a huge part of parenting. I also don't see how developing trust and respect don't help build confidence, something that can be a suicide deterrent.
Here is the study that shows it is 32X more likely for a teenager in a home with an unlocked gun to commit suicide. That is in teens who have never shown signs of depression or any other mental illness.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2001.tb05808.x/abstract
There are plenty of others as well as common sense to know that houses without guns especially ones that kids dont have access to are not a part of the statistics for teenager gun suicide, since it is very difficult to get a gun. The vast majority of suicide attempts are people who had the thought and tried to act it out within 20 minutes or less. Other means are hard to come by in that amount of time and if they are they most likely fail and never try again.
I agree that developing responsibility is important. I think showing an example of responsibility helps teach that. Responsible adults lock up their dangerous weapons along with many other things they do to be responsible. I would want a kid to learn that he should be responsible as well and lock up his guns when he is not using them. I am not arguing to not let them use the guns to go shooting or hunting. Confidence, trust respect are all great things but many kids with those things have committed suicide and died. Teens are quick to act and small things are detrimental to them even in the best kids with the best parenting.
You keep repeating several points so I want to emphasize that I am not disagreeing with much of what you are saying. My only angle is that suicide is a rare event, and as such, something I don't need to concern myself with very much. It there are troubling signs, sure...
Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, it's a pay to read article so I had to google. Here's a research publication that seemed to be unbiased & extremely inclusive for a survey-based study (the only way to study this subject).
https://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full
Table 6 has an increase factor of 1.0, meaning indistinguishable, no impact, non-factor between guns being locked up vs not.
This study also shows your 32x factor, but has it at 31.1x at 95% confidence interval. It's clear that presence of guns in America leads to increased suicide success rates.
Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, it's a pay to read article so I had to google. Here's a research publication that seemed to be unbiased & extremely inclusive for a survey-based study (the only way to study this subject).
https://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full
Table 6 has an increase factor of 1.0, meaning indistinguishable, no impact, non-factor between guns being locked up vs not.
This study also shows your 32x factor, but has it at 31.1x at 95% confidence interval. It's clear that presence of guns in America leads to increased suicide success rates.
fishonjazz
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/boy-3-shopping-grandma-dies-road-rage-shooting-061231429.html
So tragic and stupid. Road rage is so lame. Call down on the roads people, it isn't worth it just to get somewhere a little quicker.
So tragic and stupid. Road rage is so lame. Call down on the roads people, it isn't worth it just to get somewhere a little quicker.
Wow, how absolutely ridiculous. And it sounds like they haven't caught the shooter yet. Horrible.
Actually thinking that exposing a child to adult things will some how teach them to alter their gun related trajectory is not very smart. Children's brains are not even fully development at 5 years old. There is no way to know which way exposing a child to guns at an early age has to them being a responsible gun owner. The kid who killed all those children in Newtown CT used guns at an early age and that didn't seem to change his behavior.
Personally, I think there should be a age limit when it comes to children shooting a gun. What that age is I don't know but 5 is way too young. Would we allow a five year old to drive with adult supervision. You could teach your kid all the safety you want about guns but they do not have the cognitive ability to make sound decisions at that age.