Myrr, Mojo asked for a cite, and I gave one. Nothing wrong with that.
In any event, I question your assumption that the opposite case is not measurable. I’m reading Lott’s book, More Guns, Less Crime, right now, and it appears that he examines precisely that issue, but I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’ll let you know.
Umm, maybe you missed the OP? Where it says that the Brady Bill, which mandated a 5 day waiting period, was a failure? Where it was found that there was a “statistically insignificant reduction in the murder rate”?
Have you read any of the posts besides the last few? How about the Australia study that I mention again and again, where it shows that other deadly weapons are substituted, because firearms were made illegal? And that there was no drop in murder rates?
And finally, do you really believe that the example used above was the only time someone was denied a firearm and died because of it? I know personally of at least one other, and I will try to come up with some numbers for you. It will probably be difficult, as “murders that could have been prevented by using a firearm in self defense” isn’t a FBI statistic, but I’ll try.
Thank you PLD, that was what I was looking for. However, I don’t think that proves anything- she wasn’t waiting for a background check to clear. She only talked to someone about buying a gun and never followed through.
Er, sorry Myrr, I got busy at work and missed your last post before finishing mine. Obviously you did read the OP.
I still encourage you to read the study I mentioned.
I don’t see what a perfect 1 for 1 exchange on murders and murcers prevented has to do with this topic though.
and neither is “murders that could’ve been prevented if some shlub didn’t have a gun”.
Sigh…I say again and again to read this freaking study. Do any of you actually do it?
So I’ll say it yet again: Murders will fucking happen. If someone gets mad or insane enough to kill another person, it will not matter if they have a gun, knife, baseball bat, pointy stick, dental floss, whatever. They are still going to kill someone.
Yeah, no prob–I always read edit the post once, hit post, * then * decide I need to edit it again :rolleyes:
To adress a few points:
OT, but just to respond to some of the calls for pro-gun control cites:
There’s one.
[quote]
There’s another; make what you will of it…
You do know that this figure includes such “members of the household” as abusive spouses, and such “friends” as fellow gang members. Right?
Sure didn’t. If I just click on the link, it doesn’t open (and I have acrobat 4.0). If I try to save the link, it gives me an estimated download time of 20+ minutes (on a T1!) and usually locks up at minute 18. Do you have it in HTML anywhere?
And murders will not just happen. Will some murders happen anyway if no guns were around? Yes. As many murders as we currently have? Not likely.
Sure, but I seriously doubt that that makes up that entire 43 times. Moreover, it also includes * by * an abusive spouse, a gang member, and so on…
I find this stat to be highly suspect.
“In fact, police accidentally killed 330 innocent individuals in 1993, compared to the mere 30 innocent people accidentally killed by private citizens who mistakenly believed the victim was an intruder. John R. Lott, Jr., Now That the Brady Law Is Law, You Are Not Any Safer than Before, Philadelphia Inquirer, February 1, 1994, at A9.”
Besides, your cite, if it is even near accurate at all, doesn’t take into account the total number of victims defending themselves from intruders. Not all intruders are killed, more are wounded or scared off than killed outright.
From U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief
Guns and Crime: Handgun Victimization, Firearm Self-Defense, and Firearm Theft
April 1994, NCJ-147003
*"Self-defense with firearms
*38% of the victims defending themselves with a firearm attacked the offender, and the others threatened the offender with the weapon.
*A fifth of the victims defending themselves with a firearm
suffered an injury, compared to almost half of those who defended themselves with weapons other than a firearm or who had no weapon.
About three-fourths of the victims who used firearms for
self-defense did so during a crime of violence, 1987-92"*
I can send you the rest of this report if you’d like. I’d say the Scientific American data is total BS.
Sorry, I do not. I have no problem getting it at work (T1), or at home (cable modem), on either Acrobat Reader 3.0 or 4.0. It isn’t a fast download, but doesn’t take anywhere near 18 or 20 minutes.
Anyone else having problems getting this study?
Any other way to get to that study? No Acrobat on this comp, and it’s locked up real tight (I don’t have the time or energy to take down the security).
Umm, that’s pretty much irrelevant. Note that what you just quoted says * accidentally killed by private citizens who mistakenly believed the victim was an intruder
[/quote]
This in now way accounts for all the people accidentally shot (stupidly) playing with the gun, or while a friend was playing with the gun. It doesn’t account for the guy in Baltimore who shot someone who set off his car alarm (accidentally). He didn’t think the kid was an intruder; he just heard his car alarm go off and went for the shotgun. That’s my point.
Sorry bout the vB catastrophe…
Myrr21 wrote:
slythe was saying that the worst thing having a waiting period does is maybe deprive you of one or two of your “rights,” while the worst thing not having a waiting period does is allow for more impulse murders.
I used the stalker example as a way of showing that having a waiting period can result in more murders, too.
OK, I have a question here. This is a bit OT, but do we really need another gun thread (if so, I’ll make one)?
How effective (persoanlly, not statistically) do you think (whether you own one or not) your gun is? Personally, I don’t see where it would help me. I would never draw a gun on sombody I wasn’t sure I was going to shoot. In terms of home protection, if I heard somebody in my house, i have to be sure that they’re not a family member. For them, though, they can shoot at anything that moves with impunity. I can think of very few situations where I would have the resolve to draw the gun and the time/ability to do so.
Granted, this may just be me (I’m rather non-confrontational IRL). So how bout it? I’m just curious about the personal level of this debate, as well as the regional/national statistics.
Myrr21 wrote:
If you hear a suspected intruder in your house, according to one self-defense webpage I read somewhere-or-other, you’re supposed to lock yourself and your family in a “safe room” (usually the master bedroom) in which you keep both your gun and a separate phone line to call 911 from (a cellular phone is best, because burglars have been known to cut phone lines).
If the suspected intruder then fires shots through the bedroom door, or breaks open the door, you can be pretty sure he really is an intruder and has hostile intentions. You won’t need to spend a lot of time or effort assessing the situation to know it’s time to shoot.
This same webpage also recommended you use a shotgun with buckshot loads for home defense, because: (A) they’re more powerful than handguns; (B) buckshot loads fire a blast of pellets in a narrow cone, which has a better chance than a single bullet of hitting a target when you’re nervous and jittery and won’t have perfect aim or don’t have time to aim accurately; © they look more intimidating from a longer distance than handguns do, and thus have a chance of scaring off the intruder without having to fire a shot (don’t count on it, though); and (D) the sound of a pump-action shotgun’s action being cycled is quite distinctive and may also scare away the intruder. But if all you have is a handgun, it’s better than nothing.
Tracer said:
To slythe: number one, infringing one;s rights is not a minor thing. How about if took away your 8th amendmend rights and beat the crap out of a criminal in jail, tortured and starved you. Big deal, I am violating a few “rights” but straightening out criminal.
Secondly the study proves that the brady law doesn’t prevent murders. You don’t like the results, go do your own study.
myrr I am not going to get off the OP and argue gun death stats, but I do want to educate you on the 43 times more likely bogus stat that you quoted. First of all, it includes suicides. But for an in detail breakdown and statistical refutation: go here http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdgaga.html
**regardless, the Brady Bill does not effect murder rates. ** now show me how it does.
Err, yeah, you’re right…I zeroed in on the intruder word, that cite didn’t really fit what you were referring to.
Anyhow, Mr. Zambezi cleared that mess up just fine.
As for the Australia study, no, I don’t know of any other place where the study resides in its entirety. You can find quotes from it scattered around various websites, but I prefer info from the horse’s mouth, as it were.
Personally, I own a handgun for protection, just in case. I don’t expect I’ll use it, I hope I won’t ever have to use it, but it is there as insurance.
As far a drawing a gun on someone you are not sure you are going to shoot, there is an easy way to make sure there isn’t an accident: don’t put your finger inside the trigger guard until you are sure. Just having a gun pointed at them is going to give most people pause, and let you figure out if they are friend or foe. If you get rushed, your finger only has to be moved an inch, and you can fire. You have the advantage because you are in a ready position, i.e. the gun is pointed at the intruder. If it turns out that the intruder is actually your husband/wife/son/daughter, you may scare them, but no one is going to die.
Damn, I knew I was going to need that reference when I ran across it…you don’t necessarily have the right you think youhave under the second amendment. A Superior Court (not the Supreme Court, so it isn’t final here) has ruled that private citizens are not necessarily part of a “well-regulated militia”. Moreover, we don’t allow people to own tanks. We don’t allow them to own rocket launchers. We don’t allow them to own machine guns (with a few exceptions). So where is the line? Obviously we * can * prevent people from owning certain firearms; we can also regulate how they are bought and sold. If you don’t like it, get the law repealed, but it’s certainly not deprving you of any legal rights you “have”.
Mr.Zambezi: the table refutation you cite is completely irrelevant. The statement is, “you are 43 times more likely to use the firearm kept in the home on yourself/family/friend than on an intruder”.
The counter statistics are “Estimation of Violent Deaths in the Home Not Involving a Firearm”. This does not show that the 43 to 1 ratio is wrong–this is looking at something completely different. It’s a little subtle, but if you notice: the data that 43:1 was calculated from was only about use of the firearm. You haven’t included the other violent deaths in that.
So if you want to compare these two, you have to go find the data for violent deaths in a firearm-containing homes, * not involving the firearm * and add that to the firearm totals. Then, and only then, are the two sets of data related in any way.
As it is, the 43:1 stands–the data you presented does nothing to refute the fact that the firearm is 43 times more likely to kill somebody other than an intruder.
I hope I’ve expressed this clearly; I realize that the 43:1 data is not perfect–given pldennison’s point–but if you look carefully, the link you cite is trying to falsely correlate numbers