Five family members, including three kids, were found dead in an Ohio home Thursday evening in what police are calling a “domestic dispute that turned deadly,” according to a news release.
The incident is being investigated as a quadruple murder-suicide, police said.
Owning a car increases your chance of dying in a car accident too. Owning a table saw increases your chance of losing a finger. Owning a boat increases your chance of drowning. Etc.
Do I think people should be walking around with military-grade weapons? No. Do I think people should be allowed a shotgun to hunt with or whatever? Sure. Do I think there should be background checks and all that to help make sure they’re used in a responsible manner? Hell yes. Do I wish guns had never been invented? Yes.
But come on. This guy apparently went room to room in his house and systematically murdered everyone in it. It wasn’t an accident, which is what generally drives the statistic you mentioned. Who knows what was going through his mind at the time. But I’m guessing that, while the gun probably made the act easier, the gun wasn’t the enabler nor catalyst here. Given what happened, I’m guessing he would have found another tool to use if he had no gun on hand. I’m not going to be morbid and name all the things within reach at the average house you could use to murder a 9 year old, but it’s a lot of things.
You’ve made a sound argument against owning cars and table saws and boats, not one in favor of owning guns or that they’re safe to have in the home, especially in the face of overwhelming evidence.
And what you think is irrelevant; the facts speak for themselves. All you’re saying is that you’re choosing to ignore the facts, ignore reality, because you think you somehow know better. And regardless of your attempts at rationalization, it doesn’t take much to figure out that, without a gun in the home, this person would have found it far more difficult to so quickly and instantly murder his whole family and then himself, and family members would have had a much higher chance of survival and/or escape.
Even faced with the prospect of the much more difficult task of killing his whole family by other means would have greatly reduced the likelihood of him following through with his plan at all. With a gun, it’s all so easy. Using some other means makes it more difficult a task and is enough to give a person pause— often just enough to change a mind, to create an opportunity to seek help, etc.
But you’re not even willing to consider any of that. Because of boats and cars and table saws…
BTW, getting a license to drive a car/boat is much more difficult in most states than getting a gun license. And I don’t know of any stories of families being mass-murdered or schools or nightclubs having everyone inside them being slaughtered by table saws.
Let’s also not forget that cars and boats and table saws, while they can certainly be dangerous, have intended purposes which are not harmful, and are actually beneficial.
The only purpose for a firearm is to put a destructive and deadly hole in the thing you point it at. Hunting, sure, is beneficial to the hunter. Handguns are not used for hunting. Absent the odd “defending yourself from a bear or moose with a large caliber handgun,” handguns are for killing people. Essentially all handgun usage is harmful by definition.
Agreed. Handguns are basically for killing people. I don’t know why you brought them up though since we have no idea what kind of gun this guy used.
I can respect your angle here with the facts vs feelings take, but nobody lives their life like that. No one runs the numbers and considers the outliers or statistical averages as legitimate possibilities when they decide whether or not to buy a gun. It is always an emotional decision.
Imagine you got a wife and two young kids at home alone at night and you work second shift. You’re not going to give your wife a gun and a chance at defending herself against someone cuz of some statistical average? Yeah ok.
Sigh. I’m anti-gun, if you couldn’t tell from my post. But sure, put words in my mouth.
First of all, I already said I’m for more regulation on guns. Second of all, I’ll basically invite further downvotes and say “good”. That actually makes sense to me. I’ve long believed that people don’t give driving the respect it deserves. You’re literally driving a ton of metal and explosive liquid 70+ miles an hour in the dark with a lot of people around doing the same thing, houses scant yards away, all while you simultaneously talk to your friends, check your phone for messages, and adjust the radio. It’s insane when you think about it. Realistically? I’d say the capacity for mass destruction is higher for driving than guns, but I’ll accept the fact that’s perhaps mostly due to the commonality of vehicles.
Chris watts (? Not 100% on the name) killed a pregnant adult and two children with his bare hands I believe. I do believe having a gun to hand makes killing quicker and easier than another weapon, but ultimately once someone snaps to this extent, there’s little that will stop them.
Cherry-picking single, isolated incident does not change mountains upon mountains and decades, upon decades of statistical data that proves you wrong. This one man may have been capable of killing a person with his bare hands, but that doesn’t change the fact that literally anyone is capable of killing another person (and themselves) instantly with a gun. 
I always find it, particularly strange when someone claims to know the mind of someone who has “snapped to this extent“both claiming to know what they think, while simultaneously, claiming that you can’t know what they might do. 
The fact is, you can’t claim to know what another person thinks. But the statistical data shows that when taking a gun out of the situation, it’s far far far less likely that the murderous act would be carried through simply because it’s no longer as easy. 
No, I agree. I’m British so pretty anti gun. I just thought the guy I was replying to had a point and honestly I don’t think I’ve ever heard a reasonable point defending guns. But you’re right, it was just one recent-ish example that sprung to mind. It doesn’t change the fact that millions of Americans would be safer if you adopted gun laws like the UK, Oz or other similar countries.
I will gladly acknowledge that there are outliers that don’t fit the pattern. That literally always happens with any form of data analysis. It does not, however, change the facts of the matter that having a gun in your home dramatically increases the likelihood that someone in the home will be injured by or killed by that gun. 
One common misunderstanding in the argument against guns in the home and other similar arguments as such is that the goal is to eliminate gun violence altogether. That’s not really possible in this context. The goal, of course, is to dramatically reduce the incidence of gun violence. Opponents to gun control like to treat the argument as though eliminating gun violence altogether is impossible, therefore, we shouldn’t even bother trying. Because of this false narrative, their arguments will always be empty. Not to mention that they always ignore the overwhelming evidence.