[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
I guess that every time this erroneous method of comparing raw numbers is made, I’ll repeat myself. How many times in a year do you think cars are used? Pools? Things that could produce a fire? Firearms? The question is not how many deaths, but how many times out of the number of times something is used does it result in death.
I’m really pretty empirical when it comes to these things. If I believed that the net result of firearms was positive (i.e. they did end up stopping attempted crimes more often than they were used to kill someone that they shouldn’t have been), I’d be much more supportive of gun rights. I don’t believe that. I do believe that they give people who over-estimate their risks for being victimized a sense of security that is likely false, at the cost of a higher risk for injury or death to others.
Truth be told, I think that guns in and of themselves are pretty cool, and I have really enjoyed target and skeet shooting in the past. I just think the combination of firearms and people in general is a risk to everyone that is greater than the benefits they bring to their users.
[/QUOTE]
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.
