80 gun deaths a day, 300 gun wounds a day

[donsu]

http://www.jointogether.org/gv/news/alerts/reader/0,2061,570234,00.html

(bet you thought this was in Iraq)

On an average day in the U.S., guns are used to kill almost eighty people, and to wound nearly three hundred more. If any other consumer product had this sort of disastrous effect, the public outcry would be deafening; yet when it comes to guns such facts are accepted as a natural consequence of supposedly high American rates of violence.

Private Guns, Public Health explodes that myth and many more, revealing the advantages of treating gun violence as a consumer safety and public health problem. Author David Hemenway fair-mindedly and authoritatively demonstrates how a public-health approach -- which emphasizes prevention over punishment, and which has been so successful in reducing the rates of injury and death from infectious disease, car accidents, and tobacco consumption -- can be applied to gun violence.

-snip-

With its bold new public-health approach to guns, Private Guns, Public Health marks a shift in our understanding of guns that will finally point us toward a solution.

David Hemenway is Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. A former Pew Fellow on Injury Control, he has been a Senior Soros Justice Fellow and held a Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award in Health Policy Research.
----------------------------

shame on us

[Jacobin]

1. How many of the 80 per day are suicides?

Just curious.

[MadHound]

3. And this is one reason why, contrary to the gunny's fondest hopes,

That the majority of Americans in this country favor reasonable gun control measures in this country.

[daa]

2. I can't imagine a faster way

for Kerry to lose the election that to make this a central democrat issue. WV, PA. MI??? This may play well in NY but forget the Midwest or South. Stick to the jobs and war issues.

[buddy22600]

4. Im curious about

Automobile related deaths, cigarette related deaths, alcohol related deaths. I'm for gun-control, but I think everyone should have the right to own guns.

[StClone]

7. So am I

Hunting and to protect your home.

Speech has limits why not guns? The Constitution does not bar gun ownership. But the anytime, anywhere, unlimitedly lethal interpretation of what it does say is moot.

What kind of society needs all its citizenry to carry a weapon whether they need it or not?

[buddy22600]

9. No I don't think everyone needs to own a gun.

If they can limit someones ability to drink alcohol until they are 21 and force people into driver's education classes (in many states) then there needs to be severe regulation of firearms, but that shouldn't preclude someone owning a gun if they wish to.

[Bandit]

5. Most would be considered "Friendly Fire" if they were military

An Armed America is bound to have "Friendly Fire" problems. I guess it is part of the price we pay for being a nation of Cowards.

[teryang]

6. Most European suicides are gun related

Is that a consumer problem?

[bobbieinok]

8. where do they get the guns?????

[teryang]

10. Am I suposed to infer that suicide

...is a consumer problem? I'd concede that it is a public health problem, it comes into play in many cases where the existential limits of health services are reached. Indeed we are mortal.

[TexasMexican]

11. Meh

guns are cool.