It’s very simple: You’re in bed. You hear a noise outside. You reach for your gun. The noise goes away. Ding! One successful defensive gun use!
That gopher! IT’S COMING RIGHT FOR YOU! BLAMMO! Another successful defensive gun use!
You’re in your local Piggly Wiggly with your rifle slung over your shoulder. A lady with a baby looks like she’s going to cut in line in front of you but she sees your gun and scurries off to a different register. Ding! Defensive gun use! They just add up like crazy!
But its not the same laser pointer being used over and over again. Different device are yielding different measurements. In fact you were (at one point) taking issue with particular measuring devices. now it seems like youa re saying we should just ignore all the measurements because none of the measuring devices can be trusted.
The difference between the lowest and the highest estimates is not 8 inches versus 97 yards (1::150). It is more like 30::1 and if you eliminate the lowest and highest estimates is more like 3::1 depending on the study.
What method would you suggest?
In your opinion, should we throw away all studies where there is a large disparity between the lowest and highest estimates? For example, where are the estimates on the economic effects of global warming? The gap is pretty large, does that mean we can ignore even the most conservative estimates and pretend like there are no economic effects of global warming because the numbers are all over the place?
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/mains5-7.html
"Peer-reviewed estimates of the social cost of carbon (net economic costs of damages from climate change aggregated across the globe and discounted to the present) for 2005 have an average value of US$12 per tonne of CO2, but the range from 100 estimates is large (-$3 to $95/tCO2). "
or should we at least acknowledge that there is a cost to global warming and that the number is likely to be very large? And then decide if it makes sense to spend some money (or taking a hit to our economic growth) to prevent global warming?
There are some links there to get you started.
That sort of caricature does nothing to help your arguments. Are you saying that all these studies are subject to this same flaw or only the one with the biggest estimate?
What about the estimate by the Department of Justice? Is that bullshit too?
Which one? I followed the link you posted and the only reference to the DoJ is an article from 1994. Is that the one you mean?
The FBI reports 241 justifiable homicides (where private citizens killed a felon committing a crime) in 2013. If there really were 2 million legitimate defensive gun uses a year (a number I’ve seen gun rights advocates claim) and only 5% of defensive gun uses ended up being ruled as justifiable homicides, there’d be more than 241 of every day.
Regarding the number of defensive gun usages (DGU) in the U.S., I clicked one of the links linked to above, https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf ( is it really true we have to “warn” when a link is a pdf? ) and found an informative discussion of American gun usage.
I learned that the 1.5 million estimated gun defenders (and 4.7 million incidents) in 1994 were extrapolated from just 19 people who were surveyed, half of whom reprted multiple incidents. (One surveyed woman defended herself with a gun 52 times in 1994.)
The article concludes that the high figures are absurd. The number of rapes or attempted rapes in which the victim defended herself with a gun, according to the survey, is greater than the total number of rapes. The NSPOF estimated from the survey that 130,000 criminals were wounded or killed by civilian gun defenders in 1994; this is more than the total of actual gun injuries.
The article offers various hypotheses for over-reporting in the survey. Some gun owners like to impress with tales of their bravery; some may be subject to various mental impairments. And in some cases a claimed gun defender may have actually been the aggressor – this is suggested by results of surveys which ask appropriate follow-on questions.
Still, while the 1,000,000-plus figures for GDUs are inflated, even a more sober figure like 150,000 GDUs may seem like a lot. However, defensive guns do make it more likely that criminals will use guns inflating the violence. And most of those GDUs were used to thwart a non-violent crime like mugging or burglary. When you weigh the saved billfolds against the thousands of accidental gun deaths, GDUs no longer look so good.
BTW, gun thefts total about half a million annually. The average gun owner will have three guns stolen by criminals before he finally brandishes one defensively.
Multiple measuring devices? What are you talking about. The only method that has been tried is self-report. What other methods are you referring to?
As you know, studies have shown that self- report of DGU hinges on a small number of positive reports, many of which incude implausible numbers.
As you know, studies have shown that when you query the details of self-reported DGU and have judges rate them, they find the majority to be not legal DGUs.
The fact that the most common DGUs involve escalating arguments, it calls into further question the meaning of DGU and the characterization of DGU as a benefit.
A method that doesn’t generate obviously unreliable estimates, that doesn’t generate obviously implausible data points, that doesn’t include illegal instances of gun use as positive data points…
The fact that other measurement strategies would be difficult doesn’t mean that an unreliable method should be employed.
You’re *not *in a good position to deliver lectures on data analysis, Hentor. Just pointing out that even when you’re right, it’s *not *by way of your reasoning. You understand that too, don’t you? Anyway,
It’s simpler if you don’t let yourself get sidetracked by Damuri’s constant pathetic attempts to avoid the burden of evidence. To conclude that guns save more lives than they cost, it only takes defining a “defensive gun use” in such a way as to determine if a life was saved that would otherwise have been lost. But he knows he can’t do that, so instead we get all this black rioters and tyrannical jackboots stuff, and “No, you hoplophobes are the real sickos!” stuff, straight out of his porn stash.
Fuck off, you giant twat.
It was intended mostly as mockery, but mockery reflective of the issues relating to the self-reporting aspect of DGU. As has already been addressed more seriously by m’learned colleagues.
Regarding dueling statistics and studies, I have a serious question: The UK is often pointed out as an example of gun control because of its gun laws, especially the 1997 Firearms Act, which essentially banned possession of handguns, in addition to previous laws that had banned semi-automatic guns and tightened the requirements to own a shotgun or hunting rifle. My question is pretty simple: has illicit possession of guns, and the use of such guns in crimes, decreased or increased since 1997? Searching the web has led me both to sites that claim illicit guns have all but vanished from Britain, and others that claim that gun crime has soared. Which is it; and how does one know which sources are reputable?
Or a scared gun owner didn’t want to get pinned with accidentally shooting other patrons. There are a couple of different versions of what happened out on the web. Go ahead and believe what the one that you want.
You’re gonna have to walk me through your logic to get your point here.
A guy is in a Cracker Barrel and drops a handgun. It discharges and injures someone’s leg.
Are you saying there are alternate versions? What, is there evidence he intentionally shot the guy?
By the way, I totally made up what I wrote just based upon my prior interactions with crazy gun fucks here at the sdmb. Are you suggesting that there are people in real life who are claiming that? Please tell me that’s true! That would be so awesome.
National crime victimization survey.
Do you think that defensive gun use results in a justifiable homicide some significant percentage of the time? During the LA riots, the Korean store owners used guns defensively and didn’t kill a single rioter. It drove them off.
And I’m sure every single incident was on video tape, because store owners just aren’t prone to exaggerate about things like that when swapping tales of “Bravery In The Riots”.
Some of your numbers are off. Here are a few highlights:
Gun thefts are about 250K/year. It has been suggested that this number reflects some amount of straw sales.
There are not thousands of accidental gun deaths every year (its usually ~500). And there is reason to believe that some of those accidental gun deaths are suicides.
Why do you think that those 100,000 defensive gun uses (to go with the low end of the spectrum) are not worth the cost of the accidental gun deaths?
They asked questions differently and used different methodology, right?
What do you think of the NCVS?
Was this true of the NCVS? You know the one where you are answers go to the FBI?
Was this true of the NCVS?
SO what is wrong with the NCVS again?
Your basic problem with the NCVS seems to be that other surveys didn’t do it right so the federal government probably got it so wrong that the number they come up with is essentially useless too.
So as far as you are concerned the number is somewhere between zero and infinity? Or are you just assuming zero?
And yet knives have become such a problem that the UK has started a campaign against them; how does that square with the statistics quoted above?