https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/guns-remain-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-and-teens
Specifically:
"There were 2,526 gun deaths in 2022 among 1- to 17-year-olds, averaging to nearly 7 per day."
So your analogy continues to be laughable given how nonequivalent it is, along with your (as a foreigner no less who doesn't live in a country with this epidemic) outdated and frankly bizarre reverence for a document created by kid diddling slave owners who couldn't fathom the kind of firearms we have today.
You’re conveniently forgetting to mention that 100,000+ children are injured in traffic accidents every year, often becoming disabled at a young age as a result. We’re also ignoring all the adult victims which obviously dwarf child victims since there’s more adults on the road (d’uh), and the fact that the child fatalities figure I provided cuts off at age 13, but let’s play your game for a moment, just for fun.
If you look at the numbers, over half of those deaths are suicides (per your own report!) - it seems to me that the problem there is people choosing to kill themselves, the method by which they do it is immaterial. If they didn’t shoot themselves, they’d do it another way, so the problem you’d want to address is suicidal ideation, especially among teens, and mental health in general.
That, and for some inexplicable reason, black teens are 18 times more likely to be victimised compared to their white peers (per your own report!) - why is that? Is it at all possible that perhaps it’s not the guns that are the problem per se, but rather that there are *some very specific areas* afflicted by increased levels of violence which appear to be statistically more dangerous and thus in dire need of better policing and widespread cultural change?
Does the fact that the suicide rate (per your own report!) among black teens specifically rose by a staggering 24%, surpassing white teens for the first time, bother you at all and is it indicative of some deep issues that are not present, or present to a lesser extent, in other groups?
Did something happen within the last, say, 5 years that could possibly make young people want to kill themselves more so than usual? Perhaps some kind of global pandemic and a resulting financial crisis that may spoil to mood a smidge? Does that make sense, considering gun deaths surpassed other causes of death three times in a row now compared to previous years? I think it does, considering the report mentions it explicitly as one of the major causes.
These are the number you’ve provided, and there are some big statistical red flags that would point you to things that might be worth addressing.
I also don’t know why you assume the founders “couldn’t fathom” that we’ll have better weapons in the future - they lived in an age of rapid technological progress. Are you under the impression that the founders were running around exclusively with single-shot muskets? Because they weren’t - semi-automatic weapons have already existed at the time of founding. “Assault weapons” were available long before the second amendment was put to paper.
https://www.rockislandauction.com/riac-blog/assault-weapons-before-the-second-amendment
I quote,
Variants of the Lorenzoni repeating system, an invention from 1688, were one of several types of rapid-fire guns being produced in 1791. One of the finest and rarest examples is the Chelembrom magazine repeating flintlock. Thought to be the creation of a French gunmaker working in India, few of these innovative and complex Chelembrom guns survive to the present day.
Though employed primarily as hunting weapons, at least one of these repeaters may have been used on the battlefield. As noted by the Royal Collection Trust in the United Kingdom, at least one of these flintlock magazine guns was acquired by the nemesis of Colonial America, King George III himself.
Carrying 20 rounds, the Chelembron magazine-fed repeaters are flintlock predecessors to the famous Henry repeating rifle but predates the Henry by nearly 200 years. In Royal Sporting Guns at Windsor, the complicated operation of this system is described.
What exactly couldn’t they imagine, high capacity repeating rifles that already existed? If the rifle above was made today, it would be illegal to sell or own in California due to their 10-round magazine capacity limit. Heck, at the time of founding you could own *explosives and cannons* - things that today would be classed as destructive devices that are not available to the public at large. In fact, at the time of founding, the public owned *better* and *more technologically advanced* weapons than the standing military did, for the simple reason that they were difficult to manufacture, expensive and not necessarily practical on the battlefield on account of logistics. The public was allowed to own all sorts of exotic weaponry based on complicated mechanisms (repeaters included), it was the soldiers that used cheap, easy to manufacture and “basic” weapons. The situation is very much reversed today.
For the record, I’m very passionate about firearms history, so I know a fair bit about the subject at hand. My location is irrelevant, I’m entitled to an opinion all the same.
