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The study only investigated incidents where there were shootings. In incidents where shootings were involved, those were the stats. It ignores the perhaps preponderance of statistics where no shooting occurred because the victim was armed.
For persons not armed there are two outcomes in a potential incident that could result in a shooting.
The person is not shot
The person is shot
For persons armed there are multiple outcomes in a potential incident that could result in a shooting.
The person is not shot
The person is not shot because the perpetrator knows they are armed (either it's visible or the victim draws it)
The person is not shot because they shoot the perpetrator
The person is not shot, nor is the perpetrator
The person is shot because the perpetrator shot them first (i.e. the perpetrator would not have shot had the victim not been armed)
The person is shot regardless as they have no opportunity to shoot
The person is shot and would have been shot anyway
The study is not clear in instances where a victim is attacked by someone with a gun, whether the attacker being injured is incorporated into the dataset, as clearly there is a shooting case, whether the case is justifiable self defense or not is not clearly determined from the text. In instances where both parties are armed and shooting at one another then in the majority of cases one of the parties will end up with a perforation, this would skew the results upwards.
Here's the text
Quote:
Gunshot assault cases caused by powder charge firearms were identified as they occurred, from October 15, 2003, to April 16, 2006. The final 6 months of this period were limited to only fatal cases.We excluded self-inflicted, unintentional, and police-related shootings (an officer shooting someone or being shot), and gun injuries of undetermined intent. We excluded individuals younger than 21 years because it was not legal for them to possess a firearm in Philadelphia and, as such, the relationship we sought to investigate was functionally different enough to prompt separate study of this age group. We excluded individuals who were not residents of Philadelphia as they were outside our target population and individuals not described as Black or White as they were involved in a very small percentage of shootings (< 2%). Even after these exclusions, the study only needed a subset of the remaining shootings to test its hypotheses. A random number was thus assigned to these remaining shootings, as they presented, to enroll a representative one third of them.
It does not say that they excluded shooting cases where the victim shot their attacker. A self defense shooting is still an assault case, it's a justifiable assault case, thus charges are not pressed. I would have expected a comparison table for cases where the victim shot at, or shot their attacker, had they performed this. This draws into question the accuracy of their results.
Indeed it may have been more effective to examine all shootings (excluding police shot, or shootings) and compare victims shot who were armed, and victims not shot who were armed, then correcting for gun ownership ratio's (and you can do a band due to inaccuracy in accounting of gun owners per capita) rather than case-control and ignore the legality of ownership for the group who were the victim, if a drug dealer is legitimately defending themselves with an illegally possessed firearm, the legality is not relevant to the study, they were a gun owner, who was defending themselves with their firearm.
To discover whether guns are more or less effective in protecting lives, we shouldn't be looking at who was not protected, but who was protected. In the case of persons not armed 100% were not protected by a firearm, in the case of persons armed you cannot draw a conclusion on who was protected by looking at those not protected, non-crime is not reported, and if reported is not recorded. To get these stats would be difficult, there's no way to be certain that in cases where the victim is not shot to know whether they would have been shot had they been unarmed or would have been shot had they been armed.
That's the fundamental issue with trying to figure it out, you're trying to identify what would or would not have happened had the event been under differing circumstances.
"Guns don't kill people, people kill people" With guns, by the thousands. But I'm not here to do a dance where everyone knows the choreography intimately. What I'm wondering is if the MSM doesn't cover people fighting off genuine threats (not imagined ones like George Zimmerman), who does? Is there any kind of study by anyone not financed by the munitions industry giving the statistics of gun carriers defending their lives in any public place. Most of us NOT commited to gun rights make an exception within the property of the owner. We mostly don't like jittery people with stashed weapons who could start imitating movie characters.
Studies show that the more guns you have, the more people are killed by guns. Likewise, the more knives you have the more people are killed by knives. What is less clear, however, is do more guns or knives increase the number of murders. Some in the anti-gun crowd somehow think getting killed by a gun is worse than getting killed by a knife or a baseball bat.
As for the murder rate in Canada vs. the USA, the homicide rate in Nunavut is higher than it is anywhere in the United States.
Give the gun fatality count versus the bat fatality count. How many times has some nutjob killed double digits kids or shoppers with a bat? All deaths are equally gruesome. But gun and explosive deaths take way more victims. And being killed by a car is seldom a result of malice like death from a gun.
Give the gun fatality count versus the bat fatality count. How many times has some nutjob killed double digits kids or shoppers with a bat? All deaths are equally gruesome. But gun and explosive deaths take way more victims. And being killed by a car is seldom a result of malice like death from a gun.
"Miss it"? Why is that in any way relevant to a discussion of GUNS HERE IN THE UNITED STATES? I ask for examples within our political boundaries and get stories about knives is Asia? I say, let the Asians take away knives, and let's concentrate on THIS side of the planet on the massacres we have here which almost entirely with automatic or semi-automatic firearms.
"Miss it"? Why is that in any way relevant to a discussion of GUNS HERE IN THE UNITED STATES? I ask for examples within our political boundaries and get stories about knives is Asia? I say, let the Asians take away knives, and let's concentrate on THIS side of the planet on the massacres we have here which almost entirely with automatic or semi-automatic firearms.
Right, so when was the last time an automatic weapon was used in a mass murder?
You might be surprised that the violent crime rate is at a 30 year low. You will also be surprised I know that a child is 100 times more likely to be killed by a swimming pool than a gun. But we can keep talking about a 2 pound piece of plastic and metal which you seem to think is the cause of every wrong in America.
"Miss it"? Why is that in any way relevant to a discussion of GUNS HERE IN THE UNITED STATES? I ask for examples within our political boundaries and get stories about knives is Asia? I say, let the Asians take away knives, and let's concentrate on THIS side of the planet on the massacres we have here which almost entirely with automatic or semi-automatic firearms.
Ignorance like this is what causes people to ignore the anti-gun morons in this country.
Right, so when was the last time an automatic weapon was used in a mass murder?
You might be surprised that the violent crime rate is at a 30 year low. You will also be surprised I know that a child is 100 times more likely to be killed by a swimming pool than a gun. But we can keep talking about a 2 pound piece of plastic and metal which you seem to think is the cause of every wrong in America.
And that is another hysterical exaggeration. I only think it is the cause of things like Littleton and Aurora. But that's easily bad enough. As for these neat "mathematics" you guys like to toss in, go talk the survivors of little children mowed down by berserkers who buy weapons online and shoot people to work out the kinks in their nasty little minds. Give them those statistics that keep you warm at night.
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