Mandatory gun ownership reduces crime.

Great Debates
21

For one thing, because citizens of the US actually kill and injure themselves with guns by suicide and accident far more often than they are killed or injured by guns in the comission of a crime.

Follow this link:

http://www.vpc.org/studies/whostate.htm

Note that for the year cited (1996), in 43 out of the fifty states, firearm deaths by suicide and unintentional shooting are higher than deaths by homicide (in several states, far higher).

Whether or not such a specific cite exists, I think it is reasonable to assume that if more people are required to own firearms, that the number of suicides and unintentional shootings would increase.

In any event, I have somehow made it through 46 years without ever once being in a situation where I needed to protect my life with a firearm, and I refuse to accept the additional expanse and risk involved in gun ownership. If a law requiring gun ownership were passed in my area, I would publically declare my refusal to obey said law and consider moving elsewhere.

22

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Rocket88 *
**

Ahem…would someone ELSE like to answer this question for me? Not to be a buttinsky, but I’d truly like to know what the chances are that someone’s going to break into my home tonight. I’m a young woman all alone in the suburbs of a big city. Should I be too afraid to sleep?

-L

23

Not sure why you thought I was answering any question you might have posed. I speak only for myself.

24

Listed below are some facts, where they came from is cited beneath.

Death and Injury Statistics/Accidental

Accidental Death / Children / International /

In 1994, there were around 1,300 unintentional deaths related to firearms.
Center for Disease Control web site

In 1995, there were 1,225 accidental deaths related to firearms.
National Safety Council, Accident Facts: 1998 Edition, at 10, 121.

In 1997, 4,051 people drowned.
Center for Disease Control web site

In 1997, 16,189 alcohol-related traffic fatalities.
Center for Disease Control web site

In 1996 5,412 pedestrians died.
Center for Disease Control web site

In 1995, 13,986 people died from falls.
National Safety Council, Accident Facts: 1998 Edition, at 10, 121.

In 1995, 8,461 people died from poisoning.
National Safety Council, Accident Facts: 1998 Edition, at 10, 121.

In 1995, 3,761 people died from fires and burns.
National Safety Council, Accident Facts: 1998 Edition, at 10, 121.

In the United States, you are nearly 3 times more likely to die from ‘Doctor Negligence’ than from all gun deaths combined, including homicide, suicide and accidental.
Compilation of figures from National Safety Council, Accident Facts: 1998 Edition, at 10, 121, and Harvard Medical Practice Study (1990)

While the number of privately owned firearms has quadrupled since 1930, the annual number of fatal firearm accidents has declined 65%. Firearms are involved in only 1% of accidental fatalities nationwide.
National Safety Council, National Center for Health Statistics, 1996 data.

A Justice Department survey of felons showed that 93% of handgun predators had obtained their most recent guns ‘off-the-record.’
Dept of Justice ‘Survey of Incarcerated Felons’ , p 36
In 1994, the Clinton administration pushed for a license fee increase of almost 1,000 percent on gun dealers. The administration was seeking the license fee increase ‘in hopes of driving many of America’s 258,000 licensed gun dealers out of business’.
US New and World Report, January 17, 1994

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Benjamin Franklin

25

In the “Flying bullets” thread, we encountered a mindset that, IMO, tried to assert that because guns did not “cause” crime in one case (Switzerland) then it supported the idea that guns prevented crime overall, ignoring the social differences of the case altogether. This is not only illogical, but anti-logical, and when I used a defense of urging logical reasoning to overcome ill-cited social “facts,” logical reasoning in general was dismissed as unscientific. I think I know the problem now. Guns are a conservative emotional-based argument (for lack of facts) that ignores the base motives of crime (poverty, low expectations, etc) and assumes that crime cannot be prevented by social means (because people are just naturally evil, I suppose), and then attempts to replace social prevention with personal responsibility (not public responsibility, same as economic policy) which by extension blames the victim for not being armed (and blames the criminal for being born that way).

26

Oh, I didn’t really think you were specifically answering MY question. It’s only that I DID ask it earlier. I have a question, as I said, about how common break-ins and other crimes that might require your playing cowboy actually occur. And no one answered me.

-L

27

SexyWriter:

I know of two.

One, a not too smart friend. He made the mistake of mentioning his .44 while drinking in a bar. A perp then follows him home, waits for him to fall asleep (which didn’t take long since he was inebriated), breaks into the house, and steals the gun from the guy’s nightstand. Unfortunately, the guy wakes up a couple of seconds too late and more than a little pissed off, so the theif decided it was in his own best interest to subdue the owner. A .44 in the chest did the trick. Incredibly, my friend survived. I’m completely convinced that the story is true because I saw the entry and exit wound scars.

The other, an ex-cop with guns all over the house was shot by the new boyfriend of his ex-wife as he answered the door. The guy was a complete stranger to him and he was totally caught off guard. Of course, the rational thing to do, to prevent something like this is to always take your gun with you to the door and hide behind the wall with gun at the ready, like they do in cop shows…

I don’t know of anyone who has verifiably used a gun to ward off the criminal element, though I know a few who have fired wild shots into the darkness who seem to think that it somehow saved their lives…

28

Pennsylvania (where I live) has just (within the past week) launched a web site which provides uniform crime stats, statewide and by region, county and metro area, updated daily. First in the nation to do so, IMHO. Unfortunately, it does not list to what degree crimes that may involve entry of a home occur while someone is on the premises. Nevertheless, here’s the url, if you are interested:

http://ucr.psp.state.pa.us/UCR/ComMain.asp

29

Thank you for answering the question. :slight_smile:

As I said, I have done years and years of work with crime victims. I want carefully assert that I do not think MY experience is necessarily typical. For one thing, I dealt mainly with sexual assault/domestic violence victims and NOT a cross section of crime victims of all types.

Though I commonly hear people asserting that someone could “break in and hurt them” as a justification for owning firearms, in the hundreds and hundreds of assault cases I saw, I only saw ONE incident of this type. A young woman was awakened by a man who was already on top of her with a knife to her throat. (Consequently, she grabbed the knife from him and stabbed him in the back as he ran out of the house…woo hoo!)

I question the wisdom of forcing everyone to own a firearm when it simply isn’t necessary. We aren’t living in a post-apocalyptic society.

Unless I’m wrong. As I said, I only dealt with one type of crime. Maybe there IS a 1 in 10 chance of being assaulted in my bed tonight. If that’s true, does anyone know where I can buy a gun?

-L

30

Careful Sexy,

If you ask for evidence of defensive gun uses (DGUs) you’re likely to be cited the results of a study done by Dr. Gary Kleck. Kleck’s study found that there were as many as 2.5 million DGUs each year (though he has, on occasion waffled and admitted that these numbers might be slightly exaggerated).

At first glance, this study seems to present a credible argument about DGUs. It’s only when I dug into the criteria used to classify a DGU that I decided that it was biased at best and probably downright misleading. Not only does Kleck count the frequency that potential victims draw or fire a weapon in the name of self defense. He also counts the number of times that they, in the presence of a potential ‘baddie’, claim to have a gun, when in fact they are unarmed. Also, Kleck does not require that there be evidence of a ‘baddie’. In other words, pulling a gun on an innocent passerby is considered a DGU if the “victim” was “concerned” for their safety. Or, shouting, “I’ve got a gun” into a dark empty night is a valid DGU by the Kleck standard. Worse yet, the Kleck study includes DGUs by the police when dealing with the criminal element. An encounter with a policeman pulling his gun and firing three rounds counts as 4 DGUs by the Kleck criteria. And if that’s not bad enough… Kleck includes the defensive gun uses by the criminals themselves when defending themselves against victims and police. Seriously, a wholesale shootout between a dozen police and a couple of drug dealers could easily rack up well over a hundred DGUs…

Unfortuantely, Kleck has not been forthcoming with numbers for what I would deem valid DGUs. By “valid DGUs”, I mean use of an actual gun by a potential victim with an actual criminal present.

However, to be fair, the anti-gun population will give you equally invalid statistics, so bottom line - don’t believe ANYTHING you hear on this topic. My advice to you is just try to use common sense and don’t let unfounded fear control your behavior… I’m sure you’ll make the right choice… Too bad, not everyone is as rational as you are.

31

My sister, her husband and their three daughters live in Kennesaw, which is a few miles outside of Atlanta. It is a typical quiet Georgia suburb, with a few claims to fame left over from the Civil War. It’s been a good place for them to raise their kids so far. That’s why I found the gun policy so odd - it seems sinister to me, somehow; I can’t really explain the feeling. But it is true: my sister and her family have very few concerns about their safety in Kennesaw; it’s a pretty peaceful place as far as I could tell.

I had no idea that gun ownership was mandatory there until I visited a museum there with my sister’s family that had a placard mentioning their policy. IIRC, it’s a holdover from the Civil War. I was surprised, to say the least, and asked my sister about it. Turns out you can be exempted from the law if you file as a conscientious objector, which she did because she didn’t want to have guns around her children. I do know that it concerns her that when she sends her children over to play at a friend’s house, they might stumble across the family’s gun (she always asks the parents about their guns and if they’re stored safely, but you never really know); she’s done her best to educate her kids on what to do if they find a gun. She and her husband were in the Army; they’ve both had substantial weapons training and know how to properly and safely handle firearms. She and her husband have seen what guns can do in the hands of untrained or uninformed (or just plain stupid/panicky) people and she decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

BUT: I’m not going to assume the low crime rate in Kennesaw is due to the gun ownership policy. Bottom line, I think it’s ridiculous to coerce people into doing something they might not have done otherwise, and with no small amount of potential risk to themselves and their family. I’ll never keep a gun in my house. There are other ways to keep your family safe.

32

Always glad to be of assistance. :slight_smile:

Not irrelevant so much as its information should be taken with a shaker of salt. Some of the articles show bias by TYSKNews, and others show factual inaccuracies. In addition, four of the articles, “Jihad,” “Uproar,” “Invasion,” and “Hate-Crimes,” come from NewsMax.com, a source I consider somewhat less-than-trustworthy. Basically, I’d rather see an analysis of Kennesaw from a more objective, reliable source.
Media Bias Exposed
‘Hate Crimes’: A One-Way Street?
**If a white commits a violent crime and the victim is a minority, that is by definition a “hate crime” and worthy of national publicity and outrage. But if a minority commits a violent crime and the victim is white, that does not make it beyond the local media. **

They’re claiming that white-on-black crimes is made the subject of national outrage while black-on-white crime is ignored by the media and left to local media to cover. They’re also claiming that when a white commits a violent crime against a minority, it is “by definition” a hate crime, which is just plain wrong. They also imply that a minority commiting a violent crime against a white person is never considered a hate crime, which is again wrong.
Sexual Trespass: Mr. Clinton’s Neighborhood
Eugene Narrett, Ph.D
“My correspondent tells me that leadership of the Girl Scouts already is so dominated by Lesbians that that battle is over except for the mopping up. So the Boy Scouts are being targeted as the bigots of the day.”

Here they’re outright claming that the Girl Scouts leadership is “dominated by Lesbians.” Until I see a more objective source state this, I don’t have any problem with labeling this one factually incorrect either. This also implies that there is something inherently wrong with lesbians and that the leadership of the Girl Scouts is now pushing some kind of lesbian agenda which would put it on par with the Boy Scouts’ anti-gay stance.
SAT is Best Measure of General Aptitude
Jonah Goldberg
In a country with thousands of school districts, tens of thousands of schools and millions of college-bound kids, a single test that measures general intelligence, er, sorry, “aptitude” is indispensable.

Here they’re claiming that the SAT is a test of general intelligence, which is incorrect. The SAT tests verbal ability and pre-high school level math, not general intelligence. Though intelligent people do have a better chance of performing well, the two are not equivalent. Even the company that makes the SAT doesn’t claim it to be a test of general intelligence, instead saying that the “SAT I measures verbal and math reasoning abilities.”
Schumer Says He Wants Truce with NRA
Schumer, who tried and failed to pass a package of gun laws in the wake of the 1999 Columbine HS killings, conceded: “It’s not that I’m against new laws. But we’ve had such deadlock in the Congress on this.”

Yes, the linked article itself reports favorably of Schumer, but the site claims Schumer is lying. The title placed over the article says, “Schumer Says He Wants Truce” (emphasis in original). Furthermore, to the right of the article is the phrase “Never trust a snake!”, which shows that they’re editorializing the news stories as well. Also, I generally prefer to get my information from places that don’t resort to petty name-calling of the opposition, especially when the person in question is agreeing with them!
More Facts, Fewer Liberals
Ann Coulter
While having dinner recently with John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, one of life’s enduring debates came up: Are liberals evil or just stupid?

Yes, this is a editorial. The fact that they mix in the editorials with the news is another reason not to trust them, but that’s not the main issue here. Basically this says that the site endorses the opinion that if you are a liberal, you are either evil or stupid. (Coulter chooses evil.) I doubt you would give much thought to a website with an editorial that asked the question “Are conservatives just greedy, or do they delight in the suffering of others?” (and put it on their news page, no less). I’m definitely not a conservative*, and I’d still be very wary of anything that such a site told me, especially if it gave me other reasons to doubt the site like this one does.

*I’m not really a liberal either, I consider myself a moderate.
Je$$e Jackson will Amend Tax Return to Include Mistress
“It was an oversight. It is in the process of being corrected,” Billy Owens, chief financial officer for Rainbow/PUSH, said at a news conference Thursday

Uproar Over Ad Reveals Campus Censorship
An ad criticizing reparations for descendants of slaves is creating an uproar at colleges across the country. The controversy illustrates the anti-choice intolerance of left-wing activists and the speed of most student “journalists” to censor politically incorrect thought.

Now It’s Reparations for Mexicans?
Hold on to your wallet: The U.S. is studying whether to pay Mexican descendants for “stolen” land.

Unnecessary editorialization of news stories. News and opinions should be kept separate.
CBS’s Anti-Bush Jihad Continues
Brent Bozell
The network follows two simple mantras. First, nothing Tom Daschle, Ted Kennedy and Co. propose can be inaccurate or unfair. Second, nothing the GOP says is trustworthy or fair.

CBS is never critical of Democrats? Ever? They never treat Republicans as trustworthy? Not even once?
Democrats In Despair
Linda Bowles
Liberal columnist Bob Herbert, writing in The New York Times, confirmed that “the Democrat Party made a pact with Mr. Clinton that was the equivalent of a pact with the devil. And he delivered.”

Democrats Changing Their Tune on Campaign Finance Reform
George Will
It is gratifying, if not notably noble, that some Democrats, having recalibrated their self-interest in the light of last year’s elections, are rethinking their enthusiasm for eviscerating the First Amendment in the name of campaign finance reform.

Invasion of Your Privacy Has Just Begun
Exclusive: The Clinton years of attacks on privacy began with first lady Hillary and the top-secret part of her 1993 health care task force. That was just the start.

Nothing factually inaccurate AFAIK, but these go to show political bias against Democrats. And again, news and editorials do not belong mixed together. Newspapers put editorials on their own page. (And, if campaign finance reform is “eviscerating the First Amendment” isn’t Senator McCain also in favor of “evisceration”?)

33

Yemen. Come and visit.

34

In another thread, someone once said that “If you have to pay for it, it isn’t a right.” In the same vein, if you’re required by law to do something, then it isn’t a right.

Or are you claiming that it’s perfectly legal to require people to say certain mantras (such as the pledge of allegiance)? In my mind, it falls in the same vein.

Try this… what, pray tell, would be the punishment for people who didn’t want to own a gun? How could you possibly measure such a violation?

35

Mandatory anything is a pretty bad idea. Every responsible citizen should have the right to own guns, but only people who are responsible and prove that they can use, store, and handle the gun properly, and teach others to do so. That’s why I do not support gun limitations, but I do support licensing requirements. If you force someone to own a gun, and force them to learn how to use it correctly, they are not going to care as much, and that would be an unsafe situation. I don’t want people to own guns if they’re not going to do it mindfully.

36

First of all, many people interpret the bible as stating that it is wrong to even have weapons, so mandatory gun laws are a violation of 1st Amendment rights. There are plenty of other excellent arguments for why this is a bad idea, but Protesilaus has listed them pretty concisely already.

Anyway, Reeder, does this guy want to show us the source of his statistics, and give us something to compare them to? The town has had 3 murders in the last 16 years, but how many did it have in the 16 years before that? How does the murder rate in that town compare to murder rates nationwide, considering that violence is usually less common in small towns thean in larger cities? Crime rates dropped in '82 and '83, but how have they been doing since then? Could it be that like most right-wing extremists, Mr. Baldwin’s arguments fall apart when subjected to the slightest scrutiny? You say that numbers don’t lie. Actually, when a crafty writer is speaking to an audience that wants to believe what he is saying, they lie almost all the time.

37

Just like religion, inherrent in the right to do something is the right to choose not to do that thing. Forcing people to own guns is therefore a violation of the Amendment II.

38

The proper punishment for someone refusing to keep a gun would be banishment to a country where gun ownership is regulated, such as Canada, where, gee, they sure seem to have a lot of school shootings.

39

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL! CRUEL AND UNUSUAL!!

40

SexyWriter: a firearm for self protection is like insurance; it’s there when you need it.

It cannot be emphasized enough that mere possession of a firearm will not keep you safe from attack, or deter a criminal in the course of an attack. Training and education are more important than the firearm itself, as well of an awareness of your risk or “exposure”, to criminal attack.

Take the time to research crime rates for your area (home and work) by type, and victimization, to determine if you are at a higher risk.

Czarcasm has a valid point, in that too many people don’t consider all of the ramifications of their decisions, and that the majority of illegal firearms up for sale “on the street” come from people’s homes. Or from “straw purchases”, depending on what legislation some anti-gun legislator is trying to push through. The FBI, last time I looked, said it was usually stolen firearms making it into criminal’s hands.

The problem most gun-right’s groups have with mandatory storage laws is that such laws can be applied in a discriminatory fashion in heavily anti-gun states, as well as some concerns about 4th Ad. issues with ensuring compliance with such laws.

For instance: I have a gun safe, a good heavy one. Where feasible, I have even removed firing pins and stored them elsewhere, to render the gun ineffective. It would take some considerable effort (and several people) for a burglar to abscond with my collection. In my home state, that would satisfy most people and the law that I had taken all reasonable precautions to secure my firearms.

In some others, there would be DAs all-too-willing to lock me away as a careless miscreant, and legislators agitating for total bans becauses it clearly shows that even gun safes and trigger locks aren’t sufficient to secure firearms from theft.

Jeff 42:

No Jeff. The theory holds that while criminals don’t always act in societies best interest, or even their own (in terms of long term health/prosperity) they will act with some sense of self preservation. See Glitch’s post.

If a criminal, say a mugger or rapists, knows that any given person at random might be carrying a concealed firearm, that they may reconsider.

Lott tried to cover this in his book “More Guns, Less Crime”, by attempting to determine if there were “displacement crimes”. In essence, if assaults go down, do car thefts and “cold” home burglaries (burglaries of unoccupied residences) go up?

The results, IIRC (I don’t have his book with me) were not universally conclusive. In some cases (locales) they did, in others, they didn’t. He indicated that further study of that particular effect was in order.

Besides, a criminal, regardless of whatever crime they may be contemplating committing against someone (even another criminal) has no right to expect a free ride.

No one has a right to break the law.

My situation (income/neighborhood) isn’t yours; I may very well need to protect myself, whereas you may not, due to local crime rates.

As a law-abiding citizen, where the police have no obligation to protecting individual people (just the community at large) I have every right to defend/protect myself against crime. I believe that everyone else does, too. Just put some thought into it and have some realistic expectations.

Forcing guns on unwilling owners is worse than taking them away, and asking for trouble.