I am sure you're right about the study.

There are some traumatized posters here who real do feel safer with a gun at home. Fine. A handgun suffices.

What outrages most people are assault weapons of war. We have people here who say they are fun for target practice. I think running shit over with a tank might be cool, too. Doesn't mean I should have access to one.

Rifles of all types are kill about 500 people a year, 600 in a particularly bad year. Common handguns, however, are used in about 11k murders and almost all of the 20,000+ gun suicides per year. Our gun murder problem is almost entirely a handgun problem.

Anyone with the money can purchase a tank, and if you get the proper permits, it can have a fully functioning main gun.

you can fire at shit or run over shit.

Seems like how guns should be in a lot of ways :p

and if we happen to own one, it is likely to be directly involved.

As John-reporting-for-duty-right-on-schedule above says, I can buy a tank, after all.

What I'd really like to see, and what should be doable even in this country, is repealing the Dickey Amendment so we can get a first-rate scientific study on gun violence in this country done by the NIH and the CDC. Maybe start there. Nothing tells you more that we have become a failed state as it relates to guns than that our own government isn't alllowed to fund a study on the problem.

States could fund them, universities could fund them, private organizations could fund them. Hell, rich pro-control people could fund them.

Nobody seems interested in stepping up, though.


I suspect that what the studies would find is that the social and economic factors that shape our nation are the underlying factor, not hardware. And we could fix the underlying socio-economic issues.... if we could get good progressives in power.

But guess what helps keep progressives out of office? Gun-control attempts. Particularly pandering, ineffective ones.

And the reason she's not afraid to stick her neck out a wee bit is the support for sensible/obvious steps we can take to police ourselves better is clear:

http://www.pollingreport.com/guns.htm

I am worried because I feel we are slipping into a post-9/11 mindset as a nation as the media flogs these events for every cable eyeball and internet click.


Owning guns is a constitutional right. If a constitutional right can be denied by simply being put on a list, without any due process at all, then what is the point of a constitution?

You could replace "buy a gun" with "have a lawyer", "have a jury trial", "speak freely", "cast a ballot", "require a warrant to search their computer", etc. Do you support people on the no-fly list losing those rights as well?



There are no "sensible" steps, no "obvious" steps here, which is something many people seem to be unwilling or unable to understand. They latch onto "oh, it's a hardware issue" and go full-bore for stuff like defining and banning "assault weapons", or magazine limits, or universal background checks.


This stuff does not stop premeditated attacks. It doesn't. It's that simple. When you have a bunch of unprepared people enclosed in a building (a box) and some terrorist or madman decides to attack them, whatever slight effect on firepower or efficiency that banning protruding pistol grips is irrelevant! You have a wood and brick box full of targets... what do you expect to happen?

What is happening now, the "lone wolf picks a random target and opens up on people" situation, could have been happening any time in the past hundred and fifty years. It's happening now because we have "stochastic terrorism" resulting from the hate-speech business model of the Right for the last few years (and particularly the last few months, from the GOP primary candidates such as Trump), as well as our ongoing involvement in the Middle East, in particular Iraq, Syria, and ISIS/ISIL.


Quite frankly, this is all the ongoing result of Gore having the election stolen from him in 2000. With President Gore, the 9/11 attacks don't occur, Afghanistan and Iraq are never invaded, de-Ba'ath-ification of the Iraqi military never occurs, and the displaced military officers of Iraq never form ISIS/ISIL. Muslim-hate stays on the back burner by, and only by a handful of right-wingers at the extreme fringes of the party.

And one big reason Gore was able to have the election stolen was because the stupid, ineffective 1993 Federal Assault Weapons Ban put the results within reach of the fucking Bush Crime Family. <600 votes in Florida, or a couple of electoral votes in some other close state.


Goddamn it, now I'm in a pissy mood.





Anyway, I'm going to make breakfast now. If you're curious to see how Universal Background Checks work, here's how the system in Washington State works now that they had it done by referendum.

was the subject of a law. I mean they don't really want to find out, do they? What better evidence that they don't believe their own rhetoric?

You actually think assault weapons are a bigger problem than handguns, despite the obvious absurdity of that. I mean, you really think that. This nearly crazy view is why we get nowhere.

Handguns are used in about 10,000 murders and 20,000 suicides a year. Rifles in about 400 and 100 respectively.

If people think guns make them safer the answer is to promote the opposite reality, not to reinforce ignorance.

I talked about what outrages people and the reality of individual attachment to guns for self-defense purposes.

Are you for banning all handguns?

sorry no link, but in this study it found that the majority of home invasion deaths the homeowner lost his or her life because of the weapon s/he produced. It was taken away from him/her or whatever. Todays climate of shooting and asking questions later may have changed that though. Back when the study I'm referring to people were a lot less likely to start shooting at the drop of a hat. Or seems to me like anyway.
At any rate I don't have guns in my home. I have a crossman co2 pellet pistol for some reason, not sure why and out in the shop I have a daisy bb gun, again not sure why as I've owned both for years.

The American autobiography includes cords of self-reliance, individual empowerment, and personal exceptionalism.

And those cords exist because of a conflicting belief...our quite significant inability to trust others. As members of a population each of us is simultaneously 'me' and 'one of them' depending only upon point of view.

These inclinations of our personality bring us into internal conflict. You trust yourself without question and distrust others, I do exactly the same.

Such brings us into regular conflict, especially on issues such as firearms, tools that empower self-reliance, which can be used legitimately or not.

over possessing a gun, but the fact of the matter is that you increase the risk of injury or death of everyone around you, including yourself. Your false sense of security is not worth that risk.

First the way that you state being more defensive gun uses than crimes.

Second way being that you have about 100 million gun owners (or households, give or take).

Given an approximately 50 year adult lifespan (18-68, though in most cases it's probably more like 18-83 or 18-88)

2.5 million x 50 = 125 million.

This means ON AVERAGE, every household with a gun will use it AT LEAST ONCE defensively. Sure some won't use it once at all but some substantial number will use it 5 or 10 times. Everyone in their right mind knows that's absolute bullshit.

People who are law abiding should have guns. C'mon. You should not be afraid.

Guy was about a foot larger than me and probably outweighed me by 70lbs. Little feminine me at 23 years old in a dress and heels, at 5ft.5 and 140 lbs.
I sure wasn't afraid. I knew what I was capable of doing. I had a 5 lb purse on a long strap if he decided to try and grab me. and my shoes had pointy toes, if you know what I mean...

Haele

there are a lot of self defense things you can learn that don't involve guns. I remember taking a class way back in the day.

And the assailant is less likely to have a gun if there are fewer guns around.

to be not be armed with firearms.

I can't help but notice people who have the greatest love for guns as "self defense" live in places where criminal violence is rare.

They don't live in places where criminal violence is a very real daily threat; places where people know that having a gun only makes them a more likely target.

Statistically, guns are something you kill friends, family, neighbors, and yourself with.

I live in a city with a high rate of gun death and gun mayhem. Most of it is gang vs. gang, some of it is police vs. gang, and nearly all of it can be classified as guns escalating the violence of angry human confrontations. (I including suicides here, which is violence against self.)

Otherwise it's horrible accidents, such as gangs or police misidentifying people, innocent bystanders hit, children playing with guns.

I've had more than my fair share of confrontations with armed people. Not once would the overall outcome have been improved had I been some "good guy" with a gun.

My standards for gun ownership are very high. I don't think the majority of cops are qualified to carry guns, most especially the steroid-pumping street bully sort.

My family heritage is matriarchal American Wild West. There is very little tolerance in the family tradition for fools with guns, and most people with guns are regarded as fools, including family members.

You consider good.

Kleck is at the high end. The low end is from the VPC which gives an estimate of nearly 45,000 DGUs per year. That is greater than five times the number of gun related homicides. http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable15.pdf

The CDC commissioned Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence http://iom.nationalacademies.org/Reports/2013/Priorities-for-Research-to-Reduce-the-Threat-of-Firearm-Related-Violence.aspx reviewed seventeen studies on DGUs. The concluded "Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals"

How many more times must guns be used defensively than criminally before they are "good" for self defense? 2x, 5x, 10x, 25x, 100x...?

you quote are in dispute, according to that same study.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/16/the-study-that-gun-rights-activists-keep-citing-but-completely-misunderstand/

disputed but, as they indicate, appears to be a significantly high number.

I am all if favor of allowing the CDC to research the problem. My question is what happens if the data does show a high number of DGUs? Would gun control proponents objectively take that into consideration and be willing to change their position? Or would they dig in with religious zealotry, ignoring inconvenient data from a source that they requested?

I've posted my story a few times here on DU before, but the short of it is, I had to point a loaded gun at my psychotic father after he kicked in the bedroom door where my younger brother, sister and I went to hide while he was busy choking my mother in the kitchen. When he snapped and attacked my mom, my 14-yr old sister, who was far braver than I was, broke a coffee cup across the back of his head to get him off of her while I ran for the hunting gun in my dad's closet. The cup is what got him off my mom, and made him come looking for us.

No shots were fired, because the sight of the gun pointed at him did indeed make him stop and leave the house until police arrived (45 FUCKING MINUTES LATER!). And the kicker is that my dad claimed self-defense and used the lump on his head from the coffee cup to claim my mom attacked him! No one was arrested, and the cops gave us 15 min. to pack up what we needed in garbage bags to stay at Grandma's. And THEN, my mom's car wouldn't start because my dad had pulled a spark plug out in the 45 min. it took the cops to arrive, so we had to take the old beater car in the yard.

So, while I do agree that the numbers stated by Kleck et al are exaggerated, I also know from first-hand experience what defensive gun use is like. It fucking sucks, and will scar you for life even when you don't have to shoot someone.

They explicitly state that they will shoot through their own door in order to kill anyone "who comes knocking without a good reason," or to execute someone who touches their parked car, or who they think might potentially pose a threat.

I live in a small town in western Pennsylvania, where the apparent mindset is "shoot first, and if anyone questions you about it, shoot them too."


I'm fairly confident that the esteemed members of my community imagine that each of them uses their guns for self-defense 2.5 million times per year.

We had a rash of minor vandalism and annoyances where I live out here in the woods. A few items missing out of barns, for 3 days in a row various people had pasture gates opened. My horses and goats got loose, same with the neighbor across the road. The gate that was opened was one I never used and it was at the back of my pasture. It had to be deliberately opened.
The saner neighbors assumed it was neighborhood kids fooling around, probably kids we knew. The nuttier neighbors stated their intention to shoot anyone tampering with their fences. Now it's no joke to have livestock running loose but at the same time, clearly these were not cattle rustlers. I said several time " you really are going to shoot the neighbor boys who probably go to school with your own kids" yes, yes they would. I thought it was nuts to even think that way.
I got a closed circuit camera on my barn and acouple of motion sensor lights on the driveway and barn and let the big dog out of his yard for a few nights. The thought of shooting and killing a kid horrified me. I'd rather have to put an injured animal down than kill a child but then again I'm not crazy.

Last edited Sun Dec 6, 2015, 02:01 PM - Edit history (1)

By "minor" I mean that unlocked cars have been opened and their contents tossed about a bit. Of the dozen or so incidents I've heard of, the largest cash loss was approximately $6 in loose change from the ashtray.

But the brave soldiers of my mighty village are fully prepared to gun down the teenagers who are committing these atrocities, and they claim full God-given authority to do so. I'm not kidding, either: the vaunted 2nd Amendment is merely a convenience to underscore the Almighty's will that we defend ourselves even before a threat materializes.

Anyone who sees this as anything but a sickness is equally sick.

I can imagine gun possession having psychological values, and perhaps costs.

Is the psychological value that a gun provides something that should simply be dismissed from consideration?

Stop being afraid and be tough. You use it appropriately.

In some cases, guns are completely the wrong tool for the job.

If you have multiple self defense tools available to you, which span the broad range of capabilities, and if you have trained yourself in the correct usage of those tools, you will do well in defense of yourself and others, should the need for such defense happen.

If your set of tools is limited, you will need to cope with less efficient uses of the available tools when the ideal tool for the circumstance is not available to you.