Yes, people kill people, but guns make a huge difference in how many people get killed.

This map was produced from a scholarly study by researchers from Boston Children's Hospital and published this March in JAMA Internal Medicine.  It shows a correlation between strong gun laws and firearms fatalities

States with more gun regulations had lower rates of gun deaths, and states with less gun laws had higher gun death rates, both in terms of suicide and homicide.

Direct causation could not be determined, but at the very least, such a strong correlation should make it clear that existing public policy in many states with lax gun laws comes at a high price: more dead mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters and others.

In addition, higher firearm ownership rates were also heavily correlated with higher firearm fatalities, and lower ownership rates were correlated with stronger gun control legislation.

And if you are going to say "Well, that's just one study..." remember that the reason that government funding has been cut for ANYTHING which can provide this type of data has been cut on the basis that it could be used to "promote gun control".

Why cut the research funding if the truth is on your side?

Why Don’t We Know How Many People Are Shot Each Year in America?

Lately, I have been pointing out that the US has a pathetic record for gun violence research and that the debate is pretty much run on bullshit: some of which is pretty absurd on its face.  For example:

Gun rights

To which a sane and sensible retort should be: "why is there a right to own a deadly weapon, especially if the possession of which is more likely to yield adverse results?"

Of course, the usual responses are that they protect homes with a ridiculously high amount of defensive uses, reduce crime, or something else patently bizarre.

But, it goes even deeper than just how effective are firearms for self-protection or do they reduce crime.

It seems that there is no real data as to how many people are shot in the US.  ProPublica points out:

How many Americans have been shot over the past 10 years? No one really knows. We don't even know if the number of people shot annually has gone up or down over that time.

The government's own numbers seem to conflict. One source of data on shooting victims suggests that gun-related violence has been declining for years, while another government estimate actually shows an increase in the number of people who have been shot. Each estimate is based on limited, incomplete data. Not even the FBI tracks the total number of nonfatal gunshot wounds.

"We know how many people die, but not how many are injured and survive," said Dr. Demetrios Demetriades, a Los Angeles trauma surgeon who has been studying nationwide gunshot injury trends.

The problem is that the "pro-gun" freeze on research in this area means that many basic facts about the topic are unknown: some of which really are necessary to have an informed debate on the topic.

Such as: how much does the current lack of regulation of firearms cost society (e.g., the tax payers).  While you may not like it, society bears the cost of this "right".

The Department of Justice has estimates of nonfatal shootings that suggest a similar trend: Its National Crime Victimization Survey shows a decline, from an average of about 22,000 nonfatal shootings in 2002, to roughly 12,000 a year from 2007 to 2011, according to a Department of Justice statistician.

But over the same time period, CDC estimates show that the number of Americans coming to hospitals with nonfatal, violent gun injuries has actually gone up: from an estimated 37,321 nonfatal gunshot injuries in 2002 to 55,544 in 2011. [1]

The FBI also gathers data on gun crime from local police departments, but most departments do not track the number of people who are shot and survive. Instead, shootings are counted as part of the broader category of "aggravated assault," which includes a range of gun-related crimes, from waving a gun at threateningly to actually shooting someone.
There were about 140,000 firearm aggravated assaults nationwide in 2012, according to the FBI's report. How many of those assaults represent someone actually getting shot? There's no way to tell.


The contrast between these  estimates is hard to clear up, since each data source has serious limitations.  One can try to keep track of each shooting as is done in real time by using news sources as is being done by http://gunviolencearchive.org/.

But, each of these methods lacks in accuracy: with some being more accurate than others.

The American Bar Association and medical and public health groups collaborated on an extensive campaign with the message, "what we don't know is killing us". The bottom line is that the topic of firearms regulation in the United States is being debated in ignorance without even the most basic facts being presented.

So, why don't you get back to me when you can provide me with some REAL facts about how bad the gun violence problem is in the US because we can't have a real discussion until that time.

But, I would say you definitely have a problem with gun violence if you don't know the extent of the issue: or even admit it is an issue.



[1] These numbers include only injuries caused by violent assault, not accidents, self-inflicted injuries, or shootings by police.

Yet another reason to fear accurate gun use research.

It seems that there was a study published in the Western Journal of Medicine back in 2001 that came up with these results:

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

Even after many of the firearm victimization reports were excluded, the data show that more survey respondents report having been threatened or intimidated with a gun than having used a gun for self-protection. Most judges rated the reported self-defense gun uses as probably illegal in most cases, even assuming that the respondent had a permit to own and carry the gun and that the respondent had described the event honestly.

Guns are used to threaten and intimidate more often than they are used in self-defense. Most self-reported self-defense gun uses may be illegal and against the interests of society.

Results like that don't look too good for the "pro-gun" side.  That might also be a reason for the "Get Away with Murder" laws since it doesn't look too good to have a legal inquiry into these matters if most cases of "self-defence" may be illegal and against the interests of society.

Much better to say "I wuz actin' in sef-deefence" and end the inquiry in that case.

See:

Are guns used more by US civilians for self-defense or for intimidation? West J Med. Jun 2001; 174(6): 396.

Let's face it, the facts are "anti-gun"--no matter how much you don't want them to be.

As I like to say, gunloon arguments don;t stand any serious scrutiny, which is why I usually try to give citations (unless it's something uncitable like a meme).  In this case, it's a map of the research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA):

The map was part of a scholarly study by researchers from Boston Children's Hospital that was  published this March in JAMA Internal Medicine: The abstract is found here.  The study found that States with more gun regulations had lower rates of gun deaths, and states with less gun laws had higher gun death rates, both in terms of suicide and homicide.While direct causation could not be determined, but at the very least, such a strong correlation should make it clear that existing public policy in many states with lax gun laws comes at a high price in terms of public detriment.

That is not a unique finding as the Center for American Progress released another study in April that pretty much said the same thing, and that showed that 10 states with the weakest gun laws had over twice the rate of gun violence as the 10 states with the strongest gun laws. Also, in 2011, a writer for The Atlantic found, with the help of a colleague, that the presence of gun laws in states had a strong correlation with less gun violence.

Of course, I have pointed out that this anti-gun bias has led to Federal funds being denied to similar research projects because such studies "may be used to advocate or promote gun control".  Why withhold funding if there wasn't such an overwhelming prospect that the facts are against you?

Re: study showing increased theft of cars with NRA stickers?

While most of you might not believe it, I actually have a pretty good reputation for research and knowledge of this topic. In regard to that I received the following question from Baldr Odinson:

Some time ago, I remember seeing a study that showed that cars with NRA or gun stickers were more likely to be robbed.

Do you know about this study or where I can find it?

My Response:

Yeah, I did a couple of google searches and it seems there is a problem, but whether it has anything to do with proudly announcing
 gun ownership is another matter.

There is this statement:
http://www.nssa-nsca.org/index.php/2012/01/nsc-response-to-rumors-about-gun-thefts/

As with anything the gun lobby says, I wouldn't buy it.  My guess is that there is a problem.

But, there is also a problem with "stolen" guns from what I was told when I asked ATF about that topic.  The BATFE agent I worked with at USAO-DC said that most traffickers will say the guns were stolen when asked.

The bottom line is that until there is some real accurate information out there, the debate will never really reflect the reality for either side.

In other words, at this point there is nothing more than anecdotal evidence there may be a problem with having your car broken into if you parade your "pro-gun" stance.  I would also toss in that most "crime guns" are allegedly stolen per the above conversation with BATFE.   Also, there was more proof that guns in the home were detrimental to family safety, which was why federal gun violence research funding was ended.

Personally,I do not believe a firearm is the best choice, or even a realistic option, for any form of defence.

Sorry, but the truth is anti-gun

It seems that yet another review of 15 credible studies on this matter of gun violence has decided it is correct that what most gunloons keep denying: that having a gun in the house is more dangerous for the people who own the gun than anyone else, such as a criminal.  In other words, Having guns in the home triples the risk of suicide and doubles the risk of homicide, researchers reported on Monday.

The bad news:

Andrew Anglemyer and colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, trolled through studies that had already been done to see if they could clarify the association between gun ownership and violent death. They found 14 studies that found the odds of suicide went up by anywhere from 1.5 times to 10-fold if people had access to guns. Experts say this is partly because guns are far deadlier than other suicide methods, such as taking pills, which may not succeed.

Studies looking at homicide found that if people had access to guns, they were two to three times more likely to be killed themselves.

“Firearms cause an estimated 31,000 deaths annually in the United States,” they wrote in their report, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. “Data from the 16-state National Violent Death Reporting System indicate that 51.8 percent of deaths from suicide in 2009 were firearm-related; among homicide victims, 66.5 percent were firearm-related.”

Nevermind, the "pro-gun" forces will just have to make sure reliable studies are not funded.

After all, the truth is "anti-gun".

The best part of this article:

“Obtaining a firearm not only endangers those living in the home but also imposes substantial costs on the community.”

The report can be found here.

The Debate about US gun violence is being done in ignorance.

Wow, that's a pretty powerful title, but it's true.

We can start with Justice Scalia's taking the Second Amendment out of Constitutional and Legal context from it's relationship to USC Article I, Section 8, clause 16 which gives the US Congress the power to arm the militia--ONLY THE US CONGRESS. That was the concern which led up to the Second Amendment as a guarantee that Congress wouldn't neglect the militia in favour of the federal army.  That means the the part about a "Well-regulated militia" is actually quite important to the understanding of the second amendment (come on, I've written about this quite extensively and you would know I am correct if you weren't lazy and actually did some research into the primary sources).

An example of this, Scalia's Heller decision is a classic case of the fallacy of taking something out of context:

The practice of quoting out of context, sometimes referred to as "contextomy", is a logical fallacy and a type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning. While "quote mining" is also used to indicate this, the phrase also has a broader meaning which can instead describe the summarisation of key points (or those someone is opting to focus on replying to) without distorted the meaning. Contextomies are stereotypically intentional, but may also occur accidentally if someone misinterprets the meaning and omits something essential to clarifying it, thinking it non-essential.

But, that isn't really my point, although it does help contribute the US's gun problem.  Which I am sure is also something else which will get the usual "guns save lives" comment.

But, where is the proof that guns actually save lives? Isn't the data showing that guns are a problem?  Wasn't that why the government funding was cut since it had this tendency to contribute to the gun control argument?

That is my point.  The debate is being held in a state of laughable ignorance where people who propose the concept of "gun rights" make statements that more people die from baseball bats than guns.

Jeff Nesbit was the director of public affairs for two prominent federal science agencies who has written an article titled Instead of Studying Gun Violence, Americans Just Argue About It. In this article he points out that the unfortunate truth is this: Scientists simply don't know if gun violence is a public-health epidemic, because hard statistics either don't exist, aren't current, aren't readily available or can't be researched nationally under the usual rules. Until a few months ago, federal science agencies were essentially barred from even studying gun violence within a public-health epidemic framework.

The United States is the only country in the world that treats gun ownership as a fundamental, human right. It's a privilege — not a right — in every other country but America. In countries like Israel and Sweden, you must prove that you have a need to own a gun before you're given a right to own one.
What prompts the public health question, over and over and over, is news coverage of the latest, horrific stories of gun violence at public places like schools. Everyone is appalled, and then forgets — until the next incident.
Right now, Americans are following the awful story of a 12-year-old who took a semi-automatic weapon from home to attack people at a middle school in Nevada — killing a teacher who was heroically trying to stop the violent act. Before that, it was the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. Before that it was Newtown. And before that it was Perry Hall, Aurora, Tucson and Columbine, just to name a few. And tomorrow, it will be somewhere else.
Americans now own more than 300 million guns. The best available estimates in the United States — and they are just statistical estimates — indicate that there are about 30,000 firearms-related deaths in the U.S. each year, and more than twice that number of non-fatal incidents involving firearms. The United States has the highest number of gun-related injuries of any developed country in the world, according to those estimates.
Is that a gun violence epidemic? Can it be viewed and approached like an epidemic? Again, Americans don't know because our federal leaders — and especially the leadership of federal science agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — have largely shied away from studying it in this fashion for fear of the political repercussions.
It's long past the time for at least this part of the public debate regarding gun rights to stop. Long, long past time. There can be no harm in knowing how many people die each year from firearms, where those pockets of gun violence really are, and whether there are ways to mitigate or interrupt the violence in those pockets.

The problem is that you can't have a proper debate if the debate is run in ignorance.