Saturday, December 1, 2012

The Fallacy of "Criminals Get Guns from Other Criminals"

From The Four Major Ways Criminals Get Guns

First we need to identify the ways in which they currently do come into possession of weapons. We'll eliminate one common fallacy right away, that criminals get guns from other criminals. This may be true as far as it goes, but it doesn't help us in our analysis. We're interested in the original source of guns that are used in crime. If, for example, a gun is stolen during a burglary and passed from criminal to criminal before being used in a murder, that gun came from "Theft," which is one of our main categories.

15 comments:

  1. All you pacifists keep telling us not to resist criminals and just give them what they want ... whether it is our money, property, or bodies. Let me guess: we should deny criminals when they want our firearms?

    I don't want criminals to have firearms either. That is why I try to hide or secure them. Nevertheless, criminals excel at stealing hidden and/or secured items and criminals alone are responsible for their actions.

    Bottom line: unarmed citizens don't want to have the means nor skill to deal with an armed criminal so they expect armed citizens to give up their rights in a vane effort to prevent criminals from obtaining weapons. That is wrong on many levels.

    Look, criminals will always obtain weapons and try to get the upper hand for attacks. Citizens should prepare themselves for such an event. Or, if a citizen chooses to take their chances and not be prepared, then quietly accept the consequences of their choice. But any citizen who attacks another citizen's rights is themselves a criminal.

    ReplyDelete
  2. NO, what we are saying is that the criminals get their guns from idiots like you who will keep them safe.

    Except, it seems most of those guns get stolen.

    Now, if you were as intelligent as you would like to believe you are, you would sit back and say--is my gun making me a target for crime? Am I getting a very false sense of security?

    If you look at the real, peer-evaluated studies, you wold see that having a gun DOESN'T really make you safe. See: Branas CC, Richmond TS, Culhane DP, Ten Have TR, Wiebe DJ. Investigating the Link Between Gun Possession and Gun Assault. American Journal of Public Health. November 2009; 99(11): 2034-2040.

    Funny, if you found your self being held at the point of a gun that had been stolen form you.

    So, Criminals will always have a ready source of guns as long as there are idiots like you who have them lying about.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And yet, we've been told repeatedly that you carried guns. Was that to give yourself a sense of danger in your life? This I'm-better-than-you routine that you keep playing doesn't work.

      Delete
    2. Laci Laci Laci,

      You have to pay attention to WHAT the study is measuring. When determining which gunshot victims had been carrying a gun at the time, the study made no accommodation for various risk factors that might correlate to both a increased need to carry a gun as well as an increased risk for assault. Type of job being one and criminal or gang activity being another. I can find nothing in the Methods section indicating that they ruled out gunshot victims who were involved in gang or criminal activity.

      In other words, it is NOT representative of the protective benefits of general citizens carrying a gun for protection - not even close. It is a fallacious attempt to use criminal activities to paint citizens at a higher risk.

      Silly silly.

      Delete
  3. Mikeb, shut off one source, and criminals will get guns from many others. There are 300,000,000 guns in this country. Pass your proposals into law, and all of those become potential black market items. Or guns can be brought across our long and unsecure borders along with the tons of drugs and the thousands of illegal immigrants.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wrong, Greg. Shut off one source and FEWER criminals will get guns.

      Delete
    2. You continue to ignore all the other sources. You just want to make gun ownership more difficult. You don't really care about criminals getting guns. If that's not so, then answer what I said in my comment.

      Delete
    3. Greg, all the other sources are lawful gun owners too. Proper gun control laws would have major impact on theft, straw purchasing and unfit guys owning guns legally. All that could not be covered by importing guns with the cocaine or making them in your basement.

      Delete
    4. Mikeb, at present, there isn't a great demand for guns to be brought across our borders, but with your gun control, there would be such a demand. The parallel to drugs is correct. A demand for a product will be filled.

      You're also still ignoring the hundreds of millions of guns currently in the system without a long paper trail. Those won't just disappear, and they would become much more valuable.

      Delete
  4. But Mike, you want to criminalize being the victim of a gun theft. Therefore stolen guns will always be sourced from other criminals.

    ReplyDelete
  5. By the way, a fallacy is an error in logic. What you claim here is that the facts don't support a given hypothesis. You're wrong about both, but you need to be clear in how you're wrong.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What the hell are you jabbering about now? I'm claiming just what I said, the "criminals get guns from other criminals" is a bullshit diversion from the fact that all guns come from you lawful gun owners and end up with the bad guys in various ways. You are responsible.

      Delete
    2. Pay attention. The term, fallacy, refers to an error in logic. You used the word incorrectly. That was my point in this comment, and you missed it.

      Delete
    3. Oh, I didn't realize you were getting nit picky semantic on me again. Good victory for you, Greg.

      Delete
    4. When words cease to mean anything, logic no longer is possible.

      Delete