The numbers on self-defense shootings in the latimes.com article you linked to are flawed at best. The research was put together by an obviously antigun group, and the data they use comes from the FBI 's UCR program. Quoting from a paper debunking that article:
"If the police investigate a homicide and ask the district attorney to charge someone with murder or manslaughter, that is reported as a murder or manslaughter to the UCR program. But district attorneys often investigate a case, find evidence that the killing was in fact, justifiable or excusable homicide, and drop the charges.
“A person who is tried for murder will sometimes be found innocent because the killing was done in self-defense. This is very often the case in spousal abuse situations where a woman defends herself or her children from a current or estranged husband. If a murder turns into a (civilian legal defense homicide) after the initial report has been taken, there is a strong possibility that this change won’t make it into the UCR data.”
End result, the number of cases of justified civilian self defense shootings for that year is much higher than 259. It’s certainly still lower than the number of murders committed with firearms, probably by a wide margin. The paper is quoted by a lot of pro-gun groups, and as usual most people will probably just agree with the side they were already on, but read the paper and decide for yourself.
Another factor is that in a case of self-defense, the point is to stop the threat. Once the attacker is on the ground, then the citizen who shot them is going to call the police, and an ambulance. If they continued to shoot the attack while they were down “in the heat of the moment” the situation just went from justifiable self-defense to murder, or at least manslaughter. On the other hand, someone committing murder is going to finish their victim off, that’s kind of the point.
So there are going to be far more non-fatal self-defense shootings than fatal. There will be even more cases where producing the firearm will stop the threat with no shots fired. There is no data on this that I can find.
The whole argument is flawed and nonsensical. So since 8,000 plus people were killed by guns it means guns are ineffective self-defense tools? If a large number of those people were armed it might make sense but we aren’t given that info. We also aren’t told how many of those victims were criminals.
Given the number of shooting deaths in the inner cities, it would be safe to assume that a victim is either a criminal, in which case self-defense is irrelevant, or if the victim is a law abiding citizen he was probably unarmed since inner cities have the strictest laws regarding legal gun ownership.
It was an article that only appeals to people with poor reading comprehension due to antigun bias.
And far more non-fatal gun crimes (rape by gun point etc.) than homicides and non fatal self defense. The availability of guns creates a massive supply of firearms which end up used in more murders, other violent crimes, accidental shootings, etc. If you are really worried about crimes against limb and life, support disarming.
If the stated purpose of the 2nd is now absurd, then there is no reasonable justification for gun ownership at all.Self defense does not wor since it only makes society more dangerous to itself (compare our gun violence to a number of nations with strict gun policy). And shooting cans and paper targets isn’t worth dead children.
Well, we can’t be sure because there are no numbers on that, nor on how many women use a firearm to scare off a would be attacker for example.
I said this far up thread, you’re really only talking about disarming law abiding citizens, and that will only leave them as easy prey for criminals who are still armed with millions of illegal guns. If you have a plan to disarm the criminals, great! Let’s do that, first. Then we can debate whether or not we need to disarm law abiding citizens.
Also, cocaine, heroine, and other illegal drugs have been flowing over the borders by the ton for decades. If guns are outlawed, they will flow over the borders by the millions, into the hands of criminals to prey on disarmed citizens.
Outlawing guns and gun ownership as a solution to our “gun violence” problem is utopian nonsense.
Yes there are from the same source as the LA Times article (the VPC). Over 67,000 crimes per year are stopped because of a gun. The Times just chose to focus on justifiable homicides for obvious reasons.
Yes. I think I said this earlier, in different words. People really want the knowledge that firearms exist to disappear from consciousness. I guess some may just wish for some(themselves included, of course) to have a monopoly on possession of arms.
I like this part. Where the supply and demand of illegal drugs are so strongly correlated to how armed the citizenry is that it goes from a ton to millions
I only wish it were loaded when she did that. That would be the icing on the cake.
And yep she turned a highly accurate weapon into a splatter gun. Great for large crowds and clearing your front…
I think women should be armed first, before and above men as they are more vulnerable. Don’t be a statistic, create a different statistic. Another dead motherfucker who tried to rape you…
Not sure what you mean. “By the ton” doesn’t mean A ton. It means if you were measuring the quantities of drugs flowing over the border, the unit of measurement you would use is tons. The demand for and trade in illegal guns in this country is already in the millions.
I missed where they got that stat. Their source for the number 259 was very flawed, so I would want to look closely at where they got that number 67,000 before I quoted it as a fact.
Right. So the ratio scaling of “took yer guns” went from tons to millions. Seems like a pretty big jump considering there’s no real tie between gun ownership and drug usage (that I’m aware of).
It looks like you’re just being willfully stupid now.
Drugs are illegal, but there is a demand for them, and drug dealers have no problem smuggling them “by the ton” which means many hundreds of tons, over the border to satisfy that demand.
There is already an illegal trade in guns, numbering in the millions, which means there is a demand. If the supply of guns in this country vanished, they could and would be smuggled over the boarder by the millions to meet that demand.
I’ve read enough of your posts before to know that you’re not stupid. Yet you’re acting like I jumped from 1 ton = millions, and also, drug users = the only one who would want guns? So you’re trying to win an argument by being obtuse. That’s pathetic and you could do better.
I could see how that number would be flawed as well but it is from the same source for the justifiable homicides. If sloth accepts one he has to accept the other.
