The Gun Story You Did Not See This Week

by hillbilly 50 Replies latest jw friends

beksbks

Burn,
Sometimes in helping others we help ourselves the most.
Clever devil.
Pioneer Spit...oh, i mean Spirit

I carry a gun, all the time.
Fact: When you need help, when your life is threatened, when you've been knocked senseless by a rapist, when someone 'invades' your home while you're watching tv and your kids are playing on the floor, help will come, yes, they will come.
After the fact.
BurnTheShips

I carry a gun, all the time.
Now that's sexy.
HappyDad

Great article Hillbilly, Thanks!
to the person who wrote.............
Oh, and my point would be, that we have to come up with a different way of looking at things. We need to revamp our lifestyle and the parameters of our behavior.
Get real! Would you rather cower and let a deranged psycho kill you and others? Thanks but no thanks. I'd rather be shot..not cowering......but actively trying to stop the psycho with my own concealed weapon. Bleeding heart liberals will never learn.......not even when one of their own loved ones are gunned down needlessly.
Hillbilly and others.......maybe we should start posting "The Armed Citizen" from the NRA publications to show that proper gun ownership saves lives.
HappyDad (proud to be a licensed concealed carrrier)
SirNose586

Where schools once sponsored competitive rifle teams there are now “zero-tolerance” policies that have gone beyond ludicrous. The parents of a student in Lancaster County are suing their son’s school because school officials felt the the T-shirt the boy was wearing, a gift from his uncle in the Army, had a gun on it. In Arizona, a 13-year-old was suspended from school for drawing a picture that resembled a gun, which, school officials said, was “absolutely considered a threat.” Another student was threatened with a three-day suspension after a teacher noticed the pen the student was using bore the logo of Glock firearms. That suspension was overturned when the boy’s father, a law-enforcement official who had given him the pen, suggested that school officials might re-think their decision. A student at Hamline University, after raising a question about the school’s ban on concealed weapons, was suspended and ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation.
Wow, this is really getting out of control. It's tough for the school administration to just trust that the kid is not some sort of budding school-shooter. These examples are somewhat extreme; I feel they could've been handled in a less alarmist way.

beksbks

http://science-community.sciam.com/blog-entry/Sciam-Observations/Firearms-Kill-People-Home-Save/300004368 Do Firearms Kill More People (in the home) Than They Save (in public places)? Apr 19, 2007

I've heard this before (the title of this blog) and even repeated it in conversation. I'm opening up a thread here to debate its validity, from a scientific, data-driven perspective. In other words, can this oft-repeated notion be refuted, and if not, what does that mean for gun control policy, if anything?

To wit:

The Virginia Tech shootings have re-kindled the debate over gun control in the media (and on this blog). So here are some statistics:

Of 626 shootings in or around a residence in three U.S. cities, [this study] revealed that, for every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides (Kellermann et al, 1998).

And yet the Brady Bill, which "established a nationwide requirement that licensed firearms dealers observe a waiting period and initiate a background check for handgun sales...has not been associated with overall reductions in homicide rate or suicide rate.(Ludwig and Cook, 2000)."

On the other, other hand:

There is a positive correlation between homicide rates and availability of guns in developed nations. (Hemenway and Miller, 2000)

So my question is, how do we reconcile this data? There are many in the pro-gun camp who argue that if only someone present had had a gun, the carnage would not have been as bad. Others argue that gun control wouldn't have stopped this massacre in the first place.

But isn't the real issue how many people are killed by guns, period? In other words, while our primate brains automatically focus on dramatic and terrifying events such as this one, if our ultimate goal is the preservation of life, shouldn't we be talking about the overall statistics about guns rather than focusing on whether or not more lax or more restrictive gun control would have averted this disaster?

In order to address this question, others have to be addressed: would gun control mean fewer deaths? Of what kind? If it's true that we are more likely to use any given gun on ourselves or a family member than against an intruder, what's the justification for keeping them around? Is our desire for one kind of psychological security ("I feel better when I walk the streets at night") actually a Faustian bargain?

I'm asking because I'd honestly like to have a data-driven debate on the subject--it's been a couple of days now, and tempers are (hopefully) cooling--what does the (in this case observational) science say about this subject?

>> Statistics, Gun Control Issues, and Safety | The Internet Pathology Laboratory for Medical Education

UPDATE:

Here's a more current study.

States With Higher Levels of Gun Ownership Have Higher Homicide Rates (from a study conducted by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health)

Analyses that controlled for several measures of resource deprivation, urbanization, aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, and alcohol consumption found that states with higher rates of household firearm ownership had significantly higher homicide victimization rates for children, and for women and men. In these analyses, states within the highest quartile of firearm prevalence had firearm homicide rates 114% higher than states within the lowest quartile of firearm prevalence. Overall homicide rates were 60% higher.
The association between firearm prevalence and homicide was driven by gun-related homicide rates; non-gun-related homicide rates were not significantly associated with rates of firearm ownership.

(In other words, it's not merely that states with more guns have people who kill each other more often by any available means--rather this study suggests that more guns = more homicide, independent of the overall propensity of that state's citizens to kill.)

UPDATE 2:

Commenter N. Johnson points out this study:

Hahn, R., O. Bilukha, A. Crosby, M. Fullilove, A. Liberman, E. Moscicki, S. Snyder, F. Tuma, P. Briss, Firearms laws and the reduction of violence: A systematic review, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 28, Issue 2, Pages 40-71, 2005.

Which, he notes, concludes that "... based on identified studies of the range of firearms laws reviewed here, the evidence is insufficient to determine whether U.S. firearms laws affect violence."

However, if you read the study, it says that the reason the evidence is insufficient to draw any conclusions about the effects of gun control laws is that the studies conducted on the subject that were reviewed are of poor quality or simply don't address the questions the authors of this report sought to answer. As the authors put it:

"Further research with longer follow-up periods is needed to assess effects of CAP laws on violence, unintentional injury, and other outcomes of interest."

(I wonder, then, if the authors of this study would agree or disagree that the subsequent Harvard study (cited in the first Update, above) supersedes their meta-analysis.)

journey-on

MORE STATISTICS:
Doctors:
(A) The number of doctors in the U.S. Is 700,000
(B) Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year are 120,000
(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 17.14%
Statistics courtesy of the U.S. Dept. Of Health & Human Services
Guns:
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. Is 80,000,000
(yes that's 80million)
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year,
All age groups, is 1,500
(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is
0.001875% Statistics courtesy of the FBI
So statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
Remember, guns don't kill people, doctors do.
FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR
Please alert your friends to this alarming threat.
We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!
Out of concern for the public at large, I have withheld statistics on lawyers for fear the shock would cause people to panic and seek medical attention.
(This was posted with a little bit of tongue in cheek, but think about it.)
beksbks

Oh yea, I've gotten that mass email too.
sooner7nc

Is this country anything like it was in those salad days of the past? Are moms at home baking cookies and waving from the kitchen window while Johnny shoots targets in the back yard? Does dad come home from the factory with an empty lunchbox and a smile on his face, throwing it down to eagerly help Johnny with said targets? Does all of Maple street leave the doors unlocked? Do Johnny and Suzie shyly think about getting to first base? Is Officer Krupke on the beat, making sure everyone is "OK"?
This country is nothing like it was in the past, and that is precisely why keeping and bearing arms is more important now than ever. The "studies" that all anti-gunners seem to be able to pull out of their asses at the drop of a hat are interesting pieces of academia, nothing more.
By the way, tell Suzie that Johnny isn't nicknamed "3 fingers" for nothing.
sooner7nc, of the Independent class
Forscher

The study cited by beksbks bucks the majority of studies on the same issue.
It is a limited study rather than the "meta-analysis" it is reported to be. And I suspect the three cities used in the study were selected specifically to achieve the result reported. Much more extensive and authoritative was the analysis conducted by Dr. Gary Kleck at Florida state university. And he came to quite different conclusions. While many critics claim that his finding of number of personal defense uses of handguns is over stated, the most authoritative critics still come up with numbers of such usage high enough to call the study mentioned into serious question. Here is an interesting statement from Dr. Marvin Wolfgang, another criminologist of significant stature concerning Dr. Kleck's study:
I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country. If I were Mustapha Mond of Brave New World, I would eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police. I hate guns--ugly, nasty instruments designed to kill people. ...
What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator... I have to admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and this research. ...
Can it be true that about two million instances occur each year in which a gun was used as a defensive measure against crime? It is hard to believe. Yet, it is hard to challenge the data collected. We do not have contrary evidence. The National Crime Victim Survey does not directly contravene this latest survey, nor do the Mauser and Hart studies. ...
Nevertheless, the methodological soundness of the current Kleck and Gertz study is clear. I cannot further debate it. ...
The Kleck and Gertz study impresses me for the caution the authors exercise and the elaborate nuances they examine methodologically. I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology. They have tried earnestly to meet all objections in advance and have done exceedingly well.,/p>
--- Marvin E. Wofgang, "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 1995, Vol. 86 No. 1.)
I could cite other studies which agree with Kleck in the main, though they tink the real figure is more like half of the figure Kleck came up with. Still, Klreck remains the most extensive work done and most studies on the issue, at least by criminologists and other credentialed social scientists, tend to support his conclusions rather than the study cited.
There is a body of research done by medical doctors and published extensively in medical journals which purport to debunk Kleck and others. But when they are closely examined it becomes clear that their methodologies are seriously flawed and their work doesn't even come up to minimum standards for that kind of research and reporting.
By the way, another gun defense missed was the fact that the Massacre at the Jerusalem Yeshivah a couple of weeks ago was stopped by an armed student who shot the gunman dead. but for that the toll would've been much higher. Something to think about.
Forscher

The Gun Story You Did Not See This Week

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