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They conducted a survey called the National Survey of Private Ownership of Firearms (NSPOF). They concluded that 3.1 million times in one year, private citizens had used firearms to ward off a crime.
The Justice Dept.'s figure turned out to be slightly higher than that from a separate study done by Florida State professors Gary Kleck and Mark Gertz, who arrived at a figure of 2.5 million uses of firearms in one year to deter crimes.
Guns are used FAR more frequently, by a couple orders of magnitude, to deter crimes than to kill people. And of the people killed, a large percentage of them are criminals killed while committing crimes, by someone (police or civilian) defending themselves.
Ah good, you forgot to mention you edited your post.
I'll tear through the study, but considering what I just read--that it was a national phone survey--it probably has the same reporting problem as Kleck's--it's all self-reported and suffers from desirability bias.
But defensive use of firearms, which overwhelmingly in this case accounts for brandishing--doesn't directly translate into "saving lives."
30,000 lives a year are a taken by firearms, 10,000 of which are homicides, about 1,000 being negligent (I.e. 'accidental') shootings. There were about 600 justifiable homicides, which means firearm homicides account for about 9500 deaths each year. Of those, about a third are criminally related, another third are domestic disputes, and the rest undetermined. At least, that's what I recall from the...BJS numbers I think? If you have the source for that, that'd be great.
Glad you caught the quote attribution though, I was amused.
Your onus for the claim is to show that firearms prevent at least 9500 homicides each year, and preferably 30,000. Does the study say that?
Much debated is
whether the widespread ownership of
firearms deters crime or makes it more
deadly—or perhaps both—but the
[defensive gun use] estimates are not informative in
this regard.
Thanks for backing up my point. Defensive Gun Uses *should* make crime more deadly. In crimes where the victim turns out to have a gun, the criminal gets shot a lot more often than crimes where the victim doesn't have one.
And this is how the crimes are deterred. When criminals know their victim may have a gun, they are less likely to commit the crime in the first place. And when they try it anyway, sometimes they wind up dead.
Gun ownership by law-abiding citizens is a win-win situation.
Education is good for you, konraden. Even when you don't like it.
Thanks for backing up my point. Defensive Gun Uses *should* make crime more deadly. In crimes where the victim turns out to have a gun, the criminal gets shot a lot more often than crimes where the victim doesn't have one.
And this is how the crimes are deterred. When criminals know their victim may have a gun, they are less likely to commit the crime in the first place. And when they try it anyway, sometimes they wind up dead.
Gun ownership by law-abiding citizens is a win-win situation.
Education is good for you, konraden. Even when you don't like it.
The brief isn't backing your point. It explicitely concludes that defensive gun use numbers--which depending on source, range from about 108,000 uses\year to 3.1 million\year, they don't reliably tell whether it deters crime, makes crime worse, or both.
You need better evidence to conclude that firearm ownership saves more lives than it takes. Justifiable homicides represent only about 300 of the 10,000 homicides per year. You have to show that those defensive gun uses explicitly prevented 9500 deaths per year, preferably 30,000, but 9500 to start.
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