Thursday, June 13, 2013

15-Year-old Dead from a Pellet Gun Shot

SF Gate

A 15-year-old boy is dead after being shot with a pellet gun at a friend's house in central Pennsylvania.

Investigators say the shooting of Ty Yonkin in Clinton County on Tuesday afternoon appears to be an accident and isn't considered suspicious. An autopsy is scheduled Wednesday in State College.

Yonkin was at a friend's home in Porter Township when the shooting happened. It wasn't immediately clear how he was shot and the death is under investigation by Pennsylvania State Police and the coroner's office.

This brings up a question.  Do pellet-gun and BB-gun and air-soft gun deaths and injuries count? Greg loves to quote statistics when attempting to downplay the situation by limiting the number to deaths by firearms only.  I pointed out that the injuries should count too as well as the cases in which a kid does the shooting and is not injured himself.

Now it seems there's another whole category we've been overlooking.

What do you think?  Please leave a comment.

18 comments:

  1. Count for what? What I see says that there are about four deaths per year from nonpowder guns. If you want to add those to the total number of accidental deaths from all causes per annum, go ahead. The same source:

    http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/114/5/1357.full

    says only 4% of pellet gun injuries result in hospitalization. The source does a lot of handwringing over these devices, but the fact is that severe injury and death from them are exceedingly rare.

    But if you want to ban something because it might leave a bruise, there's a long list of things you'll have to go after.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, for you everything is exceedingly rare.

      Delete
    2. Seriously, Mike? You're going to argue that airgun injuries and deaths aren't rare? Or do you just insist on implying Greg is a liar any chance you get?

      Delete
    3. Yeah, for you everything is exceedingly rare.

      Is four per year not "exceedingly rare" in your view, Mikeb?

      I'll tell you what. Since adding pellet guns, BB guns, and airsoft guns (has anyone died from an "airsoft gunshot wound," ever?) seems to have netted a disappointingly small harvest of blood to exploit for your agenda, I have an idea.

      While we're at it, let's add "cap gun deaths," "squirt gun deaths," "drawings-of-gun deaths," "Pop-Tart-chewed-into-gun-shape deaths," "deaths caused by mentioning guns," etc.

      Oh, dear--that doesn't seem to help your cause much, either.

      Delete
    4. And by the way, if we're now lumping pellet guns, BB guns, and airsoft guns in with firearms, should we not take note of the fact that these guns are basically left unregulated by the federal government, and by every decent state, and are owned in untold quantities (many times by kids), and are still implicated in such a tiny number of deaths and serious injuries?

      Yes--yes, indeed, we should.

      Delete
  2. Do pellet-gun and BB-gun and air-soft gun deaths and injuries count? Greg loves to quote statistics when attempting to downplay the situation by limiting the number to deaths by firearms only. I pointed out that the injuries should count too as well as the cases in which a kid does the shooting and is not injured himself.

    Now it seems there's another whole category we've been overlooking.


    Knock yourself out, Mikeb--go ahead and claim the four deaths per year if you want (oh, and notice that the rabidly anti-gun source I'm citing admits that "injury rates for non-powder guns appear to have declined significantly since the early 1990’s"?).

    That should radically change the debate.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's still infinitely more deaths than by .50BMG

      Delete
  3. Would you like to count negligent discharges of air guns as "one strike you're out"?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tread carefully here mike. Beware, Ol' Blue just may get ya.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M9INFJ-PTw

      Delete
    2. And in case it's been lost in translation, the first comment was intended as a joke based on a beloved movie, not as any type of threat.

      Delete
  5. The gun guys like to think of BB and pellet guns as "toys" and not as "guns". But here are 73 other cases where kids have been injured, threatened, robbed, and, yes, killed, by these guns:
    http://kidshootings.blogspot.com/search/label/Pellet%20and%20BB%20Guns

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Why would I visit a site where comments aren't allowed? But let's sort out the possibilities in the number that you presented. How many deaths are we talking? Threatening is easy, especially when too many in our society don't know much about guns. Injured covers a lot of territory from a bruise to blinding. And over what period of time are we talking?

      In terms of old Germanic culture, you're a Grendal or a thrall, by the way.

      Delete
  6. But here are 73 other cases where kids have been injured, threatened, robbed, and, yes, killed, by these guns

    "[B]y these guns," Odinson, or "with these guns"? There is a very large difference.

    ReplyDelete
  7. You would classify them as dangerous or "guns" if it were YOUR son who was killed by one. This was MY son. MY ONLY SON. My baby. My world. He shouldn't have died. I don't think he discharged this WEAPON. He was ONLY 15.

    ReplyDelete