The hypothetical was an assumption that it was clear, let’s say undeniably clear, that handguns present a greater likelihood of killing an innocent person than someone committing a crime. We can even set aside law enforcement, and just focus on private citizens’ ownership of handguns (setting aside long guns as well, if you like).
I simply asked you whether you would assert, in such a hypothetical circumstance, that your right to “self-defense” through the possession of a handgun is greater than others’ rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I take it from your response that you feel that it is.
In 1993, the National Crime Victimization Survey (conducted by the Census Bureau on behalf of the DOJ) estimated 108,000 defensive gun uses annually.
That same year, Dr. Gary Kleck conducted his own survey, and came up with a range of 800,000 to 1.5 million.
The Cook-Ludwig report, funded by Pres. Clinton’s administration, conservatively estimated about 85,000 defensive gun uses per year (1997 or 1998 numbers).
That’s way below the Kleck’s and the DOJ’s numbers, but still waayyy over the national average firearm murder rate. Then, and especially now.
Of course, DGU doesn’t mean a murder averted; until Prof. Farnsworth invents the “Might Have Happened” machine to allow us to see events unfold as they might have otherwise, we cannot know. Due to the construction of all those surveys, we can’t honestly say that any crime had been averted. But they are all (in their own way) estimations of “solid” DGU’s, in that some crime had been averted.
Another problem with your problem with the numbers (raw, or adjusted) is that when someone accidentally injures or kills themselves or someone else with a firearm (IOW, a non-deliberate, non-malicious act), data as to how often that firearm is used, handled, and how well trained the owner is/was is rarely collected, and if so, even more rarely reported. Hence the CDC’s findings that there is no evidence, one-way-or-another, to prove or disprove the efficacy of gun control laws in preventing criminals from getting guns, using them in crimes, etc.
I’ve heard it said that the vast majority of firearms in the U.S.A. are sitting in people’s closets or dresser drawers gathering dust, and are never used, not even at a firing range for practice. While I make no claim one way or another to the validity of that saw, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it were true.
It also wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out that the vast majority of accidents are from those unused, practically forgotten firearms once the owner’s kids find them, or the owner’s themselves, having forgotten how to safely handle and unload the things that they bought twenty years ago when their neighbor Gladys’ house got broken into while she was at work one day.
In my 34 years of handling firearms, I’ve never let one go unintentionally. Familiarity may breed contempt in some, but in my estimation, it’s more often ignorance that kills.
One quick nit-pick: I don’t believe possession was ever outlawed in Dodge; just open (or even concealed) carry. On either side of the tracks.
And Dragon Ash: I also believe that the Dodge-to-NYC death rate comparison was in a contemporary timeframe, not a then-and-now one. At least, that’s what I got from the context. NYC was pretty damned violent back when.
At the risk of being trite, let’s point out that guns don’t kill people, people do. So we’re (still) left with the question of why our innocent citizens can’t protect themselves adequately. The answer of course, is the government prohibiting the right of self defense to law abiding citizens.
You still didn’t answer the question.
You can’t take anything from my response other than what I’ve stated, and I should probably point out the the bill of rights isn’t a smorgasboard that you get to pick and choose from, ignoring some and emphasizing others (albeit the “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” isn’t one of the amendments. It’s part of the DOI.)
You have the right to self defense via firearms, and not surprisingly this may be the only thing twixt you and the great beyond. The right of self-defense is the most basic, fundamental of course. By the way, whom do you suppose has the responsibility for your personal safety?
Of course it could be argued that the only reason that you have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is that someone with a gun is defending those rights. And while some people prefer to give their proxy to someone else to hold that gun for them, what do you do if that gun, currently pointing outwards, gets turning inwards?
Regarding the 2.7 times more chance of a fatality if you have a gun in your house: If I owned a gun, that number would not apply to me. See, if I owned a gun everyone from young to old would be trained in the proper usage and handling of said gun. The gun would be locked away and only responsible adults would have access. None of the people in my house are whackjobs and likely to get mad enough to try and shoot someone in the heat of anger, or start popping off at a sound they hear downstairs in the middle of the night and end up shooting the kid rattling around in the kitchen for a late night snack.
Now if you can find a reliable way to keep whackjobs from getting guns then I’m all for it. I’m also all for saying you can’t get a gun without proper training even if that training means you have to take a course equivalent to what the police have to take when learning about how to use their firearms. But as long as the military and the police are allowed to have firearms then I should be allowed to have them, too.
At this point, I must say that I do not believe I will be able to convey the point I am trying to make to many of the participants in this thread. I thank UncleBeer for the discussion, and bid you adieu.
And if you looked honestly at the numbers, you’d find out that despite the media sensationalism there are damn few kids who accidentally kill themselves or their buddies with guns.
Unless you count 20 year old gang-bangers shooting their rivals as ‘kids’ and ‘accidents’.
Define ‘damn few’. Data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2003 counts 2,827 children aged 19 or younger died from firearms, including 195 due to accidents or undetermined circumstances. Almost 200. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the 200 dead from accidents is improving - barely 10 years ago the figure was over 500 a year. Still, in 2003 llmost 400 of the 2,827 children killed were under the age of 15. More preschoolers were killed with guns (56) than law enforcement officers in the line of duty (53). Guns kill more teens than any other cause except cars.
We’re not talking about something that has any sort of net benefit to society, like cars, or swiming pools, or trees. We’re talking about GUNS - things that exist purely to kill.
And of course you know for rock-solid fact that every home your kids may visit either won’t have guns or the owners also practice safe-storage? You do know that around quarter of gun owners actually admit to keeping an unlocked, loaded gun (I suspect the figure is actually much higher)?
Further, how in the hell is an unloaded gun locked away (no doubt, as per the NRA’s own recommendations, you leave the gun unloaded until ready to use) going to be of any help when suddenly faced with an intruder in the middle of the night? Answer: It’s won’t.
A Journal of Trauma study from 1998 found that guns kept in the home for ‘self-protection’ are *twenty-two times * more often used to kill somebody you know than to kill in self-defense.
The risk of homicide is almost three times greater in homes with guns.
Risk of suicide: five times.
Around two-thirds of spouse/ex-spouse murders: committed with guns.
Unintentional firearm death for kids aged 0-14: NINE times higher in the US compared to 25 other industrialized countries.
I’m still waiting for someone, anyone to offer up stats that say it’s safer to live with a gun than without.
Dingdingding, we have a winner! 2000 numbers show 80 accidental shootings of children under 15, but group 15-24 year olds together (National Safety Council, Injury Facts, 2001 Edition, pp. 8-9) and shows 150 of them. So it is fairly easy for one group to say “230 children were accidently killed by guns” and another group to say “80 were killed”.
80 is of course 80 more than it should be, but the numbers were going down even as more people had more guns in this country.
Read above: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data for 2003, 2,827 children aged 19 or younger died from firearms, including 195 accidents.
The NRA has been railing against the ‘assault on gun owner’s rights’, saying that their rights have been steadily eroded away by the anti-gun contigent. Meanwhile, overall firearm deaths (accidental or otherwise) have been steadily on the decline.
This is at least the second time you trotted this lame dog out here. I told ya before that dog won’t hunt, but apparently you missed it. Or ignored it. What is your basis for your claim? You’ve made a nakend claim of fact. How are you inferring it? What’s the logic you’re using to support your claim?
[/quote]
It’d be nice if you’d provide links to these studies so we can all see 'em., ya know. I asked who the author was of a previous study you told us about. You’ve not responded to that request; I’d still like some more info on it. I want some more info about this new one, too. Specifically, is it an Arthur Kellerman study? Kellerman’s studies are notorious for including in the “persons you know” gang members who happen to be acquainted as a result of their crimes. It has the effect of vastly inflating his numbers.
Or maybe you’re just uncritically pulling your soundbites from a patently-biased website like this one: Hobi69: Mahjong Ways 1 & 2 Full Scatter Mega Win If you’re going to use blurb from a study to support your arguments, it would really be nice to let us see the whole thing. You might even wanna take the radical step of looking at the entire study yourself.
Ya know, there ain’t too many folks who call 18 & 19 year olds “children.” Unless they’re trying to inflate their numbers. After all, 18 & 19 year olds are eligible for military service. They’re hardly “children,” once they’ve reached the age of majority.
And all the while gunshot deaths have been in decline, there’s been a huge increase in the number of guns available. Particularly so for the supposedly single-evil-purposed-handgun.
Cite please? According to the ATF, the total number of guns manufactured in the US has declined almost every year since 1999. According to the Violence Policy Center, the number of licensed gun dealers has fallen by almost 80% between 1994 and 2005. This site notes that the number of people living in gun-owning households has declined from 48% in 1973 to 39% as of 2001.
I see nothing to indicate any ‘huge increase’ in the number of firearms.
You got a cite for yearly production figures. What in the bloody blue blazes does that have to do with the number of guns in circulation? Do you suppose that guns self-destruct on New Year’s Eve? That there aren’t any out there that are more than one year old?
The number of firearms dealers hasn’t got anything at all to do with the quantity of guns in circulation either.
And the Harris poll is only reflective of smaller average household sizes and that the average gun count per household has increased. It is entirely silent about how many guns are out there. Ya might wanna read that first bullet point under the heading “Other interesting findings in this poll include:” It says,
And are you gonna respond to my questions about the studies in your citations, or not? In which case we can only conclude that you: a) haven’t seen the study itself, or b) have seen it and are afraid it won’t stand up to scrutiny.
You pull out first. I never said anything about the number of guns in circulation, you did. I never said the amount of guns in circulation were either on the rise or decline; I was responding to your claim of a ‘huge increase’. I haven’t seen any data suggesting this. If you have any, by all means offer it.
I noted that you didn’t deny the NRA’s claim of the ‘assault on gun owner rights’. If, as you stated, the number of guns have actually increased, while gun deaths have declined - that’d be pretty damn good evidence that the gun control laws have been saving lives.
The Journal of Trauma study in question is Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home, from Kellermann, among others. Bad-mouth him all you want, I can pull up any number of critiques of your John Lott and Gary Kleck.
At least I’m offering data. I am still waiting for you or anyone to offer any evidence that living in a home with a gun is safer than living in a home without one.
Not directly, no. But you offered declining production figures as a rebuttal to my claim that the number of guns in circulation has taken a large jump. Production figures which are for gun manufactured only in the United States. We also import a shitload of guns from places such as Brazil, Canada, Italy and even Japan.
Anyway, we can use your figures of firearm production to make a reasonable guess at the increase in the gun supply. Since firearms have a useful lifecycle of about 100 years, we know that nearly all of them manufactured in the last 40+ years and not exported are now in circulation. The only guns not still in circulation would be the ones recovered by cops, ones exported illegally, and the ones voluntarily turned into the cops through things like buy-back programs. Then, to that number, we gotta add all the imported ones.
Your ATF figures for 2004 show 3.1 million guns manufactured in the United States. Of those, only about 141,000 were exported, leaving slightly fewer than 3 million U.S. made guns here. Add on an unknown, but large number of imported guns and we’re well over 3 million - probably approaching four. With an estimated 250 million+ guns in the United States, we find that even in a year of declining production, the supply has increased by more than 1.2%. Add that up over 40 years, and you get about 50% more guns. A vast increase. And that’s without even really counting the imports. Other folks have other, even higher, estimates.
In 1970 there were about 155 handguns per 1000 persons. In 1998, there were 340/1000. The figure has more than doubled even as the population climbed. Gary Kleck claimed in his 1997 book Targeting Guns using a variety of sources, that the handgun supply had tripled in the last 40 years.
What? I don’t follow you. I thought you said more guns necessarily resulted in more murders.
This contradicts your previous claim. That even while the gun supply has increased, there are fewer gunshot deaths. And I’m kinda curious about the CDC data; I don’t thing the CDC collects that kind of information about countries outside the United States. And from what year, or years, was that 12x figure calculated?
It yields only 235 unintentional gunshot deaths in the United States of kids under the age of 15 in 2004, out of a population of 60.7 million. This is a mere .39 deaths per 100,000. If that’s 12x higher than 25 other nations combined (and which 25 nations might those be is another good question to be asked), then we find that there are only .0325 deaths per 100,000 for those other nations. Makes me wonder what the actual quantity was and how precise that number might be. Can’t calculate that without a population figure, though.
Fortunately, I don’t need Kleck, or Lott, or anyone else to discredit Kellerman’s work. That guy always includes criminals known to each other in his studies when calculating the number of people killed by their “friends or relatives.” He also includes deaths which happen during the commission of other crimes. He, himself, admits to using such constructs in order to artifically increase the numbers of deaths he can count. Kellerman is also known for using non-random samples. And some very limited data sets which, by many, aren’t believed to be large, or diverse, enough to extract valid statistics from. The guy’s a hack.
Let me re-phrase: I was offering one possible reason behind the decline in gun-related deaths: stricter gun control laws. One possible result of that would appear to be a decline in the percentage of homes with guns in them. There might be a lot more guns, but it would seem that a fewer percentage of people own them. So instead of each gun owner owning one or two, maybe they own three or four.
I didn’t say anything about the actual number of guns in circulation, because I don’t have a clue. In fact - I can’t find one damn site that gives any accurate, current data. Everything I find puts the figure at ‘around 200 million’ - and this seems to stay fairly constant, whether the cite is from 1992 or 2002. The overall manufacturing numbers suggest a general decline, as does the sharp decline in licensed dealers, but some sites suggest an increase in imports.
The data does, however, seem pretty clear in suggesting fewer households have guns now than in previous years.
I would like to see any stats (if you have them) that would make a case for more guns - i.e., having a gun is safer than not having one. That is the crux of the matter: we can debate whether a figure is too big, and if so, by how much - but the data seems pretty clear that a household with a gun is more dangerous than one without, even if we want to debate by how much dangerous.
BTW - I do thank you for keeping this fairly civil - I’ve found the debate educational and it’s forced me to do some searching, always a good thing in the fight against ignorance.
It’s well established case law or precedent that no one is afforded police protection as such.
Leaving the reams of statistical data and politics aside for a moment, let’s ask the rhetorical question of how one is practically supposed to protect themselves/family/property?
