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Comment by rorrr | Hacker News Reader

A lot more people die from gunshots than people drown, even if you count all drownings, not just pool-related (in the US, of course).

You cherry-picked one child-dangerous item in the house. Yay for "logic".

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If you look at children 14 and under, 390 drowned, and 376 died by firearms, including accidents, murders and suicides. And if you only look at accidental firearm deaths, there were 62 for children 14 and under, and 123 for 20 and under. Pools really are dangerous, even compared to guns.

Using Consumer Product Safety Commission 2008 numbers for drowning, and the anti-gun group Children's Defense fund numbers for firearm deaths.

http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Newsroom/News-Releases/2012/New-CPSC-...

http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publicat...

Your pool deaths are inflated. The 390 is over 3 years 07-09. And gun deaths spike after age 14 where I presume pool drowning a continue to fall. Further, guns lead to very large injury numbers which I'm guessing greatly exceed pool-related injuries even more. Pools aren't that dangerous.

The 390 is the annual average number for those 3 years, not total. According to wonder.cdc.gov, for ages 0-14, there were 334 pool deaths in 2008 alone.

You're right on the pool death numbers being an average. But I'm still not sure you're point has been made.

390 over three years.

Again, why are you only talking about children deaths, one group that's not even supposed to have access to guns? That's cherry picking.

I wonder what the statistics look like when taking into account injuries too.

You can't get very injured in a pool (I guess you can slip outside the pool - but you can slip anywhere playing so does that count?). But there are probably more firearms injuries than deaths.

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