Now the gun controllers pour out of the woodwork to claim that you're more likely to kill yourself or a family member with a gun than a criminal.
Some of the people deploying this statistic really ought to know better. Composition fallacy, anyone?
These are not double blind experiments. Guns may be the weapon of choice for all sorts of crimes; that does not mean that they cause the crimes.
Men like to kill themselves with guns. (This is not culture-specific; women tend to choose poison everywhere, presumably because of some deep fear of disfigurement). Gun suicides tend to be successful. But this does not mean that if you took away the guns, people wouldn't commit suicide. There are many other near-surefire ways of killing yourself, like jumping off a high bridge, gassing yourself with carbon monoxide, driving your car at high speed into a piling, hanging yourself, etc. Think of it this way: most people who choose to wear high heels are women. That doesn't mean that if I threw out my Manolos, I would turn into a man.
Similarly, (a small number of) men like to murder their families with guns. But they also like to murder their families with knives, baseball bats, and their fists. Taking away the guns might somewhat reduce the number of homicides (it might also increase it; you're more likely to recover from a fatal-looking gunshot wound to the stomach than from having your head banged against the floor 80 times). But spousal murder is plenty easy without a gun.
Now compare this to the actions of people who are not looking to commit homicide or kill themselves. What are they likely to do with a gun? Brandish it or fire a warning shot. If they do shoot someone, they are likely to stop as soon as that someone is disabled, and call for an ambulance.
Most importantly, almost no homicides or shootings go undetected. On the other hand, many people who wave a gun at someone threatening, and thereby cause that person to go away, don't report it. How many? We don't know, because they don't report it. But I didn't report the mugging I foiled last January through strategically hunting for my keys in a well lighted portion of the street. I doubt I'd have been any more likely to do so if I'd waved a gun at him.
Now, it is possible that having a gun is actually on net dangerous to you and your family. But we have no evidence to support this notion, because all the statistics on the subject are crap. The denominator is what criminologists call a "dark number": one where there is no way to arrive at any reasonably credible estimate of its value.
Indeed, there is a thesis to be written, somewhere, on why so many of the most famous works on guns involve statistical malpractice, deliberate distortion, or outright lying.
Look at the good longitudinal data we do have: liberalizing concealed carry--the right to have a hidden gun on you at all times--hasn't resulted in the predicted rash of deaths. It turns out that suicides and would-be homicides weren't paying much attention to the legality of their actions. It also turns out that having a gun in your hands does not seem to turn a previously law-abiding citizen into a spur-of-the-moment killer. It wasn't totally unreasonable to fear that guns might turn altercations into homicide, but the evidence from states that have moved to shall issue models shows that they didn't.
Don't listen to me, gun nut that I am; listen to liberal crime policy professor Mark Kleiman. People who shoot other people, or themselves, are not ordinary folks whose gun let them vent a moment of madness. They're mostly people with long histories of all sorts of violence towards either themselves, or others.
"People who shoot other people, or themselves, are not ordinary folks whose gun let them vent a moment of madness. They're mostly people with long histories of all sorts of violence towards either themselves, or others."
They also tend to be people with long histories of all sorts of dyfunctional behavior: drug and alcohol abuse, spousal abuse, child beating, speeding tickets, etc.
In an ideal world, laws on the books would keep guns out of the hands of these people. I am still hoping for an ideal world.
To accept your argument the liberal would also have to accept that people are ultimately responsible for their actions (as opposed to environment or inanimate objects). And if they accept that, there goes the foundation of their social engineering and wealth redistribution schemes.
You are better off using their own race/class rhetoric against them. Say by expressing outrage over Breyer's dissent where he pretty much says guns in the home are ok so long as you aren't urban or poor:
"In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas."
It's strange to me that you posted just days ago about the need for us all to remember that we are fallible. I read maybe a dozen blogs regularly, from far right to far left, and you are without question the least likely to reconsider your own positions or question your ideology. If you're really dedicated to ending that kind of thinking, why would constantly engage in rhetorical maximalism? Every statistic that contradicts your preferred worldview is crap? Every one? Really? Does that sound to you like a discriminating intelligence, one ready to confront alternate opinion?
I don't understand your continued delight in waving a bloody flags for all of your yes-men commenters to chime in about how brilliant you are.
Here's our experiment. Your commenters and others love to say "an armed society is a polite society." So get back to me two years after the ban has been lifted and let me know if DC has been magically changed into a bastion of law and order by all the average citizens turned action heroes by buying a gun. We don't need to wonder whether a well-armed populace has low crime rates. We live right now in a uniquely gun-owning, gun-loving society, and our society does not have a low violent crime rate. Not by any means.
Every statistic that contradicts your preferred worldview is crap? Every one? Really? Does that sound to you like a discriminating intelligence, one ready to confront alternate opinion?
Freddie, in the previous thread, you waved around a bloodily-misconstrued interpretation of a gun statistic and promptly saw it shot full of holes (pardon the expression) and handed back to you on a silver platter, along with countervailing datapoints. There was not a peep out of you in recognition of the limits in your worldview, nor any evidence of a capacity to confront alternate opinion.
As such, your indignance here barely registers on the scale of B-grade comedy, and it definitely doesn't rise to the level of a thoughtful rebuke.
Point of advice: If you don't have the capacity to address this subject rationally, butt out of it. It will save you a fortune, both in blood pressure medication and in general credibility.
Every statistic that contradicts your preferred worldview is crap? Every one?
No, just the one that you quoted, and ones which rely on knowing unknowable numbers.
We live right now in a uniquely gun-owning, gun-loving society, and our society does not have a low violent crime rate. Not by any means.
Yes it does. Across all categories except murder, we do better than Europe. Now, murder is important (to say the least) but it's also important to note that mugging and rape are higher in many European cities than in many American ones.
Aside from which, our most gun-friendly cities (most of them, actually) are safer by many metrics than our most gun-unfriendly ones (NYC, Chicago, DC). Not to mention our friends in lovely "gun-free" Mexico City.
Freddie,
That's an unfair test. Now if you would let us import all the armed folk of (for example) Montana into DC, then I'll take that bet. Guns neither magically cause murder, nor do they magically end the culture that accepts murder as a viable option. And "an armed society is a polite society" is a truism given rational actors who decisions based on the information available to them. If you have no future-based outlook on life or are incapable of understanding how actions have consequences, the existence of armed folk around you will likely have 0 impact on your behavior. Context is everything.
Freddie,
How about a friendly wager. I bet you a dinner that in 2011 the murder rate in DC will be the same or lower than it is now.
An excellent discussion of the statistics of firearm ownership in the home is in this amicus brief filed by the Law Enforcement Firearms Trainers.
http://www.abanet.org/publiced/preview/briefs/pdfs/07-08/07-290_RespondentAmCu17LawEnforceOrgsnew.pdf
An example of a smackdown of the terrible statistical studies done by anti-gun advocates can be found at this amicus, filed by criminologists.
http://www.abanet.org/publiced/preview/briefs/pdfs/07-08/07-290_RespondentAmCuCrimSocSciScholarnew.pdf
Everyone should feel more safe now. Scalia said that the mentally ill and felons should not be allowed to have guns.
Now we just have to make sure that these people do not get their hands on all the guns in the homes and on the persons of those law abiding citizens.
How are we going to do that and what if a law-abiding sane gun toting citizen suddenly goes insane or become a felon?
Anything that will lead to the proliferation of guns in American cannot be a good.
Freddie, did you just blow right past this sentence?
It wasn't totally unreasonable to fear that guns might turn altercations into homicide, but the evidence from states that have moved to shall issue models shows that they didn't.
Am I alone in wanting to hear the story of the prevented mugging? If only to disseminate the novel-sounding key-search anti-mugging strategy?
Or perhaps it's the kind of strategy that loses its efficacy if propagated too widely.
If you've already posted the story somewhere, I'd love a link, otherwise if you wouldn't mind giving the quick version...
I feel like you are being excessively narrow in how you view the casual relationship between gun ownership and violence (as you know longitudinal data != causality). As you say, there is little (zero?) evidence from randomized control trials of the effect of guns on murder rates, suicide, etc. Given this lack of evidence, I think we need to approach this in some theoretical fashion. The relationship between guns and, let's say, homicide is ambiguous as far as I can tell (why else would we see such a debate over Heller?)
Your presentation of the Heller debate seems to be structured the choice in a binary fashions. This is understandable wrt the liberty argument (i.e. right to bear arms is good for liberty). However, when we discuss the socially optimal policy for minimizing homicide, I think that there is still significant uncertainty about the impact of gun ownership.
A question for Megan: what probability do you assign to P(Heller increases murder rate)?
I feel like you are being excessively narrow in how you view the casual relationship between gun ownership and violence (as you know longitudinal data != causality). As you say, there is little (zero?) evidence from randomized control trials of the effect of guns on murder rates, suicide, etc. Given this lack of evidence, I think we need to approach this in some theoretical fashion. The relationship between guns and, let's say, homicide is ambiguous as far as I can tell (why else would we see such a debate over Heller?)
Your presentation of the Heller debate seems to be structured the choice in a binary fashions. This is understandable wrt the liberty argument (i.e. right to bear arms is good for liberty). However, when we discuss the socially optimal policy for minimizing homicide, I think that there is still significant uncertainty about the impact of gun ownership.
A question for Megan: what probability do you assign to P(Heller increases homicide rate)?
"tend to choose poison everywhere, presumably because of some deep fear of disfigurement"
TR: I wonder if it's as much or more a matter of not wanting to leave a mess. For example James Tiptree Jr. shot her ailing husband and then herself. When she realized how messy shooting him was she wrapped a towel, or something, tightly around her head before firing. I've heard of, ot maybe even known, other suicidal women who worried about suicide "leaving a mess" in either a literal or figurative sense.
Another reason I think this is that women will try things that are disfiguring, but not likely to "leave a mess" people will see. For example jumping off a bridge will disfigure a person, but at least in theory the river already deals with carcasses. Your kitchen or bathroom doesn't. (Unless you are an unusual person)
Everyone should feel more safe now. Scalia said that the mentally ill and felons should not be allowed to have Swiss-army knives.
Now we just have to make sure that these people do not get their hands on all the Swiss-army knives in the homes and on the persons of those law abiding citizens.
How are we going to do that and what if a law-abiding sane Swiss-army knife-toting citizen suddenly goes insane or become a felon?
Anything that will lead to the proliferation of Swiss-army knives in American cannot be a good.
Fixed it.
Freddie, you malign me. I specifically said that I think it's possible that guns on net raise violence, though I doubt that this is true. I simply asserted that this particular fact sheet from Brady is crap. You are familiar enough with statistics to know it is crap, if you look harder at it. You've got a massive composition problem which is not well controlled for, set against a dark number that ANY reputable criminologist will tell you is not well estimated.
There are lots of papers that disagree with me, and I take many of them seriously. I do not take fact sheets from interest groups seriously, whether or not they agree with me--when was the last time you saw me posting a fact sheet on taxes from the Club for Growth?
And actually, our society does have a low violent crime rate, except for murder; we're weird that way. Europe started out at half our crime rate in 1970 and has now well surpassed us in every other category, for reasons that are not clear.
The best data we have is the longitudinal concealed carry data; it's the only stuff that avoids the composition errors. And vanishingly few gun crimes have been committed by licensees since the shall-issue movement gained strength.
I am not under the illusion that DC is about to turn into a peaceful paradise. I am willing to hazard a few predictions, and will be happy to admit error if I am proven wrong. Specifically:
1) The violent crime rate in DC will neither increase nor decrease outside of the current volatility bands over the next few years.
2) Very few gun crimes will be committed by newly licensed owners.
3) The DC suicide rate will not appreciably spike beyond what is expected in an economic downturn.
In the nature of a friendly wager, if any of these predictions fails in the two years starting from the gun laws easing, the next time you and I are on the same coast, I will buy you a dinner at the fanciest restaurant you care to name. (Unless the failure is a startling drop in DC's crime rate). I will not even demand reciprocity, though it would be gentlemanly of you to offer to buy me dinner at some swank hotspot if I'm right. You have the better expected value here, since you have three ways to win, and vegan meals just don't run that high. Mark Kleiman, a good liberal, can be the judge of whether any of these rates is surprisingly high.
Marilyn - Not sure I follow the logic there. Some people can't handle dangerous things, therefore dangerous things should be banned for everyone, otherwise they will be too accessible for the people who can't handle it?
Would this apply to cars?
What about other freedoms? Some people misuse free speech, should it be banned? Some people peaceably assemble for nefarious ends, ban assembly too?
I think your argument might be a sensible way to run a pre-school ("See? Now no one can play with the basketball!") but it's a pretty infantilizing way to think about running a country.
"Men like to kill themselves with guns. (This is not culture-specific; women tend to choose poison everywhere, presumably because of some deep fear of disfigurement). Gun suicides tend to be successful. But this does not mean that if you took away the guns, people wouldn't commit suicide. "
Actually, this line of reasoning isn't quite right. People have long argued about whether it's a good idea to put up a safety rail on the Golden Gate bridge to prevent suicides - the argument against it is that even with a barrier, someone who's determined to kill himself will do it some other way. But as this article describes, most people who are stopped from jumping by bystanders (or, indeed, survive the fall) don't actually go on to kill themselves in other ways. Suicide is a combination of depression and impulsivity. Remove the easy way out, and it's true that some people will find a harder way out, but a lot of people won't.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/10/13/031013fa_fact
If any of my detractors would like to send me a personal message, you can email me at rossdouthat@gmail.com
There are lots of suicides in Greek tragedy -- three just in Antigone. With very few exceptions the men stab themselves and the women hang themselves. A French classicist, Nicole Loraux, wrote a book entitled (in the English translation) "Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman".
Had Mugabe ever gone to the awful extreme of giving out a fake email address?
If the statistics are crap on both sides, err in the direction of liberty.
"Guns don't kill people, people kill people". Its a straw-man argument that anti-gun control people have been peddling forever. Even if you are intent on murdering someone with any means at your disposal, the fact remains that guns are, by far, the most lethal instrument of choice. The death rate from stabbings or poison is far far lower than the death rate with guns. Do people kill people? yes. Do guns make it easier to kill people? absolutely.
That isn't to say that gun control laws are effective and preventing gun deaths - thats an entirely different argument altogether.
Mouse mentioned it earlier today, but it was amusing that the FOX stations reran, this evening, The Simpsons episode in which Homer buys a gun.
If minimizing homicide and violent crime is the goal, there is a pretty effective and simple strategy: drive violent recidvism to a tiny percentage of total crime by incarcerating first time violent offenders with exceedingly long sentences. First time offenders rarely choose homicide to start their violently criminal careers, and repeat violent offenders frequently increase the intensity of their violence with each crime. I find it amazing that someone can engage in criminal assault or battery and have it treated as a misdemeanor, and I also find it amazing that someone can engage in what is now considered felonious assault or battery and only serve a short sentence, and sometimes even only receive probation.
Sure glad we're locking people up for distributing vegetable matter!
Seriously. I'm not going to support stats in any way shape or form, but if you're going to whine about them (and the whining may be justified) could you at least keep your own idiocy out of that particular post.
"Taking away the guns might somewhat reduce the number of homicides (it might also increase it; you're more likely to recover from a fatal-looking gunshot wound to the stomach than from having your head banged against the floor 80 times)."
There is good data through Emergency Medical Service organizations about trauma relating to survival rates when one has been either beaten or shot.
I'll taken beaten 7 days a week and twice on Sunday.
Is that true? Can you honestly say that nobody would be dead, had you had a gun in your pocket your entire life? Crime is intent plus opportunity. Having a gun in your pocket is an opportunity to kill without much immediate danger to yourself. Therefore guns are part of what creates armed crimes.
I tend to disbelieve the statistics offered on both sides of the gun debate - if anything, I expect that the correlation between restrictive gun laws and gun crime or suicides is close to zero one way or another. But I don't think anyone has ever compiled these statistics (on either side) in a way that could reasonably control for the many, many variables at play here.
But the argument about suicide specifically being decreased in a significant way would seem to be clearly disproven by the case of Japan, with its famously restrictive gun laws and absurdly high suicide rate (about the highest in the world outside of Eastern Europe and, I think, Sri Lanka). Plus, it's an island, which would theoretically make gun smuggling unusually difficult.
Steve, the specific context was attempted homicide. Most beatings are not homicidally motivated; you've got another composition error.
Guns. Great, I have the right to own one. Glad that argument is over.
I can't understand what the big deal here is. I don't own a gun; I don't want to own a gun. Just one more thing to take care of, be responsible for and train for. I'd rather practice on the golf driving range rather than the shooting range, thank you. It's okay with me if you want to own one, though. I always knock on my neighbor's door when I need a ground hog killed. He's happy to shoot it; I'm happy to see it dead. Win, win for everyone but the ground hog. Ground hogs are terrorists, you know.
I don't want to live in a society where the most prudent policy is to carry a gun and I'm glad I don't.
Is the goal to go to Mall of America and see everyone carrying? Is that some kind of joy for anyone other than gun manufacturers?
If I recall correctly one of the ostensible reasons the second amendment is in the constitution was to ensure that the citizenry had protection against an over reaching government, though some argue the slave owners wanted to make sure they had the tools necessary to keep their slaves in line. Maybe it was both. Now do you really think that owning a handgun is really going to protect you from an over reaching government? Does this mean we have the right to arm ourselves with stingers and tanks?
And we do have an over reaching government and we no longer have much slavery, so I guess the second amendment is ineffective. But what the heck, we've almost done away with habeas, so I'm glad to see we're protecting the constitutional right to own a hand gun.
First things first.
For the purposes of gun control debates, perhaps, the issue of whether more crimes occur than are deterred through deregulation of firearms is the important one, and I agree that estimating the number of crimes that did not happen is problematic at best. To my mind, however, the important statistic from research like Kellermann, et al. is that there were four times as many accidental shootings as legally justifiable/self-defense shootings in homes with firearms. If y'all want the right to have guns in your homes, that's okay. My family will free ride on the tragedies you incur while deterring home invasions more generally.
Any stats on deaths from drive-by beatings or stabbings?
Any stats on deaths from drive-by shootings, performed by non-felons with legally registered firearms, in a open or concealed carry location?
I understand why people compare our national figures on crime to other nation's statistics, but there is some skewing that goes on in doing that.
It would be interesting to see the number of gun homicides listed by zip code, I wonder how many zip codes you would have to delete from the top of the list to get national statistics equal to those of Europe in terms of murder. My thought would be maybe a hundred or less, but I don't know.
People who go to the trouble and expense of getting licensed to own or carry a handgun are not the people you need to worry about.
In every state that there has passed shall issue laws for concealed carry, the cries of "Dodge CIty!" and "Gunfights at traffic accidents" rang out loud and clear. Dire, bloody predictions of mayhem, etc. etc.
Howver, in every state where the laws did pass, there was neither a significant increase or *decrease* in gun violence. Pretty much stayed the same. If you look at the rates of criminality of any form in people with concealed carry permits, its lower than the rate in the general population.
People who are scared of guns, will never feel comfortable with concealed carry in any form, so trying to convince them that it's OK is generally useless. The same is true in this case. People who are vehmently opposed to guns will always assume the worst, and will react accordingly.
Actually, compared to the world today and human history in general most of America does have a low crime rate. And surprisingly enough low crime rates correlate with more firearms ownership.
Does that mean that wide gun ownership causes low crime? No... as any reasonable person admits correlation does not equal causation. But is does prove that widespread gun ownership doesn't cause greater crime.
But Freddie will never admit that because he's not interested in honest debate. He hates and fears weapons, period, and will allow no contrary data to endanger his worldview.
Bonobo,
I don't question your right to free-ride on my gun ownership, but the statistic you mention from Kellerman is questionable at best.
1) Gun accidents are overreported. Many coroners, especially in small towns, are more than willing to label a suicide an "accidental shooting" to protect the family. I don't have any handy statistics to back this up, but I am a lawyer who deals with death certificates routinely and I have confirmed this via personal experience.
2) As Megan pointed out in her original post, not all defensive uses of guns involve actual firing of the gun. In many cases (most?), a homeowner shouting to an intruder "I have a gun and I have called the police" is sufficient to get the intruder to hit the bricks. So even if the Kellerman study is literally correct (which I doubt, see #1), it's comparing apples to oranges.
If you take out the statistics for the murders commited by the ghetto urban thug-gangsta crowd
You'll find that our murder rate is on a par with any country in Europe.. That's a democraphic that the folks in Europe just don't have to deal with .
Harsh,long prison sentences will remedy that problem if our society is really serious about our gun violence
If you take out the statistics for the murders commited by the ghetto urban thug-gangsta crowd
You'll find that our murder rate is on a par with any country in Europe.. That's a democraphic that the folks in Europe just don't have to deal with .
Harsh,long prison sentences will remedy that problem if our society is really serious about our gun violence
I remember John Lott, in meeting at law school, pointing out that the claim you are more likely to be killed by an acquaintance is misleading. He said those studies were based on FBI statistics, and by FBI stats, all it meant is that if you knew the guy at all, not that they had to have any emotional connection. So for instance, you could be the dualing heads of rival gangs, and that counts.
you fix the numbers and you find that we frankly have alot more to fear from relative strangers than our family.
Although i suspect after Kennedy v. LA the murder rate of fathers killing child rapists might soar. :-)
Freddie:
US homicide rates have dropped markedly since the introduction of Three Strikes laws which jail repeat violent offenders for extra long periods. A US Justice Department study in the 90's determined that approx 85% of violent crime was done by a small percentage of recidivists. Locking them up extra long has done wonders.
We could do better by adopting some methods favored by European countries. (a) abandon the full measure of the judicially adopted "exclusionary rule" which lets frees the guilty (while controlling the cops)and which is almost exclusively a US product; (b), dump some stringent aspects of Miranda, also a judicial product; (c), cut illegal immigration--over 20% of the inmates in the LA jails are such-and those are just the ones that a dmit to being illegal.
Why focus on law abiding people who don't do the criems and obviously cannot count on police to do much except trace chalk lines most of the time?
Lots of "non-gun" restrictions would do wonders for the crime rates which were not that high until a lot of these judicial restrictions were adopted and illegal immigration escalated.
I am, FYI not in favor of dropping any of the judicial restrictions--but restricting the right of law abiding people to own guns is not the answer.
PS: I like these articles by MM. I think I have to subscribe to the mag.
"Is the goal to go to Mall of America and see everyone carrying?"
No. The goal is, when some bad guy with ill intent is looking for a victim to smack on the head and rob, he has to stop and consider the increased possibility that the person he chooses may be armed.
Whether acquiring a firearm increases or decreases your family's danger is dependent on your environment. If you lived in a country where no one had committed a violent crime in ten years, then a gun would increase your danger, on the basis of accidental discharge alone. If you live in an area where there are violent crimes in your vicinity every day, then a firearm decreases your danger by giving you some protection. I don't know where the crossover point is, but I do know that individuals should get to make that call as much as possible, not well-meaning interferers who want to improve us.
New England and the North Central states have had the lowest homicide rates for decades (though this is changing as our populations grow more heterogenous, with all you outlanders moving in) despite high rates of gun ownership, especially rural. But people who don't grow up with guns or gun owners have an unadmitted bias against them - they are the wrong sort of people, who like different music, clothing, and sports. Eww.
If anyone reading thinks that an unfair characterization on my part, go over to the lefty sites and read the comments today. The emotional leakage criticising the type of people instead of the ideas is chilling.
Liberalism is a social, not an intellectual exercise.
Dr. Kellermann is a propagandist. Read some of his stuff and see for yourself. Anyone with any scientific or mathematical education at all can see that his voluminous output simply can't pass the laugh test. He's replaced Franklin Zimring - who was at one time the gun-control movement's sole captive academic - as the major source for bogus gun-control statistics.
Most of it has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine and is not online, but the American public library system to get it.
It's really too bad - it wasn't that long ago that the NEJM was useful. Now it's just a propaganda rag.
Here are a few good ones ("good" here meaning "fabulous," as in "a thing of fable"). See bibliographies in each for more entertainment.
Kellermann & Reay, Protection or peril? An analysis of firearm-related deaths in the home.
NEJM, June 12, 1986, vol 314 no 24, 1557-1560
Sloan, Rivara, Reay, Ferris, Path, Kellermann, Firearm Regulations and rates of suicide - A comparison of two metropolitan areas.
NEJM, Feb 8, 1990, vol 322 no 6, 369-373
Sloan, Kellermann, Reay, Feris, Koepsell, Rivara, Rice, Gray, LoGerfo. Handgun regulations, crime, assaults, and homicide - A tale of two cities.
NEJM, Nov 10, 1988, vol 319 no 19, 1256-1262
Kellermann, Rivara, Bushforth, Banton, Reay, Francisco, Locci, Prodzinski, Hackman, Somes. Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home.
NEJM, Oct 7, 1993, vol 329 no 15, 1084-1091
This one is online - http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/329/15/1084
One of the first thing gun control advocates stipulated in the failed 1994 Assault Weapons ban was the outlawing of certain cosmetic features on firearms, including barrel shrouds, flash hiders, and bayonet lugs.
Now, either the gun-grabbers were seriously worried over the threat of drive-by stabbings (hence, outlawing bayonet lugs) accidental burns (outlawing barrel shrouds, which can serve a dual purpose of helping to dissipate heat and/or keep hands from contact with a hot barrel) or temporary blindness (outlawing flash hiders), -OR- they were mostly ignorant, fear-inspired kneejerk reactionaries banning things that looked scary, instead of rationally and intelligently dealing with real functional issues affecting a firearm's lethality, which were never addressed at all in the ban.
I'm guessing the latter, but your mileage and ability to handle uncomfortable realities may vary.
IIRC the death rate from knife attacks is 30% vs 10% for guns under similar circumstances, ie intent.
Looking for cite.
Careful on those bets. My model says that actual killings (by gunshot) in D.C. will increase gradually. The line will be made up of the extension of last month's killings PLUS a gradually increasing number of defensive killings, i.e., those who now have guns and try to stop a crime. And then, the line will slope downward as the bad guys realize there is now a price to be paid for their evil doing. The line will then flatten as the killers pretty much kill each other.
The wild card (thus, the warning on the bets) is the reporting of the extreme leftist media, the WaPo and AP, eg. EVERY shooting death from now on out will be reported as resulting from the Heller decision. It will be as though no one in DC had EVER been shot to death before Heller. And, shooting deaths not involving gang bangers will certainly require editorial comment by the WaPo. Think of it this way; if he had died next week, Vince Foster's death would have been blamed on the Heller decision.
Before you bet, make sure you have a sound way of counting future results; the media and the crooked pols aren't going to help much.
"Now the gun controllers pour out of the woodwork to claim that you're more likely to kill yourself or a family member with a gun than a criminal."
That's only because it's so hard to find a reputable criminal to kill yourself or a family member with.
Maybe Obama can fix this, too. Dare to dream, yes we can, yada yada yada.
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
"you're more likely to kill yourself or a family member with a gun than a criminal."
Anyone have a clue how how to kill yourself with a criminal? Gotta be more difficult than with a gun. Maybe that's why!
"The goal is, when some bad guy with ill intent is looking for a victim to smack on the head and rob, he has to stop and consider the increased possibility that the person he chooses may be armed."
This is called "The Halo Effect", and it's quite real.
"Research conducted by Professors James Wright and Peter Rossi, for a landmark study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, points to the armed citizen as possibly the most effective deterrent to crime in the nation. Wright and Rossi questioned over 1,800 felons serving time in prisons across the nation and found:
· 81% agreed the 'smart criminal' will try to find out if a potential victim is armed.
· 74% felt that burglars avoided occupied dwellings for fear of being shot.
· 80% of 'handgun predators' had encountered armed citizens.
· 40% did not commit a specific crime for fear that the victim was armed.
· 34% of 'handgun predators' were scared off or shot at by armed victims.
· 57% felt that the typical criminal feared being shot by citizens more than he feared being shot by police.
"Professor Kleck estimates that annually 1,500-2,800 felons are legally killed in 'excusable self-defense' or 'justifiable' shootings by civilians, and 8,000-16,000 criminals are wounded. This compares to 300-600 justifiable homicides by police. Yet, in most instances, civilians used a firearm to threaten, apprehend, shoot at a criminal, or to fire a warning shot without injuring anyone."
The Professor Kleck mentioned above is Dr. Gary Kleck, professor of criminology at Florida State University and a prolific researcher and writer on the subject. Please note that those responding to the survey were
" . . . 1,800 felons serving time in prisons across the nation . . . "
I would suggest that this is a statistically significant (and entirely relevant) sample.
From the horses' mouths, as it were. They were essentially telling us what many of us refuse to hear. They fear failure in their victim-selection process more than they fear law enforcement officers. Furthermore, and I think this a quite salient point, even those who choose not to carry, are legally debarred from doing so, or actively oppose concealed carry for non-sworn citizens derive benefit in jurisdictions in which CCW is allowed and permitted from the Halo Effect.
'Berg
If you think about it, the guns that prevent the most crime are probably the ones that are owned by the criminals. Iit became known that drug dealer Jack was at home with a huge stash of cocaine, a huge pile of cash, and nothing but a can of mace to defend himself with, wouldn't the odds of a violent crime approach 1?
Now maybe you don't want to count that crime prevention as a social benefit, but then you can't include it on the social harm side of your ratio when drug dealer Jack's little nephew accidentally shoots someone.
Those of us who have been through the Concealed Carry battle (in my case, Texas) know this phase of the process well. It's called hysteria.
The gun controllers have been through the several initial stages (moral outrage, blame and invective, etc) and have now lost. It was the same in Texas.
Here's what happens next: nothing. No great disaster. No increase in loony-tune-driven gun-related deaths. A couple of folks who could not before have a hand gun will kill some bad guys who previously would have got away with their bad behavior. Now they're going to be dead.
And then the crime rate will drop.
And then the fight for who owns the narrative will begin.
We should all know right now that this has always been about who owned the narrative. In a short time we're going to see the ownership of the narrative essentially ripped from the grasping claws of the gun controllers, by facts on the ground.
This people can't lose often enough. It's what happens naturally to congenitally stupid people.
FWIW, when I was a suicidal teenager I was very interested in devising a death which would be quick and painless. So I went into my parents' room to get my dad's deer rifle. Then I thought about how my death would then be added to the stats of "children dead by guns in the home" so I climbed to the roof in order to throw myself off of it.
By the way, I didn't throw myself off the roof.
Don't let them find out about the death rate for car owners!
"Is the goal to go to Mall of America and see everyone carrying?"
No. The goal is that mass shootings will look like the one at the church in CO (killer shot dead by a concealed carry church goer after killing 2 people) as opposed to the shooting at VT (killer mows down 32 students and finally takes his own life in a gun free zone).
Guns aren't even necessary for psychotic thugs to go on mass killing sprees - look at the knife rampage recently in Japan - a guy stabbed 17 people in 3 minutes with a knife.
A strong man can kill you with anything, including his bare hands. Only a gun allows anyone regardless of gender, height, weight or physical strength, to defend themselves on a fair footing.
Folks, we don't need more guns, we need more Hope and Change and sweetheart real estate deals from fundraising felons.
I'm asking for your votes and your guns. If you won't give them to me, I'll be forced to pry them both from your cold, dead hands.
You have taken issue with the argument that I am more likely to do myself or a family member harm with a handgun in the home than I am to stop an intruder. Your argument fails to account for a couple very important facts:
1) If I had a gun in my hand and someone was threatening me, I honestly don't know if I could bring myself to shoot them. Thus, there is a significant decrease in the likelihood that the gun would serve its intended purposes.
2) I am a clumsy oaf. Your statistics don't properly account the likelihood that I would completely mess things up.
An argument geared toward the overall incidence of these results could obviously produce different results. However, since you geared your argument toward my chances of deterring and intruder versus my chances of harming a family member, I have to disagree.
"However, when we discuss the socially optimal policy for minimizing homicide, I think that there is still significant uncertainty about the impact of gun ownership."
I'll take my own goddamned chances.
What is wrong with you people?
Who on earth are you?
Shorter debunking:
If you look at who kills whom, you're more likely to kill yourself or a family member than a criminal, period.
Sbark, you don't necessarily have to fire the gun to deter a criminal. You don't even have to own a gun to deter a criminal; the criminal just has to believe that you might. ("Do you feel lucky, punk?" is one way to look at it...) It doesn't work every time, certainly, but as Megan points out, there's darn little in the line of evidence about occasions when deterrence without actual gunfire stops a crime. (What can we do, round up every person with a criminal record in, say, Texas and ask him or her how many time s/he passed on an opportunity to commit a violent crime because Texans frequently have guns?)
Some of these comments are absolutely classic illustrations of the adage that liberals don't trust people with guns because they don't trust themselves. BTW, there is a short but cogent rebuttal of the Kellerman "43 to 1" bogosity here:
43 to 1?
If you had lived in Los Angeles during the riots, you know why people need guns. The cops were nowhere to be seen and the only thing between you and the mob was your ability to defend yourself. Criminals are afraid of guns and react accordingly.
And in response to SBark at 4:56, just because you are a self-proclaimed coward and oaf, I am not sure we should all be punished. Go stand behind the women and children. No, wait. I know too many women with more guts than you. Just go hide behind a tree and cower.
One other point. Criminals have guns as well. A criminal is most likely to be killed by another criminal (in drug deals gone bad and whatnot). I don't believe the oft-quoted study filtered them out.
Martin Fackler did some studies of gun shot survival rates. Handguns had an 80% survival rate. His calculation for AK-47 was a 75% survival rate. Shotguns were lowest at a 35% survival rate.
You'll have to excuse my failed attempt at humor.
I'm not actually completely convinced by either side of the argument. Any statistics I have seen have mostly shown that statiticians can't necessarily be trusted. I do think that the 2nd ammendment guarantees the individual right to own a gun and that taking that right away would require a constitutional ammendment. I'd have to see much better evidence of some sort of benefit to agree that such a change is wise.
Want to not be shot? Stay away from bars. Do not get involved with bad guys. Most every illegal shooting I ever had anything to do with in my 22 years as an LEO happened in a bar, in the parking lot of a bar, in the alley behind a bar, the sidewalk in front of the bar...
As for the gun in the home, in most every one of those shootings one, or more, of the people involved had some kind of criminal record.
Gun crime would be a non factor if we would only lock up or execute the bad guys. It ain't the guns, folks, it's the criminals. What is the percentage of murderers with clean records? Ten percent? Five?
I think the issue is probably moot. The "swing" vote in this Supreme Court decision is Anthony Kennedy, and who knows how he will vote the next time the issues comes before the court? The Bill of Rights hangs by what sort of a mood he is in.
And even if the current decision stands, what makes people think municipalities will suddenly start to honor the rule of law? Many of these same places are "sanctuary cities" that openly defy immigration laws. Wanna bet the same thing won't happen with anti-gun laws?
Washington DC Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier claims that the ruling still allows the city to prohibit possession of handguns outside of the home. Not it does not, you pipsqueak - the law was tossed out as unconstitutional. But Lanier and other lawbreakers will continue to get away with it if Federal, state and local authorities do not grow a spine and start to prosecute them for illegally banning handguns.
>Is that true? Can you honestly say that nobody would be dead, had you had a gun in your >pocket your entire life? Crime is intent plus opportunity.
Hmm, I've had a gun on me almost every day for 24 years now. Um. Being an adult helps.
mark van cleve:
Is that true? Can you honestly say that nobody would be dead, had you had a gun in your pocket your entire life?
That is a positively chilling statement. Mark, you should consider therapy if that is how you think of yourself. Do you drive? Do you trust yourself behind the wheel?
Crime is intent plus opportunity. Having a gun in your pocket is an opportunity to kill without much immediate danger to yourself. Therefore guns are part of what creates armed crimes.
Yea and the other part is that whole thing about, you know, being a criminal.
If your rather severe case of projection is even remotely true, you should be able to show that in states that have concealed carry, the crime rates for permit holders has gone up. Opportunity, right?
Just because you have such a low opinion of yourself, don't burden us with it.
Another argument from an economist that boils down to "who are you going to believe? Megan McArdle or your lying eyes?"
Criminals know they can steal,kill, kidnap.Just like a Wolf going after a herd of sheep without a protector (DOG).So,in order for us to defend ourselves from the Wolf we must be able to defend ourself with our protector(GUN). A phone call to the POLICE ain't gonna save your life when the WOLF has your neck.