# Sen. Webb(D-VA.), guns and stupidity **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 28, 2007, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sen-webb-d-va-guns-and-stupidity/397793 "2007-03-28T04:16:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![catsix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19b73/32.png) [@catsix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/catsix)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sen-webb-d-va-guns-and-stupidity/397793/81 "2007-03-29T23:41:26Z")
The DOJ only counts incidents that were reported to the police. There are many, many others that never are because a crime never happened. You really should look up Kellerman. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sen-webb-d-va-guns-and-stupidity/397793/82 "2007-03-29T23:43:24Z")
[QUOTE=catsix] These anecdotes happen, even at the lowest count, approximately 200,000 times a year. [/QUOTE] Is that total breakins or breakins in which a householder used a gun for protection? By whose count? And do you have a cite? And how many of these were offset by breakins in which a gun was stolen? And how many were offset by heat-of-the-moment family shootings? And how many were offset by accidental shooting when children find a gun? I know you say you are a responsible gun owner and I believe you. However, I simply will not apply your procedures to all of the rest of the people in the US. Keep you guns and what I think is a false sense of security. I will continue to think that it is bad policy for most people. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sen-webb-d-va-guns-and-stupidity/397793/83 "2007-03-29T23:44:28Z")
[QUOTE=catsix] The DOJ only counts incidents that were reported to the police. There are many, many others that never are because a crime never happened. You really should look up Kellerman. [/QUOTE] I was simply pointing out that the lowest count is much lower than you suggested. According to the DOJ, the ratio is about 10:1 of guns used to commit crimes vs. used to prevent them. Even at a 2:1 ratio, I think Miller’s point would have merit. Is there reason to think that defensive use is underreported by a factor of 10? ETA: Also worth adding that the DOJ is not the only count that puts it lower than 200,000. The National Crime Victimization Survey also puts it lower. You no doubt have criticism of their methodology as well, but it’s a little disingenuous to say that no one out there puts it lower. ---
**Author:** ![catsix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19b73/32.png) [@catsix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/catsix)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sen-webb-d-va-guns-and-stupidity/397793/84 "2007-03-30T00:10:53Z")
> [@](#): > > **David Simmons** said: > Is that total breakins or breakins in which a householder used a gun for protection? By whose count? And do you have a cite? It actually has nothing to do with break-ins. It’s defensive gun uses, regardless of where they occur. > [@](#): > > And how many of these were offset by breakins in which a gun was stolen? And how many were offset by heat-of-the-moment family shootings? And how many were offset by accidental shooting when children find a gun? Again, defensive gun uses and break-ins are not synonmous events. If you limit the scope only to break-ins, you’re being dishonest. > [@](#): > > Keep you guns and what I think is a false sense of security. I will continue to think that it is bad policy for most people. What false sense of security? On what do you actually base your ‘belief’ that I have a false sense of security? > [@](#): > > **David Simmons** said: > I was simply pointing out that the lowest count is much lower than you suggested. According to the DOJ, the ratio is about 10:1 of guns used to commit crimes vs. used to prevent them. Even at a 2:1 ratio, I think Miller’s point would have merit. Is there reason to think that defensive use is underreported by a factor of 10? You should also read Kates and Kleck. There’s a lot of reason to believe that any DOJ or NCVS study on defensive gun use understates the actual numbers to a very severe degree. Kellerman also fails to count any defensive gun use in which the trigger is never pulled. The anti-gun crowd is known for dishonest tactics, such as counting gang members and drug dealers up to the age of 25 in order to arrive at their claim that ‘23 children a day are killed with guns’. Most media reporting of crimes that were stopped by armed citizens fail to mention that the citizen who stopped the crime was armed, if they mention the citizen at all. This has all been done over and over again on these boards, complete with lengthy cites by posters like **Uncle Beer** , but in the end the gun owners here face exactly the same thing every time: accusations that guns are mock penises. By the way, how does the NCVS know who to survey? They sure as hell never asked me. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sen-webb-d-va-guns-and-stupidity/397793/85 "2007-03-30T00:15:40Z")
> [@catsix](#): > > You should also read Kates and Kleck. There’s a lot of reason to believe that any DOJ or NCVS study on defensive gun use understates the actual numbers to a very severe degree. Kellerman also fails to count any defensive gun use in which the trigger is never pulled. The anti-gun crowd is known for dishonest tactics, such as counting gang members and drug dealers up to the age of 25 in order to arrive at their claim that ‘23 children a day are killed with guns’. > > Most media reporting of crimes that were stopped by armed citizens fail to mention that the citizen who stopped the crime was armed, if they mention the citizen at all. This has all been done over and over again on these boards, complete with lengthy cites by posters like **Uncle Beer** , but in the end the gun owners here face exactly the same thing every time: accusations that guns are mock penises. Again, I’m not making a claim about what figure is correct. I’m am correcting the misrepresentation of where the bottom end of the spectrum is. > [@catsix](#): > > By the way, how does the NCVS know who to survey? They sure as hell never asked me. You’ll forgive me for not knowing whether this was meant to be sarcastic. ---
**Author:** ![brossa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brossa/32/3040_2.png) [@brossa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brossa)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sen-webb-d-va-guns-and-stupidity/397793/86 "2007-03-30T01:12:06Z")
[QUOTE=catsix] I’ve been the target of an attempted mugging, and it happened after I owned a handgun. I wasn’t carrying my pistol because I had gone out that night to a bar, and found it a bad idea to carry while drunk. It’s not a good feeling to wish you had a way to defend yourself and know that you have nothing but your own body. Biting a mugger is an act of desperation. I would’ve rather had my gun. [/QUOTE] Did this attempted mugging change your personal policy regarding carrying your pistol when going out to a bar? ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sen-webb-d-va-guns-and-stupidity/397793/87 "2007-03-30T01:33:50Z")
[QUOTE=catsix] It actually has nothing to do with break-ins. It’s defensive gun uses, regardless of where they occur. [/quote] OK, you recounted a breakin story and said “These anecdotes happen … 200000 times each year.” Can you see how I might have been led astray? It’s curious that I looked up statistics for breakins and in 1995 the number was 200000/year. And this still doesn’t give a source for your statistic. And, as you can see from **Parker’s** post, that number is not unchallanged. > [@](#): > > What false sense of security? > > On what do you actually base your ‘belief’ that I have a false sense of security? That a gun provides protection. On my reading of the news accounts of the overall record of guns in the home. > [@](#): > > David Simmons said: > I was simply pointing out that the lowest count is much lower than you suggested. According to the DOJ, the ratio is about 10:1 of guns used to commit crimes vs. used to prevent them. Even at a 2:1 ratio, I think Miller’s point would have merit. Is there reason to think that defensive use is underreported by a factor of 10? That was **Parker**. > [@](#): > > but in the end the gun owners here face exactly the same thing every time: accusations that guns are mock penises. Yeah, I’ve said that three or four times in this post alone. :rolleyes: > [@](#): > > By the way, how does the NCVS know who to survey? They sure as hell never asked me. I can’t believe that you really wrote this. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sen-webb-d-va-guns-and-stupidity/397793/88 "2007-03-30T17:28:56Z")
[QUOTE=Miller] Oh, come on. Now you’re just being silly. [/quote] Not even remotely. My conclusion is one logically-supportable outcome of your contention. > [@](#): > > What legitimate owners? If all guns are outlawed, there’s no such thing as a legitimate owner. Outlawing guns obviously will not make them automatically disappear. To ignore that fact when making an argument, is to ignore reality. Or, have it your way. Violent criminals will steal guns from owners recently criminalized. Makes nary a whit of difference in the ultimate outcome from whom a violent criminal steals his guns. > [@](#): > > Any gun found by the police would be automatically destroyed, and without a significant firearm manufacturing industry, it would be very hard to replace those guns. But those guns aren’t going to befound by the cops unless they’re _used_; or recovered incidentally in the course of other investigations of criminal activity. Which means that on order for guns to be removed from circulation, crime **must** committed - much of it necessarily violent. Unless, of course, you are advocating, along with outlawing the things, a home-to-home search of the entire nation. > [@](#): > > The problem with Prohibition, when it came to alcohol and most drugs, is that drugs and alcohol are relatively easy to produce. It doesn’t require much in the way of technical skills or specific knowledge, and the nature of the substance allows for quite a bit of leeway in quality. Guns are a different matter. I’ll grant that is true, but it ignores the feature of guns that I was trying to amplify - their _durability_. Drugs and booze are made to be consumed and have a relatively short life; once used, they’re gone. Guns, given their durable nature, are quite different; there is after all, approximately 250,000,000 guns held by private citizens in the United States. You’ve given us a figure of 10 years to realize a significant decline in the supply of firearms after outlawing manufacture of new ones. Again, I’m not sure what’s meant by _significant_, but even a 10% decrease over 10 years would have to be accompanied by 2.5 million confiscations per year - and since there is no vehicle for removing guns from circulation barring their use in commission of a crime (or thru the course of other crime investigations as I noted above), that would represent a stupendous increase in gun crimes - _five-fold_ if we can believe these [facts from the DOJ](http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/guns.htm): [ul] - According to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) in 2005, 477,040 victims of violent crimes stated that they faced an offender with a firearm. - Incidents involving a firearm represented 9% of the 4.7 million violent crimes of rape and sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated and simple assault in 2005. - The FBI’s Crime in the United States estimated that 66% of the 16,137 murders in 2004 were committed with firearms. [/ul] > [@](#): > > Pretty much the same thing that happens to people who don’t own guns when they’re victimized by criminals. Sure, there’s “a chance” they can defend themselves. Is that chance statistically significant? I don’t think that it is, but I admit, I don’t know that for a fact. Do you often argue from ignorance? Seems to me, if you wish to espouse a controversial opinion, you have a burden to inform yourself of the facts. I say this not to be overly contentious (although this is the Pit), but because that seems to be a recurring theme in this thread - arguments from ingorance, arguments from fantastical versions of reality, arguments from unsupported conjecture. > [@](#): > > You represent a market that makes the manufacture of fire arms financially viable. If that market did not exist, guns would not be manufactured in their current numbers. The fewer guns be made in total, the fewer numbers that will fall into the wrong hands. This is incorrect. The quantity of guns, particularly those so supposedly-dangerous that they warrant outright bans (meaning handguns and the so-called assault weapons) has increased dramatically in the past 30 years. And as these numbers have increased; the trrend in gun crime has been overwhelmingly downward. As have accidental shootings. > [@](#): > > Not necessarily. If there are 10,000 incidents of criminal violence involving guns, and only 10 incidents of criminal violence being averted because of guns, I think that argues pretty effectively that the benefits of gun ownership are being outweighed by the drawbacks. > > BTW, I totally invented those numbers to illustrate a point. Just so no one feels they have to debunk them. Of what possible use is an opinion based on some made-up reality? Why interject fantasy into such a highly controversial subject? It is entirely pointless. > [@](#): > > True enough, but there really haven’t been a lot of statistics on either side in this thread. Just arguments from principle, more than anything else. Apparently _uninformed_ principle, too. > [@](#): > > However, a couple posters _have_ advanced the idea that gun ownership is useful in protecting oneself from other gun owners, which particular argument I find highly suspect. Well, I’d agree with notion entirely. When threatened with deadly force by a firearm, what could _possibly_ provide a better chance (regardless of how remote that chance might be - something that at this point is conjecture only anyway) of successfully thwarting the perpetrator than meeting the threat with like force? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sen-webb-d-va-guns-and-stupidity/397793/89 "2007-03-30T17:45:32Z")
[QUOTE=UncleBeer] Not even remotely. My conclusion is one logically-supportable outcome of your contention. [/quote] I didn’t say it was illogical. I said it was silly. You suggested that, if there’s no reason for a citizen to have a gun, there’d be no reason for a police officer to have a gun. I pointed out that police officers and citizens have very different approaches to handling dangerous situations. So you suggested that the cops should only get their guns right before they enter a dangerous situation. Which is silly, because if there’s a reason for cops to have guns at all, they might as well have them all the time. > [@](#): > > Outlawing guns obviously will not make them automatically disappear. To ignore that fact when making an argument, is to ignore reality. Or, have it your way. Violent criminals will steal guns from owners recently criminalized. Makes nary a whit of difference in the ultimate outcome from whom a violent criminal steals his guns. > > But those guns aren’t going to befound by the cops unless they’re _used_; or recovered incidentally in the course of other investigations of criminal activity. Which means that on order for guns to be removed from circulation, crime **must** committed - much of it necessarily violent. Unless, of course, you are advocating, along with outlawing the things, a home-to-home search of the entire nation. I suppose, if you presuppose that every single law-abiding gun owner will decide to keep their guns in defiance of the law. Which calls into question their law-abidingness in general, doesn’t it? > [@](#): > > Of what possible use is an opinion based on some made-up reality? Why interject fantasy into such a highly controversial subject? It is entirely pointless. You asked, “Why is that danger, either collectively or individually, greater than the potential benefits derived?” and implied that there was no objective answer to that. I proposed a hypothetical in which the conclusion would be largely objective. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sen-webb-d-va-guns-and-stupidity/397793.md?page=4)