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While I agree that tighter gun laws might have hindered the shooter, if he had really wanted to do it he would have gotten the gun(s) anyway. Gun laws do not stop the people from breaking the law. Rape is illegal but it happens all the time, and when it does there is no call for tighter rape laws because that won’t do anything to prevent them. If you can’t get it legally you can sure as hell find it illegally in this country. The same issue was raised with the Columbine shooting, but what no one wanted to acknowledge is that all the laws that COULD have prevented it were already on the books. Criminals, by definition, break the law. Tighter gun laws do not necessarily mean lower homicide rates, especially when each state has different laws. I live in New York City where it is illegal to own a gun without a permit and the only way to get a permit is to be in law enforcement/security/etc. However, one can easily drive to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia etc and pick one up even with a NYS ID. Theres an excellent saying, “If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have ’em” which is the case in most areas. However, if people were a little more sensible when it came to securing their guns, there would be much fewer cases of 6 year olds taking daddy’s gun to school and shooting a classmate. Guns are only as dangerous as the people who use them.
I just briefly skimmed Hahn et. al, and their general conclusion was that “… based on identified studies of the range of firearms laws reviewed here, the evidence is insufficient to determine whether U.S. firearms laws affect violence.”
Hahn, R., O. Bilukha, A. Crosby, M. Fullilove, A. Liberman, E. Moscicki, S. Snyder, F. Tuma, P. Briss, Firearms laws and the reduction of violence: A systematic review, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 28, Issue 2, Pages 40-71, 2005.
Doesn’t really matter, free societies always pay a high price for freedom. Firearm ownership is a constitutional right, no matter how many skewed studies you post. I think many have realized that micro analysis and somewhat stretchy logical leaps aside, violence is a cultural issue rather than a which implement issue.
The data presented in this article and almost all other data I have seen verify the logical intuition that more guns = more killings. Such data proves that gun control dramatically reduces instances of violence. Although this is an extreme case of a very disturbed young man, obviously, if it had not been so easy for him to acquire the weapons then this might have been avoided or many lives may have been spared.
The proponents of gun “rights” are on to something, however. These types of events point out how extremely defenseless large populations are against gunmen. The answer is not for all of us to carry deadly weapons, of course. The OBVIOUS answer is to protect ourselves with security personnel and systems using any of a number of NON-LETHAL and HIGHLY EFFECTIVE weapons and detection devices that have been available for some time. These systems have yet to be adopted for the same reasons that many other superior technologies have yet to be adopted — stupidity. Unfortunately, the selection of technology, as with all human decisions, is an emotional, rather than rational, process.
The other OBVIOUS conclusion regarding the Virginia Tech event is that public security measures are shortsighted, wholly reactionary, and lacking in many areas of prevention. Preventing a severely disturbed individual from going over the edge and killing means making sure that the individual stays on medication or removing the individual from the public. The OBVIOUS improvements required here are 1) increase the scope and refine the criteria for ‘poses a clear and present danger to oneself or others’ 2) once better identification is in place, add measures to enforce medication or hospitalization for those individuals.
I don’t think tighter gun laws would have changed the outcome. I also don’t think looser gun laws orr more people owning guns would have significantly changed the outcome. I suspect that if one or more students had a gun on them that the outcome would have been about the same. I am assuming those students would have been law abiding citizens trained in gun safety and used to shooting at targets. Given that I believe there would have been a lot of trepidation for those students to shoot back. They would have had to gotten their guns from where ever they were. (eg a backpack or purse) and then shot the murderer. Shooting a human being is not an easy thing. Most of us don’t have the training for shooting people and we would hesitate. (I certainly would, but I haven’t had police or military training to shoot someone. Targets, yes, people no.)
Therefore, I don’t think that less restrictive gun laws would have helped. (eg more freedom to carry concealed weapons)
What might have helped is if the court system which determined in 2005 that he was a danger to himself and others had been able to flag him in the national gun check system. In this instance it might have made a difference. In the larger picture I am not sure that connection would have made a signifigant difference.
Rise in Mental Illness, American Disabilities Act etc. I feel that there has been a rise in
mental illness since 9/11 whic gives me some concern about the terrorist’s winning.
When society is up tight there may be more “degradation rituals” in groups and accross groups. Desert religions such as Christianity and Islam can host “degradation rituals”since a cognition of a “judgmental vengeful God” may part of the group think and dynamics. Was 9/11 was a “axis of evil” or was it a pyramid of “degradation rituals.”As a child the bullies took me behind the shed and showed me dirty pictures and did their “degradation ritual” from behind. One learns one of two things “paranoia”or “psycho-sociology.” Cho Seung Hui learned a “psychotic paranoia. If one reads”The Lucifer Effect” by Philip Zimbardo one gets a review of the diversity of these rituals these rituals can occur anywhere on college and university campuses, at home, in the work place, the justice system, politics everywhere in na society. Mental illness may have many sources biology like sleep disorders,
genetics, biochemical brain chemistry or poisonous social dialogue as in
degradation rituals and different, races, religions, sexes, cultures and nationalities
can do a host of different “degradation rituals”. Never get your advise,
therapy etc. grom one group in case one group has more than its share of
“degradation rituals.” We need safe places for the criminally, mentally or
emotionally challenged if we are going to have diversity on the college campus
or in the workplace. I am a member of Toastmasters International I call it my
“safe place” where I can learn social skills and confidence. We have people
there that have suffered spouse abuse. Some people there need to work on their
aggression that is that they need to be more assertive. Sometimes the
competition in the workplace tries to make a person less assertive Toastmasters
is a good place to learn about these “degradation rituals” and what can be
done to mediate these situations. There are a lot of therapists in
Toastmasters International. One can get a lot of “free” therapy if
one knows where to look for it. Many times the free therapy is much
more effective than the therapy that is paid for with public funds and that
is very sad.
Can’t blame the gun, it’s the shooter that pulls the trigger. Just like you can’t blame spoons for making Rosie O’Donnell fat. If the killer wanted to kill people, he obviously would have found a way to do it. People have the right to self-defense, and non-lethal weapons are not always the answer. As for me, I would rather have one and never need it, than need one and not have it. Why do so many think that the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to individual citizens when the other original nine do?
Where does suicide fit in to all this? I have read that over half of the people who die of gunshot wounds are the same people who bought the gun and pulled the trigger. Are suicides included in the homicide statistics? It is a form of homocide. And what percentage of suicides are gun related? What other means do people use to end their lives? Do researchers not distinguish between killing ones self and killing another person.
Blisshead said, “Firearm ownership is a constitutional (sic) right, no matter how many skewed studies you post.”
The Constitution can change. In fact, the Framers even included how it is done in Article V. And Constitution should be capitalized since it’s a proper noun. I assume you’re only talking about The Constitution of the United States of America.
I find it funny that the other responses so far have not even attempted to show evidence linking an increase (or decrease) in gun related deaths and firearm ownership even though the original post said “I’m asking because I’d honestly like to have a data-driven debate on the subject… what does the (in this case observational) science say about this subject?”
Perhaps I’m overly naive, but I’d like to think if science “proved” (however much science can prove a thing of this nature) a link or showed there was no link, then the Congress would act on it, either by repealing the Second Amendment, doing nothing, or passing a law suggesting that Americans own a gun for protection.
There are several different empirical issues here. One concerns the correlation between measures of gun availability (not clear what those measures should be, exactly — number of guns sold, number of people who own a gun, number of times guns are used, etc.) and measures of gun violence (also not clear what these measures should — number of murders committed with guns, number of deaths caused by gunshot, number of people who die given that an attempt was made to kill them by a gun relative to other means, etc.). This type of data does not establish that gun availability causes more deaths, although reliable data that shows no relationship might provide some evidence against a causal effect. Another concerns a completely different issue, namely, whether gun control laws (and the implementation of those laws) reduce the death rate. The latter is a different issue for several important reasons. First, there are many different types of gun control laws. Some would ban all guns. Some would ban only certain types of guns. Some would require assessment of a gun buyer’s personality (with many different measures possible here) and/or some delay between the request to buy a gun and the time when the gun is obtained. Other gun control laws would require people to lock there guns away. There are more, way too many to list here. But this is not the only reason the effects of gun control is different from correlational evidence about gun availability and death (and injury) rates. We have to remember that laws can be well or poorly followed by those who are told to enforce them. How much of an effort do the police make to round up all guns? How well would their efforts actually succeed? The difference between de jure and de facto effects of legal changes is well known. Another empirical issues concerns the effects of gun ownership on reduction in rate of non-lethal crimes or other activities that law abiding citizens might like to see reduced.
One additional point about most of the research in this area is that the studies do not examine association between measures in terms of the behavior of gun owners and gun users. That is, they do not measure the behavior of gun owners compared to those who do not own guns. Instead they examine measures of the rate of gun presence in a series of groups and then the rate of some outcome measure the same groups. The issue is whether those groups with more guns are the same groups with more (or less) deaths. These are not studies of how gun owners behave. But the killings that started this blog are the result of the behavior of one gun owner who used his guns to kill people. Are gun owners more likely to kill people than non-gun owners? Are they more likely to attempt to kill people or just more likely to succeed given an attempt because guns are better weapons? Most importantly, is it the ownership of the gun that is the cause or do people who want kill people simple use guns (rather than car bombs or airplanes) because guns easier to use?
Unless we make the questions want empirical answers to very clear and precise, our discussion of this topic will be less about data and more about pre-existing belief systems.
England is about 8 times as populous as New York, but in New York 8 times as many people are shot to death in a year as in England. Let’s see… duh… what could it mean? I think the standard of proof should be 1,000,000,000 studies each one considering 1,000,000,000 cases, and only when the margin of error is less than 1/1,000,000,000 will any sort of conclusion be justified.
This discussion was OVER for everybody except retards and gun-fetishists 50 years ago. If you can count, and you don’t have the misfortune of getting a hard-on every time you see a steel barrel, all that’s left is disgust for the liars in the NRA and the gutless journalists who pretend there’s no preponderance of evidence either way.
It may be worthwhile to also look into Dr. John Lott’s studies. He has used a lot of statistical analysis to come to his conclusions. He would probably agree that more numbers would be useful, but he also takes a lot more into consideration than just “number of gun deaths” vs “number of guns” (i.e. – how many gun deaths are actual homicides, etc.)
His website can be found at http://www.johnrlott.com/
Arguing control from state to state is met with failure as gun access is as easy as crossing a state line or buying black market firearms from some one who did or most likely stole the firearm from a law abiding citizen. A great number of sources are available on the web regarding the most recent and totalitarian ban on firearms in a country, Australia. Depending on the statistics you read, either violent crime has gone up immensely or at the very least, so gone down so little as to the point no study has been able to make an accurate conclusion. The obvious problem is that the only group that turns in their guns are law abiding citizens making them prey to criminals who are not known for following laws in the first place. Dr. John Lott in his book “More Guns, Less Crime” followed 18 years of right to carry states and concluded that these states in fact have less violent crime (appreciable through fear of confronting someone who is carrying). There are many ways to kill yourself and most of the time they aren’t smart enough to find a way to do it if they don’t have access to a gun. This would suggest that this country has more a problem with access to mental health care, rather than to easy access to firearms.
ps, I believe Iraq most likely has rather severe weapons laws in place, as do most continents with armed militias (ie terrorists) and I don’t see them having much luck in curtailing violence in those places.
The purpose of the constitution (and the only legitimate function of government) is to protect individual liberty, NOT to save lives.
Hey… love the new look of the web site! Is there any way to see the number of comments on the main page so that we know if there have been any since we checked last?
I guess overall I’m on the fense when it comes to gun control. I agree with full background checks but after that, most people should have the right to own one. One question that might be pertinant to your question here is how many robberies are prevented just from the knowledge that most people have guns in their homes? I mean if no law abidding citizen had a weapon, wouldn’t rapes and robberies be much more common?
Hi Chris – nice to see you found us over here. In answer to your question, this gives us an even *better* way for you to follow developing comment threads – you can subscribe to them via RSS.
In other words, click on the link in the sentence: “You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed,” which is at the beginning of this comment thread. If you’ve never used RSS before, I suggest using a google homepage, or any of the free readers – google reader, say, or, well there’s a million of them these days.
The biggest issue with tough gun restrictions is that it leaves American citizens defenseless… not against the common criminal, but against the government itself. Don’t get me wrong… I’m not calling for the violent overthrow of the US government, but governments do tend to move towards totalitarianism. The availability of firearms is the final citizens last line of defense against an oppressive government. Maybe I’m just a pessimist and lack faith in our leaders, but… that’s just me.
@N.Johnson, it sure can, but thankfully quite a lot of us consider the bill of rights a document we should never dismantle. Your welcome to get to work on that of course, if you can get the support you’d need, but I consider the freedom we posses now a great responsibility we should not so quickly dismiss.
pwmoore (and others):
OK, I get it–I know that the original intent of the second amendment was to make sure that citizen militias, like the kind that defeated the British, could always be at hand so that the fledgling republic could defend itself from intruders and from tyrranny (after all the memory of rule by a monarch was still fresh in the minds of the authors of the Constitution).
But what the hell does that have to do with modern day N. America? Does anyone commenting here really believe that if our government became totalitarian, all these handguns and sport rifles would mean anything against tanks, planes, bombs, rpg’s, etc.?
I mean, Canada has restrictive gun laws… last time I checked their government wasn’t exactly a dictatorship. (Ditto Japan and all of Western Europe.)
It just seeks like, sorry to say, a kooky notion. But maybe I’m missing something.
I guess what I’m saying is, I can see why folks would argue for having a gun as self-defense–there are some places where the police just aren’t around, I get that. But as the last bulwark against tyrranny? Really? Wouldn’t it be slightly more effective to, uh, vote? Or be politically active?
I mean come on, admit it – that’s some straight-up dogma, right?
It’s all right, you can tell me–sometimes I read Reason magazine, too.
Blisshead:
Even the founding fathers recognized that there would periodically be good reasons to amend the constitution. They did forget to ban slavery and promote the suffrage of women and people of color when they first wrote it, you know…
I was born and raised in a very rural area and my father taught me to shoot at a young age. Later he took my brother and I hunting starting so I never developed the fear of guns that a lot of people have. Respect yes, but to me they are a tool just like any other and they can be used for good or evil purposes.
I still live in the back of nowhere, I also have a concealed carry permit and I carry faithfully! When my daughter came along I made sure that she was introduced to guns and gun safety (no hunting however as she didn’t wish too). She is now 20 and I feel MUCH better knowing that she has a means of protecting herself in her own home. She has told me that when she turns 21 she will also be applying for a CCL. We still practice regularly to stay proficient.
While it may or may not have helped to have armed students or faculty due to them not being able to get to the weapon quickly enough or not being able to shot another human being even though they were being shot at, I sincerely think that it quite well ‘could’ have made all the difference in the world. One woman, Suzanna Gratia Hupp, from the Luby’s Cafe massacre said later that if she had been able to have her own weapon with her instead of locked in her vehicle she could have stopped the shooter short of killing 23 people including her mother and father. If I were ever placed in such a position I KNOW that I would be able to shoot back to protect myself, my loved ones, and others if given the slightest chance.
@zeitgeiber
Nice try, you forgot to bring up Hitler though.
I am aware of the amendment process, reading my response again will clear that up for you.
@zeitgeiber again.
2A protects from a tyrannically government (could be our own… context would help you here) as well.
If you only read what you want to read you’ll never get the whole picture.
The intent of the second amendment is NOT to allow the REPUBLIC to defend ITSELF; it is to allow the CITIZEN to defend HIMSELF.
Would handguns and sport rifles mean anything against tanks, planes, etc? Probably. No matter how small the tyrannized minority, it’s likely to be a good bit larger than the army. And the argument “your defense is so weak, you deserve no defense” is as weak as “your single vote is so insignificant, , you deserve no vote”.
Also, the argument for a “gun as self-defense” does not rest on the fact that sometimes the police are not around. It rests on the fact that the individual has an inalienable right to defend himself. He is not required to cede it to the police regardless of their proximity.
Disclaimers:
I don’t own a gun because I have children and live in a safe area minutes from police help. I make this decision on a protection/accident choice. Gun accidents are terribly common (fatal and non-fatal). But I believe folks should be allowed their guns.
The US is a violent place. We have drug/gang/mafia related violence including turf wars, intimidation killings, robberies etc. Domestic violence including murder-suicide [I don’t think we should include solo-suicide since that is easily accomplished without a gun]. Arguments and honor killings – particularly high in the rural South. And madmen. There just isn’t a lot of other categories.
From the US DOJ statistics…
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict_c.htm#relate
Also, it says the following:
In 2005, about 68% of all murders, 42% of all robberies, and 21% of all aggravated assaults that were reported to the police were committed with a firearm.
According to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2001 about 39% of the deaths that resulted from firearms injuries were homicides, 57% were suicides, 3% were unintentional, and 1% were of undetermined intent.
Currently, the murder rate for young adults 18-24 is 15 per 100,000 and less than 5 per 100,000 for everyone else.
So, only 68% of murders were committed WITH firearms. [I was actually surprised by that number – but I guess its correct]. But anyway, the current murder rate is about 5.2 per 100,000. So the firearm murder rate is approximately 3.6 per 100,000 and the non-firearm rate is 1.5 per 100,000.
It claims that 11% of murder victims were killed by intimates (ie domestic violence in all forms).
Here’s an interesting link – it details circumstances of homicides.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/circumst.htm
Arguments constitute the largest single circumstance – but interestingly that number has declined by HALF in the last 35 years. I’m actually shocked by that statistic as well. Gang related murders and murders committed during commission of a felony constitute another chunk.
For 2004 (the recent trend is much lower than 70s, 80s and 90s) with percentage indicating firearm involved [I don’t know whether this includes instances where a firearm was involved but wasn’t actually the murder weapon]
Arguments – 2925/4787 (61.1%)
Gang – 963/1020 (94.4%)
Felonies – 1708/2292 (74.5%)
Other – 1140/1975(57.7%)
Unknown – 3918/5086 (77.0%)
Total – 10654/15160 (70.3%) [2005 was lower than 2004]
Call me crazy – but I bet the Unknown total is actually mostly drug, gang and mafia related crime.
Supposedly the murder rate in 1900 was 1 per 100,000. After drug prohibition laws came onto the books, the murder rate rose steadily to 8 per 100,000 in the early 1930s and spiked again in the 1970s to 15 per 100,000 when the most recent drug war began. As noted it has since declined to 5 per 100,000 in recent years.
A number of folks (including myself) think that a large portion of gun related murders is a direct result of the drug war. [Disclaimer: While I think drugs are universally harmful – I think the drug war is a freaking disaster of EPIC proportions].
Now, most of the rest of the civilized world has a murder rate of around 2.0 per 100,000. So the question becomes – is the US murder rate a result of Guns, Drugs or Culture? I’m guessing all three. Felony, gang and “unknown” constitute fully 50% of our murder rate. I don’t see gun laws changing that. Another 30% is from arguments. But 40% of those murders didn’t involve firearms. Would fewer guns save any lives there? Probably. Additionally, most murders in the US do NOT involve stranger on stranger crime – instead the victim and criminal knew each other. So that’s gotta be a cultural component. I suspect a high proportion of murders in other countries the victims knew each other as well – but how many involved arguments?
In Australia, the moment we removed easy public access to guns after the Port Arthur massacre, the rate of gun related deaths plummeted. There is a clear correlation between the availability of guns and their use to commit crimes. If people are appalled and horrified by what happened at Virginia Tech, then the logical first step is the removal of the means to commit such acts. No guns = no mass killings.
Since the majority of Americans buying guns have only the most rudimentary training in their use, and none at all in actual combat situations, in what way would it have helped to have a college full of gun-toting students and professors? An even bigger bloodbath, perhaps? As for the notion that the killer would have used some other weapon if he couldn’t get a gun … do you really think he’d have managed to kill 32 people before being subdued, if he had just a knife? Less than 100 gun deaths in the UK per year on average; in the US, with only 5 times the population, the figure is 10,000. Go figure it out.
Has else anyone noticed that, after asking for a “scientific” analysis of this question : ‘Do Firearms Kill More People (in the home) Than They Save (in public places)’, the author immediately inserts statistics that answer a different question (e.g., ‘Do Firearms Kill More People (in the home) Than They Save (in the home)’)?
I understand why some are drawn to this data — it is easy to come by and easy to understand — but, in this case, it has little to do with the very important question raised by the title of the post.
What *about* lives saved in public places? How many lives were saved by the off-duty policeman at the mall in Salt Lake City recently? How many lives have been saved in other places, when armed citizens are able to stop unbalanced people or criminals wielding guns? (see the case of the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia (of all places) in January 2002 — where citizen/students at the University, wielding legal weapons, stopped a disgruntled student who had started out on a killing spree (3 dead, 3 wounded) ).
The list goes on — but as another writer said once, “A massacre is a story. Thwarting a massacre isn’t.”
All else aside, when we say that we want to take a scientific look at a problem we ought to at least start with data that has something to do with the research question.
If you would like to compare two heavily populated centres of about the same size one with guns and one without. You can compare Detroit and Toronto. Each has gangs and drugs. Detroit gun homicides approach 400 per year while Toronto a 4 1/2 hr drive away has 50 plus a year. I should also mention that all the homicides in Toronto are gang related. The only reason the deaths even reach 50 is because the border is so close and guns can be purchased and smuggled across the border rather easily. It is only 90 miles to Niagara Falls. Illegal hand guns in Toronto sell for 1000 to 2000 on the street. The old part of Detroit has become a wasteland of abandoned houses and neighbourhoods. While the old part of Toronto is the most desirable place for young people to live. Property values in the downtown are skyrocketing. Without the access to guns people stay downtown because they feel safe.
A few points.
1) Quantifying the value of guns requires more than comparing body counts of good guys and bad guys. What about instances where no shots are fired, both positive and negative, but the gun was instrumental in the outcome? What about situations that were avoided because the potential perpetrator knew or suspected the potential victim was armed?
2) Gun ownership rates in these studies typically are found via proxies (as it’s difficult data to come by via surveys, etc.) An often-used proxy is Cook’s index, named for Philip Cook. It is based on the proportion of guns used in two types of violent death — homicide and suicide. It is the average of two fractions — firearm suicides (FS) over all suicides (S) and firearm homicides (FH) over all homicides (H). Its formula is (FS/S + FH/H)/2. Some studies use simplified proxies: FS/S or FH/H.
The assumption behind the proxies is that the more that firearms are represented in overall violent death, the more they are prevalent. However, then comparing its findings to gun violence rates and declaring, “See: more guns means more gun deaths!” is circular reasoning thus: “high gun deaths = more guns = high gun deaths.”
3) Don’t confuse correlation with causation. Fat people own more diet pills than skinny people, but the diet pills don’t make them fat. Similary, perhaps people at high risk of homicide are more likely to seek out a powerful defensive tool — but that doesn’t mean the tool CAUSED their death, especially when looking at studies that use proxies. Because of the use of proxy, we know that the researchers are unlikely to know the details of many of the incidents — was it the gun bought for self-defense that was used against the victim or was it another gun? We don’t know from these studies.
4) Re Australia: Its gun death rate was declining prior to the bans. Did rate of decline increase following the ban?
5) On international comparisons, please don’t cherry pick data. Pro-gun folks tend to point to nations like Switzerland (little gun control, low crime/gun death) and Russia (high gun control, high crime/gun death) to bolster their side. Anti-gun folks tend to point to nations like the U.S. (low gun control, high crime/gun death) and Japan (high gun control, low crime/gun death) to bolster their side.
The fact is that there all four types of nations exist, and this is true on a state-to-state level: S.D. (low gun control, low crime), Mass. (high gun control, low crime), Maryland (high gun control, high crime) and Louisiana (low gun control, low crime).
This isn’t a one-dimensional plot. It’s requires at least a two-dimensional plot with the traditional four fields.
6) Whatever the meaning of the 2nd Amt, that’s irrelevant to the scientific questions. And vice versa.
I don’t know how you can analyze statistics on a subject like this, because there are so many variables. The English pompously state they don’t have a gun problem. Who needs drive bys when you can wipe out an entire block with a bomb in a trash can? How about looking at the real problem. The shooter was mentally disturbed in a society whos laws shield the mentally disturbed from getting help. Or isn’t that question devisive enough for blogs.
Sea: Re point 4. Once we removed the guns, the death rate plummeted. All the arguments for posessing guns in the US seem rather out of date….18th Century ideas. With the amount of gun related deaths in the US, both self inflicted and homicide….there’s only one common denominator….guns. True people will find ways to commit suicide and kill others, but if Cho had been weilding an axe things would have been very different.
Dan: Cho could have been as disturbed as he liked….but without the help of Glock & Walther (or any other gun), there is no way he could have killed so many. Australia has its share of the mentally disturbed…and after the last one killed 35 people we took the means to harm out of the equation. How many mass killings in Australia since Port Arthur?
Just to point out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland
Countries which have gun laws like this, also require that the person go out and practice with the gun.
I really think measures like this, would do wonders for us. We don’t give people who can’t pass a driving test drivers licenses.
And they make the police monitor who gets a licenses to get a gun. I’m sure that does wonders.
I’ve also noticed posts in here comparing gun only homicide rates. I really dislike those, because they fail to take in the fact that there’s other ways to kill people. Bombs are now easier than ever to create. I can imagine, if you take away one means to kill a lot of people, they will find others.
I mean, Europe has had bombs go there, recently, no less. And it killed people.
Yeah, its terrorists, but the point was, it hurt a lot of people, and it didn’t take them much to do it. And we’ve had bombers in this country before too. We’ve just gotten lucky with a lot of them (with the exception of the Twin Towers, considering that planes are giant, flying bombs).
Current polices on guns are not working, plain and simple. There’s problem on both ends, which means the entire system needs to be reworked. And since the majority of the US population wants their guns, banning all guns is out. We’d have to do that as a nation, and right now, we’re not going to. So there’s no use in going on about it. Work for something that actually has a chance of happening (like a licenses to hold a gun), and maybe in another 100 years, the public will change its mind about guns, and then we can get rid of them.
Russel Dunne: “Once we [Australia] removed the guns, the death rate plummeted.”
With all due respect, Russel, you’re wrong.
See the Australian Government data: http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi2/tandi261t.html
AUSTRALIA
Year — Homicides (rate/100,000)
1990 — 385 (2.3)
1991 — 354 (2.0)
1992 — 319 (1.8)
1993 — 326 (1.8)
1994 — 332 (1.9)
1995 — 333 (1.8)
1996 — 326 (1.8)
My last post got cut off for some reason
AUSTRALIA
Year — Homicides (rate/100,000)
1990 — 385 (2.3)
1991 — 354 (2.0)
1992 — 319 (1.8)
1993 — 326 (1.8)
1994 — 332 (1.9)
1995 — 333 (1.8)
1996 — 326 (1.8) PORT ARTHUR
1997 — 329 (1.8)
1998 — 307 (1.6)
1999 — 302 (1.6)
2000 — 313 (1.7)
2001 — 300 (1.6)
Yes, homicides declined after the Port Arthur laws — but the point is that they were ALREADY declining PRIOR to the ban.
In the 5 years BEFORE the ban, your homicide RATE declined from 2 to 1.8 — two points (11% change). In the 5 years AFTER the ban, your homicide RATE declined from 1.8 to 1.6 — two points (12% change)
The rate of decline did not change to any statistically-meaningful level (11% to 12%).
The laws were not effective.
Incidentally, you have to look at homicide RATES (per 100,000 people), not the raw numbers, when comparing different years because of changes in population numbers.
Double check those numbers above on the street price of an illegal handgun in Toronto. This is a very common variant of the “Law of Unintended Consequences.”
To wit: Toronto has made importation and smuggling of such weapons very profitable, and has relegated the trade to members of a criminal underclass. And the relative “value” of an illegal weapon increases in proportion to the decrease in law-abiding weapons.
Reputable businesses are no longer involved, so there is no means at all to accurately determine how many weapons are present, who has them, and there is no way to perform any kind of “background check.” All of the relevant data has been compromised.
More guns=more gun deaths just sounds like, more cars=more auto accidents.
It may be true, but nothing is learned about the relative safety of cars versus, say, railroads or blimps.
In short, I am probably more sympathetic to 2nd A, because the creation of a black-market situation and increasing reward to those willing to participate is not a good thing.
War on Drugs suffers from the same shortcomings.
It is interesting that France has some of the strictest gun laws. Now they are plagued with fire bombings of unarmed people. If just one of the victims at VT had a weapon to defend himself with, maybe the rest of the victims would be alive. Comparing the number of people unintentional injured in the home to the number of crimes stopped in the home with guns is a non-start. A much better question is: “How many home invasions have been stopped by the criminal knowing that there was a gun owner in the home. Why are the crime statistics in neighorhoods that have a high percentage of gun owners lower then those with no gun owners.
Arguments in favor of gun control presuppose that the right to keep and bear arms is debatable. Are we talking about amending the constitution?
You Americans crack me up. It’s amazing how convenient your gun nuts find terrorism in other countries, whenever anyone canvasses taking their precious guns away. Did your guns help you on 9/11? You just keep “protecting yourselves” while the rest of the actually-civilised world watches, okay?
You folks miss the point: this was a very troubled person who got a little help once and then was thrown back into the society and ignored. Our society must recognize that we need to pay the price for treatment of such individuals or we will pay the price when they do something crazy.
Every society has troubled individuals. You choose to arm yours.
One statistic these studies do not address is how many would-be crimes are NOT commited due to the threat of a gun. How many rapes are thwarted when the would-be victim pulls a pistol out of her purse? In order to have a complete study of the effect of guns on crime, one must include the crimes that were prevented, and the attackers scared off.
Keep in mind that criminals do not follow laws. After all, the laws say that killing someone is illegal, unless it is self-defense. The only people affected by laws are those that obey laws in the first place.
Imagine a law that makes possessing knives larger than 2 inches illegal. Now imagine a criminal obeying that law when he’s buying a knife from his crack dealer. Do you think, for an instant, that this criminal will concern himself with the size of the knife he’s buying? Of course not. The same goes for ANY law that is on the books. Criminals do not follow the law! That is why they’re called criminals.
My younger brother is employed at VA Tech and so I was a little bit nervous when I heard about this shooting and then relaxed some when the e-mails came in saying that he was fine and would be sent home as soon as they cleared his building.
Both my brother and I are trained in the use of firearms. We both target shoot, he hunts I do not.
The one thing that I have not seen mentioned in any of these conversations was that this kid made a concious choice to kill people. Waiting periods, restrictions on type of gun purchased etc would not have stopped him. “Oh I have wait twenty days, no problem, everyone will die on the 21st day.” Criminals don’t care about waiting periods. They don’t care if you give them additional charges, hell they are going to kill someone what is an additional 15 years on a sentence, they may get the death penalty, they still accomplished their goal, people are dead.
If you want to prevent this kind of thing from happening it is not going to happen over night. What we have to realize is that people who do these types of killing sprees have determined that their lives and the lives of others have no value. This has been inculcated into our culture. From abortion to euthanasia, life is not worth living. 140 years ago lots of people had guns, but lots of people also knew that life was sacred and special. Unfortunately we cannot quantify the value of life or its sacredness in a scientific way. I am not seeking some type of utopia, just a basic understanding that everyone is special and that everyone has a right to live.
It is easy for us to blame the gun for what happenend, but let us all remember that a person pulled the trigger and mady a knowing decision that people must die. Unfortunately we cannot charge this young man with a crime, which I feel if we could we would all feel alot better.
In reply to N Brennan:
Unlike Great Britain, France and Sweden, the United States has existed for less than 300 years. The country was born with a gun in it’s hands. The guns that pervade our society descend from desire to be free from the heavy hand of oppresive rulers. In fact, our once free nation has been co-opted by a bunch of rich oil barons. It may be required to overthrow that same government again. That is why we will not surrender our firearms without a fight. The ordinary citizens of the US have the capacity to resist unjust actions by our own government, even if it means shootings by madmen from time to time. Great Britain, where the citizens have been disarmed, is now a police state.
That Harvard review is political clap trap. Read the Lott report. The more guns the more the good guys are safe and the bad guys get killed, saving us time and money and decent people.
http://tinyurl.com/2x5tfp
No one is safer with guns than these guys.
http://www.guncite.com/journals/embar.html
non-partisan treatment of the 2nd Amendment
Gun owners have been deluding themselves. The 2nd Amendment doesn’t mention self-defense or crime. The concept of self-defense was debated when the 2nd was penned. They intentionally left the matter of this concept up to the states. The 2nd is meant to CHECK the government, guaranteeing the right to “bear arms” for the *specific* intention of protecting the people from a corrupt government. Where ever the source for a gun owners’ right to carry a firearm for self-defense comes from, it doesn’t come from the 2nd Amendment.
I really like this article. You get to some very good points and ultimately what part of the problem is with government. A lot of the time politicians have to make decisions bases more or less off of gut feelings.
To get back on the to Gun issue at hand. I think there may be a couple more steps before what you are talking about that need to be resolved. I think there is still debate over owning a gun is constitutional or not. I hear Anti-Gun people sling this out that there is no admendment that addresses that. So I think the Judical branch needs to probably clarify that. I tend to lean more Pro Gun mainly because I think it mainly is there to deture a government take over not that our military couldn’t stop a small size rebellion but there are a lot of guns in the states and if you ever had someone in office that debated it they would have to think about all the gun owners and how they would fight them.
I think another issue at had is how much death is acceptable over all and by specific events. The common public doesn’t seem to think much about stopping the flu even though it kills, I think, 30,000ish people a year. Is 30k acceptable or not is the question.
These types of questions need to be answered on so many levels. I could not image telling people that live in a neighborhood where gangs run rampted that they couldn’t have guns. I kind of feel that the local communities should ultimately have control over this issue. I am Pro Gun and I don’t own anything more then a paintball gun mainly because I don’t do any sporting with guns and I don’t feel I need one to protect myself where I live. What about studies that aren’t corrolations.
How does just having a gun in a room affect people. I know there are some studies with that. Does it matter their education on guns. Are sport hunters more likely to kill someone with a gun or are they less likely? Who uses guns to kill people? I think the real answer to the gun control issue is Education like most other issues!
Back to the question at hand, to scientifically examine the question, we shouldn’t start with the assumption that firearms are more dangerous than other types of technology commonly found in the home or in public.
Just a few quick examples of pertinent questions: (No, I don’t know the answers.)
Which kills more people:
Handguns or staircases?
Handguns or bathtubs?
Handguns or drunk drivers?
Handguns, or overhead power lines?
I suspect, although I would like to see real numbers, that the handguns are the least of our worries among the 4.
Faustian bargains are common. Wouldn’t Anna Nicole Smith be a similar argument for stronger drug laws? The use of power items such as guns, drugs, and cars, all can, of course, be misused. At Virginia Tech more guns in the hands of the responsible would have reduced the carnage and given some defense to the victims.
Three different questions:
1) What is effect of gun control laws?
2) What is effect of a bunch of “other” folks in town having guns on general crime rate?
3) What is effect on your household on you having a gun?
I think the data strongly show the liberal argument of #3– your owning guns is more likely to injure your household than protect it.
I’m enough of a cynic to wonder if the conservative argument on #2 is un-disprovable.
But if you’re going to talk about #1, you have to separate the phenomena.
“…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
This clause is absolute.
There is a very good reason the second amendment, is second only to free speech provisions of the first. Without the insurance policy of freedom that the second amendment provides, any tyrant can AND WILL be revoke the all the other freedoms the Constitution provides.
The MAN murders, not the weapon.
Stop trying give away the freedoms that members of my family DIED to protect.
It’s not just data, it’s how the data is framed.
>But isn’t the real issue how many people are killed by guns, period?
Maybe. It depends on what you want your answer to be.
What if you asked how many people drown in buckets, pools and bathtubs? Would that number (if it’s high, and it is) justify Container Registration and Water Control laws?
Frame the data differently, “Isn’t the real issue how many lives are saved by guns, period?” and you get a different answer.
Click to access Drowning_facts.pdf
Please note that I’m not arguing that guns are the same as buckets, just that data alone is never relevant. Data has to be interpreted. You can interpret the data about drowning to mean that education and safety precautions is the answer, but we shouldn’t ban pools. “Pools don’t kill people. Breathing water kills people!” Or you can interpret the data to mean that pools should be banned. After all, pools are mere entertainment; no life has ever been saved by the presence of a pool. If we can save lives by banning pools, then we should.
And then there’s that thorny issue of freedom, and what the idea of personal liberty means, and maybe whatever the data, it needs to be considered in that light… Or maybe not.
Whatever your position, the data is a tool in the debate. But the data isn’t what the debate is about.
You stated you read a report on gun control and thought it was not well researched. Then you state that the Harvard study is a better example. Well I read it. I do not think phone surveys are very useful. I have a pretty good idea that the states with the most gun violence also have the largest populations. Worthless comparison. This study was funded by the Joyce Foundation. This is a radical anti-gun group. I have no doubt that the good Harvard professors that did this study wanted to get paid. Count me a septic.
Your readers are right. Had a few right to carry gun owners been there, the damage would have been minimalized. Obviously only the law abiding thought that the campus was a gun free zone.
I totally agree with Phillip Crimm, it is the percentage of the population that caries guns that will determine your likelyhood of being shot, not the laws that let people do so.
Also, I would like to point out that of the two types of radical groups (if indeed a pacifist group could be called radical), I would prefer to live in the same neighborhood with the non-gun types. My chances of being shot by someone without balistic weaponry would be decreased scientifically.
I know, I know, call me a Commie, tell me to move to France; I’ve heard it all before. I’ll tell you this though, If I did move there I wouldn’t miss a single damned one of you gun nuts. And even though I live in Canada I’d feel a little safer having the Atlantic between us.
excuse the bushism….
…meant to say “by someone with balistics”
(In other words, it’s not merely that states with more guns have people who kill each other more often by any available means–rather this study suggests that more guns = more homicide, independent of the overall propensity of that state’s citizens to kill.)
Firecrackers are no good hidden away in a shoebox.
You buy a gun to fire it.
Well there is an easy problem, if Firearms are killing so many people, then just arrest them.
Do Firearms Kill More People (in the home) Than They Save (in public places)?
Interesting question.
Do Police Kill More People (in the home) Than They Save (in public places)?
Is this a good measure? And of what?
If it is, then it would seem equally applicable in other situations, no?
The Second Amendment’s sole purpose, as has been stated above, is to ensure the people have the means to overthrow an abusive or tyrannical government. The First Amendment’s purpose (in part) is to ensure the people have the right to discuss this option with each other and get a rebellion organized, since no single person could realistically stand up to the might of a government. Yet we have laws against advocating the overthrow of the government. I need someone to explain that to me.
But that’s neither here nor there. Events like this frighten us because any one of us could have been there. What we want to know is, what can we do to reduce the chance of that happening? In this case, what can we do to reduce our chances of being shot by a madman, while still respecting our cultural need to have the means to overthrow a tyrannical government?
Even including all the wars in our history, many more Americans have been killed by cars than by guns; each year, in fact, about as many as died in the Vietnam war. Not many are advocating banning cars, even when a horrific bus accident kills forty or fifty people at once. We do have fairly stringent, state-by-state licensing regulations, which probably help but obviously fall far short of a solution. We also spend taxpayer money on things like guardrails near drop-offs, warning signs, speed limit enforcement, and so on.
I’m just not sure the question posed by this article would lead to terribly useful information for the process of deciding how to solve the problem at hand. Given the legal and cultural circumstances in this country, it doesn’t seem like the answer to this question would make much of a difference in that process.
Justme,
InRe your first para. ;Your analysis of the first & second amendements is correct. To a strict interpretor all firearms laws and prohibition of any speech whatsoever are unconstitutional.
My readings are:
First Am.: You can say anything to anybody.
Second Am.: You have the right to arm yourself to the standard of light infantry. (“Militia” remember).
Unfortunately ‘the constitution means what the supreme court says it does` and the court is open to manipulation. (Paraphrased quote from Holmes IIRC)
While my strict reading is admittedly a bit too extreme, I do feel that the court has gone much too far in its limitations of the rights involved.
InRe. your third para.: Would you be surprised to learn that falling in the bath-tub also kills more people than guns yearly??
As to the main issue, the statistics:
The gathered data ignores one essential fact.
The primary purpose of any defensive weapon is not to kill or maim, but to
intimidate and thus stop the aggression.
The data thus ignores any instance where a criminal is driven off or discouraged from his purpose by the presence, (or possible presence), of a defensive firearm. Most such incidents are not even reported. Sometimes the potential victim is even unaware of them. I reference here the clear decrease in violent crime in ‘right to carry` areas.
In a recent letter Sara Brady bemoaned the fact that legislators must worry about ‘revenge from disgruntled constituents`. This, (in general if not specifically), was the exact intent of the second amendement.
In an era where our legislators are admittedly for sale to lobbyists I would think that a little worry there might have an overall salutory effect.
The media would also like to portray the mood of the general population as anti-gun. In answer to this, I would like to ask: If there are, (as the anti-gunners loudly lament), over 200 Million guns in the country, and there are only about 300 Million people in the country, (maybe 150M. households?), and those guns did not creap into all those closets like cockroaches, but were bought deliberately with hard earned cash, how can you say the people don’t want guns?
There are a lot of us, and we’ve already voted on the issue with our pocketbooks. The ‘anti`s pose of represnting the ‘will of the people` is
defeated by their own numbers in this.
A few excerpts from a notable scholarly study, the entire thing is well worth reading.
GUNS AND PUBLIC HEALTH: EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE OR PANDEMIC OF PROPAGANDA?
[Copyright © 1994 Tennessee Law Review. Originally published as 61 Tenn. L. Rev.
“513-596 (1994).
“Consider the description by Gary Kleck,
the leading researcher in this area, of the effect his–and others,–research
had on his own attitudes:[39]”
“[Subsequent research] has caused me to move beyond even the skeptic position.
I now believe that the best currently available evidence, imperfect though it
is (and must always be), indicates that general gun availability has no
measurable net positive effect on rates of homicide, suicide, robbery,
assault, rape, or burglary in the U[nited] S[tates]. This is not the same as
saying gun availability has no effects on violence–it has many effects on the
likelihood of attack, injury, death, and crime completion, but these effects
work in both violence-increasing and violence-decreasing directions, with the
effects largely canceling out.””
“Based on an exhaustive data analysis, Kleck concludes that guns are more often
used by victims to defend themselves each year than misused by criminals to
commit (p.537)crimes.[86] This conclusion rests on consistent results in ten
surveys yielding estimates of the numerical frequency of defensive gun use. ”
“It bears emphasis that Kleck and others who have discussed these facts add
various caveats, the most important of which is that a gun is not a magic wand
that renders resistance successful and risk-free regardless of the
circumstances.[95] Rather, a handgun is precisely analogous to a fire
extinguisher. Each is a tool which provides an option for action–an option
which may be exercised or not, depending on what the circumstances dictate. “
This question is outside the scope of science, and the proposed methodology is a classic case of concocting a statistical analysis that can never adequately address the question. To wit: the proposed “scientific” analysis is to keep a score card of “justified” shootings, consisting of self-defense shootings, against “unjustified” shootings (assaults, homicides, manslaughters, and accidents). The scientific solution will be conjured as soon as the statistical sample passes some unspecified hurdle of accuracy and breadth.
This methodology overlooks another category of “beneficial” firearm event: those in which a potential victim (or the protector of a victim) make known to a potential aggressor that the victim is armed. By the incident’s very nature reports of this kind can hardly be anything but anecdotal. Worse yet they would span a continuum of severity from mistaken intentions to prevention of multiple homicide, and we could never hope to know how many “unjustified” assaults, homicides, manslaughters, and accidents were prevented.
I don’t believe there are any useful, falsifiable theories to be derived here.
Canada has just as many guns [if not more] per capita than the US, yet the per capita incidence of gun homicide [and other forms of homicide] is significantly lower. The difference is because most Canadians don’t see violence as the means of resolving disputes. This has been true throughout history, even before Canada passed stringent gun control laws.
I’m from Switzerland, where we’re having a similar debate after a similar (but “smaller”) case. The most relevant data I found about the question asked is here :
http://www.gunsandcrime.org/43times.html “For each of the nine cases of police-characterized self-defense homicide involving a firearm supposedly “kept in the home,” there were 1.33-1.67 accidental deaths, 4.56 police-characterized “criminal” homicides, and 37.33 suicides “involving” (by?) firearms.”
Guns don’t make innocent people safe. A criminal faced by someone who he thinks maybe armed will shoot without hesitation. If he is faced by someone who he knows is unarmed he is likely to hesitate or use the gun to threaten only. This is why the British police are normally unarmed
I Britain it took two mass killings to make us see sense. The Australians came to their senses after only one
We still have a problem with armed criminals. However, its easy to identify and arrest armed criminals, since owning a gun makes someone a criminal
Handguns have only one purpose
The Americans will learn too, in time, after many more of their children have been killed
To TomD, you know how many children die from accidental gun deaths a year? 150…. That’s less that children killed by various other mistakes, like not looking both ways before crossing the street. Or cars, or getting lost, or kidnapped, or raped.
I hate it when children are brought into these types of arguments, because it’s the whole, ‘think of the children!’ argument, and it’s hollow. You’re looking for sympathy, to pull on heart strings, because you’re out of arguments other wise. Children are very important, yes, and it’s sad when one of them is shot.. but using that as an excuse to ban guns is silly. We might as well ban windows, cause children do jump out of them on occasion. And stairs.. and furniture.
Criminals do not automatically shoot someone they think has a gun. Give me a break. Most people don’t want to kill someone else, but they do want to hurt them. And if that’s the reason police don’t carry guns, is because if they did, they’d get shot? Then I think you’d have someone of a gun problem over there…. Considering that therefor, every criminal walking around owns a gun.
Meanwhile, Dr. Goulu, thank you for the stats. Suicides are hard to count, because they are going to do it anyway…. so are probably the homicide ones. However the stat for nine prevented is a little hard to come by. Firstly, that means you’d have to know someone planned to do something, but changed their mind. Yeah, there’s a few cases that’ll stand out. Example, there was in the news recently that a former Miss America (84 years old) stopped a thief with a gun.. and shot out his tires so he couldn’t escape… and got him sent to jail.
But really, there’s no way to get those kinds of numbers… and I’m sure most people don’t report small cases. Like a nurse leaving a hospital after the night shift and she sees someone, so she pulls a gun out of her purse, and then that person leaves. (Something similar to this happened to my mother.) Unlike the other numbers, which you have dead bodies you can count.
So, I don’t take that number with a grain of salt. If anything, I expect it to be higher, a lot higher, just because people don’t report everything that happens to them.
I’m sure criminals would love stricter gun laws, because then that would take guns out of the general public. And how would they get guns? Same way they get everything else, by breaking the law. What do they care if there’s gun laws? They don’t. And we, as the public, need to consider that these people don’t think like us, they don’t act like us, and they don’t have the same morals as us. Laws that work for moral, lawful people (don’t kill someone, don’t speed, ect), don’t work for immoral, non-lawful people, because they aren’t moral or lawful.
We need laws that appeal to their mind sets (if you kill someone, you go to jail for a long time. If you speed, you get a ticket and have to pay it)…. and let the lawful, moral people go about their lives, and be able to own guns, if they want to.
In building such a data base, I would be interested in seeing all deaths assigned by actual cause. Although being killed by a wacko gunman or blown up by a suicide bomber, what is the real statistical threat to any given individual from causes that are invariably sensationalized. For a person living in Baghdad or Manhattan, What is the statistical likelihood that an individual will die from terrorism compared to cancer or accident? What fraction of the daily death rate is due to hand guns?
Special interest groups are an American institution, but their aim is always to maximize the significance of the cause they champion. I’ve become so cynical that I automatically analyze news atrocities to determine who stands to profit from the outcome. Usually, it isn’t the people we are led to blame. There isn’t much I can do about my suspicions, but it gives me a little insight into situations to avoid to protect my personal safety. It’s probably a false security, but every little bit helps.
Interesting story.
Note that no one was killed, so this would not end up in the stats quoted.
I find that the anti-gun lobby banks heavily on hysteria and emotionalism.. I find that the pro-gun lobby generally has a more reasoned approach. I haven’t found any of these sociological survey’s done with requiste rigor to validiate their findings, statistical manipulation bordering on fraud being the case. Where I live, in southern arizona, if you want to enjoy the wildernes, it’s necessary to go armed, lest you find your vehicle and wallet appropriated by drug traffickers or illegal immigrants. Even the national guard can’t protect you/stop this. So, it’s situationally dependent. Seeing that mugger punch out that elderly new york women in her apartment door contrasted against the 82 year old women above who could defend herself with a handgun points out the great truth of firearms.. they level the field, with age and brawn no longer a factor.
The real issue is the mindset of the individual, not the tools that are used… without some means of personal protection, given our current cultural situation, it’s a quick slide into barbarism.
The uses of guns as defensive weapons follow different stages. First, there is the presentation stage. That is, the person shows that s/he has a gun [eg in a holster or drawer].
Second, there is the drawing of the gun [where the person puts the gun in his/her hand].
Third, there is aiming the gun.
Fourth, there is firing the gun.
The information provided to the assulting party in the first 3 stages are the most common uses of guns…in decreasing order.
To use the information only about who is shot would be a vast underexaggeration of handgun use.
My POV as a non-US citizen:
1. The data speak for themselves. 2006 in Western Europe we had LESS THAN ONE gun-homicide for every million citizens. In the US you had MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED gun-homicides for every million citizens. Of course clever statisticians can confuse uneducated folk with terminology, but no intelligent person can seriously question what these numbers mean. Fewer guns = fewer gun-homicides.
2. The question of what to do is thornier. I’m sorry but as non-US citizen, my POV on the constitution is that if it’s wrong, you change it – which I believe was also as the founding fathers of the US intended. That’s not the problem.
The problem is: given that there are already so many guns out there, is there a realistic way to dramatically reduce the number, and not just reduce the number of guns owned by law-abiding citizens while leaving those in criminal hands untouched? This could be done if we had a whole generation of politicians willing to sacrifice their careers to do what’s best for the country by going against the NRA. Because the only way to make this happen is to make gun-ownership illegal and punishable by a significant penalty – if your house is raided and the police find a gun, you go to jail for 5 years. Only with that kind of legislation could the police (or army) proactively get rid of criminals’ guns.
Is that likely to happen? Not as long as politicians are more concerned about the NRA lobby that about 30,000 gun-homicide victims every year …
Those that call for tougher gun control are in fact in the minority. 70 million gun owners in America along with many more that recognize the right to bear arms and do so everyday without killing anyone in cold blood. Should we all suffer because a few nuts abused a system? That seems to be the mentality used in the quest for safety.
Where does this all end? When will enough “safety” be in place? Is it when all of our actions are dictated by societies’ mandate and personal responsibility is a thing of the past?
Bryan Rankin is quite right “The purpose of the constitution (and the only legitimate function of government) is to protect individual liberty, NOT to save lives.” Nor as some (like Great Britain) wish to, be governed by a ‘nanny state.’
Freedom demands personal responsibility. If you chose poorly then your results will be poor. Or you make just have bad luck. Life is not fair, get over it.
Government is not your keeper, but it can become your master. Choose not to become a slave.
Ebbe’s logical blog on the statistical questions of gun ownership miss the point. It does matter if the majority of gun owner misuse their gun. What our founding fathers knew was that someday, our government would become tyrannical. And then a revolution would be necessary.
No a .45 automatic nor a 30 cal. Rife would stand a chance against tanks. But perhaps a million or 10 million would.
Pwmoor you are right. The day is coming, read justme’s blog!
personaly i dont know how anyone would be able to calculate how many times guns have saved lives. not if you included all instances of justifiable homicide, all incidents of justifyable shooting not resulting in homicide, and all incidents of justifyable use of a gun not resulting in a shooting or a homicide. the problem being the latter of the 3. its just to hard to tell how many times a gun is used to save a life without a bullet being shot. this being the case all statistics and data compareing defensive gun uses to accidents, suicide, and homicide are incomplete at best, and a wild guess at worst.
Regarding the Harvard study, I noted that the researchers used phone surveys to determine gun ownership levels. Given that individuals in possession of a stolen or illegal weapon are probably not going reveal this fact to surveyors – and will likely not even take a survey – an important section of data is completely missing: those who possess stolen or illegal guns. It would be interesting to see some stats on the percentage of homicides that are committed with stolen/illegal firearms, though I suspect such stats would be difficult to obtain. A high concentration of illegal/stolen weapons in a state could skew the findings drastically.
Look up a guy named Gary Kleck. Sounds like he’s someone in your ideological camp who has done some interesting work. You’ll probably find his conclusions counter-intuitive until you dig into the analysis. John Lott has more research, but his style is less popular with… um, “progressives”?
WRT gun control in Europe.
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcgvinco.html
So making guns illegal did not result in the UK’s lower homicide rate, it was lower before gun control. Same for Japan.
One might think that the UK is a safer place, but the few friends and relatives of mine who went to the UK were all robbed at knife point. I’m not saying it’s not a nice place to visit, I’ve not been there, but I can say that it’s not a “safe” place to visit.
ive seen kleck’s work but still dont think eaven that could give a completely accurate calculation as other studies show wildly differing results
I raised 2 children [1 boy, 1 girl] in a house where there were probably a dozen firearms, both pistols and rifles, were stored openly. All were kept loaded at all times, because if you know that the firearm is loaded, you won’t take chances; if you know it’s not loaded, you aren’t so careful. If you make a mistake, it’s better to think a firearm is loaded when it isn’t. Neither child ever touched a firearm without permission. [When permission was asked, it was always given, if possible–showing how to unload the firearm, how to determine it was unloaded, and how to reload it when finished.] There was no mystery, so there was no reason to want to look at one other than out of curiousity; there was no restriction, other than asking permission which was always given, so ther was no reason to take one without asking. Neither child has been particularily interested in firearms since they have become adults; my daughter carries a pistol in her vehicle, which she has had to “use” by showing it, and a rifle in her apartment. My son carries a pistol when he feels like it, which is when he goes in harm’s way, just like his father.
As far as whether firearms cause more deaths than they prevent, Florida. in 1987, passed a “shall issue” concealed weapons law; that is one in which any individual who is not prohibited from owning a firearm is not prohibited from carrying it concealed. In the months before the law was passed, the terms “Gunshine state” and “blood i9n the streets” were common in the press.In the 20 years that have passed, the number of firearms deaths decreased significantly. This has been the common experience of most cities and states in the US: increasing the number of LEGALLY owned firearms has decreased the number of firearms deaths; it has also decreased the number of rapes and armed robberies, chiefly because if criminals don’t know who is armed, they are less likely to take a chance. Compare the number of home invasions, in which criminals go into a home when people are there, between the US and Britain; In the US, criminals prefer to wait till the people are gone. Florida criminals also developed the tactic of robbing people leaving airports; most of these were tourists, who would likely be unarmed, and most of the Floridians were disarmed by the laws prohobiting firearms on airplanes [the same laws which have enabled hijackers to take over an airplain armed with a case cutter, a device using a razor blade: you don’t need a firearm when your victims have voluntarily disarmed themselves]. And rental car agencies changed their policies on the license plates of their cars, because most of the people driving rentals were unarmed, for whatever reason, and therefore safer targets. Gary Kleck has produced some statistically-rigorous studies that show that most lawful firearms are used to prevent crime; the last study he did showed that there were more than 2.5 million uses of handguns [no rifles or shotguns were considered] to prevent crimes per year. And a factoid that few people know: Mr. Kleck is, or was, anti-gun, and he still does not carry a firearm. I’m less familiar with John Lott’s background, but I know that he projected that if the areas that prohibit law-abiding citizens from carrying concealed weapons, based on the hours of work lost to hospitalization and death, it would be worth more than $6 billion per year. I’m also familiar with several of the anti-gun studies, including the famous “guns are 43 times as likely to kill a family member than a criminal’, and most of them are either based on faulty data, have serious errors in the handling of that data, or both. I also know that most of the people who call for more restrictive firearms laws, especially those in politics or public life, either own firearms thenselves, and have licenses to carry them, or have police or private, armed guards for protection. As one said, when asked about this, “But we’re not like the ordinary people!” No, they have more sense than to disarm themselves. [They also don’t think the firearms laws pertain to them; Sarah Brady bragged about getting someone to buy a rifle for her son, who couldn’t legally buy it. This is known as a “straw purchase”, and is prohibited–except for Mrs. Brady, it seems.]
Arguing that a city or country has fewer firearm homicides when it has stricter firearms laws is, bluntly, stupid. Of course there will be fewer firearms homicides; you don’t need firearms when your victims are unarmed. Britain flouts their lower firearms death rates, yet they are now calling for tighter knife laws, bacause the criminals have seitched their firearms for knives. Firearms are the protection of the otherwise weak and helpless; you don’t need to be strong to protect yourself with one. Take firearms away from them and you have condemned them to the mercy of their attackers, who are usually short on mercy.
Of course, there is something more than a firearm needed to keep from becoming a victim, and that is the mind-set. The people at Virginia Tech didn’t have it; whether any would have fought back if they were armed is a question, bacause they certainly didn’t make any effort to do so in this case. In at least one case, Cho ran out of ammunition and relaoded, then continued to fire. Why didn’t someone attack him during that time? For that reason, why, when they saw that he was shooting at will, didn’t someone, or several people, attack him? People have become convinced that they are victims, and give up when threatened. In one of the school shootings, a kid came in and started shooting people; a couple of guys took him down, one getting shot, not fatally, in the process, but saving an untold number of people. The opposite thing happened on 9/11; 3 aircraft full of people sat in their seats like good little victims and let someone fly them into a building. In the only case that the people faught back, they died, but the airplane didn’t kill anyone else.
People have mentioned the “dangers” of being around armed people; take a look at the number of people injured badly enough to require medical aid in the various sports. Of course, rugby, soccer, and football lead the list. Where does hunting ant the other shooting sports fall in this list? Well below the dangerous sports of tennis, billiards, and bicycling. In fact, the total number of injuries in the shooting sports is less than the number per 100 000 in football. In fact, look at the number of innocent people shot by civilians attempting to stop a crime, and compare that to the number of innocent people shot by police attempting to stop a crime; you’re significantly better off with the civilians. No matter how emotional the argument gets, the facts bear out that most law-abiding citizens who choose to carry a firearm for protection are trained it it’s use; most are better trained than the average police officer. Most police officers practice with their firearms the minimum amount that is required, and get out of that if they can. Private citizens, who have to find a range, which is getting harder all the time, and pay for their own ammunition, which is fairly expensive, usually practice as much as they can find time for. A friend who is in the military makes it a practice to become a volunteer police officer wherever he is stationed, because he gets a range to practice at and because he enjoys police work. He told me that in about every place where he had been a volunteer he had to take a lot of jokes because of his shooting; most places provide an officer with a certain amount of ammunition, and this is replaced at some interval, like every 3 months. He would shoot up the replaced ammunition, where most of the other officers had a deal with a gun store so they could sell their replaced ammunition. I spent a lot of time at ranges the last several years because I was a member of a shooting group, and at any range safety is the most important thing; anyone who handles a firearm in the way most people seem to think that shooters do would be reminded of the rules, then warned, and very shortly asked to leave–and that would be backed up by threats of what would happen if the shooter didn’t. And the threats would not be by firearm; most shooters do not view their forearms as weapons except in self-defence, and enforcing range rules do not come under that heading.
The problem with guns in the US is rooted in crime, and the minds of criminals. Going back in US history, certainly before the “gangster years” of the ’20s and Prohibition, guns and criminals were linked, and American criminals had guns. This is a major difference between them and the criminals of most other countries. And this is where the statistics of guns in the US becomes so inflated. Look at the non-criminal use of firearms in the US, and it compares favorably with any other country. But take the raw numbers of gun crimes in the US and we look bad. On the other hand, we have very few attacks on people by explosives, fire, and other methods. Our criminals use guns.
As for the people who think that “people” shouldn’t be allowed to have firearms because of what they will do with them, they are usually projecting their own feelings onto others. They know that they could not be trusted to have a firearm, because they would use it to attack others if they were angry, or would panic if a situation arose in which they needed a firearm. Of course, we all know what Dr. Freud said about those who fear firearms, but that is their problem. I fully agree with them; they should not be allowed to have firearms. But why they believe that their fears should extend to a ban on firearms for me, I fail to understand. If they believe that their life is not worth protecting, I can’t argue, but there are many people who think their life is important, and are willing to protect it. They shouldn’t be restricted. As for the Canadian who would feel safer if the Atlantic Ocean were between him and the US, I agree with him, and can’t understand why he doesn’t do something about it. As far as the majority of Canadians, at least from the reports I’ve read, they disagree with their country’s firearms laws. As in most of the areas of the US where there are restrictive gun laws, these were not passed with the agreement of the people who were restricted. Most politicians want firearms ownership strictly limited to the military, the police, and themselves.
Here are some FACTS to consider. Real fact, not stuff based on statistics, not stuff based on studies done by univeristies or scientists. Just plain old common sense, real, true to life facts; (1) Gun laws will only affect those people who are law-abiding, not the other way around. (2) If one is to look into whether or not guns save or take more lives then one should take into account EVERY incident of armed confrontation, including military and law enforcement. How many times have the police prevented an incident merely by having a firearm readily available? (3) People are animals, period. (4) It would be impossible to rid the world of guns. (5) No amount of legislation is going to change ANY of the above facts.
Now for the opinion. Deadly weapon. Well that could be ANYTHING. A well trained person can kill with nothing at all. Teenagers routinely use deadly weapons every day, while driving to school or using their pencil to fill in the bubbles on an exam. This then means that it boils down to TRAINING. That’s right. It starts in the home as soon as the child comes into the world. It continues all through life, be it formal and in a classroom or informal as a part of how a person percieves the world around them and reacts or responds to it. It is not the job of the governments of the world to raise people and babysit children. Would you really want them to anyway? Think about this before you go voting on ANYTHING, be it gun control or the next President. Half of the problem with most of the laws we currently have is that they were drawn up and enacted as a direct result of an emotional connection forming an opinion based on less than all the ACTUAL FACTS.
While the correlations in the Harvard study are interesting, they don’t imply a casuality. Are the gun ownership rates higher because of the higher prevalence of gun crime or vice versa? Furthermore, are the cited cases of gun violence traceable to household guns (obtained and owned legally)?
Only by answering those questions can one start to speak to public policy.
“States With Higher Levels of Gun Ownership Have Higher Homicide Rates”
True. Exactly like states with higher levels of umbrella ownership have higher rainfall rates. People tend to buy guns in areas where they feel unsafe.
They are related numbers, but make sure the causality is pointed the right direction.