[granitepail]

It's also worth noting that while blunt objects such as hammers and baseball bats find uses in construction and non-violent sports, guns do not necessarily share such innocent use cases. Sport shooting is the major exemption (I'm quite a fan, myself) but at the end of the day guns are designed to put holes (some messier than others) in objects very far away. When a gun is pointed at a living organism and the trigger is pulled, its chances of survival plummet.

[learc83]

> When a gun is pointed at a living organism and the trigger is pulled, its chances of survival plummet.

When a hammer is raised above someone's head and lowered with force, chances of survival plummet.

Guns are a far more useful tool than baseball bats. Guns have a non recreational purposes as functional tools, baseball bats do not.

The number of deaths per baseball bat are far higher than the number of deaths per "assault weapon", making baseball bats deadlier by far.

[tome]

> The number of deaths per baseball bat are far higher than the number of deaths per "assault weapon", making baseball bats deadlier by far.

Wait, are you really claiming that a baseball bat is deadlier than an assault weapon?

[learc83]

Yes, per baseball bat.

If you are looking at banning something because it causes deaths. You want to look at how many deaths are caused per item.

Reducing the number of items by X will result in Y fewer deaths.

Baseball bats kill more people per baseball bat than do "assault weapons".

What other reason could you have for banning something other than reducing harm. Looking strictly at the numbers banning baseball bats would prevent more killings than banning "assault weapons".

[corresation]

Baseball bats kill more people per baseball bat than do "assault weapons".

What font of imaginary statistics are you pulling this ludicrous claim from? Do you know how many hundreds of millions of baseball bats there are in the United States? If we're discussing the confused, exaggerated stats that originally kicked this off, add in the billions of other "club-like" objects in circulation.

You are making absolutely ridiculous claims.

[nsmartt]

Do keep in mind that the parent was specifically referring to assault weapons, which are presumably much more rare than other firearms, and also very rarely used in crime.

I have no statistics, and I have no clue how many baseball bat deaths occur annually. I just thought maybe this would be a useful reminder.

[mindcrime]

I haven't looked up the stats lately, but IIRC, the number of times a legally owned actual assault weapon was used in a crime in the US was something like 3 or 4... ever.

[saalweachter]

I love trying to find numbers for random claims. This one is a little bit tricky because none of the four numbers are readily available.

The closest numbers I can find so far are:

  Number of murders committed with blunt objects, 2010: 600 [1]
  Number of murders committed with 'rifles', 2011: 323 [2]
  Number of 'assault-style' rifles: 3.75 million [3]
  Number of baseball bats produced per year: > 1.6 million [4]

So we don't know what fraction of blunt object murders are bats, and we don't know what fraction of 'rifle' murders are 'assault-style' rifles. We also don't know for sure how many 'assault-style' rifles there, are just a random reporter's guess. We also don't know how many bats there are, just how many one company of many makes.

All this together makes me believe that no one has any basis to make any claims about the deadliness of guns versus bats, because no one knows anything about the deadliness of guns versus bats.

I certainly can't come to any conclusions either, but I can at least sketch out the bounds. If we assume that every blunt object murder is a bat and every rifle murder is an assault rifle, then there are twice as many bat murders as assault rifle murders. But the question is murder per bat versus murder per assault rifle. So how many bats are there? There are probably somewhere between 2 and 5 million bats sold each year, depending on how much of the market Hillerich & Bradsby have. If the average lifespan of a bat is 5 years and 2 million are sold per year, then we have around 10 million bats in the country. If the average lifespan is 10 years and 5 million are sold per year, then we have around 50 million bats in the US. This puts the bats : assault-rifles ratio at between 2.5 and 13.

So the way I see it, as long as no more than twice as many murders are committed by baseball bat than assault rifle, I feel comfortable saying that assault rifles are more deadly than baseball bats, using the metric of people killed / weapon. For me to feel comfortable saying that bats are more deadly than assault rifles, at least ten times as many people would need to be killed by baseball bat as are killed by assault rifles.

The numbers I could find would still allow for either conclusion -- there's just too much uncertainty in them -- but IMO it leans heavily towards the conclusion that assault rifles are deadlier.

  [1] http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/baseballbats.asp
  [2] http://blogs.marketwatch.com/election/2013/01/16/assault-rifles-are-not-involved-in-many-u-s-murders-a-look-at-the-data/
  [3] http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/20/assault_rifle_stats_how_many_assault_rifles_are_there_in_america.html
  [4] http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/2136195

[saraid216]

Where are you getting:

  - The number of baseball bats available,
  - The number of baseball bat homicides,
  - The number of assault rifles available,
  - The number of assault rifle homicides

Please provide the actual numbers, and sources. We can't compare H_bat/A_bat to H_rifle/A_rifle without these.

[Terretta]

Fantastic point. Considering the rifle's primary purpose, and the number of them out there, it certainly suggests the typical rifle owner must be pretty responsible.

Compare to the 200 kiddie pool deaths every summer, which have the unfortunate side effect of almost exclusively killing kids despite mostly non lethal purposes, and rifle owners start to seem extraordinarily more responsible than kiddie pool owners.

At some point, I think we might as well cut through the hyperventilation, acknowledge potentially dangerous things are potentially dangerous, and let people choose their own risk profiles.

[corresation]

Compare to the 200 kiddie pool deaths every summer

You have a very loose handle on facts. There are about 20 "kiddie pool" deaths in the United States in an average year. There are many more swimming pool accidents, which is exactly why there are endless regulations and safety actions around swimming pools, and it remains a serious tragedy that absolutely needs action. It is completely and outrageously unacceptable that children continue to die tragic deaths in swimming pools, and whether it's increased safety measures, or more education starting at a younger age, it is untenable and at some point in the future people will look back and marvel at the stupid risk taking that occurred.

Of course it's a garbage analogy anyways. Swimming pools provide recreation and physical activity for tens of millions of people. Guns generally sit in closets until that day it's used to commit a suicide, a robbery, a murder, etc.