Guns n’ Pools: Closing the Loop…or “Is it Time for a Swimming Pool Summit?”
A couple of weeks back, I posed a hypothetical question in a post about the relative safety of a home with a loaded gun in it versus a home with a pool in the backyard. Here’s the full post:
A Riddle for Parents, Courtesy of Freakonomics
Basically, the question is, if your 6-year-old daughter is invited over to spend the night by two different friends from school, and you learn that one of the homes has a swimming pool in the backyard, and the other has a loaded gun in the house, and you want to send your child to the safest home, where do you send her? Second, you want to “even the odds” in such a situation, so that you incur an equal amount of risk by sending her to each house at a “rate of risk” that is equal—so how many times do you send her to the safer home before you send her once to the riskier home? Levitt and Dubner, in Freakonomics, have done the research on this one, and they have the answer, which I will now reveal.
To answer the second question first, you send your daughter to the safer house 100 times before you send her to the riskier one; i.e., one place is 100 times safer than the other. And which house do you send her to 100 times before you send her to the other one once? You send her to Gwen Gunn’s home 100 times before you send her the first time to the home of Paula Poole.
Earlier this week in New York, the “Republican” mayor of the city, Michael Bloomberg, had a “gun summit” to see what big city mayors could do to stop the tragedy of guns in the streets, and better than 15 mayors showed up. My question is, when is he planning to have a huge Swimming Pool Summit?
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Osborne: A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God
Schlossberg: Idols For Destruction
5 Responses to “Guns n’ Pools: Closing the Loop…or “Is it Time for a Swimming Pool Summit?””
Write after the “Secondhand Smoke†summit and the “ESUVEE Safty†summit.
Don ~ May 5, 2006 at 4:55 am
Interesting you should bring this up, Byron…the fire dept. I do my cadet work with responds to child drownings every single day–not just for swimming pools, but the majority of them are in pools. There’s a lot of pools here in Phoenix. But I’ve yet to respond to a child shooting. Hmmmmm…
Mel ~ May 5, 2006 at 9:41 pm
But they don’t make the NEWS, do they, at least not NEARLY as much as if a kid is killed with a bad old GUN. Of course, the kid is JUST AS DEAD…good post, Mel, from the voice of experience!
Byron ~ May 5, 2006 at 10:09 pm
What method of transportation is used? Is the delivering parent or the receiving parent driving? What are they driving? Has either household investigated the safety ratings of the vehicle? Have the seatbelts been inspected? Are the parents traditional? Same sex? Is either household under a single parent? Will the parent(s) even be there? Are he/she/they working? Are he/she/them drinking? Is there alcohol in the house? Are the towels washed? Is there a rollerskate on the stairsteps? Are there non-skid strips on the steps, the pool side, in the pool, on the driveway? Are the knives in the safe? Who has the combination? Is there a sexual predator list posted on the refrigerator including address and picture? Is there a burglar security system? Are all guests provided with emergency contact information?
Maybe nobody should have children nor leave the house until the government provides guarantees.
Across the Flow ~ May 8, 2006 at 10:33 am
The name is making sense now…there’s “with the flow” and “against the flow”, and then there’s…”ACROSS the flow”. Thanks, as usual, for a great sideways perspective, Across!
Byron ~ May 8, 2006 at 10:54 am