Only the religious ones:
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/24/frequent-churchgoers-frequently-fatter/
It’s not religiosity, it’s all those potluck church suppers.
I guess my point is that the DoJ is not really biased, their NCVS yields consistent results year in and year out, there are no violent swings depending on who is in the white house. They have every incentive to get the most accurate information possible and all the resources that could reasonably be used to that purpose. The DoJ’s impartiality is generally not questioned. So it seems to me that you might simply be saying that absent extraordinary measures, we simply cannot come up with statistics that you would find credible so we are left with an undisputed number of gun murders and an unverifiable number of cases of guns used in self defense. Hemenway, one of the premier gun grabbers in this country is willing to give the NCVS quite a bit of weight (at least he uses it in a lot of the stuff he writes), but the gun grabbers on this board think I’m for saying we should use it because its the best information we have.
It may not be as certain as the theory of evolution or global warming but its still data. I feel like I did in 2012 when I was arguing with conservatives that polls actually mean something.
Guns - keeping the world safe from old guys with alzheimer’s who are lost and cold.
Does this count as a defensive gun use? In some studies, it very well might.
And hey - why wait until they knock on your door? Why wait? You’re clearly safer if you roam the neighborhood, taking these guys out early, before they can knock on your door. The nerve of them!
Not in the national crime victimization survey it wouldn’t. Or can you explain how something like this would make it into the NCVS?
You don’t think there might not be a problem with asking the same people over and over again the same questions? You don’t think their might not be a problem with only asking people that have reported a crime? Are you really too stupid to see the clear selection bias involved here?
Some would, sure. Some gun suicides would now jump of buildings or what not…but we know from dozens, if not hundreds, of real-life studies that simply making it a little bit harder to use the first easiest method for an impulse suicide to work, many people aren’t that motivated to use the second easiest method. See UK (coke vs natural gas), various bridge examples, etc. I think a reasonable estimate of the impact of removing guns from the equation would be a 30% drop in suicides right off the bat, if not more. It’s not just that guns are most often used, it’s that guns have a really really high success rate.
Sure, some murders would still be committed - premeditated murders will use some other means, I suppose - but remember what I said about guns and the high success rate?
Anyone that thinks removing guns from the equation would not result in any drop in suicides or homicides is delusional and can be safely ignored in any sort of gun-control debate because they are clearly mentally ill.
Most Americans aren’t armed anyway, right? And now, at the very least, now we don’t have to worry about the Joe Blow Public blowing up people for knocking on their door at night. And over time, criminals will be increasingly disarmed as well.
It makes it ‘more’ reliable than a test that did have telescoping - it doesn’t make the data ‘reliable’. Congratulations, you’ve partially mitigated one tiny problem - the biggest problem is that the data isn’t fucking verifiable! You’re basically taking your data from Letters to the NRA Magazine Editor.
Cite for Hemenway ‘accepting’ the DoJ numbers?
Gee, I don’t know - but I suppose if the UK can do it, we can to.
This is the best part of the story:
“The unlikely collision between two strangers — one deeply confused, another perceiving a threat — illustrates both the difficulties that caregivers face in keeping loved ones with Alzheimer’s safe and the consequences of miscalculation in a state that celebrates its gun culture.”
If you perceive a threat from a 72-year-old Alzheimer’s patient, you are an idiot. Or a pants-wetting pussy. Take your pick.
This is exactly the kind of bullshit thing that gets rolled up in your bullshit defensive-gun-use stats. “I had a gun. I felt threatened. I used it.” Congratulations, Dead-Eye; the NRA will contact you shortly with your medal.
I think these are supposed to be features, not flaws. Everyone seems to think that these are the very things that make this survey MORE credible than others. Asking the same people over and over again eliminates something called telescoping, only asking people who have reported a crime is supposed to improve the quality of the data, people don’t call the police as frequently when THEY were the ones illegally waving their gun around at people, etc. I think these are supposed to be things that make the information MORE reliable.
So does hanging yourself. In the other thread you mention that sticking your head in the oven used to account for over half of all suicides and that the suicide ovens are gone, suicides have droped 30%. So it seems that about half of the ovenheads went ahead and committed suicide by other means anyways and that is assuming that there is no intrinsic drop in the suicide rate that accounts for that 30%.
BTW, you have a cite for your stats? I’d be interested to see what yearrs youa re comparing.
Most murders are committed by people who aren’t legally allowed to own guns. How does making guns illegal reduce the murders committed by them?
And anyone that thinks that there would be drastic reductions in suicides or murders approaching any where close to the number of suicides and murders using guns today can be safely ignored for much the same reason.
About 1/3 of households have a firearm. You willing to take a 1 in 3 chance that your victim has a gun? What if you live in NYC and the chances are considerably less?
And how long will criminals have this advantage before their advantage fades away? We have 300 million guns in circulation atm. A gun buyback would require a constitutional amendment, a new law, a lot of manpower and perhaps $100 Billion. I have a gun from WWI that works just fine, you have to fire a gun a awful lot before it wears out. How long do you think we should disarm our society so that these criminals can wear out their guns on us? I have no concern abot my safety or security right now but I think I would become more concerned if criminals thought they could go to just about any neighborhood and only worry about the cops.
So short of a catching it on video, how much more verification can you possibly be asking for? How would you construct that survey or study? Or are you saying that we can never verify it to your satisfaction so we should really be treating the number as if it was zero? Someone linked to an article in Daily Kos on the great debates thread where the they say that the NCVS numbers probably understae the incidents of DGU (and frankly that was my impression as well but I figured I’d use them to avoid all sorts of frivolous arguments and a great deal of pettifoggery and it appears i haven’t avoided either.
In what world does the NRA present the 100,000 numbers crom the NCVS instead of the 2-3 million number from Kleck’s study?
He certainly cites them a whole lot.
So you have no idea?
So did the UK ever have as many guns per capita as we have now? Were their criminals EVER as well armed as ours are now? Do you have ANY idea how many shots you have to fire through gun before its performance starts to degrade? Most barrels will handle somewhere around 10,000 rounds before the rifling starts to wear down and you lose accuracy. A shotgun should last about forever. I have a rifle from WWI that can hit man sized objects half kilometer away. If they aren’t used, and they are maintained, they can last longer than your children will.
In the end, this is all academic, we will never repeal our second amendment, we will never ban all guns, so if you want a solution to the problem of gun violence (and I am starting to suspect that people aren’t as concerned about the gun violence as they are about the guns), then you should start looking at things like licensing and registration and stop wasting your time and political capital on silly notions like gun bans.
I rest my case.
What are you talking about?
Records: Shooter in teen’s death thought gun was empty
"…According to the affidavit, McDaniel was showing Peters and the two other men a shotgun and a handgun. Dajuan Williams, one of the men in the group, told police that “McDaniel tried to get Aubrey to hold the gun, but she didn’t want to.”
At that point, Williams told police, McDaniel ejected the magazine from the gun, pointed the weapon at Peters, took the safety off and pulled the trigger."
Would more gun safety classes do any good?
Sounds like yes.
“Abstinence only,” maybe.
Uhh, yeah. We should make them near universal, like driving classes, sex ed, and basic financial literacy.
How effective is that?
Probably about as effective as the withdrawal method was for your parents, unfortunately.
But education is basically the same as licensing, which is the same as registration, which leads to confiscation. :rolleyes:
I may have brought it into this topic, but gun manufacturers are the ones who recognize and market to this. Like Buck Godot said in post #3454, its not a matter of size but masculinity. Its easily recognizable that for many people, marketers and those who buy guns, having a gun means you’re more of a man. It plays to male fears of losing one’s masculinity. Like my response to Damuri states, if that’s not obvious enough for you, if you want to dispute even that clear and blatant imagery, then I don’t expect any honest discussion and will bow out of it entirely instead of spending another dozen posts dissecting propaganda
Then it was irrelevant to the point of cars being similar to guns as a masculinity reinforcement
I’m willing to read whatever you cite but I reserve the right to come to my own conclusions and disagree with the interpretation of you and the researchers
Which of course low testosterone guys wouldn’t worry about, the masculinity is already gone or was never there in the first place, hence they will drive moped instead of a Harley Davidson. Maybe it’s because of environmental estrogens.
Well I’m not going to bother, if your mind is already made up regardless. You can google it yourself.