The FAST Approaching Gun Ban

[hippifried]

That's just like a man. All speed and no foreplay.

What's foreplay?

[loren]

Guns, in the hands of civilians, are hardly ever used for protection.

Umm no. According to the Census Bureau firearms are used for self-defense OVER 100,000 times per year. While Gary Kleck, a criminologist, says the nuber is closer to 2.5 million.

And as for your "phallic symbols", that is pure bullshit. I carry my pistol for my personal protection. I usually have it with me every time I leave my house. In my past I've had several bad relationships and I like having the security of mind to know that I don't have to rely on someone else for protection.

One day, in 2010, I didn't have my pistol. That day, I was raped. He was eventually caught and brought to "justice". Because his family had a slime-ball lawyer got a slap on the wrist and served less than a year in prison. If I would've had my pistol, he wouldn't have raped me.

[broncofan]

Loren,
It is great to be able to protect yourself in times of need. But your anecdote tells us that even owning a gun is not enough. You need to have it on you every time you could get into trouble. We're all vulnerable at some point in our lives, guns or not.

In the abstract, you could have prevented the rape. But in your attempt to prevent other crimes, such as robbery, or jaywalking, owning a gun could also lead to an innocent person's untimely death. I don't know anyone who has saved their own life with a gun but I have known three people involved in gun tragedies. One guy's kid killed himself by accident not suicide. One guy was shot by his friend who thought his gun was not loaded (he is a vegetable; not dead). And one guy pulled the trigger of his shotgun with his toe.

Perhaps I just have crossed paths with an accident prone and suicidal group. I have not heard one anecdote of someone hearing someone creeping around their house and thank goodness they had a gun because it averted a disaster. Talk about the statistical anomaly that would catch everyone's attention (think shark attacks). Can you imagine if one day a gun averted a public disaster? The gun lobbies would latch on to this anomaly like it were the only relevant thing in the universe.

[trish]

There are a lot of tall tales told by gun owners, but not nearly as many substantiated accounts of guns used in self-defense. Just to highlight the willingness of some so-called "researchers" to inflate the numbers note that 100,000 is only 4% of 2.5 million. Gary Kleck's theoretical figure is 2.5 million. Your quote for the Census Bureau's measured figure (for which you provided no link) is 100,000. I'd say the theory failed to remain within a modest interval of error. But don't take my word for it. The National Research Council of the National Academies of Science disagrees.

Here's a quote from the link that follows.

The pro-gun crowd sure wants you to think so, promoting studies over the years claiming guns are used defensively thousands of times per day and that broader gun ownership makes communities safer, and repeating anecdotes in which guns are reported to have thwarted crimes.
A favorite study of these advocates is 1995’s “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun” (Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Fall/95), byGary Kleck and Marc Gertz, which found that guns were used defensively about 2.5 million times annually in the U.S.—or almost 7,000 times a day.
Researcher John Lott conducted another study favored by gun advocates, published in his 1998 book More Guns, Less Crime, which claimed that increasing numbers of concealed carry permits in a given area are associated with decreasing crime rates.
Both studies have been convincingly challenged in the scientific community. In a 2004 meta-study of gun research, the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science found that Lott’s claims were not supported by his data. And when Lott misrepresented the report (New York Post, 12/29/04), the NAS published a letter (Deltoid, 1/26/05) listing his distor-tions. Shooting Down the More Guns Less Crime Hypothesis (11/02), a paper pub-lished by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found crime actually increased in states and locales where concealed carry laws had been adopted.
The Harvard School of Public Health’s David Hemenway took on Kleck in Survey Research and Self Defense Gun Use: An Explanation of Extreme Overestimates (Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 1997), demonstrating that because of the nature of the data, Kleck’s self-reported phone survey finding 2.5 million defensive uses of guns per year was wildly exaggerated. For example, Kleck says guns were used to defend against 845,000 burglaries in 1992, a year in which the National Crime Victimization Survey says there were fewer than 6 million burglaries.
Hemenway put together facts from the well-regarded NCVS—that someone was known to be home in just 22 percent of burglaries (1.3 million), and that fewer than half of U.S. households have firearms—and pointed out that Kleck “asks us to believe that burglary victims in gun-owning households use their guns in self-defense more than 100 percent of the time.”
Hemenway noted that respondents may also have a distorted view of “self-defense”—e.g., mistakenly thinking they are legally defending themselves when they draw a gun during a minor altercation. As the Harvard researcher and his co-authors in another study pointed out (Injury Prevention, 12/00): “Guns are used to threaten and intimidate far more often than they are used in self-defense. Most self-reported self-defense gun uses may well be illegal and against the interests of society.”
A National Crime Victimization Survey report, controlling for many of the methodological problems in Kleck, supported Hemenway, finding 65,000 defensive gun uses per year (NCVS Report, 1997). Current NCVS estimates are in the 100,000 range.

http://fair.org/slider/the-self-defe...ion/#gsc.tab=0

[broncofan]

"Hemenway noted that respondents may also have a distorted view of “self-defense”—e.g., mistakenly thinking they are legally defending themselves when they draw a gun during a minor altercation."

Great article Trish. This line in particular made me chuckle because I think it exemplifies how demented some gun advocates are.

Who here doesn't read this sentence and have a picture conjured up in their head of some dolt hastily drawing a gun and pretending he saved everyone's life from a situation he created? Thank goodness our hero saved us from a malicious homeless man cleaning windshields.

[redsweater]

There's trouble on both ends of this argument. Here's a list of things everyone should be able to own if they want.

- .22 pistol
- hunting rifle
- .45 handgun
- semi-automatic rifle
- automatic rifle
- grenade launcher
- VX nerve agent
- nuclear warhead

If at any point on this list, you thought "wait a minute", then you agree that the government should control weapons. No one should be talking about whether the government has the right or the need to control weapons. The argument is, and must remain, about where and how to draw the line.


Conversely, the FBI estimates that there are 200 million guns, and there are about 32,000 total gun deaths per year, in the US. Simple division shows that you'd need to take away 6250 guns to possibly save 1 life per year, and since about 2/3 of those deaths are from suicide, that's being really generous.

Here's a "hugely successful" gun buyback, where 100k was spent, and 600 guns were brought in.

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/201...in-oakland-sf/

I think it's extremely safe to say that there are much, much more cost-effective ways of saving lives than "getting guns off the streets".

[trish]

There's trouble on both ends of this argument. Here's a list of things everyone should be able to own if they want.

- .22 pistol
- hunting rifle
- .45 handgun
- semi-automatic rifle
- automatic rifle
- grenade launcher
- VX nerve agent
- nuclear warhead

If at any point on this list, you thought "wait a minute", then you agree that the government should control weapons. No one should be talking about whether the government has the right or the need to control weapons. The argument is, and must remain, about where and how to draw the line.

That's one part of the argument. Other issues include secret carry, background checks etc. But yes, anyone who draws that line at nuclear warheads already grants the government the right to regulate weaponry. Personally I would like to see the line drawn at semi-automatic weapons. But I grant my representatives the right to negotiate and compromise, something tea-baggers do not allow their own representatives.

I think it's extremely safe to say that there are much, much more cost-effective ways of saving lives than "getting guns off the streets".

Agreed. But not putting more guns on the streets should be part of any rational regulatory agreement.

[broncofan]

I think it's extremely safe to say that there are much, much more cost-effective ways of saving lives than "getting guns off the streets".

You're right that it's safe to say. Effectiveness of regulation is an important consideration. It's reasonable to start with the measures that save the most lives. Once they're implemented there's no reason to stop there?

The problem is that decision-making is not perfectly top down. Each agency has its own mandate and so for instance the department of transportation cannot fail to regulate car safety because asbestos is very dangerous. We can't use the fact that money cannot be allocated in a perfectly efficient way as an excuse for dragging our feet. As a theoretical matter, regulate that which is most dangerous and has the least utility first. As a practical matter, going down the list we do not run out of money by the time we get to guns.

I can think of many things that ARE regulated that save fewer lives than getting guns off the streets would. I am glad you concede there would be a net reduction in deaths from gun control measures though.

[redsweater]

I am glad you concede there would be a net reduction in deaths from gun control measures though.

I didn't say that, in fact. I was careful to use words like "possibly", to show that if you do believe that a net reduction would be the result, then there are still much more effective ways to spend the $1 million that would result in 1 life saved under the absolute most optimistic conditions. The truth is that I don't know what the real result would be, and neither does anyone else. The purpose of this math problem was to show boundaries to check your expectations against, not to suggest what's really going to happen.

[broncofan]

I didn't say that, in fact. I was careful to use words like "possibly", to show that if you do believe that a net reduction would be the result, then there are still much more effective ways to spend the $1 million that would result in 1 life saved under the absolute most optimistic conditions. The truth is that I don't know what the real result would be, and neither does anyone else. The purpose of this math problem was to show boundaries to check your expectations against, not to suggest what's really going to happen.

I understand. Look, though I don't agree with some parts of your previous post I thought it was a fairly reasonable presentation of some of the issues to consider.

If we discussed this long enough and pored over enough data I think we could shed some light on whether getting rid of certain guns would save lives (I think it would). It's empirically not testable but we could look at some of the factors. The real problem with precise numbers is that you don't know how many of the homicides and suicides and accidents committed with guns would be committed with less efficient means. Some amount less, but then this would still need to be netted against the lives saved by guns, which is some positive number though I think overstated.

Assuming that lives would be saved: I don't think it's that cumbersome a thing to regulate. As you say it's a matter of line drawing and not implementing a complete ban. But I don't think that the fact that there are other things to regulate means that it's too unwieldy to regulate guns.