Friday, January 22, 2016

The pernicious myth of the good guy with a gun.

Huffington Post

But statistically, it's more likely that someone with a concealed carry permit will set out to commit mass murder than prevent it.
Analysis by the Violence Policy Center has found that at least 29 mass shootings since 2007 were carried out by perpetrators with concealed carry permits. That's more than three times the number of concealed permit holders whoprevented mass shootings through their swift action. And it's not as though those heroes (and they are heroes) are truly stemming the tide of non-sensical gun deaths in the U.S.: A Washington Post analysis of Federal Bureau of Investigation and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data found that, for every "justifiable" gun homicide in 2012, there were 34 criminal gun homicides, 78 gun suicides, and at least two accidental gun deaths. Similarly, a 2014 study from the University of California–San Francisco found that people who owned a gun were three times as likely to kill themselves as non-firearm owners; by comparison, the annual per capita risk of death during a home invasion is 0.0000002 percent. Hell,even toddlers killed more people than terrorists in 2015. Guns are used far more often for killing than for self-defense, despite the fact that some 63 percent of Americans think guns make them safer.
A well-armed citizenry rarely makes an impact on mass shootings. According to 2014 FBI data, only seven of the 160 of the mass shootings that took place between 2000 and 2013 ended because of some would-be Rambo came to the rescue, according to the Huffington Post—but there was only one true exception (emphasis ours):
More than half (56 percent) were terminated by the shooter who either took his or her own life, simply stopped shooting or fled the scene. Another 26 percent ended in the traditional Hollywood-like fashion with the shooter and law enforcement personnel exchanging gunfire and in nearly all of those situations the shooter ended up either wounded or dead. In 13 percent of the shooting situations, the shooter was successfully disarmed and restrained by unarmed civilians, and in 3 percent of the incidents the shooter was confronted by armed civilians, of whom four were on-duty security guards and one person was just your average "good guy" who happened to be carrying a gun.

2 comments:

  1. "Analysis by the Violence Policy Center has found that at least 29 mass shootings since 2007 were carried out by perpetrators with concealed carry permits. That's more than three times the number of concealed permit holders whoprevented mass shootings through their swift action."

    Of course, that would mean that non-permit holders are responsible for all of the other mass shootings. This guy should reconsider using data from the VPC if he hopes to maintain credibility.
    I'm going to leave the other crazy comparisons for everyone else to have fun with.

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  2. Oh boy.

    What is it with gun control people and the seeming aversion they have to elementary level math?

    …the annual per capita risk of death during a home invasion is 0.0000002 percent.

    So 1 in 500 million- or roughly one person every other year or so? Really? I’m not so sure about your math skills there, Mr. Jered Keller. I don’t know what year’s data he was looking at, but according to the FBI in 2013 there were 94 murders associated with a burglary in 2013, or 0.00003% (150 times what he said). He probably didn’t think to multiple by 100 when using the word “percent” because being accurate isn’t important to people who write propaganda for gun control (or for their editors).

    https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_10_murder_circumstances_by_relationship_2013.xls

    You’ll also notice that there are over seven times as many murders that happen from robbery than from burglary, which would be more associated with crimes outside of the home. You would think this would be relevant to the discussion since this whole hit piece is against concealed carry- but again, that would imply some degree of integrity from the author. Still to rare, you say? How come you gun control people think being murdered is the only thing worth protecting yourself from? The only way to know you’ll be murdered is to wait to die. The whole point of self-defense is to not have to find out, and to prevent bodily harm. You guys pretend to be such pacifists, but I bet none of you would take a beating out of sympathy for your poor downtrodden assailant. You just want pacifism for other people. Anyway, there are 266,000 incidents of violence to family members that occur during a home invasion (and that is not counting the much broader violence outside the home which concealed carry is for). Additionally, 24,000 of those resulted in serious injury.

    An estimated 3.7 million household burglaries occurred each
    year on average from 2003 to 2007. In about 28% of these
    burglaries, a household member was present during the burglary.
    In 7% of all household burglaries, a household member
    experienced some form of violent victimization (figure 1).

    […]

    A household member was present in roughly 1 million burglaries
    and became victims of violent crimes in 266,560 burglaries.

    […]

    Serious injury accounted for 9% and minor injury accounted for
    36% of injuries sustained by household members who were home
    and experienced violence during a completed burglary.


    http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/vdhb.txt

    And what about rape? According to my first link, there were only 20 murders that occurred during the commission of a rape in 2013. So according to this Huffington anti-self-defense piece, it’s paranoid for people to protect themselves against the 100,000+ rapes per year because only 0.000006% of them die. What jerks.

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