So says David Hemenway, a professor of health policy at Harvard School of Public Health:
Anyone still want to argue that you’re better of having a gun in the house?
You’re new here, aren’t you.
Join Date: Feb 2006
The findings don’t surprise me. There are people who have a legitimate need for guns in their home, e.g., people who regularly go hunting, but I think it’s unlikely that they would be much use for self-defence or for deterring criminals from robbing your home.
I’m sure they do; the gun crowd in this country has a fanatic, irrational worship of guns. If it comes down to the safety of their family or guns, most will choose guns as more important. Most of them appear to put guns up as being more important than anything else; they will sacrifice any principle, any person in favor of guns.
I do not own a gun and I do not like guns. Nevertheless, I would need for this article to be better documented before I agree with it.
I have read on several occasions that in the United States one and a half crimes are deterred by the use of guns. I have also read that areas that permit the legal ability to carry a concealed hand gun experience a decline in the crime rate. I do not know if that is true, but it is important if true.
I have read, and I am fairly confident of this, that in the United States whites are much more likely to own guns than whites in Europe, and that their crime rate is not substantially higher. It is the high population of blacks and Hispanics that give the United States a higher murder rate than Western Europe.
In the United States millions of men derive a feeling of masculine identity from their ownership of guns. Millions of men and women think that is pretty disgusting.
Guns and gun control are highly emotional issues. People approach these issues wanting to believe something about them. As a result, studies on these issues need to be very well done. Those evaluating the studies need to be prepared to accept conclusions at variance with their feelings.
Okay, I’ll take a shot at it. Without reading the article or having any real interest in what either the pro-gun or anti-gun activists have been saying lately:
Do you know that people who own cars are far more likely to be in a car crash than people who don’t? But no one is lobbying to take our cars away, even if the chance of dying in an auto-related accident goes up greatly with car ownership.
A risk/ benefit analysis cannot legitimately concentrate on a single data point.
I would like to see statistics comparing responsible gun owning households (ones where guns are treated as tools, and all members of the household have had real training on gun safety) versus non-responsible gun owning households (where the gun owner seems to think a handgun is some sort of magic criminal repellant device, and where no one is allowed access to the weapon, making it an attractive nuisance to any children in the household).
In short, just because there are irresponsible people out there, that should not affect my right to own a gun if I want one. If my irresponsibility causes harm to an innocent person then I should be held responsible for the damages to the fullest extent of the law, but the State has no right to presume that I am not a responsible adult.
(How does that sound? Maybe later I can argue from the other side.)
I think that’s possible. However, the deterrent effect would be the relative likelihood that a potential criminal victim is armed, not knowledge of that. A person is less likely to make a career of burglary if even 1% of the time they might get shot. However, they won’t know if a particular house contains a person with access to a gun. So it’s not having guns in your own house that lower the crime rate – it’s the percentage of your neighbours with guns in their houses that do it.
What about Spain? There is a much higher proportion of Hispanics in Spain. Does that give them a much higher crime rate?
It’s awfully simplistic to bring race into it. In the US, as in many other countries, race is a marker for social and economic differences, and they are much more important in explaining crime rates.
The problem with guns isn’t (nor has ever been argued to be) that they increase the crime rate. But they do make it easy for crimes to have much uglier outcomes. Including when it’s the victim who has one.
No need to go further; the author deserves to be taken as seriously as someone who insists that there is no credible evidence that Barack Obama was born in the United States.
No, but we do license people to drive 
(nice bit of Devil advocacy BTW. Cheers.)
Hardly surprising, though; simplistic racial theories are New Deal “Democrat”'s schtick.
The problems with guns in a home almost always revolves around one or a combination of stupid/irresponsible gun ownership, children and/or alcohol abuse.
I am a responsible gun owner. I used to own a handgun and a shotgun, then I had kids. The guns were sold. I will probably own guns again once my boys are out of the house, but I refuse to have them in the house when they are so young (9 and 5) because no matter how much respect and training I could possibly give them, they are still children.
Thank you. Wait until I get geared up for my “Yes, a handgun is a tool, but it is a tool whose sole purpose is to harm other people - no one hunts with a handgun, and sharp shooting / target practice is just to help you get better at harming other people” argument *for *gun control.
(I consider myself a moderate on many things and can recognize legitimate points on both sides of many issues.)
I asked about this a few years ago and the results were actually surprising.
It’s not the the physical gun that provides the benefit but rather the potential that a gun might be in the home.
When comparing crime stats between Canada and the US the point that stuck out was how crime was different. Without the potential for a gun, [armed] criminals in Canada are more likely to strike in the evening when the occupants are home, meaning their wallets are also home.
It’s the exact opposite in the US, criminals avoid entering occupied homes, and prefer to break in during the day when the house is empty.
The potential of a gun in the house alters criminal behavior. Even if the same number of houses are robbed, I personally think we’re better off avoiding the home evasion scenario.
If you don’t like them don’t own them. Pretty simple - what’s the big deal?
Personally, I think guns are fun. I enjoy target shooting and collecting them. I’ll take the risk.
After all, it really is a matter of personal preference - to own them or not - right? What’s your point? Do you wish to dictate what people can or cannot do, or classify gun owners as stupid because they like something you don’t?
Sheesh. Some people’s kids. :rolleyes:
I think that’s the point that I was making in the first part of my post #8, though perhaps emacknight put it better.
There’s also the issue that, if homeowners are more likely to have guns, then criminals are more likely to have them as well. Things are never as simple as arguments on the extreme of either side of the case would suggest.
It could be anyone’s kids.
As John Donne said, “No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.” I have no problem with you owning a gun if the risks of gun ownership are entirely yours. However, they never can be, because you live in a community. Your gun increases the danger that others around you will be injured or killed, and the major reason for gun control should be to minimise that risk.
The results aren’t surprising. What about my household? There’s no history of depression or other mental illnesses, no domestic abuse and no drug & alcohol abuse. Does that change the risk factors?