tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038865.post-1118708574098720022005-06-13T19:22:00.000-05:002005-06-13T19:22:54.180-05:00<a href="http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2005/06/13/pools_100_times_more_dangerous_than_guns.php">Pools 100 Times More Dangerous than Guns</a> <br />The "post a comment" stuff does not seem to work, so I might as well make a blog post. <br /> <br /><blockquote> <br />Here's a story you won't see printed in the NY Times or a Hearst paper: <br />A child is 100 times more likely to drown in a pool than be killed by a gun <br />They're pulled from backyard pools and bathtubs each year, tiny limp bodies, blue and not breathing. <br /> <br />A young life can vanish quickly under water. A survivor can endure a lifetime of disabilities. Either way, families are torn apart by an almost always preventable tragedy. ... <br /> <br />Levitt analyzed child deaths from residential swimming pools and guns and found one child under 10 drowns annually for every 11,000 pools. By comparison, one child under 10 each year is killed by a gun for every 1 million guns, according to his research, outlined in a new book "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side to Everything," which he co-wrote with journalist Stephen J. Dubner. <br /> <br />Freakonomics is on the NYT bestseller list. A colleague is reading it and highly recommends it (even though he is a flaming liberal). </blockquote> <br /> <br />Actually, that was in the August 3rd, 2003 edition of The New York Times Magazine. The relevant part of the quote is on page 146 of Freakonomics - the last sentence of the quote, in fact. <br />I, as a flaming neo-conservative, also recommend the book. I finished within two days. The 'child death' portion compares the effect of popular outrage compared to the actual hazard, which often seem to have an inverse relationship. You know those safety drawstrings on children's clothing? They save about two lives per year. And all that obsessive child resistant packaging? Saves around 50 children per year. I bet more people die per year because they cannot get through the packaging when their life depends on it. And, apparently, those $200 car seats don't really provide much more safety. The only real effect they have is preventing the baby from riding shotgun, in which case the child can become a projectile – if I understand the book right. Chris Edwardsnoreply@blogger.com