Um, Mack? Did you click on the link? I don't think I missed your point, I think you missed the link. If it came up as horse porn, you had that window open already, actually click on the link and you'll find what you seek.mistermack wrote:Well, your evidence doesn't address the point I made at all.GreyICE wrote:I imagine that skepticism works better when one seeks out evidence, rather than supposing that the evidence matches your conclusion.
And after reading it, the best you can make of it is that there is an advantage in having a weapon IF you're attacked ( pretty obvious ) but that it's marginal ( rather surprising). As my point was about the overall numbers, and not the outcomes, you've missed it, it seems.
If you accept their conclusion, that when the worst happens, it's best to have a gun, I would say that's bleedin obvious anyway. Trouble is, exactly the same logic applies to criminals.
It doesn't prove that tighter gun control would cost innocent lives. Far from it.
If domestic guns were much rarer, fewer criminals would take risk carrying one of their own.
Whether the overall result would be lesser or more innocent deaths, is the big unknown.
But you can be pretty certain that accidental deaths and maimings would be fewer.
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...Nevertheless, among these imperfect surveys, two were relatively good for present purposes. Both the Hart survey in 1981 and the Mauser survey in 1990 were national surveys which asked carefully worded questions directed at all Rs in their samples. Both surveys excluded uses against animals and occupational uses. The two also nicely complemented each other in that the Hart survey asked only about uses of handguns, while the Mauser survey asked about uses of all gun types. The Hart survey results implied a minimum of about 640,000 annual DGUs involving handguns, while the Mauser results implied about 700,000 involving any type of gun.(37) It should be stressed, contrary to the claims of Reiss and Roth,(38) that neither of these estimates entailed the use of "dubious adjustment procedures." The percent of sample households reporting a DGU was simply multiplied by the total number of U.S. households, resulting in an estimate of DGU-involved households. This figure, compiled for a five year period, was then divided by five to yield a per-year figure.
The most technically sound estimates presented in Table 2 are those based on the shorter one-year recall peRiod that rely on Rs' firsthand accounts of their own experiences (person-based estimates). These estimates appear in the first two columns. They indicate that each year in the U.S. there are about 2.2 to 2.5 million DGUs of all types by civilians against humans, with about 1.5 to 1.9 million of the incidents involving use of handguns.
These estimates are larger than those derived from the best previous surveys, indicating that technical improvements in the measurement procedures have, contrary to the expectations of Cook,(47) Reiss and Roth,(48) and McDowall and Wiersema,(49) increased rather than decreased estimates of the frequency that DGUs occur. Defensive gun use is thus just another specific example of a commonplace pattern in criminological survey work, which includes victimization surveys, self-report surveys of delinquency, surveys of illicit drug use, etc.: the better the measurement procedures, the higher the estimates of controversial behaviors.(50)
