Grim

It's a dog. A large, goofy one.

On Quoting Statistics in a Vacuum

Just so everyone knows beforehand, I'm a bit of a smartass. I understand that my retort in this situation was not delivered in the absolute most personal way possible. The discussion was not held in a professional forum, so I just wrote it how it came to me. The following is my response to a post by a rather liberal acquaintance of my wife's who posted on facebook that 'having a gun in the home increases the likelihood of gun deaths in that home by X percent'. He posted it in public, so I felt no shame at sticking my 2 cents in. I'm reposting it here on the chance that he deletes it, and that someone here may find it entertaining.

Also, it's a bit of a long read.

Reply follows:

Swimming pools are no more necessary in the home than firearms, and yet are still a recreation that many families enjoy. Lets talk about the numbers for a different, non-necessary piece of equipment and compare.

According to the CDC, there were an average of 3,533 drowning deaths per year in the US between the years 2005 and 2009. Out of those, one in 5 is under the age of 15. Math says that is 706.6 drowning deaths per year for persons under the age of 15. I've heard it said that most drowning injuries that are nonfatal aren't as serious as nonfatal firearm injuries. The CDC says that over 50% of nonfatal drowning incidents require hospitalization or further treatment. It also points out that many of these leave lasting brain damage and other loss of basic functions.

Source: http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Water-Safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html

So,
Drowning - 706.6 deaths per year for children

Now, lets look at the CDC stats for accidental gun deaths per year
The CDC stats show that for the same period, 2005-2009 "Firearm Death Rates Among Children Ages 1-14" totaled 397, 403, 382, 367, and 341 for the given years. That averages to 378 DEATHS per year. This is the total statistic, and does not seperate between intentional homicide and accidental death.

Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/FIREARM_DEATHS_AND_DEATH_RATES.pdf

The score so far:
Drowning - 706.6 deaths per year for children
Firearms - 378 deaths per year per children

Now, since the CDC study on drowning only looked at accidental deaths by drowning, lets go a step farther. This is easy since the CDC, later in the same report, DOES seperate by accidental deaths and homicides. According to the section entitled "Unintentional Firearm Deaths and Death Rates Among Children" 74, 54, 64, 62, and 47 accidental firearm deaths under he age of 14 occurred those years. This averages to 60.2.

Score
Drowning - 706.6 deaths per year for children
Firearms - 60.2 deaths per year for children

Now, that's a little lopsided, so for sake of argument I'll assume that many of the drowned individuals were drowning themselves on purpose. There is nothing to show that this is the case, but I thought I'd add a few kills to the gun death side just so you could feel a little better about your position. Let's look at suicides among the same age group. Same study says 84, 62, 53, 50, 64. This averages to 62.6 per year.

Let's recap:
Drowning - 706.6 deaths per year for children
Firearms (accidents AND suicide) - 122.8 deaths per year for children

Hey, so you know, I intentionally skewed this examination in your favor and swimming pools are still killing babies faster at a rate of 5.74 to 1. Just looking at accidents, the ratio becomes 11.73 to 1.

So the difference is? The government and the media sensationalize gun violence. No one cares about swimming pools because they don't fit anyone's agenda. Guns are scary, guns are bad.

Truth is though that a dead child is a dead child, drowned or shot makes no difference. So...

For the children.

Do we really NEED swimming pools in the home?

For craps and giggles lets add a third number to this list.

[butthurt intensifies]
Drowning - 706.6 deaths per year for children
Firearms (accidents AND suicide) - 122.8 deaths per year for children
Car Deaths (As usual, 14 and under. In this case though ONLY the year 2010) - Greater than 1,200, with a further 171,000 injuries. (Source, because I provide those rather than just repeating what the king says: http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/child_passenger_safety/cps-factsheet.html)

Total number of cars on us roads legally: 240 million ( http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_11.html). This works out to, at minimum, one dead child for every 200,000 cars on US highways.

You won't find a legitimate 'number of firearms owned in America' list since we don't federally register most classes of firearms. Estimates as of 2009 put the number at about 310 million. Almost 5 years ago. Before 4 years which broke records for the number of guns sold. You do the math, the number is significantly higher now. For sake of argument we will use this more accepted figure though, even if I have children starting school younger than this estimate. At 122.8 (accidental AND suicidal) child gun deaths, that comes out to one firearm death to every 2.5 million firearms owned in this country. If you remove suicide (remember, we added those too help out the anti gun side of this issue. All of the above listed deaths by drowning and automobile are accidental) then it comes out to one death per 5.15 million firearms.

According to the above CDC document, there are about 11,000,000 swimming pools, both public and private, in the United States. At 706 deaths per year that works out to about one death for every 15,580 swimming pools.

Why aren't you walking? Thing is, the presence of any object increases the likelihood of an accident with it. The same is true for stairs. Homes with stairs have more stair related deaths than homes without. It is disingenuous to use this as some sort of argument. If you really want to worry about the safety of someone else's children, you should really start by taking away their freedom to hand the most dangerous objects first.

You think guns are dangerous for your children? Don't own guns. Otherwise take tho CDCs advice on ALL THREE COUNTS. Don't be an irresponsible dickhead with dangerous item around your children. Insure they are stored properly. Insure your pool is fenced in properly. Insure your kids are wearing seatbelts. Don't leave your guns and ammo where kids can get them. It's amazing how this country has gone from a people who accepted personal responsibility to wanting to blame objects for their own stupidity and lack of. Keep letting them regulate and legislate personal responsibilty. Eventually a government inspector will have to check after you wipe, you know, like you have to when you have a small child who hasn't quite the hand control to insure a clean wipe every time.

Who am I kidding, that's what these people want, right? The government to wipe their ass for them.

Screw that. Put your big people pants on and be a responsible adult in all things, "bad" or not. That'll solve a lot of the problems we have.

Final Babies Dead Score:
1 death for every 200,000 cars.
1 death for every 15,580 swimming pools
1 death for every 2.5 million firearms (including suicides)
1 death for every 5.1 million firearms (strictly accidental)

My child is approximately 12.5 times more likely to die in a car accident than from the firearms in my home.
My child is approximately 160.5 times more likely to drown than to die from the firearms in my home.

You see, saying children are "X amount" more likely to die from guns in the home is only scary as long as you only get the information that is handed to you. Put in perspective of the other dangers my children face daily, I've got much better things to worry about. I'd bet you are more likely to be beaten to death by a baseball bat in the home of a baseball player than in my home. That proves nothing.

It really is much harder to play on the emotions of the informed.

Pools are bad.
Cars are bad.
For the children.

And just so I can show I'm up on how to use hashtags:

# learntoresearch #stopeatingwhattheyfeedyou

p.s. I don't really care if those work or not.
p.p.s. For those of you curious, the number of documented deaths of people playing, officiating, or watching professional baseball events is greater than 850

On Trying Watercolor

Always intended to try out watercolor. This is a quick and dirty. I hate to cheat on my oils, but i think I'm in love.

Gay Marriage

Don't care. I don't feel in the least threatened by two well dressed gentlemen holding hands and getting some paperwork.

Personally, I don't see why anyone in a straight relationship feels threatened by gay marriage at all. So your book says it's bad? So is shellfish. Have you boiled a lamb in it's mother's milk lately, or worn mixed fabrics? Fucker, stick with all of the law, or drop all of it. Don't pick and choose so you can feel big and in charge. Many people give less than a damn about your book. They have their own, or they have none, and they pay taxes same as you.

Personally, I think if your nailed god is so awesome and powerful he wouldn't need a bunch of bigoted, scared assholes to speak for him. You'd think a beard that awesome could speak for itself.

Leave the gays alone, no one cares how hurt and scared you feel. Put your big people pants on and accept that the playground won't let you have your way all  the time just because you're bigger.

I support Biblical marriage. One man, one woman, one other woman, a couple more women, and 17 concubines.

Two Years

It's been two years (near enough) since I've posted anything on here. Nothing interesting to say, I guess.

If I had any sense I'd have documented my GTMO deployment in 2010. Missed out on that one. Honestly most anything I'd feel like talking about would be ravings from states of depression that strike from time to time.

As a matter of fact, on a disjointed note, that's part of the reason for the title of this blog. It's partly a reference to where I live, both geographically and socially. More than that though it's a comment on my occasional swings in mental state. Sometimes I take spells where I worry that I'm not all there.

Aside from work, my only real social interaction comes from World of Warcraft friends. By friends, I mean I play with my wife and my brother-in-law. Don't really care for people even, and perhaps especially, on the internet. On the internet stupidity and other less than pleasant human traits are often protected by anonymity, so they run rampant. Don't believe me? Try running dungeons with rates in WoWs LFD tool...

A long awaited replacement for Swype

I always said that losing Swype would be like losing a puppy.  I guess I didn't like that puppy as much as I thought.

I finally gave SwiftKey a fighting chance. Played with it for about an hour then tried to use Swype again. It was like a root canal. I don't type, say, twice as fast as I type with swype, but I save a lot of time not having to go back and make corrections for words it missed.

The moral of the story is this: You shouldn't get rid of your dog as often as you get rid of keyboards on your phone.

Or something like that.

On Summer Camp

I'll have to say that this is possibly the least I've worked in a while. Mostly just training down here, and I'm all caught up, so I've had a bit of a slow time, what with our only piece of field equipment being so much junk.

Oh, well. Never been one to complain about naps...

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