RadioShack gun giveaway: A clarification

Our piece last week on the US RadioShack franchises who are handing out free guns with satellite TV packages prompted an email from the provider in question, Dish Network. The Dish Network's corporate communications operative, Alisa Meyer, wanted be certain readers understood the company is not itself involved in the promotion …

[Steve Davies 3]

In Other News

The Populations of Idaho & Montana have reportedly increaded by 10% almost overnight.

[Ross 7]

Firearms - oooh, exciting!

The statistics are interesting* -

Idaho :

0.33 firearms murders per 100k population

22.7% of murders in the state committed with firearms

5 firearms murders

New York (state) :

4.47 firearms murders per 100k population

61.7% of murders in the state committed with firearms

481 firearms murders

California :

3.7 firearms murders per 100k population

69 of murders in the state committed with firearms

1360 firearms murders

Based on those numbers we can extrapolate pops :

Idaho - 5 FA murders at 0.33 per 100k = 1.5m pop

New York - 481 FA murders at 4.47 per 100k = 10.8m pop

California - 1360 FA murders at 3.7 per 100k = 36.8m pop

Wow, California has a lot of ppl living in it (or my maths is even worse than my teacher said it was). Anyway, it seems that what we can take from this is that giving guns to people that live in the middle of nowhere is about as safe as not giving them guns. However giving guns to people living in poverty/extremely crowded cities is prolly a bad idea.

In other words, why is it such news that they are giving guns to people that can legally own them anyway, and tend not to shoot people that often?

Ok, I'm off to lobby my MP on the giving of free HKs to Scousers... And Google how Idahoans (???) prefer to kill. Seriously - 77% of murders don't use a firearm?!

---

*taken from the Graun so they're prolly an order of magnitude out somwhere ^^ And by "interesting" I mean "not all that surprising really"

[Michael 28]

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits......I got yo' digits!

possibly a question of range/lighting/speed of target/ inebriation/hubris present in target/other mitigating factors possibly but not necessarily including zombies.(or aliens)

[Anonymous Bosch]

You can't shoot what you can't find

By the time you find someone to shoot you have forgotten why you wanted to shoot them.

[Rovindi]

Handles

Anonymous Bosch. Gave me a nose bubble moment

Very good

[Destroy All Monsters]

I'm ok with that ...

...even if Michael Moore is probably gonna have fun about this.

But why is that satellite TV package glued to my Barrett Light 50?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Statistics

But by the same reasoning everybody in Idaho and Montana already has a gun - and probably a much better one than the supermarket cheapie being given away

[kain preacher]

population of California

36,961,664. So your math is is slightly off, but good enough for gov. work.

[Marvin the Martian]

Gov quality work indeed.

Especially the making of random conclusions; "positive correlation, therefore a causal relation". That's a new version of post hoc propter hoc?

[Mark Serlin]

Wish I'd got one with my fetchTV box

I'd have used it to blow the useless thing into a million pieces by now.

[Rick Brasche]

the gun's necessary

to keep the legions of cable-pushing sales dweebs from demanding to know why you turned off their overpriced sewer pipe in favor of something you had a little more control over.

these guys stop by my place at least once a week (when I'm home, who knows how many when I'm at work) and it's taken 5 years to get most of them to turn around and stop the spiel when I say "no, not interested". The new ones keep trying to sell me an expensive service I wouldn't utilize enough to be cost effective.

No dish, no cable. Give me a DSL pipe so I can choose what I want to see from whatever source I choose.

grenade because, sometimes subtlety is not effective.

[The Flying Dutchman]

I can see this scaling up pretty well...

Buy a new pickup truck, get a 25mm autocannon for only $9.95!

[JP 6]

Coupons, not guns

Another important minor detail. They are passing out COUPONS good toward the purchase of guns. The people still have to qualify for gun ownership.

[John F***ing Stepp]

Damn.

About all they are offering where I live is Jersey Shore.

(and after watching that, you need that gun to shoot yourself.)

[Winkypop]

More guns?

We all know America needs more guns....

[Anonymous Coward]

Montana: miles and miles of miles and miles

I've driven across Montana (I-90) and you can drive for hours without seeing another vehicle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Guns don't shoot people, people shoot people...

Hi, it gets down that guns are for protection mainly, but bad people shoot people.

[Craig 28]

Re:People shoot people

Yeah but the gun sorta helped. It's slightly easier to kill someone with a gun than it would be to kill them with a knife for example.

If you believe the public is responsible enough to own guns that's your choice but don't forget that guns carried in society have only one purpose, to kill or seriously injure someone. Self defence is essentially "shoot them before they shoot/stab/whatever me" so this qualifies for self defence as well. It is arguable whether or not guns for self defence work more often than they make things worse, but that's a whole other argument and getting off topic here.

[Trokair 1]

Prepared

When the Zombie Apocalypse is in full swing and the only living left are in Montana you will know why.

1911 owner