EDMUND BURKEHere’s another letter from the mailbag that I found interesting.
From the mailbag: “Regarding the atrocity of the Newtown murders: I went to the CDC website and did a quick search to find the main causes of childhood fatalities. Judging by the number of deaths, swimming pools are of vastly greater danger to children than are lunatics with guns.
“If our children’s safety is the primary concern, I think that promoting water safety is more important than advocating for gun control. Am I wrong?
“I know that drowning deaths lack the headline appeal of a school shooting, but the data is [sic] not unclear.”
My response: You might be right if you look just at certain age brackets. More children ages 5-9 drown than are killed with guns. But if we widen the age parameters that flips. More children ages 10-14 are shot to death than drown, and among adolescents there are far, far more deaths by shootings than drownings. From the data I’ve found, there are, on average, about 3,533 unintentional drownings per year in the United States for people of all ages – children, adolescents, and adults – in swimming pools and open water, while the CDC reports that in one year 4,423 children and adolescents were killed with guns. I know this is not exactly comparing apples to apples, but these are the best data I’ve been able to locate quickly. You can see my sources here, here, and here.
What is fascinating about your question is the implication that we should not be discussing gun control because there are greater risks. You don’t say that explicitly, of course, because doing reveals the absurdity of the proposition. It’s like saying we should stop funding cancer research and training oncologists because more people die of heart disease.
There is a second interesting implication in your question: that child safety is not my “primary concern.” If it were, you subtly suggest, I would be talking about swimming pools rather than guns. The first writer in the post immediately below made the same suggestion by alluding to my preexisting “agenda.” But if public safety is not my real concern – or the genuine concern of others advocating gun control – then what, pray tell, is?
Just as we need both oncologists and cardiologists, we need people thinking about reducing different kinds of risks. And I am happy to tell you (with apologies if this is not what you were thinking) that everyone talking about gun control does not have a secret agenda of confiscating all guns as part of a totalitarian cabal.
Incidentally, you may be interested to learn that I have written something related to swimming pool safety. You can find it here.