Right, because we can all tell from Iraq and Afghanistan that in order to stage effective stand against unorganized military, like the United States, the solution is heavy armament, like Tanks, Artillery and Grenades…
… Oh wait…
Goes both ways.
The Afghanis are not seriously threatening the US military at all over there. Sure they are killing some guys here and there but in terms of defeating the US military they are light years from pulling that off.
In the end the Afghanis have nowhere else to go so they remain a thorn in the side of the US military till the US gets tired of it and says “fuck it” and goes home.
If it were the US military in the US oppressing its citizens then the US military would have nowhere else to go. Sure some people could annoy the military and kill some guys here and there but on the whole the military would be fine and you’d be living in trees hoping to get off an occasional pot shot.
Its about about defeating the military, it’s about making it uneconomical to occupy a given area. It would be (relatively) easy to occupy a few of the major cities, but you’d never be able to secure the highways, farms, etc.
Okay, so why are we spending $782billion on it and developing the worlds most advanced weapon systems?
I worked with a guy that every day went through the newspaper. He sissored out articles about kids shooting each other by mistake. That was his interest. he cut it out and taped it in a scrap book. He had 3 scrap books totally full and was working on his 4th.
Not sure. Probably because we are smart enough to realize that just because the wars in afghanistan and Iraq are asymmetrical, not all wars would be.
A war with Pakistan, or India, or China, or Russia (higher powers forbid any of them, all being nuclear armed states) would likely be fought in a different way. The current strategy is to “win the hearts and minds,” though. Killing individuals isn’t helping with that, but we’re forced to because we must defend ourselves if we’re going to be there.
We also have more vested interest in each individual soldier than the enemy does, each of ours representing an investment ad high as millions of dollars, with each of theirs under a thousand.
(my bold)
How do you reconcile this with the hundred or hundreds of thousands of DGU?
This is somewhat not based in reality. Most criminals are not super villains. I give the prepared homeowner the upper hand in most break in situations. I know I can have a loaded weapon inside of 2 seconds. That’s after my dogs have alerted me and my alarm is tripped. Most people who are prepared to defend their homes would have the upper hand against home invaders. It’s not hard to find many examples. I think for your assertion to hold, you’d need to show that most home invasions that occur where the homeowner is armed result in the homeowner not being able to successfully defend themselves.
You’re not accounting for DGU where no shots are fired. Is that on purpose? Again I ask you, just for the sake of discussion, what amount of DGU do you think is a reasonable basis to start from? I’m not going to ask for a cite, but I’d like to know your take on it. Are you avoiding this on purpose?
In general - I’m not sure what point is trying to be made by not acknowledging the actual number of DGU. Most of the opponents in this thread question the efficacy of gun ownership by highlighting accidental deaths and crime related deaths, while at the same time ignoring DGU. Czarcasm? Come up with a number that you think is reasonable? Do you accept any of the results of any study on DGU?
At least if there is a starting point we can actually debate the merits or demerits. If you dismiss any number or any study it seems intentionally misleading to continue to try and make some kind of comparison.
Well, this is exactly what I am trying to figure out. I believe the expression is, “you keep asserting this, but it doesn’t make it fact.” Do we have any data recording the failed DGU? Should we be able to conclude if 50% of homes have a gun, are 50% of home-invasions failed DGU?
For example, right now, how long to get your gun? Are you typing with one hand? When you are in the shower, how long to get your gun. When you are curled up watching a movie with your wife/kids/etc?
What’s more important, what is your mind set when you are >2sec from your gun? Are you worried about when you take out the garbage, or do you take your gun with you? Do you have a plan for the time between when you leave your home-gun and walk to your car-gun?
And you still prove that you need an alarm and dog for your gun to be effective.
I’m assuming that “two seconds” is an exaggeration for effect, and does not represent an actual testable fact. I doubt I could grab my Zippo in two seconds, and that’s usually right there in my pocket.
My psychiatrist told me that a gun kept in the home is more likely to kill someone in the home than it is to kill an intruder.
I’ve had two students removed from my classroom with loaded handguns. I was the victim of an “armed robbery.” He was sent away for twelve years. I didn’t know that it was a BB gun made to look like a handgun.
I’ve known way too many murdered people. The last two were friends my age about this time last year. Their grown son was charged in their shooting deaths.
elucidator’s post #154 is about where my thinking has settled for a while.
One’s options were a little more limited back then. He sounds like he was about fourteen when he said it.
If it was ‘hundreds of thousands of DGUs’, then you could *possibly *have an argument. But as others such as Whack-a-Mole have already pointed out, there doesn’t seem to be any basis in reality for the ‘hundreds of thousands’ of DGUs view. As was said previously: Doesn’t pass the smell test. At the very least, I’d expect to read/hear more of such stories.
I personally question whether the number is even in the hundreds - but supposing for the moment that it is in the hundreds, or even thousands…no, that does not balance out the tens of thousands that guns kill each year. Far too high a price for perceived ‘safety’. I mean, besides, we have a well-known board poster stating that he didn’t think guns made him safer - he only thinks guns do not make him ‘less safe’.
Oh, I call serious bullshit. You keep a loaded weapon on or around you and could be ready to fire it within 2 seconds? Puh-lease. Secondly, you are out of your mind if you think any regular homeowner is more ready and capable of shooting and killing compared to your average criminal who has already shown he has no qualms about breaking into people’s homes.
But there are examples - in fact, here’s a very recent example: Man with gun hears something at his door, it’s kicked in so he starts firing. Kills the intruder! Oh, by the way, the homeowner was also shot in the chest. Oops. He could have just as easily been killed as well. I’m sure his family would have been real happy knowing that he died, gun in hand - what a hero! Maybe the money spent on that gun would have been better off spent on, oh, I don’t know, better bolts on the door and/or a home security system?
If the guy runs away - it’s probably not because you had a gun, is it; the security system and dogs would have scared him away.
If shots aren’t fired - the gun wasn’t really needed, was it. Did it need to be a real gun? Did it even need to be shown? If I have a gun in my hand and I’m on the second floor landing while I see/hear someone coming in the downstairs window, and I shout, ‘I have a gun! I will shoot!’, and the guy leaves - is that counted as a DGU or not?
It’s not that no one is acknowledging DGUs - I’m sure they happen. But there are no clear-cut criteria on methodology - I mean, the best you can narrow it down to is ‘hundreds or hundreds of thousands’. That’s kinda broad. In essence - we don’t know how many DGUs occur. There are far too many variables that make just about any statistic meaningless.
However: Less subjective is when people end up dead. And we saw previously, the number of accidental deaths by guns outnumbered justifiable homicides by guns by at least three-to-one (even worse ratio in other years).
At the the very least, I’d need to see justifiable homicides by guns far, far surpass accidental death by guns before I’d be willing to think that guns in the house do actually make you safer.
You’ll need to come up with reasonably accurate data with defined methodology on DGUs if you want us to take DGUs seriously. Stories of grandmas fending off robbers doesn’t count - the plural of anecdote is not ‘data’.
My father didn’t know I almost shot someone, he would have killed me!( Only my younger sisiter knew and she was too young at the time. The other younger children were at the neighbors). My parents didn’t learn of it until several years later when I was not living at home and they were going to fix the ceiling. Then they found the bullet wedged in the hole.
I left home at 13 and worked my way through high school and lived with a family in the city as a mother’s helper. I supported myself from that time on. I do not know if my father even used his guns again ,because his hands became crippled with athritis. I never dreamed a gun would be loaded. I taught my children to expect that all guns were loaded and to think of them as if they were, should they go to someone’s home and a friend would have a gun.
**DragonAsh **pretty much covered my answer in the last post.
I am accounting for DGU where not shots are fired by the way. Indeed that is my point. I find it remarkable that with 100,000 DGU there are so few people actually shot.
As for the DGU number itself I do not have “this many will be ok” in my mind. I want to get at the real number, whatever it may be. From there we can discuss whether gun defense trumps the societal costs.
My problem with the DGU numbers cited is, as mentioned, apparently there is no firm definition for what constitutes defense with a gun. Further, we are relying on people to self-report this use. Further still (and something we probably can never know) is how many DGUs demanded a gun be used for self defense and how many might have turned out fine if the gun user did not have a gun with them? I suspect quite a lot would manage without a gun so while having one counts as a “defense” with a gun it was not necessary (and again I am not sure how we could ever tease numbers on that out short of a case-by-case examination and even that would be subjective).
For my part in this thread I have done my best to gather what empirical evidence there is and use that to compare to the DGU numbers and frankly the DGUs reported do not seem to jibe with the reported statistics.
So then the answer is, Whack, you reject all studies presented. That’s your option. It seems like gun threads are the only ones where that is acceptable, but okay.
I think this about sums up your position on DGU. It’s nonsensical of course. One doesn’t need to fire a gun for it to be useful. One doesn’t need to be in a life or death situation to present a gun in a defensive setting. LA riots with shopkeepers on their roofs with rifles didn’t fire (in some cases) and I’d think it’s pretty clear their gun and display was necessary and would be considered a DGU.
There are actually at least 7 studies linked to in this thread. I settle on the lowest estimate not because I believe it to be the most accurate, but to mitigate claims that the study is somehow flawed or inaccurate or inflated. Of course, if you dismiss all like I believe Whack is doing and are sticking to you gut, this line of discussion is over. Like I said upthread, to continue to try and evaluate the merits or demerits, while ignoring evidence of DGU on the merits side - this is intentionally misleading.
It’s amusing that in the same post where you post an anecdote of an incident of DGU and in the same thread sarcastically use anecdotes to attempt to make a point you at the same time say that the plural of anecdote is not data. Of course when actual data is presented, it’s just not good enough because…well because.
I don’t think my personal home setup is really relevant to this discussion, but generally yes with multiple firearms in different rooms, it’s really not that hard to be prepared. I did time it and the upper end is closer to 4-6 seconds depending on what I’m doing and 2 seconds on the lower end.
Dismissed based on my gut?
I have been providing cite after cite of hard numbers culled from the likes of the FBI and even went so far as to use Kleck’s numbers and the most favorable numbers I could (when there was a spread in the numbers to the pro-gun side) to run some basic calculations. I accept the numbers cannot be spot-on perfect but I think they are good enough to ballpark it which is sufficient for this discussion.
It is you who dogmatically rely on the DGU numbers and repeat it as mantra. You have not responded directly to the issues I pose when you compare the DGU numbers to hard numbers on crime from the FBI and their ilk.
You further have not answered what, exactly, constitutes a DGU for those studies nor how they control for people inaccurately reporting a DGU where none happened (perhaps the person thought it counted but not for purposes of the study).
And, as I mentioned in my last post, how do you account for the number of DGU’s where a gun was not necessary and things would have turned out fine? Maybe some kids in a farmer’s barn smoking pot and he comes out, gun in hand, and scares them off. The farmer would probably report that as a DGU but would you for this purpose?
I think you need to reconsider which of the two of us is adhering to one side and refusing to discuss the other side.
*On preview: Whack-a-Mole pretty much sums up my opinion. *
My ‘anecdote’ was pointing out an example of a DGU - something that supports your position - that just as easily could have ended up with the ‘hero’ dead, but for blind luck. It hardly advances your position if the DGU incident was just as dangerous to the person with the gun as the villian. Would this be counted as a DGU? Would it be a DGU if the home owner also died from being shot?
Why in the world do we have to automatically assume that a study is the least flawed, inaccurate or inflated’ simply because it has the lowest estimate of a group of studies? Even that low-number study could just as easily be flawed, inaccurate or inflated.
The ‘Armed Citizen’ is thinly veiled propoganda. The saf.org piece highlights a bunch of problems with the various DGU data, notes ‘internal confusion and contradictions’ with one of the surveys, cites the ‘absence of guns in some DGU households’, notes that women made up over 40% of DGUs, but account for only 20% of gun owners and only 14% of justifiable homicides - and yet still goes on to make a bunch of random assumptions about over/under estimates affecting survey data, to arrive at an even more random conclusion of ‘several hundred thousand’.
As has been noted repeatedly: We have approx. 400,000 crimes comitted with guns in the US each year. If DGUs was even just at 100,000, that means 20% of all crimes with a gun were being thwarted by gun-toting heroes!
Not sure how may times we have to repeat this, but: All we have are a bunch of *extremely *varied estimates - from a low of 80, to several hundred thousand, to 2.5 million. It’s a common mistake for people to simply assume that ‘well the real number is probably somewhere in between’ when faced with widely diverging answers (I think there is a proper term for this, forget what it is).
We have no idea what the actual number is, no idea as to how the numbers were derived at. No idea of how the people doing the survey are defining DGU. What we do have is hard data on dead people from the FBI and such. Unless you’re going to argue that the FBI etc. data is flawed, inaccurate or inflated, our starting point is, lots of people shot by guns accidentally, far, far fewer justifiable homicides.
We have a lot of data suggesting that guns in the house are dangerous: Guns in the house are 40x more likely to kill someone you know than kiill someone in self-defense (New England Journal of Medicince), guns 20x more likely to be involved in unintentional shootings, assaults, homicides and suicides than self defense (Journal of Trauma), suicide is 5x more likely for 15-19yr olds in homes with guns than in homes without guns (Centers for Disease Control), close to 80% of suicide attempts with a firearm are successful, less than 1% of drug overdoses succeed (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly).
If you still want to argue that the number of DGUs is evidence that guns make you safer, you’re going to have to come up with meaningful DGU numbers that stand up to scrutiny, and you’re going to have to argue that the DGUs offset the data in the above paragraph as well as the 30,000+ people killed by guns every year.
Yes. Let’s look at your analysis.
This is a gut reaction right? One thing that’s missing from the above are unreported crimes.
How big? That’s what I’m interested in finding out. What level of DGU would be substantial – to you?
Here is a brief description of Kleck’s methodology. In it, he describes some weaknesses of the NCVS study. Even that one that was done by the Department of Justice yields a DGU result of around 100k/year. Using the NCVS data for the sake of discussion, here was its methodology:
The NCVS is a non-anonymous national survey conducted by a branch of the federal government, the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Interviewers identify themselves to respondents as federal government employees, even displaying, in face-to-face contacts, an identification card with a badge. Respondents are told that the interviews are being conducted on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, the law enforcement branch of the federal government. As a preliminary to asking questions about crime victimization experiences, interviewers establish the address, telephone number, and full names of all occupants, age twelve and over, in each household they contact. In short, it is made very clear to respondents that they are, in effect, speaking to a law enforcement arm of the federal government, whose employees know exactly who the respondents and their family members are, where they live, and how they can be recontacted.
Discredited in what way? Is the NCVS figure also discredited?
Here, you conflate reported crimes (via crime stats) vs. an estimate of all DGU including unreported (to police). That’s not a meaningful comparison. In addition, a person could have a DGU in a situation where the criminal is not armed.
The 70,000 figure is not necessarily a subset of the 3 million. There is likely overlap, but the cite for your 70k figure states “There were also approximately 70,000 non-fatal gun shot injuries in 2005 serious enough to require at least an emergency room visit.” This at least ignores those who have non-fatal gun shot wounds that do not go to the hospital.
A bit further you state:
Work this backwards then. 245 / .03 / .15 = 54k. This is lower than any of the 13 other studies done. I find this to be unreasonably low actually, but for the sake of discussion I think even using a 50k number for annual DGU is sufficient for my purposes. Does this work for your rational view of the world? I mean, if you use this basis of calculation then it should work in the opposite direction right? If not then I dont see how this type of calculation is meaningful. Even still, I’ll accept it for the sake of discussion. Do you feel comfortable with the 50k figure?
From your own citeearlier:
*The survey was designed to eliminate deficiencies of past surveys by others. Unlike earlier surveys that had dealt with defensive gun uses (DGUs), this one asked specifically whether or not anyone in the household had used a gun during the last year or past 5 years to protect self or property against a person perpetrating a crime. A series of questions followed for anyone who answered that the household had experienced a DGU.
The survey asked the respondent to exclude any DGU experienced in law enforcement, the military, or armed security. Kleck and Gertz (K-G) did this so that the results would be about “civilian” (i.e., non occupational) DGUs. The survey included a number of questions about the nature of the incident and the crime involved. This was done both as a means of ensuring that the incidents were genuine and met certain criteria, and for suggesting characteristics of DGUs. For example, K-G carefully ensured that reported incidents were not about protecting against animals.
Unlike earlier surveys, this one asked how many DGU incidents the respondent or household had experienced in the last year and last 5 years. Earlier surveys had been limited to the unwarranted assumption that each person claiming a DGU had experienced only one.
The survey data were analyzed both on the basis of personal DGU incidents and household DGU incidents, and separately for the last 5 years and for the last year.*
I think I’d need more details, but generally I would consider this a valid DGU. If a guy breaks into a property and the owner confronts and presents a gun, regardless of the motivations of the person breaking in, that is a DGU. The owner can not know the intent of the person and in CA at least, the presumption in such cases is that the owner is legitimately in fear of death or great bodily injury. I dont know how this interacts with a detached structure like a barn though.
You are accounting for it by saying that it seems remarkable. Again, this is what I refer to as your gut.
Here are summaries of 7 studies (6 of which have an estimate). Since that time, there have been at least 7 more. Every study that estimates the amount of DGU has a figure north of 700k except for one. Even that one has a figure north of 100k. My point is not to quibble over the detail figure. It is to say that DGU is not rare and occurs in such significant amounts that the efficacy of gun ownership is high.
From the cited Kleck book (page 46):
For example, David McDowall, faced with nearly unanimous evidence that DGU is extremely common, has switched from flatly and recklessly stating that DGU is “rare,” as he did in a 1994 publication (McDowall and Wiersema 1994), to adopting a position, just one year later, of scientific conservatism and declaring that “the frequency of firearm self-defense is an issue that is far from settled” (McDowall 1996:136). Certainly this issue is no more finally resolved than any scientific issue ever is, but it is distinctly misleading to imply to readers that the body of relevant evidence is somehow evenly balanced between studies indicating that DGU is rare and those indicating the opposite, or that the evidence is not consistent enough to draw even tentative conclusions. As of 1995, at least fifteen surveys indicated 700,000 or more annual DGUs [McDowall acknowledged the existence of only three of these (1995:137)], while just one (the only one relied on in the McDowall and Wiersema 1994 study) indicated fewer than 100,000.
Even in the NCVS study (methodology described above), I think it’s clear that any inaccuracy would lead to a lower reported figure rather than higher so at a minimum you have a baseline which seems to be ignored.
From this interview regarding study questions by Kleck:
Again I ask, what information do you have that casts doubt on the numerous studies including the one done by the DoJ? My point is that DGU is significant and substantial. I think even 50k events would support that conclusion but believe the number to be far higher. Do you think the level of DGU is substantially less than that?
The lowest number study was the 1993 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which estimated 108,000 annual DGUs. Fourteen other surveys have been performed; the lowest of those estimated 800,000 DGUs, and the highest estimated 2.5 million DGUs annually. The Department of Justice conducted their own study in 1994, which estimated 1.5 million DGUs annually. The NCVS’s results are so far removed from those of any other survey that the 108K number is plainly suspect.
Possible problems with the NCVS were pointed out by Gary Kleck: first, it was conducted face to face by census bureau employees who displayed ID cards and badges. The surveyor then collected demographic info, including names of family members, addresses, and other contact information, meaning the surveyed persons were aware that they were speaking to a person with a badge who knew where to find them. The surveyor then asked, among other questions, whether the person was a victim of a violent crime, where the crime had occurred, and how he had defended himself. The person wasn’t directly asked whether they had used a gun or handgun. So, for the person to admit using a handgun to defend himself, he’d have to tell a government employee that he’d been carrying a handgun in a place where it was possibly illegal to carry one. It’s not surprising that the number who admitted using a gun in self defense was low.
The question of “what is a defensive gun use” is a tricky one. Some years back I remember reading a website whose creator talked about three times he’d used a gun defensively, and none of them involved firing or even pointing the gun at anyone (one involved him, as a teenager, hiking on a remote trail carrying a .22 rifle for rabbit hunting, and coming across some guys in their 20s who behaved threateningly. When he shifted such that the rifle he’d been carrying was visible, they backed off and went their own way. No threats, no brandishing, just making it known that he was carrying a firearm. In my mind, that should count as a DGU). Still, it’s always difficult to say what might have happened if the gun wasn’t there.
Take my advice on this and never, ever quote that horribly flawed NEJM Kellermann study again. I’ve been shredding Kellermann for about ten years now. A few bullet points:
[ul]
[li]Kellermann’s survey included less than a quarter of the homicides in the county (yes, just one) he surveyed, because he only wanted to measure homicides “in the home.” To be specific, he disregarded 76% of all homicides, and of those remaining, he collected complete data for just over 70%.[/li][li]Kellermann’s study measured for correlation, not causation.[/li][li]Kellermann’s results indicated that “living alone” and “renting a home” were greater “risk factors” in being killed in your home than gun ownership. If his study is valid, it makes a stronger case for getting a mortgage than for not owning a gun.[/li][li]Kellermann’s study was just about counting bodies, which is a terrible way of measuring the utility of firearm ownership. You can’t assume that “gun ownership is bad until the number of dead bad guys equals the number of dead good guys.”[/li][li]The “counting bodies” thing is so flawed, I’m making another bullet point for it. Taking Kellermann’s methods of comparing only “homicides” against “self-protection homicides” and applying to the homes in the same county that didn’t have guns, the “risk ratio” is 100:1. So it was actually less “risky” to own a gun.[/li][li]Speaking of bodies: Kellermann’s study included all non-self-protection deaths, of which there were 389 in the period studied. Of those 389, 333 were suicides. I’d like some proof that owning a gun makes you suicidal.[/li][li]Kellermann’s study didn’t control for situations where, for example, one abused spouse used the gun against the other in self-defense. If the gun’s “owner” died, that was that.[/li][li]Of those killed in Kellermann’s study, more than half weren’t even killed with a firearm! I’d like to know how owning a gun makes it more likely that I’ll be bludgeoned to death.[/li][li]Kellermann refused to release his surveys or submit to any outside scrutiny of his methods or results. As a result, Congress cut the CDC’s funding (the CDC had funded Kellermann’s study) and ordered the CDC to engage in no further firearm studies.[/li][/ul]
I look forward to the day when that damn Kellermann study dies…
Chalk one more body up for the accidental death side. A nine-year old shoots his 2-year old brother.
There are laws about safety fences around pools to help cut down drownings. I don’t recall pool owners declaring it is an infringement of their rights nor a terrible burden. It is just logical and correct to try and make them safer.