Friday, July 3, 2009

Dental Office Shooting

MercuryNews.com reports on the domestic violence shooting that took place in the waiting room of a dental clinic in Simi Valley California.

A gunman opened fire inside a busy dental office in an apparent domestic dispute Wednesday, leaving one woman dead and three critically wounded, police said. A fourth person was grazed by a bullet.

The man, wearing shorts, no shirt and with a shaved head, surrendered after barricading himself inside the Family Dental Care office, police Sgt. Karl Becker said. A hostage negotiator coaxed the man out about an hour after the first shots were fired.


This story illustrates a number of our favorite themes. The first thing that struck me is that guns are bad news for women. The number of women killed by their intimate partner in states with lots of guns compared to states with fewer guns tells the tale. I'll have to dig up those statistics. I know some of you will want to see them.

Secondly, of course, it occurred to me that the shooter might very well have been a member of the famous 10% club. I realize he might have been a criminal already, perhaps we'll read about that in the subsequent news reports, but otherwise he was one of the many who hitherto numbered himself among the lawful gun owners of America until that fateful day when he went over to the dark side.

What's your opinion? Do you think the 10% figure is about right for this type of latent criminal or criminal-in-waiting? I suspect it may have to be increased.

I noticed that in the enlightened state of California, instead of sending in the swat team, they let the hostage negotiator do his thing. What do you think of that? It worked this time, but it's a gamble isn't it?

Please leave a comment.

12 comments:

  1. mikeb,

    As your looking for the huge number of females shot by their spouse each year (since there are only about 13,000 gun murders each year and the FBI has stated that 80% of these are gang related, I'm guessing that the number you will find is somewhere less than 1000), be sure to look up the number of times some women prevented another assault on her by her spouse because she had a gun (it doesn't have to result in the death of the perp, although that is preferable).

    If the only thing we look at is the bad that happens because of some object, we could make the case that we need to ban everything. That I believe is the difference between some of our opinions and yours. We don't discount that criminals have and use guns. We have looked at the data and found that law abiding people having guns is a greater good to society than only allowing criminals to have guns (which is the position that gun controllers advocate - not directly, but in effect from the policies they push).

    Let's look at a similar case, Ersland at his pharmacy had a weapon and was able to defend himself. In the end, no innocent person died. The jury will deliberate over the evidence presented (not just a video that doesn't show what the kid was doing on the ground), and decide whether Ersland went too far, but the fact remains, only criminals were killed that day.

    If someone at the Dental Office had a CCW, how might this have turned out different? Compare that to having a restraining order against the guy?

    If it turns out that this was one of your 10% of legal gun owners, what do you propose would have kept him from having guns? If you advocate anything less than confiscation and destruction of all firearms then you are lying to yourself. Even that wouldn't have prevented him from getting a gun.

    If it turns out that he obtained a gun illegally, what do you propose would have worked? Make it more illegaller to steal firearms?

    I theorize that the only way this tragedy could have been prevented would be from a law abiding CCW being in the office at that time and using his sidearm. Is this a guarantee, no, he might be the first one shot. But one gun against one gun is a lot better odds than one gun against no gun.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The first thing that struck me is that guns are bad news for women.

    Exactly, Mike B. It's not murderous boyfriends/husbands who are bad news--it's the implements those men use. Of course, guns are very good news for women who use them to defend their lives. Ah--to hell with those women, right Mike B? As low-down, trashy, gun owning women, their lives are inherently less valuable than those of women who choose voluntary disarmament and defenselessness, anyway.

    What's your opinion? Do you think the 10% figure is about right for this type of latent criminal or criminal-in-waiting? I suspect it may have to be increased.

    And what convinced you of that, Mike--this one incident--which may or may not be an example? Excellent thinking.

    But hell--you're right, Mike--just call it 100% and be done with it. You know you want to. Hell, come to think of it, why limit yourself to 100%--why not call it 200%? That has as much basis in reality as your ridiculous 10%.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "The first thing that struck me is that guns are bad news for women."

    I would love for you to tell that, face to face, to Breda, Tam, Roberta, Squeeky, or one of the other women firearm advocates.

    You'ld then be the one wishing you had a gun for self-defense.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "The first thing that struck me is that guns are bad news for women."

    I will have to re-evaluate my level of civility towards you for making that comment.

    This is filth I would expect from a sexist pig.

    Are my expectations correct?

    ReplyDelete
  5. kaveman, I don't know what you mean. Maybe this is another joke.

    It's the opposite of a sexist pig who would make this statement. It considers that too many women suffer at the hands of their significant others and where there are guns it get worse not better.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "The first thing that struck me is that guns are bad news for women."

    Not always.

    In 1966, the city of Orlando responded to a wave of sexual assaults by offering firearms training classes to women. Rapes dropped by nearly 90% the following year.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Reputo said, "you will find is somewhere less than 1000."

    That would be murdered. I'd like to include all those wounded and threatened too. That would significantly raise the number.

    But, my point was not how many there are, it was the difference in states with many guns compared to states with fewer. It proves two things, women are brutalized by their partners too often and when guns are available, that brutalization takes on a more lethal form.

    ReplyDelete
  8. OK, so put up the statistics of domestic abuse for states with high gun and states with low gun. You alluded to it before but put up no numbers to prove your point. Once again, you have an idea (not necessarily supported by facts) and then use that as the basis for advocating further draconian gun laws. Your correct the less than 1000 is murders and again I ask you what about the times a gun is used to prevent further abuse of women? You just don't care about that.

    Let's assume 2.5 million defensive uses of firearms (based on FBI statistics). We'll then assume that the ratio for defensive domestic abuse is the same as domestic murder (1000/13000) and round down to 5%. That would be 125,000 times guns are used to prevent domestic abuse. Again the Bureau of Justice Statistics report that there are about 400,000 crimes committed with guns each year. We'll assume 10%, hell, 20% are domestic abuse (if we are going to throw around fanciful numbers we might as well make them extra big). That is still 80,000 domestic abuses committed with firearms.

    No one who comments here will argue that 80,000 is acceptable. What we say is that by removing the guns from the other 125,000 you will only increase the number of abuses, because they won't have a viable means to defend themselves. That is why your comment is sexist in the extreme.

    ReplyDelete
  9. "Let's assume 2.5 million defensive uses of firearms (based on FBI statistics)."


    Whaaaat?

    ReplyDelete
  10. What mikeb, only you are allowed to make up statistics and sources? You should know that the 2.5 million comes from Kleck's study (who happened to be anti-gun, until he did his study). Actually trying to figure out the number of defensive gun uses each year is next to impossible. The only hard data is for those who were victims of crime (i.e. who tried to use a firearm to stop the crime). Those who successfully stop a crime from happening and a)never fire the gun or b) don't wound or kill the assailant, are never going to be counted because no crime was committed. It was stopped by the person with the firearm. So every number you see is a guess, Kleck happens to have gone about it in the most scientific way yet to try and capture how many crimes are prevented.

    Do you admit that there are a significant number of defensive gun uses by women which prevents the violence against them?

    ReplyDelete
  11. Reputo, I don't make anything up. In fact I demonstrated in some detail how I arrived at the 10% figure for those lawful gun owners who present a danger.

    You're quoting Prof. Kleck's famous assertion that there are 2.5 million DGUs a year, and saying "let's assume," is going a bit too far.

    I've been promising a post about Kleck and the GGU question. It's coming.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Actually mike, you spouted off a "10% or 30%" figure. Then after you were called on the carpet you backtracked on the 30%. Then after further calling your number BS, you finally tried to justify it after the fact. I believe you made up the number without any thought and only after you were challenged on it did you provide any kind of evidence (which we have shown you is also total BS).

    ReplyDelete