Teen suicide in households with a gun is a very interesting stat to bring up for this. Suicide in general is higher for gun owners, which can be handwaved away as “that’s my right”. But suicide is higher for children of gun owners? That seems like a tough risk to justify.
The thing is there's such a breadth of circumstances and behaviors involved that pigeonholing it under one giant banner is questionable. Like the people who leave loaded guns in random drawers around their houses are doing something very different with a different risk profile. Whereas once you get to teens in households that have guns and generally practice some level of safe storage it's a much more complex issue IMO. Because as a society we want teens to become responsible enough to handle things like cars, or power tools, or guns. But we also know that they're not adults yet. And we know that infantilization of teens isn't going to do anyone favors in the long run. So it's probably not as simple as ban cars and ban guns or whatever else.
It's more dangerous to live in a household with a pool than with a gun.
What should we do about it?
> What should we do about it?
Outlaw swimming pools, clearly.
Shit. I have a pool. My kids like it. And I have guns! How about instead, we do nothing. We have more than enough to worry about already just with the sentient hazards in homes.
Brother, were aligned