scrubbedexpat099

Pretty much impossible to buy one, and only one I know of has ever been used.

Boomhauer

2016 saw around 33,000 gun related deaths.
2016 released study states that there was around 250,000 deaths from medical malpractice.

You are far more likely to be the victim of Medical Malpractice than gun related violence.

Compare the relative lack of outrage for medical malpractice deaths vs. gun related deaths.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles...eath-in-the-us
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/u...ath-rates.html

robtuck

At the end of the day, with a 100% mortality rate, something will always be towards the top reasons for death. The issue is whether the reasons are worthy of effort to prevent, allowing as full a life to be lived as possible.

Is medical malpractice something worthy of preventing via legislation, training, ensuring medical staff have sufficient qualifications before performing surgery etc? Yes, of course, which is why the industry is heavily regulated. Should we aim to improve performance, of course.

So what is your point?

We can improve many things, not just one.

Boomhauer

My point is the degree of outrage expressed towards Gun related fatalities versus Medical Malpractice. If the media and all the people outraged at gun deaths were concerned about preventable deaths, why do they make such a huge deal about gun deaths while essentially ignoring medical malpractice.

scrubbedexpat099

Very similar to Airlines vs Trains vs Coaches vs Cars.

Shard

Yes, I agree.

Shard

That's an irrelevant comparison. Malpractice is generally unintentional, and is often dependent on long causal chains. There's an argument to promote best practice and punish negligence, but it's muddying the waters to bring this issue in on the gun debate.

Siouxie

But apparently included within those 'stats' for 'medical malpractice' were 'Hospital-acquired infection and pulmonary embolism' and suchlike.There's an interesting article here: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/863788

I don't think it's relevant to compare deaths from medical issues to mass shootings with guns..

zzrmark

Yup, truly shocking. Are you suggesting we should be asking those who are tooled up to perform vasectomies, removing warts, etc?
Misuse or malpractice are unfortunately a part of the human experience, the difference with a gun is that there is no misuse when it is pointed at somebody, it is being used for it's proper purpose.

All kinds of things can be used to kill or do things they that they aren't designed for but, unless the user of a gun happens to be some kind of disturbed pervert who likes to use it as a sex toy, a gun has one use and that is to put holes in stuff. And yet a highly vocal part of this nation would prefer to allow it's kids the means to easily put holes in each other rather than let them smoke a J and suffer from the munchies????

The number of kids globally who die unnecessarily from malnutrition is shockingly high and makes a few American murdered schoolkids appear to be an insignificance BUT as a fully functioning human I can multi task and campaign to stop both and still have time to moan about US medical malpractice, Florida driving standards, poaching, paedophilia, politicians, etc, etc. Just because some people are incapable of multi tasking and resort to the 'it's bad but x is worse' argument it shouldn't prevent normal people from fighting for common sense legislation/action regardless of the severity of the cause.
(Castigation of the homeless is actually top of my list but it's far less popular a cause than decrying the needless deaths of a bunch of 14 year olds or six year olds or whichever age group gets to suffer the next mass shooting).

Boomhauer

I think it is, because Gun related deaths also include suicide and accidental deaths.

The sheer number of medical malpractice deaths vs. gun related should matter if deaths is what society is concerned about. In reality the media and anti-gun activists are most concerned about the power of the individual to effect drastic change. Our intelligentsia and a lot of the public simply do not want the average person to have access to the kind of power guns provide, they want individuals to be relatively powerless like Europeans.

Shard

Are you pro-gun Boomer?

Boomhauer

I am saying that people in government, media and activists who go on about how many children must die, don't care about deaths per see, they just want to remove the ability of the individual to effect major change.

Yes guns are designed to kill, and they are also designed to help a physically small person defend himself/herself against attackers.

These mass fatality school shootings started being frequent from the 2nd half of the 1990s onwards. America was awash with guns long before that.

Boomhauer

I do support the right to bear arms, even though I do not have any and never owned any.

I don't see why the vast majority of lawful gun owners should have their rights infringed upon because an extremely tiny majority decide to abuse rights afforded to us. In a free society, like the US, freedom and liberties invariably will have its abusers. I wouldn't want the US to become a more controlled society like Europe is.

Lion in Winter

They don't. If more people made a huge deal (isn't it a huge deal anyway?) out of the body count from guns in the US, then we would probably have managed to reduce it by now.

On the other hand, a very huge deal is made out of medical malpractice and doctors and other medical types and institutions have the insurance premiums to prove it.

Lion in Winter

Why should they have their rights abridged? Because there are too many dead people, and we have a collective responsibility. Individualism as a principle is inadequate as the sole principle of oranizing a society.

You may define the government limiting the way, or if, people get weapons as an infringement on liberty. Others, including those european countries, define it as government doing its job so that the society as a whole may be more free from violence and sudden death of peoples' children, spouses, parents, etc.