Reply to Children Sacrificed to Pay for Easy Access to Guns

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If our society chooses to have easy access to guns, part of the price we pay is two year olds getting shot.  Is the price worth it?[/quote]

What an idiotic thing to say. We choose to make it very easy to obtain a driver's license, part of the price we pay is two year olds getting killed in accidents. Is the price worth it? [/quote]

Yes, that's exactly the right question of costs versus benefits.

And yes, our society considers the cost of some people dying in auto accidents to be worth the benefit of easy transportation for millions of people.  But we try to reduce that cost by imposing fairly strict controls on who is allowed to drive, tests those drivers have to take, high insurance costs for drivers, lots of speed limits and other rules to keep drivers safe, penalties when drivers are being unsafe, strict controls on auto manufacturers to make their cars safer, mandatory seatbelts, etc.

Now let's ask the same question about easy access to guns.  The societal benefits of guns are a lot less than cars.  Also, those benefits are highly concentrated in just the relatively small pool of gun owners.  We see lots of costs of people dying needlessly from guns, including many children.  We also see lots of costs from guns being misused for criminal purposes to rob people.  There are other costs as well.  So what has our society done to try to reduce those costs?  Not much.  There are far fewer restrictions on guns, or efforts to make guns safe.

As I wrote in my original posts, I'm not advocating for the elimination of all guns.  I'm just trying to highlight the high human costs of easy access, and encourage people to consider why our society hasn't taken steps to reduce those costs.  [/quote]

Any chance you want to do a similar highlight thread for Americans killed by undocumented immigrants?  Benefits of the additional labor vs cost of not enforcing our immigration laws? [/quote]

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