# Gun Law Question-Pennsylvania **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 5, 2006, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-law-question-pennsylvania/359513 "2006-06-05T19:19:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2006, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-law-question-pennsylvania/359513/61 "2006-06-15T19:10:29Z")
[QUOTE=Crandolph] OK, a couple of days later still waiting for the data that suggests _any_ carry gives one a better than 1 in 50,000,000 or so chance of defending oneself here… [/QUOTE] [http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf](http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2006, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-law-question-pennsylvania/359513/62 "2006-06-16T07:19:52Z")
[QUOTE=UncleBeer] [http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf](http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf) [/QUOTE] Thanks for the reference **UncleBeer** , but you do realize this is a self-reported survey of national data 12 years old? I’ve been asking for documented cases of people with carry permits defending themsleves on the street in Philadelphia in the last decade. If this is at all common it shouldn’t be hard to find. Note that the carry laws changed here in 1995 (after this survey was done) and that a record 10,000 people signed up for carry permits in the 2 years thereafter; I’d expect that to work to your advantage. The general level of street crime being down in the city now vs. a dozen years ago admittedly works to my advantage, but to be fair that describes conditions on the ground. Thus far we have but 2 claimed instances of the type of defense we’ve been discussing (this is over a decade in a city of 1.5 million people!) and although I find one kinda woo-woo I’m crediting both, which brings my estimate of the frequency of these “down” to about 1 in 51 million opportunities, give or take. Does it really require a loaded gun to walk down the street with more confidence? There seem to be a number of negative implications there. ---
**Author:** ![catsix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19b73/32.png) [@catsix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/catsix)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2006, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-law-question-pennsylvania/359513/63 "2006-06-16T10:45:41Z")
Why is it, **Crandolph** , that you trust the criminals with guns not to attack you, but you don’t trust someone like me who had to go through a background check and provide character references not to shoot you? What makes me dangerous to you? ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2006, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-law-question-pennsylvania/359513/64 "2006-06-16T13:18:59Z")
[QUOTE=Crandolph] Thanks for the reference **UncleBeer** , but you do realize this is a self-reported survey of national data 12 years old? [/quote] Yeah, I realize how old that study is - and that it doesn’t directly address your question. I don’t know of any recent study regarding DGU frequency that you’d accept, tho. And I’m not gonna spend any time looking and reading one only to have you dismiss it as biased. The reason for this lies below. Read on. > [@](#): > > Thus far we have but 2 claimed instances of the type of defense we’ve been discussing (this is over a decade in a city of 1.5 million people!) and although I find one kinda woo-woo I’m crediting both, which brings my estimate of the frequency of these “down” to about 1 in 51 million opportunities, give or take. This “estimate” is trash. You realize, I hope, that calculating statistics on the basis of stories reported by the news media alone is a fool’s errand. If you don’t, then there’s no reason to believe you’ll put any credence in **any** study that could be offered here. ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2006, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-law-question-pennsylvania/359513/65 "2006-06-16T18:13:29Z")
Earlier in this thread, while still in GQ, there was a whole lot of insistance on the pro-carry side that it was extremely common for non-law-enforcement people to be walking around in Philadelphia with (legal) guns. I’m not the one who posted the 28,000 permits number, which appears to be accurate. On top of that the assertion was made that large numbers of tourists are also carrying here any given day (by not counting a single one of those people in calculating these odds I appear to be spotting the pro-carry side a bit). All I’ve done was to assume that the people who have carry permits here actually carry, and leave the house an average of once/day. This seems reasonable as I can’t imagine why people would decide that Thursday is going to be really dangerous but Tuesday won’t necessitate a gun, and that in this thread people with permits have said that carrying lends confidence and that at least in one case a fellow said he carries every time he leaves the house. An implicit assumption in the OP and subsequent discussion appears to be that visiting Philadelphia for any reason on any given day requires carrying a gun to be safe(r) from a rational perspective, and in fact when I’ve questioned that I was accused of living on “Lollipop Lane.” (Interesting itself considering that I appear to be the only person in the discussion _who lives in Philadelphia_.) From there it’s some pretty simple multiplication and division to figure out how often the guns are useful in self-defense. I originally asked for a recent study with some numbers on legal gun defenses on the street in Philadelphia. Since the assertion was made that we couldn’t get one of those I said I’d be perfectly happy with anecdotal evidence of these occurances. Living here I know that they are pretty darn rare and newsworthy. I was also looking for any citation suggesting that it was common for tourists to arrive here carrying. One person spent some time looking and found 3 news items from the past couple of years, one of which wasn’t actually in the city. I credited one of the remaining two even though I thought it seemed sketchy. Again, this seems to be an act of good intentions on my part; just trying to get a handle on the frequency of law-abiding people using their guns successfully on the street here. If it’s at all common they shouldn’t be hard to find. Even at this I think I’m erring on the side of generosity as I assume a lot of the people with carry permits who live here encounter worse neighborhoods on a daily basis than would a visitor to the city for entertainment or business purposes. If anyone has a better idea of how to measure the perception of gun usefulness vs. reality than trying to figure out how many times they are used per frequency of carry I’m all ears. I won’t dismiss any studies out of hand either, as long as they show some numbers for this city at some point in the past decade, two conditions which seem reasonable. I’m perfectly willing to revise the numbers as more data comes in, but at the moment it appears you have a better chance of getting killed in a car wreck any given time you enter your car than you do having the opportunity to use a gun against assailants by carrying in Philadelphia. That was even spotting the pro-carry side 8 more reported successful defenses than anyone cited. Now, what am I afraid of with people carrying legally? Keeping in mind that the odds of the positive/legal use of the gun appear to have extremely low odds, it seems to me that by bringing additional guns into the city I inhabit, you only logically increase the possibilities of the following things happening in a cost/benefit analysis: - Inducing concern or panic among people who aren’t used to seeing civilians walking around with guns. As cited above this might also entail illegal police action/detention which will cost you time and money and cost the rest of us residents tax money via any lawsuits. Pretty much all of the scenarios below have the abiity to drain our tax base as well, in addition to the human cost. - Increasing the possibility of adding a gun to the arsenal of an actual violent criminal should you encounter one, as - and this is a point made by pro-carry people in this thread - the attacker has the drop on you in a street fight and could well end up putting you down before you know what hit you. - Increasing the possibility of a shoot-out should you be confronted by an attacker. Every year innocent people who have the misfortune of living in one of the concerntrated drug trade neighborhoods of the city get hit by stray bullets in their gang wars and I’d prefer not to see bullets flying in other areas too. - Increasing the possibility of a normally law-abiding person losing their temper or misreading a situation and shooting someone in the heat of the moment. - Increasing the possibility of having the sort of inevitable fluke accident that happens with loaded firearms. To see what I’m talking about, go to [newsoftheweird.com](http://www.newsoftheweird.com) and type ‘gun’ into their search function. You might reasonably say “But the odds of these things happening are very low.” To that I counter “But it appears that the odds of the gun being successfully useful to you are sufficiently low that these comparisons are completely valid.” I _regularly_ walk home late nights/early mornings through a variety of neighborhoods here and have managed to do so safely without a gun for _decades_. When someone starts talking about doing so being reasonable for tourism or business purposes in the safest areas of the city I have to react with a :dubious:. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2006, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-law-question-pennsylvania/359513/66 "2006-06-16T19:15:28Z")
Well, then. That’s quite a post, Crandolph. And I’m sorry you spent so much time on it. First, because I’m well aware of the assertions made previously in this thread, so there wasn’t a lot of need for you to summarize them. I will grant, though, that your summation of those previous comments is pretty accurate; I don’t take issue with it. But the second, and more important reason I’m sorry you spent so much time on your post, is that every conclusion you make, and suppositions you extract, in it is useless. Everything you assert is based on the rate of DGU’s for concealed (and/or open) carry instances. And you simply do not have enough information to make **any** meaningful estimates of that. All your conclusions are drawn from a mere **four** points of factual data. Two news stories of CCW DGU’s, the population of Philadelphia, and the number of CCW permits issued. The numbers you’re willing to revise, are garbage. The conclusions, tentative tho’ they be, you’ve drawn from those garbage numbers, are equally useless. Thus, the projections you make from those useless conclusions are twaddle, bunkum, baloney, flapdoodle . . . > [@](#): > > If anyone has a better idea of how to measure the perception of gun usefulness vs. reality than trying to figure out how many times they are used per frequency of carry I’m all ears. I won’t dismiss any studies out of hand either, as long as they show some numbers for this city at some point in the past decade, two conditions which seem reasonable. Okay. Try this one: [http://www.gunsandcrime.org/dgufreq.html](http://www.gunsandcrime.org/dgufreq.html) It ain’t Philly, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect to find a study for Philadelphia alone. You might also wish to take a look at this: [http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLS/journal/issues/v26n1/JLSv26p1/JLSv26p1.web.pdf](http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLS/journal/issues/v26n1/JLSv26p1/JLSv26p1.web.pdf) and this: [http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE/journal/issues/v44nS2/012203/012203.text.html](http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE/journal/issues/v44nS2/012203/012203.text.html) ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2006, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-law-question-pennsylvania/359513/67 "2006-06-16T20:33:41Z")
Actually my estimate is being made with _three_ points of data: - **Reported number of incidents of successful carried gun defense in the city** (the pro-carry side has cited 2 and I spotted you an _additional 8_ just running on the assumption that if it happened once this year it might have happened once/year for the past 10). - **The known number of Philadelphia residents with carry permits** , 28,000. Actually the precise figure is slighlty higher than that and again rounding down is helping your side of the argument. - My biggest assumption, that the people with carry permits who live here do so an average of once/day. In other words “ **number of carries**.” The person can be going about their business for 15 hours in the city, going to work, shopping, doing anything while out of the house, and I’m counting the whole sortie with multiple stops and outdoor travels as _one_ opportunity to use the gun; seems pretty fair to your side. (If people who have have carry permits live here and _don’t_ habitually carry because they don’t feel the need this would seem rather to be making my argument for me.) This doesn’t even include all of the people who are assumed (again not by me but by the other side of the argument) to be visiting the city armed. I’m willing to work from another suggested calculation of number of carries if it seems reasonable. The total population of the city doesn’t enter into my estimate. I did mention that it seems pretty incredible that anyone would have trouble finding even anecdotal news item evidence of the ultimate usefulness of carrying a gun in a city of 1.5 million people if in fact this were both A) common and B) useful. What would find to be a reasonable frequency at which people with carry permits carry? Is that the hole you find in the method I describe? Is 3x/week reasonable? That’d give us a 1 in 30,660,000 annual chance of needing the gun any given time a person felt they needed to leave the house with their gun, and that’s assuming that there’s a successful gun defense by a legal carrier once/year (we haven’t even found that many yet, not close). What’s remarkable about that is that would be _full-time residents of the city who know the place and selectively determined that those 3x/week were their most dangerous trips out of the house_! The odds of Joe Sofa getting to use the gun visiting Independence Hall (which incidentally requires you to pass through a metal detector so you don’t bring a weapon in…) in broad daylight are far less, but I’m treating the two as equals, to the pro-carry side’s advantage. Are we talking once/week as reasonable? That brings it down to about a 1 in 1,400,000-and-change chance of the gun being useful annually. It also raises a question as to why the people _who live here and have carry permits_ would figure they were safe enough to leave the house 6 out of 7 days without the gun but you as a visitor would figure you need it all of the time. Show me a tool a construction worker carries around all day if they think there’s a _one in a million chance_ of needing it that day… I’ll take a look at the studies you cite and get back to the thread after giving them a read. I’ll repeat that I don’t think people lack a right to carry a gun, my question is why anyone thinks this is their most rational approach to keeping themself safe while visiting Philadelphia for routine business or fun. I would also repeat the question as to why people think that the police would go out of their way to remove a gun from someone with a legal permit to carry if they thought the person were more likely to fight crime than reduce danger. (Not endorsing the behavior, but asking about the motivation.) ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2006, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-law-question-pennsylvania/359513/68 "2006-06-16T20:42:34Z")
> [@](#): > > What would find to be a reasonable frequency at which people with carry permits carry? Is that the hole you find in the method I describe? Is 3x/week reasonable? I don’t know what’s reasonable. You don’t know what’s reasonable. Makes it all kinda pointless sit here fabricating numbers. You can’t draw any reasonable conclusions, or extrapolate any reasonable trends from unreasonable numbers. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2006, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-law-question-pennsylvania/359513/69 "2006-06-16T20:46:53Z")
Oh yeah, I meant to add that I’m heading outta town for the weekend in just few minutes. I won’t see this thread again until, at the earliest, Monday morning. Ya know, after I get to the office. That first citation I gave in my second post has some numbers that might indicate the quantity of DGU’s arising from concealed carry. But again, barring any actual survey numbers of such things, they’re just guesswork. The author makes some assumptions, and then draws some conclusions. Not too terribly different from what you’re doing, so I don’t know how much stock I place in his conclusions, either. You can judge for yourself how reliable you find his assumptions to be. ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2006, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-law-question-pennsylvania/359513/70 "2006-06-16T21:08:52Z")
[QUOTE=UncleBeer] You can judge for yourself how reliable you find his assumptions to be. [/QUOTE] That’s all I intend to do; have a good weekend. I might not be posting anything until at least tomorrow at the earliest. ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2006, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-law-question-pennsylvania/359513/71 "2006-06-25T23:42:52Z")
Well, _that_ took long enough! My apologies… Thus far I’ve only had a chance to look over the first study posted ([http://www.gunsandcrime.org/dgufreq.html](http://www.gunsandcrime.org/dgufreq.html)). Actually it’s not a study so much as a survey, totally self-reported and pretty open to even honest error. Taking everyone at their word I did some math (figured the % of legal gun carriers as per numbers from pro-gun sites who would be Philadelphians and extrapolated from that a number of gun defenses in this city) and the numbers would just have to be absurdly high, in the thousands per year. In other words if the survey had any validity the 28,000 Philadelphians with carry permits would be drawing their guns once every few days. This strikes me as extremely implausible but I’ll admit not verifiable. Even “better,” 8% of these defenses according to the survey involved _actually shooting_ one’s attackers, and assuming Philadelphia is average in this - in fact the rest of you seem to be suggesting this is a more dangerous place than normal - we’d have to have about 98 _shootings_ by permit carries annually, about one every 3-4 days. This is considerably more than the police! And I should think more likely to be verified by some corroborating news reports. Yet we have 1 report thus far reported of an apparently legal shooting on the street in the past 2 yrs, when according to the survey we should have about 200 easily found … hmmm… also it would appear that muggers and rapists here would be targeting people with guns out of all proportion to the general population… yeah, I think the survey is more than a little off… I’ll take a look at the others soon. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2006, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-law-question-pennsylvania/359513/72 "2006-06-26T17:02:13Z")
[QUOTE=Crandolph] Taking everyone at their word I did some math (figured the % of legal gun carriers as per numbers from pro-gun sites who would be Philadelphians and extrapolated from that a number of gun defenses in this city) and the numbers would just have to be absurdly high, in the thousands per year. In other words if the survey had any validity the 28,000 Philadelphians with carry permits would be drawing their guns once every few days. [/quote] Well, I’d kinda like to see your math. Because if I use the numbers in that report which yield the _highest_ number of DGU’s per year, I don’t get anything like what you’re saying. From the report: > [@](#): > > 222 of the 4799 respondents reported having at least one DGU in their household in the past 5 years. After correcting for oversampling in some regions, this figure drops to 66 personal accounts of DGUs in the preceding year, indicating that 1.326 percent of adults nationwide had experienced at least one DGU. When multiplied by 1.478, the average number of DGUs reported per DGU claimant for the preceding year, and by the total adult population, an estimate of 2.55 million DGUs per year was arrived at. So, even assuming **every** DGU is carried out by a concealed carry permit holder (a pretty risky assumption, but one that serves to inflate the number at which I arrive) we have (1.326% of permit holders \* 28,000 permit holders \* 1.478 DGU’s per DGU instigator per year). This yields only _549 total DGU’s per year_ in the city of Philadephia. I have no idea how you’re coming up with “thousands.” And as noted, if we consider that some portion of the DGU’s are perpetrated by legal gun owners in their own homes (or places of business), the number of DGU’s by concealed carry permit holders _decreases_. The report gives us a figure of 27% of DGU’s occur _away_ from the respondent’s home and supposes that these are the DGU’s that actually represent those by CCW holders. If this is accurate, then we’re reduced to about 148 DGU’s per year in Philly by CCW holders. From that intial calculation, the rest of your numbers are also in error, I believe. For instance, 8% of 549 yields only 39 DGU’s where someone in actually shot. This is only about 30% of the number you calculated. And, if the 27% rate for CCW holders we postulated above is carried through, then there are less than 11 per year. As I said, given the great disparity in our conclusions, I would appreciate seeing your math. > [@](#): > > Well, that took long enough! My apologies… No problem. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-law-question-pennsylvania/359513.md?page=3)