# Why Should Guns Be Legal? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 7, 2017, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154 "2017-10-07T00:21:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/161 "2017-10-09T22:30:07Z")
Given your riot shield example, I’m sure you already understand this, but “defensive weapons” or even “offensive weapons” don’t need to necessarily result in a death for them to be used successfully in self defense. For example, if a home invader, intent on murdering me, broke into my home and I beat him with a club until he changed his mind and retreated, that would be a successful employment of a weapon in my own defense, but it wouldn’t show up in the statistic of “people killed by clubs” because the murderous home invader wasn’t _killed_ by my defensive employment of the weapon at my disposal, he was only warded off. Do you see how this short story might relate to your insistence on comparing gun “deaths” of bad guys vs family members? You said earlier “… I don’t have a vested interest in disingenuously skewing the data by leaving out a major subset of gun uses.” If that’s true, you should have no problem including the defensive gun uses that do not result in a death in determining their utility as “defensive weapons”, correct? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/162 "2017-10-09T22:33:30Z")
> [@XT](#): > > But you are skewing the data, and you know you are. Hell, you are admitting you are but you don’t care. Nicely played though with the between the lines ‘but YOU are a monster’ part btw. > > So, the US with a lower suicide rate than many other ‘industrial’ nations, would have an even lower suicide rate without guns then? I’m frankly skeptical. Now, if you said there would be, perhaps, a lower number of successful suicides if we didn’t have easy access to guns I might accept that, but your claim here is bullshit IMHO. In most other ‘advanced’ or ‘industrial’ nations people seem to be able to figure out how to kill themselves without the benefit of guns, after all. In Japan, a country with one of the highest suicide rates in the world AND very strict anti-gun laws and bans they figure it out pretty well. > > So, again, I think that you know you are skewing the data and you are good with that because without that your request isn’t going to look like nearly the slam dunk you want it to look like. > > Yet we know the numbers for non-gun owning homes verse gun homes wrt suicide and you seem unwilling to use that data to normalize the figures and give an honest take on them, right? You could just take the non-gun owning rate and use that as a rough take on what it might look like in your ideal US without any guns at all (discounting the fact that even in countries like Japan they STILL use guns for suicide sometimes, it’s just not the primary method there). If normalizing the data honestly wouldn’t affect your argument, I’m curious why you didn’t suggest it. > > Do they? Do they in every country, or only in the US? Why do many countries with very restricted access to guns have a higher suicide rate as a percentage of the population? Seems curious, as does the claim that the US without guns would be one of the lowest nations wrt suicide per capita than any other country on the planet, since WITH all those guns we are only in the middle of the pack now. There’s two separate questions. Do people in different regions have different suicide rates? and Are people within a given region more likely to commit suicide if they have access to a gun? The first question is important and complicates (read: screws) the idea of doing a straight-numbers comparison between different regions. Ignoring it entirely and trying to argue that owning guns makes a country less likely to commit suicide in general is silly and not worth serious consideration. Though I will concede that when you’re compiling your stats to check whether gun ownership increases suicide rates you have to take into correct for region and year. That is important information that you sort of pointed out, so thank you. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/163 "2017-10-09T22:39:17Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Given your riot shield example, I’m sure you already understand this, but “defensive weapons” or even “offensive weapons” don’t need to necessarily result in a death for them to be used successfully in self defense. For example, if a home invader, intent on murdering me, broke into my home and I beat him with a club until he changed his mind and retreated, that would be a successful employment of a weapon in my own defense, but it wouldn’t show up in the statistic of “people killed by clubs” because the murderous home invader wasn’t _killed_ by my defensive employment of the weapon at my disposal, he was only warded off. > > Do you see how this short story might relate to your insistence on comparing gun “deaths” of bad guys vs family members? You said earlier “… I don’t have a vested interest in disingenuously skewing the data by leaving out a major subset of gun uses.” If that’s true, you should have no problem including the defensive gun uses that do not result in a death in determining their utility as “defensive weapons”, correct? Correct. I would be interested in credible statistics that indicated that homeowners warded off a home invader with their weapon without killing them. These numbers would be compared with non-gun-owning homes that also managed to fend off home invaders nonfatally, which I’m sure happens. I’m not afraid of data. I just don’t really believe that the data is going to show that armed vigilantes are commonly driving off invading hordes. I’m willing to view data that shows otherwise, though. And if that data described my current living region, I’d consider the relative merits of moving away from such a warzone. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/164 "2017-10-09T22:39:27Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > There’s two separate questions. > > Do people in different regions have different suicide rates? > > and > > Are people within a given region more likely to commit suicide if they have access to a gun? > The first question is important and complicates (read: screws) the idea of doing a straight-numbers comparison between different regions. Ignoring it entirely and trying to argue that owning guns makes a country less likely to commit suicide in general is silly and not worth serious consideration. > > Though I will concede that when you’re compiling your stats to check whether gun ownership increases suicide rates you have to take into correct for region and year. That is important information that you sort of pointed out, so thank you. So, when you requested the cite you knew all this, but you didn’t acknowledge how what you were asking for would skew that data to conform with your narrative? Ok, glad we worked that out. By including the suicides and not normalizing the data it’s going to come back with a pretty disingenuous result, which is why I was curious in the first place as to why you were asking for it and why your initial response puzzled me. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/165 "2017-10-09T22:43:59Z")
> [@XT](#): > > So, when you requested the cite you knew all this, but you didn’t acknowledge how what you were asking for would skew that data to conform with your narrative? Ok, glad we worked that out. By including the suicides and not normalizing the data it’s going to come back with a pretty disingenuous result, which is why I was curious in the first place as to why you were asking for it and why your initial response puzzled me. I didn’t mention normalizing for region and year because that was presumed to be **given**. Presuming the data wasn’t being deliberately twisted disingenuously, anyway. Similarly, I would include suicide data because removing it would be twisting the data disingenuously. That detail I mentioned explicitly, because I’m used to people trying to pretend that suicide isn’t an issue and/pr isn’t facilitated by guns. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/166 "2017-10-09T22:51:25Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Correct. I would be interested in credible statistics that indicated that homeowners warded off a home invader with their weapon without killing them. These numbers would be compared with non-gun-owning homes that also managed to fend off home invaders nonfatally, which I’m sure happens. > > I’m not afraid of data. I just don’t really believe that the data is going to show that armed vigilantes are commonly driving off invading hordes. I’m willing to view data that shows otherwise, though. And if that data described my current living region, I’d consider the relative merits of moving away from such a warzone. [2013 CDC Study: Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence (NOTE: this link leads to a download of a 121-page PDF and requires your email address to do so)](http://www.nap.edu/download.php?record_id=18319#): > [@](#): > > Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, > although the exact number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996; > Kleck, 2001a). Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive > gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by > criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to > more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent > crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010). On the other hand, > some scholars point to a radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual > defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey (Cook > et al., 1997). The variation in these numbers remains a controversy in the > field. The estimate of 3 million defensive uses per year is based on an > extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 > national surveys. The former estimate of 108,000 is difficult to interpret > because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use. > > A different issue is whether defensive uses of guns, however numerous > or rare they may be, are effective in preventing injury to the gunwielding > crime victim. Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual > defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the > crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have > found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims > compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies (Kleck, > 1988; Kleck and DeLone, 1993; Southwick, 2000; Tark and Kleck, > 2004). Effectiveness of defensive tactics, however, is likely to vary > across types of victims, types of offenders, and circumstances of the > crime, so further research is needed both to explore these contingencies > and to confirm or discount earlier findings. ETA: Do you still hold to your belief that “the belief that guns are defensive weapons is based on lies told by lying liars …”? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/167 "2017-10-09T22:57:01Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > I didn’t mention normalizing for region and year because that was presumed to be **given**. Presuming the data wasn’t being deliberately twisted disingenuously, anyway. > > Similarly, I would include suicide data because removing it would be twisting the data disingenuously. That detail I mentioned explicitly, because I’m used to people trying to pretend that suicide isn’t an issue and/pr isn’t facilitated by guns. I think it would be less disingenuous to simply not include the suicide data at all if you weren’t going to normalize it. Basically, there is a level of suicides that are going to happen regardless of the tools available or method used, so including them in the home to demonstrate how homes with guns are more or less likely to harm the homeowner’s verse likely to be used in defense without that is automatically skewing the discussion heavily in favor of the narrative you are going for. Removing them completely would, of course, skew it the other way. You obviously agree with the latter…do you see why I’m taking issue with the former? I’m not pretending that suicide isn’t an issue, however, I think that this has been vastly overplayed by the anti-gun side. Like I said, many countries have a higher per capita suicide rate than the US, despite the fact that the US has more guns than basically everyone…there are more guns in the US than people, after all. Thinking that this rate would magically disappear or even change substantially has never been something I’ve seen demonstrated very well. I have been convinced over time that, perhaps, the success rate of suicides would go down somewhat if we were able to substantially reduce the number of households with access to guns, as guns are singularly deadly tools while other methods people try in other countries without guns are less efficient…but the delta would, IMHO, not be all that large between the current suicides using guns and whatever would be used 5 or 10 years later. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/168 "2017-10-09T23:02:33Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > [2013 CDC Study: Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence (NOTE: this link leads to a download of a 121-page PDF and requires your email address to do so)](http://www.nap.edu/download.php?record_id=18319#): > > ETA: Do you still hold to your belief that “the belief that guns are defensive weapons is based on lies told by lying liars …”? Yep! The picture I’m seeing is that home invasions are quite infrequent, but if you do get home invaded, and they have a gun, and you have a gun, you’re better off than if they have a gun and you don’t have a gun and you choose to come at them with something else. But I’m not forgetting that home invasions are still quite infrequent. They are MUCH less frequent than the people selling the rambo home protector image are trying to convince you they are. And they’re less frequent than the use of those “defensive” guns against family members including their owner. It’s sort like what I mentioned before, rigging all your doors and windows to blow your entire house up when they’re opened. I am damned certain that that would result in a reduced incidence of theft and other home invasions, at least through the doors and windows. Whether that would generally make the occupants safer is another matter. Or put another way, supposing you had a gun that shoots three bullets into you for every home invader they stopped. Would that be a defensive weapon? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/169 "2017-10-09T23:10:08Z")
> [@XT](#): > > I think it would be less disingenuous to simply not include the suicide data at all if you weren’t going to normalize it. Basically, there is a level of suicides that are going to happen regardless of the tools available or method used, so including them in the home to demonstrate how homes with guns are more or less likely to harm the homeowner’s verse likely to be used in defense without that is automatically skewing the discussion heavily in favor of the narrative you are going for. Removing them completely would, of course, skew it the other way. You obviously agree with the latter…do you see why I’m taking issue with the former? Man, I _explicitly said_ that “we should compare gun-owning houses to the ‘control group’ - people who don’t have them. What are the home invasion rates, the murder rates, and the suicide rates there?” I didn’t DO the former! :mad: > [@XT](#): > > I’m not pretending that suicide isn’t an issue, however, I think that this has been vastly overplayed by the anti-gun side. Like I said, many countries have a higher per capita suicide rate than the US, despite the fact that the US has more guns than basically everyone…there are more guns in the US than people, after all. Thinking that this rate would magically disappear or even change substantially has never been something I’ve seen demonstrated very well. I have been convinced over time that, perhaps, the success rate of suicides would go down somewhat if we were able to substantially reduce the number of households with access to guns, as guns are singularly deadly tools while other methods people try in other countries without guns are less efficient…but the delta would, IMHO, not be all that large between the current suicides using guns and whatever would be used 5 or 10 years later. It’s my understanding that guns are the go-to tool for suicide for a reason. It’s also my understanding that suicide is often spur of the moment and convenience matters a lot. How large the delta would be is, of course, largely unpredictable. But suicides are such a dominant usage of guns that I feel reasonably confident that the delta, even if not large, would probably exceed the times they stopped home invasions _on its own_. And that’s not even counting how often privately owned guns are used for straight-up murdering people. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/170 "2017-10-09T23:18:50Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Yep! > > The picture I’m seeing is that home invasions are quite infrequent, but if you do get home invaded, and they have a gun, and you have a gun, you’re better off than if they have a gun and you don’t have a gun and you choose to come at them with something else. > > But I’m not forgetting that home invasions are still quite infrequent. They are MUCH less frequent than the people selling the rambo home protector image are trying to convince you they are. And they’re less frequent than the use of those “defensive” guns against family members including their owner. > > It’s sort like what I mentioned before, rigging all your doors and windows to blow your entire house up when they’re opened. I am damned certain that that would result in a reduced incidence of theft and other home invasions, at least through the doors and windows. Whether that would generally make the occupants safer is another matter. > > Or put another way, supposing you had a gun that shoots three bullets into you for every home invader they stopped. Would that be a defensive weapon? Could you walk me through the numbers you’re using? Here’s what I see: 108,000 - 3,000,000 defensive gun uses [21,386 firearm suicides (2014)](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm) > [@begbert2](#): > > … I’m not forgetting that home invasions are still quite infrequent. They are MUCH less frequent than the people selling the rambo home protector image are trying to convince you they are. And they’re less frequent than the use of those “defensive” guns against family members including their owner. Is it that you’re only looking at the subset of DGUs involving home invasion and ignoring the DGUs against other crimes? I thought we both understood that we were talking about DGUs against criminals generally, not just the home-invading variety, and that we were using “home invasion” as just one example of a crime that DGUs can stop. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/171 "2017-10-09T23:30:42Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > But I’m not forgetting that home invasions are still quite infrequent. Without looking it up, how often would it have to occur to not qualify as infrequent anymore? ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/172 "2017-10-09T23:36:29Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > ETA: Do you still hold to your belief that “the belief that guns are defensive weapons is based on lies told by lying liars …”? Are you suggesting that the vast majority of CCW carriers are carrying them to commit crimes? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/173 "2017-10-09T23:39:44Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Could you walk me through the numbers you’re using? > > Here’s what I see: > > 108,000 - 3,000,000 defensive gun uses > > [21,386 firearm suicides (2014)](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/16/the-study-that-gun-rights-activists-keep-citing-but-completely-misunderstand/?utm\_term=.77385012969d](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/16/the-study-that-gun-rights-activists-keep-citing-but-completely-misunderstand/?utm_term=.77385012969d) I’ll tell you straight up that I’m a little suspicious of any stat that has such a ridiculously huge margin of error. > [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Is it that you’re only looking at the subset of DGUs involving home invasion and ignoring the DGUs against other crimes? I thought we both understood that we were talking about DGUs against criminals generally, not just the home-invading variety, and that we were using “home invasion” as just one example of a crime that DGUs can stop. If you talk about anything but home invasions the ‘defenders’ start crossing over with the aggressors - they’re all just people walking around with guns. And you start getting into the unavoidable fact that by the time the defender pulls on the aggressor, the aggressor has probably already shot at least one person himself. This _is_ fuzzing the specific talking point, but since this thread is about the legality of all guns, it’s reasonably to point out that we’re not really comparing the armed defender with unarmed defenders versus armed defenders. We’re comparing unarmed defenders versus unarmed aggressors. Obviously any gun control tactic that goes far enough to get them out of the hands of the innocent should also work aggressively to get them out of the hands of the criminals. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/174 "2017-10-09T23:41:22Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > Without looking it up, how often would it have to occur to not qualify as infrequent anymore? Without looking it up? “Often.” Also, note that we’re specifically only talking about home invasions where the invaders are dumb enough to get caught by somebody in the mood to defend their castle. Cases where the joints are robbed with nobody catching the perpetrators aren’t helped by guns at all. (Well, unless you had autocannons or something, but I don’t hear about that much.) ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/175 "2017-10-09T23:43:54Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Are you suggesting that the vast majority of CCW carriers are carrying them to commit crimes? Huh? No, not at all. What gave you that idea? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/176 "2017-10-09T23:45:53Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Are you suggesting that the vast majority of CCW carriers are carrying them to commit crimes? If you intended to ask me that (as I’m the guy he was quoting), I actually have no real idea why most CCW carriers bother to carry. (My instinctive theory of “as a security blanket” is really just rude speculation.) It probably varies by region. I’d imagine that there are areas where a majority of CCW carriers are carrying them to commit crimes, (starting with ‘having an unlicensed firearm’ and going up from there) but those wouldn’t be very nice neighborhoods. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/177 "2017-10-09T23:54:50Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Without looking it up? “Often.” > > Also, note that we’re specifically only talking about home invasions where the invaders are dumb enough to get caught by somebody in the mood to defend their castle. Cases where the joints are robbed with nobody catching the perpetrators aren’t helped by guns at all. > > (Well, unless you had autocannons or something, but I don’t hear about that much.) Sure, I’m trying to gauge our level of common thought processes by asking you what you figure you’d conclude that the value is no longer infrequent. 1M, 10M, 100M events per year? Just as a reference. If I were to say, a single instance is too many! Well, that is interesting and all, but you may conversely think that 1 is terrible but not enough to be considered not-infrequent. Trying to see if we’re in the same ballpark. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/178 "2017-10-09T23:56:23Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/16/the-study-that-gun-rights-activists-keep-citing-but-completely-misunderstand/?utm\_term=.77385012969d](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/16/the-study-that-gun-rights-activists-keep-citing-but-completely-misunderstand/?utm_term=.77385012969d) Was there a particular part of this article that you felt bolstered your claim about “the belief that guns are defensive weapons is based on lies told by lying liars …”? If so, would you mind quoting just that piece? Otherwise, I’m not seeing the connection you apparently are. > [@begbert2](#): > > I’ll tell you straight up that I’m a little suspicious of any stat that has such a ridiculously huge margin of error. That’s understandable. You can be suspicious of it all you want, but it’s the best data we have available to us. > [@begbert2](#): > > If you talk about anything but home invasions the ‘defenders’ start crossing over with the aggressors - they’re all just people walking around with guns. It’s the job of the police and the courts to sort out who the aggressors and defenders are, and they generally do an adequate job of it. This isn’t nearly the mysterious unknown you seem to think it is. > [@begbert2](#): > > And you start getting into the unavoidable fact that by the time the defender pulls on the aggressor, the aggressor has probably already shot at least one person himself. This is wrong. There are lots of DGUs, including home invasions, where the criminal being staved off isn’t even armed with a gun, and certainly in most cases they have not “already shot at least one person”. What kind of narrative is running through your head where this is the typical DGU? It seems far removed from reality. > [@begbert2](#): > > This _is_ fuzzing the specific talking point, but since this thread is about the legality of all guns, it’s reasonably to point out that we’re not really comparing the armed defender with unarmed defenders versus armed defenders. We’re comparing unarmed defenders versus unarmed aggressors. I’m not following you here. I think you’re the only one that’s making these comparisons between armed and unarmed parties. The DGU statistics I cited earlier were just various surveys estimating DGUs overall, without regard to whether the criminals were armed or unarmed. > [@begbert2](#): > > Obviously any gun control tactic that goes far enough to get them out of the hands of the innocent should also work aggressively to get them out of the hands of the criminals. I don’t see that this is ‘obvious’ at all. Mexico, for example, has done a pretty good job of getting them out of the hands of the innocent and largely failed to get them out of the hands of the criminals. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/179 "2017-10-09T23:57:51Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Here, I believe, is the complete list of reasons that guns should be legal for everyone to own, as compiled from what I’ve heard from pro-gun people. I do not intent to imply that all of these reasons apply equally to all gun owners. > > 1. Shooting them is fun. For some of us yes. For others not so much. My Wife was interested in them for a very small while, but was not interested in getting proficient. I don’t think she knew what it takes to be a competent, safe shooter. She lost interest, and that’s fine. I would prefer that she was a shooter, but have never pushed it. I have been shooting since I was 9 years old. It takes time and dedication. I am now at 56 years old learning the guitar. Being good at anything takes time. > [@begbert22](#): > > They have things they need to kill, often in a hurry and perhaps with little warning. Non-primates, generally. I don’t need to kill anything. I hate setting mouse traps. I do live in an area that I do like the ability to try to defend myself. They have also been good for scaring bears off. Police? 911? Hahahahahh. > [@begbert22](#): > > 1. They believe that guns make their owners safer from roving bands of home invaders Roving bands of home invaders? Seriously? No. Though I do live at least 20 minutes away from any help that might come. And yes, we have always had dogs for the first alarm system > [@begbert22](#): > > 1. Civilization’s about to collapse in some fun and interesting way and being armed to the teeth will be super-helpful in the lawless state that will follow. I’ll agree here. SOME are waiting for a TV show to come to life. > [@begbert22](#): > > 1. They already have some guns and don’t want to be suddenly a criminal just because they own them. That’s mostly true for me. Make them inoperable? No point in that. I am not against additional restrictions. I and many gun owners do get aggravated that those that want to put additional restrictions on don’t seem to know a thing about guns. And I understand that I’m not typical in my ownership, and where I live. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154/180 "2017-10-09T23:59:22Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > Sure, I’m trying to gauge our level of common thought processes by asking you what you figure you’d conclude that the value is no longer infrequent. 1M, 10M, 100M events per year? Just as a reference. If I were to say, a single instance is too many! Well, that is interesting and all, but you may conversely think that 1 is terrible but not enough to be considered not-infrequent. Trying to see if we’re in the same ballpark. I don’t even have a real solid grasp on the national population; I certainly wouldn’t care to speculate on the frequency of events in it! But here, I’ll say this: if the average person is experiencing (on average) at least one of these events a year, that pretty damned often; if it’s at least one event per five years that’s still pretty bad, and if it’s at least one event per ten years (per person, on average) that still enough to raise eyebrows. (I’m currently up to zero events in forty years, personally. So even with statistics being lobbed at me the threat doesn’t really hit home at an emotional level.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-should-guns-be-legal/798154.md?page=10)