Just wanted to chime in here 10 years later to point out the blatant bias in another review here about the "facts" he seems to be refuting in this documentary and to call him out on his BS.
"This whole thing is hilarious. Any parent who raises kids who are stupid enough to shoot themselves should be held criminally liable for not educating their kids about something so prevalent in our society."
Of the 5 children showcased in this documentary only two die from accidental shootings; the other three consist of one suicide and two homicides. Of the two accidental shootings, one consisted of kids who were 2 and 3 years old, an age I don't think many children would understand the gravity of the dangers being taught to them. But yes, any parent whose children (or any invited guest within their home for that matter) who has reasonably easy access to their gun and uses it to harm someone should be held criminally liable.
"Full of distortions, irrational appeals to emotions and whatnot."
Possibly distorted. I don't know where the statistics were gathered that in 1995 41% of homes with both guns and children left their guns unlocked. Others don't seem too hard to put 2 and 2 together like every 8 hours an American child commits suicides/It is 5x more likely that a child will take their life if a gun is in the house. If anyone would care to refute those statistics I would like to see them. Any time statistics are involved in any report, it must be taken with a grain of salt since stats can be included or excluded to shape an argument. As for irrational appeals to emotion, I mean, what do you think this documentary should look like...manufacturers showing off the guns they make and how they are designed and FBI officials reading off statistics about gun violence? People relate to human stories and in a documentary about gun deaths, there are going to be emotional stories supporting the film. Every single polarizing political topic in America has emotion tied inherently into it.
"This documentary literally claims more children die from accidental gun wounds in the home every year than did soldiers in the Vietnam war. This is absolutely, totally, blatantly false."
This documentary literally does not claim more children die from accidental gun wounds in the home every year than did soldiers in the Vietnam War. The only statistic in this entire documentary that makes an outright claim of total deaths per any given year is one that states that 3,600 children died from handguns in the year 1994. Using any other statistic in this documentary that could be converted into a yearly statistic only produces one, that every 8 hours a child in America commits suicide. That adds up to 1,095 per year. According to the national archives here...
... the number of American soldier casualties was slightly more than 58,000. Since not all casualties include deaths, removing all other statistics other than those Killed In Action leaves just over 40,000. Dividing that by the 20 years the war took place would give a death rate of 2,000 soldiers per year. If the trend of gun deaths to children were consistent at 3,600 per year, your claim would hold some weight, however, many statistics cite the peak of gun deaths among teens and children to be around 1993, one year before this documentary was filmed. The rate was similar within the previous 10 years but steadily decreases once moving away from the parameters of that decade.
"More kids drown in swimming pools every year than die from gunshots."
Okay? Seems like a nice whataboutism you've got there, as if one problem negates the other. More people die in car accidents than in plane accidents too. So if an airplane falls out of the sky and kills 300 people, we shouldn't try to regulate their safety after the fact? And according to your pool equivalency, the numbers seem eerily similar.
'From 2005-2014, there were an average of 3,536 fatal unintentional drownings (non-boating related) annually in the United States - about ten deaths per day.1 An additional 332 people died each year from drowning in boating-related incidents.'
"I might also add, that in the FBI Bureau of Crime statistics, they define ''children'' as ANYBODY YOUNGER THAN 20 Years Old. What does that tell"
That's because they are children. Yeah, you may legally be an adult when you turn 18 but biologically you aren't much different than you were are 17 or even 16. Children's brains aren't fully developed until about 21 or even later. That's one of the biggest reasons that states are obligated to set their drinking age at 21. I went back to college later in life and being surrounded by 18-22 year olds didn't make me feel like I was around adults. Most of them still looked and acted like high schoolers in many ways.
So yeah, whether this doc is biased or not, you are being disingenuous and creating straw man arguments to try and undermine what its argument is.
"This whole thing is hilarious. Any parent who raises kids who are stupid enough to shoot themselves should be held criminally liable for not educating their kids about something so prevalent in our society."
Of the 5 children showcased in this documentary only two die from accidental shootings; the other three consist of one suicide and two homicides. Of the two accidental shootings, one consisted of kids who were 2 and 3 years old, an age I don't think many children would understand the gravity of the dangers being taught to them. But yes, any parent whose children (or any invited guest within their home for that matter) who has reasonably easy access to their gun and uses it to harm someone should be held criminally liable.
"Full of distortions, irrational appeals to emotions and whatnot."
Possibly distorted. I don't know where the statistics were gathered that in 1995 41% of homes with both guns and children left their guns unlocked. Others don't seem too hard to put 2 and 2 together like every 8 hours an American child commits suicides/It is 5x more likely that a child will take their life if a gun is in the house. If anyone would care to refute those statistics I would like to see them. Any time statistics are involved in any report, it must be taken with a grain of salt since stats can be included or excluded to shape an argument. As for irrational appeals to emotion, I mean, what do you think this documentary should look like...manufacturers showing off the guns they make and how they are designed and FBI officials reading off statistics about gun violence? People relate to human stories and in a documentary about gun deaths, there are going to be emotional stories supporting the film. Every single polarizing political topic in America has emotion tied inherently into it.
"This documentary literally claims more children die from accidental gun wounds in the home every year than did soldiers in the Vietnam war. This is absolutely, totally, blatantly false."
This documentary literally does not claim more children die from accidental gun wounds in the home every year than did soldiers in the Vietnam War. The only statistic in this entire documentary that makes an outright claim of total deaths per any given year is one that states that 3,600 children died from handguns in the year 1994. Using any other statistic in this documentary that could be converted into a yearly statistic only produces one, that every 8 hours a child in America commits suicide. That adds up to 1,095 per year. According to the national archives here...
... the number of American soldier casualties was slightly more than 58,000. Since not all casualties include deaths, removing all other statistics other than those Killed In Action leaves just over 40,000. Dividing that by the 20 years the war took place would give a death rate of 2,000 soldiers per year. If the trend of gun deaths to children were consistent at 3,600 per year, your claim would hold some weight, however, many statistics cite the peak of gun deaths among teens and children to be around 1993, one year before this documentary was filmed. The rate was similar within the previous 10 years but steadily decreases once moving away from the parameters of that decade.
"More kids drown in swimming pools every year than die from gunshots."
Okay? Seems like a nice whataboutism you've got there, as if one problem negates the other. More people die in car accidents than in plane accidents too. So if an airplane falls out of the sky and kills 300 people, we shouldn't try to regulate their safety after the fact? And according to your pool equivalency, the numbers seem eerily similar.
'From 2005-2014, there were an average of 3,536 fatal unintentional drownings (non-boating related) annually in the United States - about ten deaths per day.1 An additional 332 people died each year from drowning in boating-related incidents.'
"I might also add, that in the FBI Bureau of Crime statistics, they define ''children'' as ANYBODY YOUNGER THAN 20 Years Old. What does that tell"
That's because they are children. Yeah, you may legally be an adult when you turn 18 but biologically you aren't much different than you were are 17 or even 16. Children's brains aren't fully developed until about 21 or even later. That's one of the biggest reasons that states are obligated to set their drinking age at 21. I went back to college later in life and being surrounded by 18-22 year olds didn't make me feel like I was around adults. Most of them still looked and acted like high schoolers in many ways.
So yeah, whether this doc is biased or not, you are being disingenuous and creating straw man arguments to try and undermine what its argument is.
