Do you trust your family members and other Americans with automobiles, trucks, and motorcycles? 43,664 people died in motor-vehicle-related incidents in 2006.
Do you trust your family members and other Americans with poisonous and noxious chemicals and substances? 37,286 people died due to poisoning in 2006.
Do you trust your family members and other Americans with heights sufficient to kill someone? 21,647 people died due to falling in 2006.
The answer to each of those questions is, most probably, “Yes.” Then why is it so difficult to trust people with an object that was involved in 30,896 deaths in 2006?
Accidents happen. People decide to do crazy, illegal, dangerous, and stupid things. But those same people will do those same crazy, illegal, dangerous, stupid, and accidental things regardless of the items or materials they have available to them. Blaming the object the people use to do those things instead of the people doing them makes about as much sense as blaming alcohol for drunk driving accidents. And signling out one particular object for irrational demonization when other objects claim far more lives on a yearly basis makes even less sense.
Then again, abject bigotry is not known for making sense in general, so I should not be surprised.
If you do not trust your own family, or other law-abiding, peaceful, private American citizens, that is, unfortunately, your own problem. Additionally, that irrational distrust does not somehow give you the ability to strip those law-abiding, peaceful, private American citizens of their rights when those Americans have committed no crime and broken no law.
The world simply does not work that way, and the anti-rights advocates really should stop denying reality and catch on to that simple fact.
(All numbers were pulled from the CDC NCIPC WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports, and reflect incidents due to “all intents”.)
Especially considering that of that 30,896:
16,883 (54.6%) were suicides; and 360 (1.2%) were legal intervention (police related and self defense shootings)
That means that 55.8% of shootings were not murders. To put this in perspective, only 52.9% of the nation voted for Obama, and that election was called a mandate.
Quite true. And once you factor in “accidents” (i.e. negligent discharges), I think the number of intentional murders get even smaller… However, no matter how you look at the deaths related to inanimate objects, it is not the objects that are killing people. Rather, the people are doing it to themselves (through their own choices or negligence), or they are doing it to each other (again, through their own choices or negligence).
The same people will make the same choices or be negligent in the same way whether we are talking about firearms, automobiles, or zambonies.