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It was also discovered that the CDC had conducted a study to verify/falsify Gary Kleck’s research but they sat on the results. This study, never published, was just recently made public.
“In 1996, 1997, and 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted large-scale national surveys asking about defensive gun use (DGU). They never released the findings, or even acknowledged they had studied the topic. I obtained the unpublished raw data and computed the prevalence of DGU. CDC’s findings indicated that an average of 2.46 million U.S. adults used a gun for self-defense in each of the years from 1996 through 1998 – almost exactly confirming the estimate for 1992 of Kleck and Gertz (1995). Possible reasons for CDC’s suppression of these findings are discussed.”
Quote:
Originally Posted by dspguy
Where's the source for "millions?" As per the article, it mentions Gary Kleck's research. Yet, if the article linked wasn't biased, it would have also mentioned further research done on Gary Kleck's methodology to arrive at "millions."
To sum up, getting the probability of an event with a small chance of happening (say 1%) by surveying people commonly results in what is called "presentation bias" where some respondents want to answer yes even if the definition of something like "did you use your gun defensive" isn't actually true. For example: what if someone surveyed considered the example of "I was walking down a dark alley and I was afraid someone MIGHT attack me, but I had my gun." If someone bends that scenario to fit the definition, that's problematic.
So, if the actual chance of a defensive gun use is only 1% and a few people surveyed have a bias to answer yes based on their misinterpretation of the definition, 1% becomes 2% or 3%. That's double or triple the real number. Whereas if the question was... "are you a man or a woman" - even if a few people answered wrong since they are confused, it would be 51% or 49% and that wouldn't be anything earth shattering.
Aside from all that, if there truly were millions of defensive gun uses per year... Let's say 2 (since 2 would be millions). Remove everyone under the age of 15. Sure, there might be some instances of legitimate gun defense in that age group, but I'm not taking away the 80+ people from this - they could use a gun as well. So that leaves a population of about 250M. 2M uses per 250M people. Per year. That means that of all the people you know, you'd expect a handful of them to have used a gun to protect themselves from a violent criminal. Every year.
Personally? I know zero. Ever. I've read about them - all those "good guy with gun vs bad guy with gun." But I personally know zero people that have used a gun defensively. Let's say I was 50. That'd be about 40 years where I'd probably recall hearing stories from friends and family of people THEY know that used a gun defensively. If about 1% of the entire US population is hero-ing it up with a gun EVERY year, by age 50, I should have a long list of acquaintances that have done this.
Anyway, I mainly have an issue with leveraging the questionable research that states that 2.5M people every use a gun defensively. The beginning of that article was at least more on the level, I think, when it said that there were something like 65k uses per year. I could believe that.
I still don't understand what that has to do with car accidents. It isn't like we are hurtling cars into violent criminals to keep ourselves safe. One really has nothing to do with the other.
"More People Use a Gun in Self-Defense Each Year Than Die in Car Accidents"
"Millions of people protect themselves and their families with guns every day in the United States."
None of the above statements are true if you are talking strictly about USA and not the whole world.
In USA on average there are approximately 35,000 traffic deaths per year. On average there are approximately 37,000 gun related deaths per year, the majority of which are homicides, not self defense and not for protection.
I think what you really meant was that in USA there are millions of people who possess guns for the purpose of protecting themselves if it should become necessary to defend themselves.
So what else is new? Everyone already knows that so what is your point?
In USA there are not millions of people who use guns or protect themselves with guns every day. If that were true there wouldn't be any people left in USA because they'd have all killed each other off within a single year.
.
That bolded statement is true ONLY if you include suicide as a form of homicide because most gun deaths in the US are suicides. This is admitted even by the notoriously anti-gun NY Times.
“When Americans think about deaths from guns, we tend to focus on homicides. But the problem of gun suicide is inescapable: More than 60 percent of people in this country who die from guns die by suicide.”
So, out of those 30 some odd thousand guns deaths are included suicide (the majority), homicide (which can include justifiable homicide by police and civilians), accidental death. Murders by gun are of course covered under homicide, they’re just not justifiable (by definition).
"More People Use a Gun in Self-Defense Each Year Than Die in Car Accidents"
"Millions of people protect themselves and their families with guns every day in the United States."
None of the above statements are true if you are talking strictly about USA and not the whole world.
In USA on average there are approximately 35,000 traffic deaths per year. On average there are approximately 37,000 gun related deaths per year, the majority of which are homicides, not self defense and not for protection.
I think what you really meant was that in USA there are millions of people who possess guns for the purpose of protecting themselves if it should become necessary to defend themselves.
So what else is new? Everyone already knows that so what is your point?
In USA there are not millions of people who use guns or protect themselves with guns every day. If that were true there wouldn't be any people left in USA because they'd have all killed each other off within a single year.
.
The main thing you're missing is that you don't have to kill the badguy in order to defend yourself with a firearm. You can shoot and wound the suspect, shoot and miss, or just present the firearm.
Why does this lie of a statistic keep coming up. How can millions of people use guns to protect themselves every year when the U.S has only around 1.1 to 1.3 million violent crimes a year. Take in mind a high percentage of violent crimes involves zero guns. at best we are talking thousands a year. Take in mind 125,000 out of 300,000 robberies involved guns... So we are talking at best thousands of incidents and certainly not over 100,000.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jm1982
The liberal elites all have walls and armed guards as well . Yet they don’t want the average person that can’t afford to hire armed guards to own guns .
You clearly live in Nigeria or Latin America. One: 90%+ of walled neighborhoods in America are a joke, it's an aesthetic look and it's at best tells the criminal, one way in, one way out and I'll have to wait at the gate for like 5 seconds when it opens for me to drive through, might just hit the neighborhood across the street. I have lived in gated areas in Nigeria and the U.S. In most U.S gated neighborhoods their's enough space under the gate to simply just roll under, and these neighborhoods will have easily scalable walls, and often the pass-code can be found on the internet.
If a crook from Nigeria saw what, American's called gated neighborhoods he would be laughing as he casually would walk into the neighborhood after a car goes through and rob the first house he stumbles across.
Also Gated neighborhoods are more likely to be in the suburbs of Sunbelt Cities, which don't swing heavy liberal/conservative at all.
The main thing you're missing is that you don't have to kill the badguy in order to defend yourself with a firearm. You can shoot and wound the suspect, shoot and miss, or just present the firearm.
Even if you include that, it isn't statically possible. Maybe 2 million people have done it in the last 40 years, but millions everyday, the U.S would be a crime ridden hellhole.
Even if you include that, it isn't statically possible. Maybe 2 million people have done it in the last 40 years, but millions everyday, the U.S would be a crime ridden hellhole.
I never said in this thread that it was 2 million. There's at least 50,000 defensive gun uses a year.
When someone owns a gun that gun is more likely to kill someone the gun owner knows either by accident, by the gun owner shooting an acquaintance in a argument, or by another family member using the gun to commit a homicide or commit suicide. And women who live in a home with a gun are 2.7 times more likely to be murdered than women living in a home with no gun. Dangerous Gun Myths - The New York Times
"According to FBI data, nearly eight times more people were shot and killed in arguments than by civilians trying to stop a crime."
"The odds of an assault victim being shot were 4.5 times greater if he carried a gun. His odds of being killed were 4.2 times greater."
"For every time a gun is used in self-defense in the home, there are 7 assaults or murders, 11 suicide attempts, and 4 accidents involving guns in or around a home."
"More than 5 times more women were shot by husbands, boyfriends, and ex-partners than murdered by male strangers." 10 Pro-Gun Myths, Shot Down – Mother Jones
Maybe you need to spend some time which is free by the way, minding your own business and let people live and defend what's theirs as they see fit.
You'd probably feel better if you did rather than being a nosy busy body.
Matter of fact, an AR is a pretty good home defense weapon as 193 busts up pretty good through drywall and studs. Opposed to a 12 gauge slug or 9mm or 38 or 357 which has the power to blow through interior walls and escape exterior walls and nail your neighbor's house.
But alas. If you had any idea of what you were talking about, rather than waddling about flying off feeble emotion, you'd know it's the cartridge that counts, and the projectiles construction. Not the weapon it is discharged from. Otherwise that dirty Harry revolver you suggest others use, coupled with the wrong projectile/cartridge, will blow clean through the house because you missed due to the bad guy not being a stationary target and wind up hurting or killing your neighbor.
Face facts. If you knew anything of physics, you'd endorse ARS especially short barreled ARS for home defense purposes. Not a revolver. Not a shotgun. Remember. You want responsible gun owners... and if they miss while defending their life or home... do you really want to risk that bonded core 38 ripping through studs drywall and entering the neighbors house? How about that 00 buckshot?
Serious question. But I doubt I'll get a serious response just more hyperbolic rhetoric and
The first rule of owning a gun is responsible gun ownership. Like keeping guns out of the reach of children and keeping guns away from criminals, the mentally ill and terrorists (examples, keeping guns hidden from home invaders, keeping guns in a safe, and not selling or trading guns with criminals.)
Republicans have the gun safety rules of gun owners who leave loaded revolvers in reach of 7 year old children at birthday parties. And should people who don't follow the most basic gun safety rules even be allowed to own guns?
How many of those cases of self-defense required a high-end weapon, such as something designed to put out 30+ rounds a minute and kill a room full of people?
How many of the criminals were immune to revolver rounds or shotgun pellets and could only be put down with a burst of gunfire to breach their "regenerative shielding" or some insanity?
How many of those people who used a gun in self defense were themselves criminals, mentally ill, on drugs, or otherwise a danger to themselves and everyone else around them because of the weapon they owned?
Until you answer those questions, you completely miss the point of those of us who argue for sane gun control laws. Because if you live a place where nothing short of an AR-15 will "stop the bad guys," you really need to spend more money on moving and less money on room-clearing weapons.
"Until you answer those questions, you completely miss the point of those of us who argue for sane gun control laws"
NO it is YOU who have "completely missed the point"
"who argue for sane gun control laws""
Every one of those that I have read are NOT "sane" at all.
Please give us YOUR "interpretation" of he word "INFRINGED"
Where's the source for "millions?" As per the article, it mentions Gary Kleck's research. Yet, if the article linked wasn't biased, it would have also mentioned further research done on Gary Kleck's methodology to arrive at "millions."
To sum up, getting the probability of an event with a small chance of happening (say 1%) by surveying people commonly results in what is called "presentation bias" where some respondents want to answer yes even if the definition of something like "did you use your gun defensive" isn't actually true. For example: what if someone surveyed considered the example of "I was walking down a dark alley and I was afraid someone MIGHT attack me, but I had my gun." If someone bends that scenario to fit the definition, that's problematic.
So, if the actual chance of a defensive gun use is only 1% and a few people surveyed have a bias to answer yes based on their misinterpretation of the definition, 1% becomes 2% or 3%. That's double or triple the real number. Whereas if the question was... "are you a man or a woman" - even if a few people answered wrong since they are confused, it would be 51% or 49% and that wouldn't be anything earth shattering.
Aside from all that, if there truly were millions of defensive gun uses per year... Let's say 2 (since 2 would be millions). Remove everyone under the age of 15. Sure, there might be some instances of legitimate gun defense in that age group, but I'm not taking away the 80+ people from this - they could use a gun as well. So that leaves a population of about 250M. 2M uses per 250M people. Per year. That means that of all the people you know, you'd expect a handful of them to have used a gun to protect themselves from a violent criminal. Every year.
Personally? I know zero. Ever. I've read about them - all those "good guy with gun vs bad guy with gun." But I personally know zero people that have used a gun defensively. Let's say I was 50. That'd be about 40 years where I'd probably recall hearing stories from friends and family of people THEY know that used a gun defensively. If about 1% of the entire US population is hero-ing it up with a gun EVERY year, by age 50, I should have a long list of acquaintances that have done this.
Anyway, I mainly have an issue with leveraging the questionable research that states that 2.5M people every use a gun defensively. The beginning of that article was at least more on the level, I think, when it said that there were something like 65k uses per year. I could believe that.
I still don't understand what that has to do with car accidents. It isn't like we are hurtling cars into violent criminals to keep ourselves safe. One really has nothing to do with the other.
"I still don't understand what that has to do with car accidents."
It isn't really that hard.
MOST gun-grabbers use DEATH by guns to back up their opinions on the gun issue. "We need to save lives"," we need to STOP the SLAUGHTER of our CHILDREN", etc., etc., etc.
IF they REALLY care about deaths, they would be going after the many OTHER things that cause deaths then guns such as cars, swimming pools, blunt instruments like bats kill MORE then ALL rifles combined, etc.
The do NOT care about death BUT, BANNING GUNS, PERIOD, which is their objective.
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