Results show that regardless of storage practice, type of gun, or number of firearms in the home, having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and firearm suicide in the home.
Results show that regardless of storage practice, type of gun, or number of firearms in the home, having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and firearm suicide in the home.
In other news, owning a car is associated with a greater risk of dying in a car accident.
ReplyDeleteI love those pictures you come up with.
ReplyDeleteThe English don't have to worry about gun trumpet playing anymore.
ReplyDeleteThe key phrase from the summary:
ReplyDelete"was associated with"
I wonder what the association is between illegal activity in a home (drugs, prostitution, thieves, etc.) related to deaths in the home. Does anyone have that data?
I wonder how much of the associations found in that study occurred in what was (before the death) nice, law-abiding homes.
And of course, how does this compare with guns used in self defense to ward off home invasions and assaults in the home.
Unfortunately, such information may throw a wrench in the whole "guns are bad" belief, so maybe we'd better not examine that sort of thing.
...Orygunner...
Orygunner, There are a lot of these studies. Some of those factors you mention are difficult to quantify, so in order to be fair, let's halve the results and halve them again. What's left is still a clear indication that guns don't help they hurt.
ReplyDelete@Mikeb,
ReplyDeleteFirearms can be used to hurt, OR to help.
The right to keep and bear arms can be abused, or exercised responsibly.
The fact of the matter is that most firearms in the US are used responsibly. It's hard to logically and fairly look at all the data and believe otherwise.
There's about 270 million firearms in the US, and roughly 300,000 reported firearm-related crimes. that's about 1 crime for every 10 firearms owned
Advantage - responsible.
There were 7 Billion rounds of ammunition purchased in 2008 (12 billion in 2009), and only about 100,000 intentional and unintentional gunshot wounds (going by memory, let me know if that's incorrect).
Vast advantage goes to firearms used (and shots fired) for good, safe purposes.
Unfortunately there's no recent reports, but many studies have shown defensive gun uses to be at least 770,000 and up into the millions, yet current reported firearm-related violent crime is under 400,000 per year.
Advantage, again, to GOOD uses of firearms.
So, not only is your statement "guns don't help" false, but you can't even honestly claim they hurt more than they help, or that they're used for evil more than they are for good. There's simply no evidence to back up your suggestion - when you examine ALL the evidence rather than only the skewed and biased reports, that's the only honest conclusion, don't you think?
...Orygunner...
Those are good points, but misleading.
ReplyDelete1. "1 crime for every 10 firearms owned" needs to be qualified with the words, "every year." Plus as you said yourself these would be the REPORTED crimes only.
2. the billions of bullets bought vs. the 100,000 or so injuries doesn't work because even the cold-blooded murderer doesn't kill with every single bullet he fires. So among those billions of bullets supposedly used for good purposes, you've got some percentage that aren't.
3. 700,000 dgus vs. 400,000 gun crime incidents are both debatable numbers. Some reports put the dgu number much lower. That makes sense to me since they would include all those unnecessary uses of the gun which are later dressed up as defensive. Plus, to get up to 700,000 or into the millions like John Lott does, you include brandishings which scare off the bad guy, but you don't include the aggressive and threatening brandishings in the figures of gun crime because they go largely unreported.
All this is beside the point anyway. As described in my Famous 10% post, the percentage of trouble we're having from so-called legitimate gun owners is too high. I do indeed feel that the great majority should be inconvenienced because of the "relatively small" minority.