How safe were cars 96 years ago?
 

I decided to learn a little more about Ides and the first Google result worth clicking also had an interesting article about boomstick safety, which shared this quote:

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politi...of-Big-Tobacco

I do not know how many people drove even twelve or fifteen thousand miles a year back then, but it interested me how much worse it was, and I am curious if any further progress will be made in the next four years. I would like an update!

Diminishing returns...

four divided by ninety-six...

This is anecdotal, but in the 1950s they told stories about the 1930s that were hair-curling. Of course today you have cars launching off traffic circles into the second stories of houses, so [shrug].

And vehicles still kill tens of thousands of people every year in the US alone.
Around half of those involve alcohol.

In the short-term, gun laws that require demonstrated proficiency before allowing the sale of a firearm may slightly reduce accidental injury, and likely do little to reduce physical violence.

This will all be moot in the very near future when people will be able to print their own firearms for practically free. Individual power grows along with technology, and laws are incapable of dealing with humanities failure to improve their basic nature in proportion.

Perhaps firearms can be made to be marginally safer, but the bigger issue is that humans need to evolve in decency before our capabilities reach existential levels. In the very near future, firearms will be nothing compared to the power of biological and autonomous weapons. Maybe someday we'll require brain "pacemakers" that dull the emotional centers when they become overactive. Then there will be hackers out there who circumvent it so they can experience the full range of emotion.

Cars are on the verge of becoming much safer as autonomous aids become commonplace.

Printing them is kind of a waste of time since a bare poly AR lower can be bought for $35 and a forged aluminum ones are around double that.
Vehicles and guns would be safer if current laws were better enforced.

IIRC nowadays most of the murderings in the U.S. are performed with hammers and baseball bats. But you know, calling a cheap hunting rifle modded in the tool shed of a psycho teen's dad an "assault weapon" is way more effective as a clickbait than addressing the real issue. Just like blaming spoons and forks for making people become fat.

How many vehicular casualties involve a lack of seatbelt?

The definition of an assault weapon varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but mostly involves things that only make it look scary. Pistol grip? What difference does it make? You can screw a suppressor onto it? Those have been illegal since 1976 and I do not recall ever hearing of any being used. Also, they are not nearly as quiet as in the movies. Flash suppressor? Okay.

I do not know of any way an AR-15 is any more dangerous than a hunting rifle. Many claims about them are simply untrue or misleading. Officially, they fire 800 bullets a minute, but that would require 23 magazines, enough heat to warp the barrel, and probably jam ten or twenty times.

Having said all of that, if they are not the police, and I see any firearm in a public place, I am breaking line-of-sight, calling the police, and putting as much distance between me and them as possible.

It only takes one bullet to ruin my day.

Cars 96 years ago ==> Gun saftey? Well, Okay...

School shooters always use long arms and the news always complains about muzzle velocity.

In that door-to-door environment wouldn't two hand-guns be more efficient? A Glock 20 holds 15 rounds. I think it's about shaping the news.

And pharmaceuticals.

No, hammers and baseball bats are not the cause of most, it's firearms in the home. A firearm makes killing as easy as a single pull on a trigger.