I have a friend who is trying to research some handgun statistics, and isn’t sure where to start or how to find stuff. I figured, someone here can prolly help. (She thinks that, since I write Staff Reports, I know everything.)
Anyone know where to find this kinda info, please? Thanks…
She may be looking for FBI Uniform Crime Reports. I can’t find a link to the actual data, but having researched a few of those questions before, I can tell you that they will include statistics such as:
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The short answer is that the ratio of accidental to justifiable homicides is roughly 4:1. If you buy a gun to protect your home, you are 4 times more likely to kill someone accidentally than to kill an intruder.
That’s not really addressing the question, since it’s limited to homicide and ownership rates are needed.
I know some will contend the suggestion, but googling for “John Lott” may produce some good links. Since beginning to study the question of guns & crime, he’s done a lot of work in that field.
The two statistics that were compared have roughly the same ownership: legal owners of guns. You’re right that the ratio of those can’t be really connected to unjustifiable homicide, because the ownership is different.
I’m making an assumption about the question posed by Dex’s friend, but usually the question asked is as I answered: if I purchase a gun (legally), what is the historical probability of me using it to defend my home vs. the probability it will hurt my children?
Query: by “used”, does she mean actually shooting somebody, or pointing the gun to get the home invader’s attention and make him leave, surrender, etc? The distinction would make a huge difference to the statistics.
That’s cool. I was just sayin’, is all.
I wonder what the rates are if we compare those who purchase guns speficially for defending the home.
Is there any way to edit a quote? I hit “Submit” instead of “Preview” by accident.
Some of the questions posed by Dex in the OP really have no answer.
What constitutes “use” in “protection” against a “home invader”?
It’s important to know which of these are included – for example, the NRA generously estimates some number of rapes and robberies thwarted by guns - even if the gun was never fired - simply by expanding on the definition of “use”.
What constitutes “against a family member”?
Nobody’s going to keep track of the number of times that a Lady walks through a Really Bad Neighborhood and sees an Evil Black Man approaching, and reaches inside her purse for her Second Amendment Rights and scares off her Would Be Rapist.
Likewise, nobody’s going to keep track of the number of times a gun was accidentally discharged and nicked someone’s shoulder instead of killing them.
All good points. thanks! Let me modify the question, and see if anyone has any helpful ammunition (so to speak.)
This is coming from a friend of mine, with a new grandchild. Her son-in-law keeps a gun in the house, for “protection” and this has my friend very concerned. They live in Gainesville, FL, if that makes a difference. He’s a very rational-type person, so an emotional argument won’t influence him, but facts and statistics might. (She’s obviously motivated from the very emotional “I don’t want my grandson playing around guns!” but she needs some facts to back up the obvious.)
So, she’s looking for facts. She basically wants to make a case that “home protection” is not statistically significant compared to gun accidents in the home.
That help refine the question?
Considering that Florida is well known lately for breakdowns of services here and there due to hurricane damage, keeping a gun might be a prudent move. If your friend isn’t starting with a rational argument maybe she needs to take a long hard look at the core of her argument and how it may have no relevance to others. Or better yet, if her daughter has no problem with it, learn to get over her control needs and find something productive to spend her time on.
drachillix. Thanks for the information in the first part of your post.
Since this is General Questions, I’d appreciate it if you could keep your editorial commentary to a minimum. If you want to debate something, take it somewhere else.
samclem GQ moderator
Maybe suggest that the owner keep the weapon unloaded and locked (safe or gun lock) when the child is in the house?
Ah, okay. So bias/accuracy isn’t really a problem here? That makes things easy (why did you make your OP sound like it was looking for objective, impartial facts?). The Brady Campaign has “fact sheets” that seem to be what your friend is looking for. Similar things can most likely be found on the sites of most gun control organizations.
Actual “gun accidents” (accidental discharges, discharges while kids are playing with Dad’s cool toy, etc.), if that is all your friend is concerned with, are extremely rare compared to most estimates of “protection” uses. Something like 1000-1500 gun fatalities per year in the United States are classified as accidental. As others have noted above, how many “protection uses” there are depends on exactly what you count as such a use. If brandishing a gun against an intruder to scare him off counts as “protection,” then this number is probably something on the order of 1 million per year (Kleck’s survey estimates 2.5 million). Only a small fraction, maybe 5-10%, of these “uses” escalate to the actual wounding or killing of the intruder. The actual number of intruders or attackers killed is the same order of magnitude as the number of accidental fatalities. (Bill The Cat, above, says 1:4; I’ve heard various other estimates ~1:1. The link below suggests ~3:2.)
But it’s difficult to weigh one number against another, though; which numbers do you use, and what exactly are they measuring? Most “gun accidents” are easily preventable by following a small number of extremely simple rules, which mostly boil down to “don’t be stupid” (and, in second place, “understand how your gun works”). The risk to a responsible gun owner is much lower than those numbers would indicate. The protection uses, on the other hand, are probably weighted toward bad neighborhoods, people more likely to be victims (e.g., women living alone), etc., and may not accurately reflect his situation. And do you only count it as a “use” if the intruder is killed? If so, why? (One reason is to try to use “deaths” as a more easily-counted proxy for “deaths plus woundings” or the even harder “discharges” or the completely nebulous “uses.” But it’s not clear that the ratios of these proxies to the underlying values are the same, and I’m not even sure that the ratios ought to be of “uses” to “uses” rather than to “innocents killed” vs. “innocents probably saved.”)
I hesitate to provide this link (Gun Owners of America fact sheet), since it’s explicitly political, but it does provide references to a fair number of primary sources, among them the Kleck survey and the FBI UCRs, which are directly relevant to any research your friend wants to do.
(Bolding mine.) As a footnote, I hope it won’t be taken badly if I say that it sounds like “research”–an argument based on the facts–is not what your friend wants. It sounds much more like what your friend wants is “propaganda”–facts supporting her argument, so that she can “make a case” against home protection. Real research requires an open mind, and all the primary sources the SDMB can provide can’t help without one.
So she also needs to know about burglaries in houses with firearms vs those without. The NRA’s search function doesn’t seem to be working but I remember that some years ago a NRA spokesman was interviewed on radio - Radio 4 IIRC - and he stated out that the US had a much lower burglary rate than the U.K. and put it down to guns.
The Home Office states that there were 818K burglaries in the UK in 2003/4 and the American Bureau of Justice states that there were 29.6 burglaries per 1000 households. There are 22 million households in the U.K. so a quick bit of maths shows that Britain has 37.2 burglaries per 1000 household - 25% more.
That this is down to guns is not addressed in any of the cites.
I did a search of the Uof W’s trauma center, Harborview Medical Center and found this page on Handguns
He could try the same thing at a local university.
Cecil talked about British crime rates in one of his articles, and he confirmed that the U.K. has more property crimes than the U.S. does, per capita. The question of why, is of course debatable.
Sorry, I didn’t explain it the first time because she didn’t explain it to me that way.
We must be honest, here: the problem is not with her SIL, nor with the “gun in the house.” The problem, I am assuming, is that your friend is completely ignorant when it comes to firearms. This explains why she’s afraid of them. (We are naturally afraid of the unknown.)
The way to fix this problem is not by analyzing statistics. The way to fix this problem is to grab a few guns and take your friend to the firing range. Bring along lots of ammo, teach her the Four Safety Rules, and let her shoot a few hundred rounds from a variety of handguns and long guns. This exercise will take the mystery out of guns, and (hopefully) her hoplophobia will be forever cured. Afterwards, her SIL should explain how the gun & ammo will be handled and stored in the house.