300,000,000+ guns floating around in our society

[Arkady]

This you cannot say either it's just your opinion
"Guns take more lives than they save."

It's an opinion consistent with the best available evidence. See post #275. If you've got a stronger way of examining this question with numbers, I'm all ears. But, for now, each statistically meaningful way I've seen this problem approached has come to the same conclusion.

You don't have to use a gun for it to help keep a bad guy from doing you harm just showing it is enough which would make the 2.5 million a valid figure.

No, very obviously that wouldn't make the 2.5 million figure valid. It's like you didn't even read what I wrote. Here, I'll make it simpler:

(1) The 2.5 million figure is derived from poll results (not, say, extracted from police reports). There's no attempt to control for the tendency gun advocates would have to lie to pollsters in order to drive up the figure.

(2) There's no way of knowing, even among the honest poll responses, how many really kept a bad guy from doing harm.

 

[Arkady]

Damn you're desperate for attention............no "probably" to it.........

You need spend more time at Range than here........you're a blow hard bore w/no Gun Control.

So, can I assume you've spotted your error now? Good. You're welcome. I understand not everyone is good at thinking things through, so I'm glad I was able to break it down in a way that made your error obvious even to you.

 

[freyasman]

Do you see the problem with pretending that 2.5 million figure is the number of times guns were used to save lives? It's merely an extrapolation of the number of self-reported defensive uses. There's absolutely no attempt to test if people are being honest about those uses. For example, it's not calculated based on actual police reports, where there would be repercussions for inventing it. It's just a poll, and thus pro-gun people will have no disincentive when it comes to lying to drive up the figure. And, even if we could guarantee that most were being honest (a big "if"), that doesn't show those uses saved lives.

For example, say you hear someone messing with your front door in the middle of the night, and so you go to the window and brandish a gun, and the person runs away. Did you save a life? Maybe. Probably not. Maybe it was a would-be thief who thought nobody was home and would have run away equally quickly if you'd just shouted that you'd called the cops. Maybe it wasn't a thief at all, but just a confused drunk who was trying to get his key to fit in the wrong door. Maybe it was a paid dog-sitter who'd misunderstood directions and meant to be two doors down letting a dog out for one of your neighbors. But, when a pollster asks you, the homeowner, about a defensive use, you're going to count that, and it'll be counted up with all the other true and invented defensive uses into that 2.5 figure.

You're right that these numbers are subjective and open to dispute; it's almost impossible to prove a negative. But I've been studying this for a long time now and my educated and informed opinion is that 2 and a half million defensive gun uses a year in this country is not only a reasonable estimate, it might be a conservative one.
I don't expect you to believe me, and I know you're going to bust your ass to try and refute it, (because you have an obvious agenda despite your protestations of impartiality) but this is what my real-world practical experience has led me to believe.

 

[Capitalist]

Yes. So are nuclear arms. But neither firearms nor nuclear arms are specifically mentioned in the Constitution.

STILL nobody is talking about personal nukes.

If you keep saying it, I'll keep posting it until you get it.

 

[Constitutional Sheepdog]

It's an opinion consistent with the best available evidence. See post #275. If you've got a stronger way of examining this question with numbers, I'm all ears. But, for now, each statistically meaningful way I've seen this problem approached has come to the same conclusion.



No, very obviously that wouldn't make the 2.5 million figure valid. It's like you didn't even read what I wrote. Here, I'll make it simpler:

(1) The 2.5 million figure is derived from poll results (not, say, extracted from police reports). There's no attempt to control for the tendency gun advocates would have to lie to pollsters in order to drive up the figure.

(2) There's no way of knowing, even among the honest poll responses, how many really kept a bad guy from doing harm.

I don't read what you write because it's pure bull shit.
Yes the 2.5 million is a valid number.

 

[Constitutional Sheepdog]

Yes. So are nuclear arms. But neither firearms nor nuclear arms are specifically mentioned in the Constitution.

that's an ignorant position to take.
Weapons in common use that would maintain an efficient citizen militia supplied by those citizens

 

[marvin martian]

That's how we handle similar issues in other settings. For example, when a new safety feature is mandate for new cars, we don't confiscate the cars that lack it, we just require it to be present in any new ones sold. Similarly, if a toy is determined to be a choking hazard, retails pull them from the shelves until they can be redesigned to eliminate the danger, but government agents don't go door to door collecting those in the hands of individuals.

If it would get them votes from people like you, they would.

 

[marvin martian]

Yes. So are nuclear arms. But neither firearms nor nuclear arms are specifically mentioned in the Constitution.

That's intentional, to protect us from people like you, who seek to deprive others of their rights. The authors of the Bill of Rights were far, far more intelligent than you.

 

[Dawg]

If it would get them votes from people like you, they would.

Liberalism is party of Hitler

 

[Arkady]

You're right that these numbers are subjective and open to dispute; it's almost impossible to prove a negative. But I've been studying this for a long time now and my educated and informed opinion is that 2 and a half million defensive gun uses a year in this country is not only a reasonable estimate, it might be a conservative one.
I don't expect you to believe me, and I know you're going to bust your ass to try and refute it, (because you have an obvious agenda despite your protestations of impartiality) but this is what my real-world practical experience has led me to believe.

I certainly wouldn't rely on my own "real world experience," because that would be a foolishly self-centered way to look at the issue. Just because I, personally, have never used a firearm defensively, nor ever heard of any of my friends, relatives, or acquaintances doing so, doesn't mean that such uses are as exceedingly rare as my personal experience suggests. That could just be a result of quirks about my personal experience (e.g., mostly having lived in relatively low-violent-crime areas). Similarly, it would be foolish for you to judge based on personal experience, because your personal experiences could likewise by atypical, in the opposite direction.

That's why, rather than relying on personal experience (or polls that make no attempt to keep people honest), I'd prefer to try to measure outcomes -- looking at states, cities, households, countries, etc., by gun ownership, controlling for other factors (wealth, population density, etc.) and then seeing whether they have better or worse outcomes based on gun ownership levels. It's that analysis that led me to conclude that firearms saturation is a net negative when it comes to overall violence. That's not a conclusion I wanted to reach. I like guns. I grew up on military stories and action movies, etc., like most boys. One of my favorite toys as a kid was a caps gun. And we loved playing "guns." I'd love it if the data pointed the other way. If nothing else, it would mean being able to have our cake and eat it, too (fewer government controls with better outcomes)..... and who wouldn't want that? But I can distinguish between what I wish were true and what the data is showing.

 

[Arkady]

STILL nobody is talking about personal nukes.

I was. Right in this thread. Did you miss it?

 

[trapdoor]

Massachusetts is in VASTLY better shape than Kansas. You're well over twice as likely to be murdered in Kansas. Texas is even worse. You're over two and a half times as likely to be murdered in Texas.



The FBI UCR compiles the data handed to them by the states. There isn't uniformity between states as to methods. If what you were saying were true, though, as I said, it would be a VERY strong argument in favor of gun control, since it would eliminate the dodge about places like Massachusetts just being less violent because of cultural, demographic, or economic reasons. If they were actually just as violent, yet somehow managed to kill each other vastly less often, that would suggest gun control was incredibly effective.

Immaterial, really, I showed you the violent crime statistics by state. Kansas is not a s bad as Massachusetts, and is only slightly better than Texas. Now you're attempting to cite merely the murder rate, when in the past you've wanted to cite overall violent crime. This appears to be an attempt to cherry pick the numbers that suit your argument. Try it with the Greeks, Apello, not I.

In any case most stats compiled in the United States do not support additional gun control. I remember the hue and cry that concealed carry laws would lead to "the wild west" across the US, and yet the overall violent crime rate (and murder rate) have declined since "shall-issue" concealed carry became the norm.

 

[Arkady]

Weapons in common use that would maintain an efficient citizen militia supplied by those citizens

That sounds like an opening clause, not a fully-formed sentence. What was the point you were trying to make?

 

[Arkady]

Immaterial, really, I showed you the violent crime statistics by state. Kansas is not a s bad as Massachusetts, and is only slightly better than Texas.

OK, let's set aside the fact that we know the non-murder data is not meaningfully comparable across states because of different standards by state. Let's pretend it is comparable. What would that tell us? Well, then, it would tell us that people in Massachusetts are more violent, by nature, than people in Kansas, yet kill each other VASTLY less often. Isn't that exactly the pattern we'd expect to see if gun control were EXTREMELY effective at saving lives?

For example, let's say that in Massachusetts there are three bar fights for every two in Kansas. But in Massachusetts, the bar patrons don't tend to be armed with guns, so those fights just end with bruised knuckles and someone getting some stitches, whereas in Kansas they end with someone bleeding out on the barroom floor. That kind of difference would produce the data pattern you're saying that we see, and would be an overwhelming point in favor of more gun control.

Again, to be clear, I don't think gun control is anywhere near that effective. I think that a large part of the reason people get murdered so less often in Massachusetts is simply because the culture is less violent, leaving gun control nothing but a small contributing factor in the overall good outcome. But if the culture were MORE violent here, such that other things being equal we'd expect more murder, that would suggest gun control manages to accomplish the entirety of the reduction in murders, and then some.

yet the overall violent crime rate (and murder rate) have declined since "shall-issue" concealed carry became the norm.

The violent crime rate has been declining as the percentage of households with guns has declined, just as one would expect to happen.[/QUOTE]

 

[trapdoor]

There are several reality checks we could run on that notion. For example, we could compare murder rates by state and by nation relative to share of households with firearms. If life-saving uses outweighed life-taking uses, we'd expect the high-gun states and nations to be low-murder places. For example, compare Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas (high gun ownership) to Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island (low) and see how murder rates are in each such location. Or, to take more rural examples in each case, compare Alaska, Montana, and West Virginia (high gun ownership) to Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont (lower). Similarly, compare places like Japan (low gun ownership) to places like the US (high).

Or we could look at it on a household-by-household basis, to see if households with guns are more or less likely to have violent deaths. If life-saving uses predominate, we'd expect violent deaths to be less likely in armed households. If life-taking uses do, we'd expect them to be more likely.

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/160/10/929/140858/Guns-in-the-Home-and-Risk-of-a-Violent-Death-in

I don't agree with your methodology. The fact that a crime is prevented doesn't mean the crime was murder. Neither is it particularly indicative that the prevention would lower the crime rate -- an armed robber, for example, might flee the armed target, but seek an unarmed target later in the day. This would not result in a record of the crime prevented, and wouldn't impact the crime rate in that later a crime was committed. Most defensive use of firearms involves the would-be assailant seeing that his would-be victim is armed, and fleeing the scene. This involves no murder either way, but the armed party hasn't lost his wallet.

 

[Bugsy McGurk]

That sounds like an opening clause, not a fully-formed sentence. What was the point you were trying to make?

Covfefe?

;-)

 

[trapdoor]

The violent crime rate has also declined, regardless of the number of armed households, as concealed carry has become more common and the semiauto "assault" rifle become more popular.

 

[freyasman]

I certainly wouldn't rely on my own "real world experience," because that would be a foolishly self-centered way to look at the issue. Just because I, personally, have never used a firearm defensively, nor ever heard of any of my friends, relatives, or acquaintances doing so, doesn't mean that such uses are as exceedingly rare as my personal experience suggests. That could just be a result of quirks about my personal experience (e.g., mostly having lived in relatively low-violent-crime areas). Similarly, it would be foolish for you to judge based on personal experience, because your personal experiences could likewise by atypical, in the opposite direction.

That's why, rather than relying on personal experience (or polls that make no attempt to keep people honest), I'd prefer to try to measure outcomes -- looking at states, cities, households, countries, etc., by gun ownership, controlling for other factors (wealth, population density, etc.) and then seeing whether they have better or worse outcomes based on gun ownership levels. It's that analysis that led me to conclude that firearms saturation is a net negative when it comes to overall violence. That's not a conclusion I wanted to reach. I like guns. I grew up on military stories and action movies, etc., like most boys. One of my favorite toys as a kid was a caps gun. And we loved playing "guns." I'd love it if the data pointed the other way. If nothing else, it would mean being able to have our cake and eat it, too (fewer government controls with better outcomes)..... and who wouldn't want that? But I can distinguish between what I wish were true and what the data is showing.

I don't agree with your conclusion.

 

[freyasman]

Gun ownership is growing, not declining. If you see data that suggests otherwise, it's false.

 

[Arkady]

I don't agree with your methodology. The fact that a crime is prevented doesn't mean the crime was murder

Agreed. But murder is a "marker." Just as, in theory, a defensive use can prevent a non-murder crime that would otherwise have occurred, a gun can also allow for a non-murder crime that would otherwise not have occurred (for example, you're less likely to see convenience stores being held up in places like Japan, where guns are hard enough to come by that you might need to use some sort of non-firearm weapon). It's tough to measure those impacts meaningfully, in either case, because of inconsistencies in data collection. But we can measure murder. That could overestimate the impact of guns in either direction (e.g., over-estimating the overall crime reduction, or over-estimating the overall crime inflation, depending on which way it went), but it should give us a rough sense of which direction it's going.