Candace and Cypren have a couple of posts up about guns, and so as a public service I went and found an op-ed by Steven D. Levitt, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago, who writes that swimming pools are more dangerous than guns.
What's more dangerous: a swimming pool or a gun? When it comes to children, there is no comparison: a swimming pool is 100 times more deadly.We've got to stop the swimming pool industry, they don't even have a flimsy amendment to stand on! Studies have shown that swimming pool manufacturers specifically target the most vulnerable members of our society with their deadly product. How many precious little ones must be sacrificed on Poseidon's altar? Won't someone please think of the children?In 1997 alone (the last year for which data are available), 742 children under the age of 10 drowned in the United States last year alone. Approximately 550 of those drownings -- about 75 percent of the total -- occurred in residential swimming pools. According to the most recent statistics, there are about six million residential pools, meaning that one young child drowns annually for every 11,000 pools.
About 175 children under the age of 10 died in 1998 as a result of guns. About two-thirds of those deaths were homicides. There are an estimated 200 million guns in the United States. Doing the math, there is roughly one child killed by guns for every one million guns.
Thus, on average, if you both own a gun and have a swimming pool in the backyard, the swimming pool is about 100 times more likely to kill a child than the gun is.
Summer fun, or backyard killer?
Update:
Thanks for the link, Ankfray Ajay. I don't think this post will get as many hits as "No More Hot Teacher/Student Sex", but we'll wait and see.
On the other hand, you can't bring your swimming pool with you and come try to kill me with it... nor were swimming pools designed to kill people. (Although I bet you could make good money building pools that ARE designed to kill people.)
Wouldn't deaths per hour of exposure to each item be a better metric? Of course, then you have to define what "exposure to guns" qualifies as. Having someone point a gun at you, or having a loaded gun, unsheathed in the vicinity, maybe.
Besides, cars kill way more kids than pools or guns do. Clearly we need to get rid of cars.
- mattw
Yeah, there are certainly different ways to look at the data. Households will generally own at most 1 pool, but may own many guns -- handguns vs. rifles being a particularly important distinction. Still, 100x more deaths per pool than per gun is a pretty big difference.
And hey, I didn't know you read my blog, spiffy!
Yes, I do. I kept forgetting about it, but now it's a perfect way to waste time at work! :)
Are there available statistics on overall deaths from pools and guns? Limiting it to children under 10 seems arbitrary. I imagine there probably are still far more pool deaths than gun deaths, across all ages, but still, the numbers of deaths per pool/weapon are not nearly as relevant as the numbers of deaths per hour of exposure to those things.
The problem is that many studies on gun deaths include strange things like 16-24 year old gang members, and suicides. I don't think that 16-year-olds (much less 24-year-olds) qualify as "children", and suicides shouldn't be counted as "gun deaths" for the purposes of gun restriction arguments.
Funny... but yeah your last comment is right on.
Who shoots children, anyway? That's even more heartless than shooting a grown-up. They're far less likely to have done damage to the scale meriting even a really violent person to shoot them.
I'd still like to see some more on this topic. It's been a full year since I really kept up on gun control.
The difficulty inherent in such studies doesn't mean they shouldn't be attempted. But my point was that you have to have a fair analysis of the data before you can reasonably make policy from it. Anyone using Dr. Levitt's article all by itself as a basis for legislation, for example, should be shot. :)
Anyway, I'm sure you're right that gun suicides probably shouldn't be counted as "gun deaths" for that purpose; but this doesn't mean we simply assume what we want and go on our merry way.
Well, my real argument against gun restrictions is based on civil liberties, not analysis of the costs and benefits. I only make the cost/benefit points to undercut the traditional arguments of the pro-gun-restriction crowd.
I guess it depends on where you're coming from. If you think that civil liberties are divinely ordained, or at least that they derive directly from God (as you seem to (?)), versus if you think that civil liberties are the result of social evolution (as I do).
Hm, in the grandest sense I believe that man derives his freedom and liberty as a virtue of his creation, but the specific structure of a given instantiation of those freedoms is not necessarily divinely dictated. This view means that those freedoms are subject to external abridgement only by God.
Rights that are based on social evolution are not really "rights" at all, are they? In your view, it would seem that society grants rights to its members. In my view, individuals voluntarily cede some rights to society. Maybe it's just semantics, on the functional level, but I think the underlying principles are important.
I can't belive I found this article on a web search. I am currently creating a 30 second PSA for a class project for a mythological organization I have named "PAP" (Parents Against Pools).
I never hear about the million mom march trying to enact swimming pool control. Of course then only criminals would have pools.
Thanks for the info.
I'm glad this post turned up, and I hope your PSA makes some of yoru classmates think.
While I recognize that you intend this piece as humor, many people are not able to find the errors in your reasoning that invalidate your conclusion that swimming pools are more dangerous than guns.
Benjamin Disraeli once said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics."
To figure out whether keeping a gun in a household with children is more dangerous than keeping a swimming pool in a household with children, you'd have to know how many of the children who drowned in swimming pools lived in a house with a swimming pool and drowned in it, and how many of the children who died of gunshot wounds lived in a house with guns and were shot with one of those guns.
It might turn out, for example, that only a small fraction of people with children keep loaded guns around, so that this behavior is much more likely to cause a death in that house.
As an almost computer scientist Ph.D., you will appreciate that to show that exposure to something has a probability of some consequence, you need to show that exposure occurred. For example, cosmic rays are pretty lethal, but children don't often die of exposure because they don't get exposed.
I don't know for certain how these deaths occurred, but I would doubt that having a loaded gun around the house where children can get to it is safer than having a loaded (filled) swimming pool.
P.S. I hold a Ph.D. from Rutgers University in Computer Science.
thanks for the info. its strange, i have a pool and guns but if i have company over ( i dont have kids) i feel more paranoid about the guns because kids can be so sneaky( i remember) so when i inform the parent (that i own guns), they act like " well MY child knows better than to touch a gun" (as if that eases my paranoia) and seem to be equally indignant if i bring it up more than once. (oh well)maybe if some parents would get out of denial and WATCH their kids the "accidental" death rate would drop a little . My post is truly made out of love. thank you, lara
Well Levitt's new book Freakonomics should renew debate on this subject because everyone is reading it and because he cites the 2001 article discussed here. As others have said we should consider the logic of a deaths per pool or deaths per gun statistic. In Levitt’s example in the book, the parent must choose between a house with a pool vs. a house with a gun. What really matters for the parent making the choice is not a comparison of deaths per pool vs. deaths per gun but deaths per house with pool vs. deaths per house with guns. If your house has two pools are your kids twice as likely to die in a pool than if you have only one pool? While two pools or two guns may be slightly more dangerous than one, I don’t think twice as dangerous. So it would be better to compare the number of residences with any pools to the number of residences with any guns. The estimate from the mid 1990’s is that 35% of U.S. households own guns (see, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/pressreleases/1997/GUNSRIB.HTM) and there were 102 million households in the U.S. in 1998 (see, http://www.prcdc.org/summaries/family/family.html). By my shoddy reckoning, (I’m sure there are better numbers out there) that’s 35% by 102 houses = 35.7 million households with guns. 175 child gun deaths with 35.7 million gun owning households means there is about a 1 in 204,000 chance of gun death vs. a 1 in 11,000 pool death at the two houses (I'm assuming relatively few houses have more than one pool). Thus kids are around 19 times safer with a gun in the house than with a pool. Even though this number is an order of magnitude less than Levitt's conclusion, it’s clear the house with the pool is much more dangerous; it is beyond me why Levitt, admittedly a very smart and calculating man, would jump to the 100 times safer figure when a more reasonable yet still very large 19 times safer figure is available.
Ultimately, we should consider the validity of a death per pool owning residence vs. death per gun owning residence comparison at all. A measure of danger per hour of exposure as others have said makes more sense. Children under ten spend way more time playing in pools than playing with guns (at least I did). The higher number of pool deaths is a product of this fact alone not the danger of pools per se. The reason “Molly is roughly 100 times more likely to die in a swimming accident at Imani’s house than in gunplay at Amy’s,” as Levitt asserts, is of course because Molly and Amy probably won’t be doing any gunplay at Amy’s, while they likely will go swimming at Imani’s. As the good Dr. Goldberg said (see two postings ago): which would you rather have kids play with a loaded gun, or a loaded pool?
Pools offer the potential for physical exercise, positive social play with friends, and the honing of valuable skills, i.e. swimming, that may be of value in future situations, e.g. avoiding drowning while canoeing at summer camp. Guns, however, don’t offer the same rewards, especially if the children don’t actually play with the guns as we tell them not to. Balconies, clotheslines, aspirin, lollipops, and lots of other things kill children, but most would argue their day to day utility outweighs their risks; some would argue the same cannot be said of guns. And that's why calling for a ban on pools is not really very clever or funny.
My last posting shouldn't have said the risk was "an order of magnitude lower" than Levitt's estimate--I exagerated it's only about five times lower. I appologize profusely, and by the way, encourage others to tackle this problem from their perspective. Sorry, Andy.
wow, that was deep. i mean really, very interesting. but isn't it pointless to discuss pool danger vs. gun danger unless you wish to ban guns? i have a RIGHT to have a gun. it affords me protection from those that would harm me or attempt to take away my rights (as jefferson intended). the very thing that gives a gun the ability to defend me also makes it potentially dangerous to others IF mishandled. we take a risk getting into a car to go to walmart for a new dvd. we take a risk when we leave the christmas lights on on christmas eve. we take a risk when we build a pool for our own pleasure. why is it we are willing to risk life for pleasure but not personal defense? the founding fathers wanted freedom and liberty for themselves and the people and gave us the means to protect it. today some just want us to be fat, dumb, and happy so they can steal it.
I am an avid advocate of gun control. HOWEVER, I am also a strong believer in our Constitution. So, the ONLY way to ban guns is to rescind the II amendment of our Constitution, which like it or not gives citizens the right to bear arms. But, back to pools- the argument that pools kill more children than guns in the absolute is absolutely correct, however, one does need to take into account exposure hours as has already been noted. I would far rather prefer my children play 100 hours in a pool than 1 second playing with a gun.