Guns used for lawful self defense Pt. 4

[Jason]

I am so smart. S-M-R-T!

FIFY

[Gallstones]

I like guns. I have fired several types from fully automatic to cap and ball 45 Navy Colt.I have hunted and might yet again. I do NOT need a gun for personal protection, especially not a handgun at all times.Those who think they do are welcome to do as they wish, but if that is really necessary depends on your own interpretation. I have noticed that not acting like a prick towards your fellow men minimises the risk of threat of assault considerably.
On other news, Thunder Bay is the Canadian leader in spousal assault, largely due to a large native population.

I think it is a fallacy to think that people who carry handguns act like pricks towards their fellows because they carry handguns.

[Gallstones]

People have different interests.
Let them shoot children with gunz.

FIFY

I am not interested in stopping gun owners shooting children. Don't let your kids walk in front of my windows I hav poor impulse control.

FIFY and pity reply.

Pitiful more like.

[JimC]

I like guns. I have fired several types from fully automatic to cap and ball 45 Navy Colt.I have hunted and might yet again. I do NOT need a gun for personal protection, especially not a handgun at all times.Those who think they do are welcome to do as they wish, but if that is really necessary depends on your own interpretation. I have noticed that not acting like a prick towards your fellow men minimises the risk of threat of assault considerably.
On other news, Thunder Bay is the Canadian leader in spousal assault, largely due to a large native population.

I think it is a fallacy to think that people who carry handguns act like pricks towards their fellows because they carry handguns.

But what about the reverse?

[Jason]

Handguns act like pricks because they're carried by people!

[Blind groper]

They are every bit as valid as the base data supposedly used by Lott et al's. detractors, all of which are based on first-hand police reports of crimes committed and investigated.

That is not what Prof. David Hemenway of Harvard University said. When he tried to get the raw data from Lott's so-called survey, he found it did not exist. Nor did Lott's research assistants, or his employing university know anything about it. Though Hemenway did not say this (probably afraid of a law suit) it looks as if Lott's so-called research results were all acts of fiction.

[aspire1670]

People have different interests.
Let them shoot children with gunz.

FIFY

I am not interested in stopping gun owners shooting children. Don't let your kids walk in front of my windows I hav poor impulse control.

FIFY and pity reply.

Pitiful more like.

I bow to your superior experience of pitiful impulse control.

[Blind groper]

Here are some quotes from the Wiki article on gun violence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence

"The United States has the highest rate of gun related injuries (not deaths per capita) among developed countries, though it also has the highest rate of gun ownership and the highest rate of officers.[9]

it was found that individuals in a firearm owning home are close to five times more likely to commit suicide than those individuals who do not own firearms

In the United States, where suicides outnumber homicides 2:1,[16] firearms remain the most common method of suicide, accounting for 52.1% of all suicides committed during 2005.[17]

In 2010 USA homicides, guns are the weapon of choice, especially for multiple homicides.[21]

In the case of gun violence, the definitions become more specific and include only robbery and assault committed with the use of a firearm.[45] Firearms are used in this threatening capacity four to six times more than firearms used as a means of protection in fighting crime.[46]

Violence committed with guns leads to significant monetary costs. Phillip J. Cook estimated that such violence costs the USA $100 billion annually.[47] Emergency medical care is a major contributor to the monetary costs of such violence. It was determined in a study that for every firearm death in the USA for one year from 1 June 1992, an average of three firearm-related injuries were treated in hospital emergency departments.[49]

Psychological costs of violence committed with guns are also clearly documented. James Garbarino found that individuals who experience violence are prone to mental and other health problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep deprivation. These problems increase for those who experience violence as children.[50]"


The USA has by far the highest rate of gun ownership in OECD countries. it has by far the highest rate of murder. it has 100,000 gunshot woundings each year, and 20,000 gunshot deaths. Far from guns aiding in stopping crime, the highlighted statement above shows that they are more used in crime than in stopping it. Guns cause enormous psychological as well as physical trauma.

There is no doubt at all that fewer guns are far, far more desirable than more.

[Blind groper]

Also, a comment from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violen ... ted_States

"A quarter of robberies of commercial premises in the United States are committed with guns.[63] Fatalities are three times as likely in robberies committed with guns than where other, or no, weapons are used,[63][64][65] with similar patterns in cases of family violence.[66] Criminologist Philip J. Cook hypothesized that if guns were less available, criminals might commit the same crime, but with less-lethal weapons.[67] He finds that the level of gun ownership in the 50 largest U.S. cities correlates with the rate of robberies committed with guns, but not with overall robbery rates."

The number of robberies in the USA is unexceptional, and similar in rate to many other OECD countries. However, the number carried out with guns is way higher than in other OECD countries, and the use of those guns is far more likely to result in massive trauma or death than if they had less lethal weapons.

Also worth noting from the same reference :

"Between 1987 and 1990, McDowall found that guns were used in defense during a crime incident 64,615 times annually (258,460 times total over the whole period).[83] This equated to two times out of 1,000 criminal incidents (0.2%) that occurred in this period, including criminal incidents where no guns were involved at all.[83] For violent crimes, assault, robbery, and rape, guns were used 0.83% of the time in self-defense.[83] Of the times that guns were used in self-defense, 71% of the crimes were committed by strangers, with the rest of the incidents evenly divided between offenders that were acquaintances or persons well known to the victim.[83] In 28% of incidents where a gun was used for self-defense, victims fired the gun at the offender.[83] In 20% of the self-defense incidents, the guns were used by police officers.[83] During this same period, 1987 to 1990, there were 46,319 gun homicides,[84] and the National Crime Victimization Survey estimated that 2,628,532 nonfatal crimes involving guns occurred."

Note that the number of self defense cases is massively less than what that charlaton, John Lott, tries to claim. Compared to total number of times people were harmed by criminals, the times a gun helped is laughably minor.

Note also the more than 600,000 gun crimes annually in the USA. This does not happen anywhere else in the OECD, and is a direct and harmful outcome of the ridiculously easy acquisition of guns by anyone in the USA, and especially criminals.

[Ian]

Share of Homes With Guns Shows 4-Decade Decline

The number of American homes with guns has fallen over the last four decades, according to a national poll. It gets better: some drops are in the gun-lovin' south and Western mountain states. The General Social Survey, which is taken even two years, shows a clear drop in the rates across many demographics in America. In the '90s 43 percent of households had guns, while in the 2000s only 35 percent held firearms. In 2012, 34 percent of households had guns. The numbers are a sharp contrast to the idea that gun sales have been skyrocketing after Sandy Hook--which may suggest that existing gun owners are just buying more.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/us/ra ... ml?hp&_r=0

All that hoplophobia may be more widespread than you freedom-loving gun owners may realize. Damn all those hoplophobes.

[Blind groper]

A further thought about DGU's.

Quoting from : http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

A 1993 nationwide survey of 4,977 households found that over the previous five years, at least 0.5% of households had members who had used a gun for defense during a situation in which they thought someone "almost certainly would have been killed" if they "had not used a gun for protection." Applied to the U.S. population, this amounts to 162,000 such incidents per year. This figure excludes all "military service, police work, or work as a security guard."


Since only a third of all American households have a gun, if 162,000 incidents occurred in which a person "almost certainly" would have been killed if no gun was present, then logically, in the two thirds of people with no gun, over 320,000 incidents occurred, in which someone "almost certainly" was killed.

In fact, total murders were about 16,000. This alone shows that these surveys are total crap.

[Seth]

I like guns. I have fired several types from fully automatic to cap and ball 45 Navy Colt.I have hunted and might yet again. I do NOT need a gun for personal protection, especially not a handgun at all times.Those who think they do are welcome to do as they wish, but if that is really necessary depends on your own interpretation. I have noticed that not acting like a prick towards your fellow men minimises the risk of threat of assault considerably.
On other news, Thunder Bay is the Canadian leader in spousal assault, largely due to a large native population.

I think it is a fallacy to think that people who carry handguns act like pricks towards their fellows because they carry handguns.

But what about the reverse?

"An armed society is a polite society." Robert A. Heinlein

[Seth]

They are every bit as valid as the base data supposedly used by Lott et al's. detractors, all of which are based on first-hand police reports of crimes committed and investigated.

That is not what Prof. David Hemenway of Harvard University said. When he tried to get the raw data from Lott's so-called survey, he found it did not exist. Nor did Lott's research assistants, or his employing university know anything about it. Though Hemenway did not say this (probably afraid of a law suit) it looks as if Lott's so-called research results were all acts of fiction.

And I should believe you, or Hemenway (a notorious anti-gun zealot) why, exactly?

Just because he couldn't find the data and Lott's people dismissed him (as well they should, knowing full well who he is and why he would be interested) because of his institutional and personal bias doesn't mean the data doesn't exist, it just means that Hemenway is an idiot and a biased zealot.

[Clinton Huxley]

Leave Lott alone. The dog ate his survey. Or something.

[Seth]

Here are some quotes from the Wiki article on gun violence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence

"The United States has the highest rate of gun related injuries (not deaths per capita) among developed countries,

Cherry picking pettifoggery. Of course it has more gun related injuries than societies without guns, but no mention is made of the actual number of injuries or the trend of gun injury statistics.

Firearm Safety in America 2013

Posted on January 17, 2013

The number of privately owned guns in the U.S. is at an all-time high, upwards of 300 million, and now rises by about 10 million per year.1 Meanwhile, the firearm accident death rate has fallen to an all-time low, 0.2 per 100,000 population, down 94% since the all-time high in 1904.2 Since 1930, the annual number of firearm accident deaths has decreased 81%, while the U.S. population has more than doubled and the number of firearms has quintupled. Among children, such deaths have decreased 89% since 1975. Today, the odds are more than a million to one, against a child in the U.S. dying in a firearm accident.

Firearms are involved in 0.5% of accidental deaths nationally, compared to motor vehicles (29%), poisoning (27%), falls (21%), suffocation (5%), drowning (3%), fires (2%), medical mistakes (1.7%), environmental factors (1.3%), and pedal cycles (0.6%). Among children: motor vehicles (34%), suffocation (27%), drowning (17%), fires (7%), environmental factors (2.3%), poisoning (2.2%), falls (1.5%), firearm (1.5), pedal cycles (1.4%), and medical mistakes (1.3%).

Education decreases accidents. Voluntary training has decreased firearms accidents. NRA firearm safety programs are conducted by more than 93,000 NRA Certified Instructors nationwide. Youngsters learn firearm safety in NRA programs offered through civic groups such as the Boy Scouts, Jaycees, and American Legion, and schools.3 NRA’s Eddie Eagle GunSafe program teaches children pre-K through 3rd grade that if they see a gun without supervision, they should “STOP! Don’t Touch. Leave The Area. Tell An Adult.” Since 1988, Eddie has been used by 26,000 schools, civic groups, and law enforcement agencies to reach more than 26 million children.4

The “cars and guns” myth. In the 1990s, gun control supporters claimed that driver licensing and vehicle registration caused motor vehicle accident deaths to decline between 1968 and 1991, and that gun registration and gun owner licensing would reduce gun accidents. However, vehicle registration and driver licensing laws were not imposed to reduce accidents, and did not do so. Most were imposed between the world wars, but motor vehicle accident deaths increased sharply after 1930 and didn’t begin declining until 1970. Also, between 1968 and 1991 the motor vehicle accident death rate dropped only 37% with vehicle registration and driver licensing, while the firearm accident death rate dropped 50% without registration and licensing. Gun control supporters want registration and licensing only to acquire records necessary to make confiscation of privately owned firearms achievable in the future. Handgun Control, Inc. (since renamed Brady Campaign) once said that registration was the second step in the group’s three-step plan for the confiscation of all handguns.5

Also, the purchase and ownership of arms is a right protected by the federal and most state constitutions,6 whereas driving a car on public roads is a privilege. A license and registration are not required to merely own a vehicle or operate it on private property, only to do so on public roads. Similarly, a license and permit are not typically required to buy or own a gun, or to keep a gun at home, but are usually required when hunting or carrying a gun for protection in public places.

Gun control supporters’ “children and teens” deception: In the 1990s and the early part of the 21st century, gun control supporters claimed that firearms (homicides, suicides, and accidents combined) took the lives of a dozen or more “children” daily. To get that figure, they added the number among children (then about 1.7 per day) to the much larger numbers among juveniles (about four per day) and teenage adults (about nine per day), and calling the total “children.”7 Having been called on the deception, gun control supporters now cite a single number for “children and teens,” adding the number for juveniles and teenage adults (now about 10 per day) to the number for children (about one per day).

The CAP law myth: Also in the 1990s, “gun control” supporters pointed to a study (produced by the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center, a group active in the HELP Network) claiming that so-called “Child Access Prevention” (CAP) laws (which make it a crime, under some circumstances, to leave a gun accessible to a child who obtains and misuses it), imposed in 12 states between 1989-1993, decreased firearm accident deaths among children.8 Its flaws: Firearm accident deaths among children began declining in the mid-1970s, not in 1989, when “CAP” laws were first imposed. Also, such accidents had decreased nationwide, not only in “CAP” states. And it failed to note that also in 1989, NRA’s Eddie Eagle GunSafe Program was introduced nationwide.



1. See BATFE, “Annual Firearm Manufacturers and Export Reports” (http://www.atf.gov/statistics).

2. Statistics from 1981 forward are available from the National Center for Health Statistics’ “Wisqars” website.

Those prior to 1981 are available from the National Safety Council (http://www.nsc.org/).

3. For more on NRA training programs, visit http://www.nrahq.org/ (click “Education and Training”) or call 703-267-1500.

4. For more on the Eddie Eagle program, visit http://www.nrahq.org/safety/eddie/ or call 800-231-0752.

5. Pete Shields, quoted in The New Yorker, “A Reporter At Large: Handguns,” July 26, 1976.

6. See Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). (http://www.nraila.org/media/PDFs/HellerOpinion.pdf)

7. NRA-ILA “Not 12 Per Day” fact sheet, http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=21 .

8. Journal of the American Medical Association, Oct. 1, 1997.

though it also has the highest rate of gun ownership and the highest rate of officers.[9]

it was found that individuals in a firearm owning home are close to five times more likely to commit suicide than those individuals who do not own firearms

So what? Suicide is a civil right. You can't prevent suicide by disarming the non-suicidal.

In the United States, where suicides outnumber homicides 2:1,[16] firearms remain the most common method of suicide, accounting for 52.1% of all suicides committed during 2005.[17]

Again, so what? Suicides want to die. Let them do so efficiently and painlessly. Less cost to society than having to support some brain-dead gork who took too many pills.

In 2010 USA homicides, guns are the weapon of choice, especially for multiple homicides.[21]

And they are even more the weapon of choice for self defense, by far.

22 Times Less Safe?
Anti-Gun Lobby's Favorite
Spin Re-Attacks Guns In The Home

Posted on December 11, 2001
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Is a firearm in your home "22 times more likely" to be used to kill or injure a family member than to be used for protection? Or "43 times more likely?" How about "18 times more likely?" Anti-gun groups and politicians say it is, citing research by Arthur L. Kellermann, M.D.

Dr. Kellermann's dubious conclusions provide anti-gunners propaganda they use to try to frighten Americans into voluntarily disposing of their guns—in essence, to do to themselves what the anti-gunners have been unable to do to them by legislative, regulatory, or judicial means.

Kellermann admits to the political goal of his work, saying "People should be strongly discouraged from keeping guns in their homes." ("Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home," New England Journal of Medicine, Oct. 1993.) Anti-gun groups have seized upon his most recent attempt in this regard, a "study" from which the bogus "22 times more likely" risk-benefit ratio is derived. ("Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home," Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection and Critical Care, Aug. 1998.) The study suffers numerous flaws common to previous Kellermann efforts, including the fact that it is a very small-scale survey of sample jurisdictions that are not representative of the country or even of one another.

Most significant, though, Kellermann severely understates defensive uses of guns, by counting only those in which criminals are killed or injured. Dr. Edgar A. Suter, writing in the Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia, explains the error in the context of an earlier Kellermann study, which compared family member deaths to killings of criminals: "The true measure of the protective benefits of guns are the lives saved, the injuries prevented, the medical costs saved, and the property protected—not the burglar or rapist body count. Since only 0.1% to 0.2% of defensive gun usage involves the death of the criminal, any study, such as this, that counts criminal deaths as the only measure of the protective benefits of guns will expectedly underestimate the benefits of firearms by a factor of 500 to 1,000." ("Guns in the Medical Literature—A Failure of Peer Review," March 1994, p. 134.)

Similarly, criminologist Gary Kleck notes, "More commonly, guns are merely pointed at another person, or perhaps referred to or displayed, and this sufficient to accomplish the ends of the user." (Targeting Guns, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997, p. 162.) Kleck's 1995 landmark survey of defensive gun uses found guns used for protection as many as 2.5 million times annually. ("Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Fall 1995.)

Kellermann's "22 times more likely" study suffers yet another flaw: only 14.2% of criminal gun-related homicides and assaults he surveyed involved guns kept in the homes where the crimes occurred. With a similar sloppiness in his "43 times more likely" study, suicides (never shown to correlate to gun ownership) accounted for the overwhelming majority of gun-related family member deaths he pretended to compare to defensive gun uses.

In the case of gun violence, the definitions become more specific and include only robbery and assault committed with the use of a firearm.[45] Firearms are used in this threatening capacity four to six times more than firearms used as a means of protection in fighting crime.[46]

Outright lie.

Violence committed with guns leads to significant monetary costs. Phillip J. Cook estimated that such violence costs the USA $100 billion annually.[47] Emergency medical care is a major contributor to the monetary costs of such violence. It was determined in a study that for every firearm death in the USA for one year from 1 June 1992, an average of three firearm-related injuries were treated in hospital emergency departments.[49]

All the more reason to make sure it's the criminals who end up with "firearms-related injuries," preferably fatal ones.

Psychological costs of violence committed with guns are also clearly documented. James Garbarino found that individuals who experience violence are prone to mental and other health problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep deprivation. These problems increase for those who experience violence as children.[50]"

All the more reason for potential victims to be armed so that they can stop crime before it happens or defend themselves successfully when faced with violent crime. People who successfully fight off attackers suffer far less psychological trauma than those who are helplessly victimized.

The USA has by far the highest rate of gun ownership in OECD countries. it has by far the highest rate of murder. it has 100,000 gunshot woundings each year, and 20,000 gunshot deaths. Far from guns aiding in stopping crime, the highlighted statement above shows that they are more used in crime than in stopping it. Guns cause enormous psychological as well as physical trauma.

Lies.

There is no doubt at all that fewer guns are far, far more desirable than more.

For gun-banning hoplophobes and criminals most certainly. For the rest of us, not so much.