America's Safe Firearm Gallery, 5-4-08

And today, 99.9% of the 250 million firearms in this country were used to do nothing illegal at all.

Do the women in the rural US who were threatened by their firearms-owning husbands today report to you? Do the drunks who own firearms and whose neighbours live in fear of them report to you? Do the people who left their firearms lying around where they are accessible to their children report to you? Does anyone at all report to you?

Didn't think so.

If someone owns 20 firearms and uses one of them to do something illegal, do the other 19 get off scot free in your count, by the way?

Innocent inanimate objects ...

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

I really want to know why you insist upon your course of action despite the fact that WE have to live under the republicans because of people like you encouraging the party leadership to adopt policy positions that screw Democrats in elections across the south and midwest.

Canada has different gun laws because Canada has a different culture and a different political landscape. In America, this issue is poison to our party so long as we continue to take our cues from people like you.

Damn, there must have been an "in the first place", and I done missed it.


... people like you encouraging the party leadership to adopt policy positions ...
... this issue is poison to our party so long as we continue to take our cues from people like you.


Oooh, you mean there are people like me where you're at?

So I guess the question of where I'm at is a non-issue then, eh?

Me, I'm just here to keep the agenda-shovers honest. It's kind of a full-time job ...

"Me, I'm just here to keep the agenda-shovers honest. It's kind of a full-time job ..."
not all of us push an agenda

I'd say it happens about as frequently in the United States. How do the neighbors know a) that their neighbor owns firearms, b) is a drunk and c) handles the firearms when they are drunk? Unless they know all of this explicitly then they are living in fear of the unknown. Which is what you often accuse gun owners of? We can't make people report crimes. You seem to think that the scenarios you listed above are common occurrences. Do you have any evidence of that?

David

How do the neighbors know a) that their neighbor owns firearms, b) is a drunk and c) handles the firearms when they are drunk?

Are most people really stupid where you are?

When I was a kid in the 50s, we had a neighbour who (a) owned a firearm, (b) was a drunk, and (c) hauled his firearm out and waved it around at the neighbours when he was drunk.

Nobody does that where you are? Lucky you. Your country must have achieved a utopian state.


You posted a bunch of stats about rural Canadian women reporting stuff.

Shake that memory loose now. The "reports" were made in the course of assistance provided or surveys taken by organizations that assist women who are victims of abuse. They were therefore NOT included in any official figures, or news reports, about criminal misuse of firearms.

They also quite possibly didn't actually involve detectible criminal misuse of firearms. Mere presence of firearms in a home where abuse takes place has a known effect on the likelihood that women will report or try to leave an abuse situation, i.e. facilitates the abuse, just as the presence of a firearm in the hand of someone holding up a convenience store facilitates the robbery. But by the standard we have apparently been offered, those firearms are not problematic. I'm not agreeing.


We can't make people report crimes.

Duh.

Ergo, we can't made statements such as were made in the opening post.

Point, got?

I haven't seen a single firearm in my neighborhood. I would dare say only one or two neighbors have seen any of mine since I rarely go shooting anymore. That would have only been when I was loading them in my truck. I don't allow people in my home since we run a dog rescue and sometimes have dog that have aggression problems, so they wouldn't have seen them in my home either. There was a couple that got drunk and liked to yell at each other at about 2 am. I just walked down there, they saw me and went inside and argued more quietly. How many people did your neighbor kill before he was removed from society?

David

I haven't seen a single firearm in my neighborhood.

Neither have I in mine.

I also haven't seen an albino Manx cat. Doesn't mean there aren't any, or that other people haven't seen them in their neighbourhoods.


How many people did your neighbor kill before he was removed from society?

Gosh, neat trick there. Too bad it didn't work.

If he'd killed someone, he would likely have ended up in those fine statistics. Since he didn't -- but HE DID do illegal and despicable things with his firearm -- he isn't there.

As it happened, he finally died of some alcohol-related ailment, and his abused wife was finally able to get a life.

(It was the 50s in working-class suburbia. There were no shelters for isolated abused women, no one in the neighbourhood knew about the abuse until after he died, and people didn't think such things happened next door, or talk about them if they suspected, back in those days.)

So let me get this straight you haven't seen a single firearm in your neighborhood and neither have I. But you are sure that there are neighborhoods all over the country where drunks are waving around firearms and shooting indiscriminately, and that no one is reporting those people. I'm willing to bet that the scenario above is a very rare occurrence. I am glad that the situation for abused women has improved in both the US and Canada.


David

So let me get this straight you haven't seen a single firearm in your neighborhood and neither have I. But you are sure that there are neighborhoods all over the country where drunks are waving around firearms and shooting indiscriminately, and that no one is reporting those people.

In fact, you chose to make an outright false statement.

Your choice, sweetie.

Why wasn't your neighbor reported for his illegal and despicable acts with firearms?


David

I was 10ish years old at the time. I'm not really sure why the grown-ups did what they did. I do suspect that the fact that the neighbour was a bailiff might have had something to do with his not being dealt with, if reports were in fact made, which I really don't know.

Nice of you to take such an interest, I must say.

People in positions of power get away with all kinds of crimes. It's a shame.

David

It was more of a question. I probably should have put question marks there but you are usually pretty sharp.

David

YOU SAID:

But you are sure that there are neighborhoods all over the country where drunks are waving around firearms and shooting indiscriminately, and that no one is reporting those people.

That statement is FALSE, because I said no such fucking thing and nothing I said could be interpreted as meaning that.

I apologized for not using a question mark. I'm glad to see that's not what you were asserting.

David

Language!

I speak two or three or four. Which one were you wanting?

Your French is terrible. You are the one who has questioned other members about
whether they have read the forum rules. You need to read up yourself. Read the part about civility
and repeat it silently to your self while standing in the corner. LOL!!!

Your French is terrible.

Hein?


Read the part about civility and repeat it silently to your self while standing in the corner.

Here. For you.

http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue2_1/03Schroeder.html

There is an unfortunate tendency to assume that civil discourse has occurred whenever two or more people are nice to each other, say something, and don’t get into an argument. That is misleading on all three counts.

Civil discourse is city speech, implying, as Richard Luecke (1968; 1996) has suggested many times, that it is not only how we speak in cities but also how cities speak.

City speech is not simply or uniformly nice; on the contrary, it is often confrontational and rough. A place in which speech was simply and uniformly nice would be homogeneous and have nothing but smooth edges. I am aware that this may well be what Aristotle (1990) had in mind when he described the city in terms of friendship and excluded those who were not “beautiful” (not to mention those who did not speak Greek) from full participation. But, as Martha Nussbaum (1986) has pointed out, Aristotle truncated his own city at this point and (unfortunately) did not allow himself to be carried away by his method. That method is certainly capable of carrying us to a city with a more inclusive aesthetic. Beauty is defined not by excluding those who do not fit within existing boundaries but by crossing boundaries to acknowledge the fittingness of diversity encountered in the city. Crossing boundaries involves confrontation and is rarely smooth. But that it is part of city speech means that civil discourse has not occurred if boundaries have not been crossed.

Nor is city speech simply a matter of saying something. If it does not also ensure space and time in which to say nothing, the listening essential to discourse becomes impossible. In terms of boundary crossing, this means that civil discourse has not occurred if boundaries that define spaces of sound and spaces of silence have not been recognized and honored. Both sound and silence are crucial if the city is not simply to degenerate into a place of violence.

Finally, and most emphatically, city speech does not avoid argument. In fact, the rhythm of crossing, recognizing, and honoring boundaries is descriptive of the discipline of argument. (Remember the formulation at the beginning of this essay: liberal arts are concerned with discovery, appreciation, orientation, and application—redefined here in terms of crossing, recognizing, and honoring boundaries.) Where there is no argument, there is no civil discourse, and there is no city. Such a place is likely to be defined in one of three ways: either it is surrounded by an essentially impermeable boundary that excludes difference; or it is marked by violent struggle for control of turf; or (most likely) it is a mixture of both, with enforced homogeneity near the center of power and violent struggle for control of turf on the fringes.

Just an opinion, but I rather like it.

If that speaking Greek bit were enforced, I'd be in trouble ... my ancient Greek speaking was brief and almost as long ago as it was for Aristotle himself ...


Then there's always democratic discourse ...

http://plato.acadiau.ca/dagora/Glossary/glossaryhtml/ddiscourse.html

Democratic discourse is a "civilized debate among convictions, in which one party can recognize the other parties as co-combatants in the search for authentic truths without sacrificing its own claims to validity." (Taylor, 133) Democratic discourse is essential to a well-functioning democracy in which citizens are able to express diverse opinions in the form of "reasonable disagreement". Reciprocity is also necessary as it allows for a multi-dimensional flow of ideas and discussion which may affect all parties.

http://www.publiceye.org/aboutpra/Eyes_Right.html

A few years ago I helped write the Blue Mountain Statement that argued for civil discourse while opposing certain anti-democratic tendencies on the political right, especially the Hard Right. We felt threatend by some organizing on the right that undercut the basic ideas of semocracy and pluralism in an increasingly diverse society:

... The time has come to stand up and vigorously defend democracy and pluralism against the attacks orchestrated by cynical leaders of the anti-democratic right. History teaches us that there can be no freedom without liberty, no liberty without justice, and no justice without equality; and we look forward to success because we know it is through the never-ending struggle for equality, justice, liberty and freedom that democracy is nourished.

... Democracy depends not only on ensuring freedom of speech, but also on ensuring the ability for all of us to carry on serious debate based on accurate information rather than prejudice or misinformation. Informed consent—the bedrock of the democratic process—relies on accurate information. Demagogues traffic in lies, distortions, and emotionally manipulative appeals, often aimed at inflaming stereotypes and prejudice already embedded in the society. Demagoguery is toxic to democratic discourse, no matter where it comes from on the political spectrum.

Ich mag den alten addage, der fragt, „Kann wir übereinstimmen, nicht übereinzustimmen“?
Wir müssen zivil nicht sein zu übereinstimmen.

prognosticating what percentage of gun owners act that way, in your opinion? I am sure that there are no hardcore numbers as none of these neighbors and significant others of the gun owners report the crimes...and if there are some numbers I would be very interested in the source and method of securing the data.

I'm not saying that what you are saying didn't happen to you in the 1950's, there were a lot of things that occurred in the 1950's which is far less prevalent now because of new laws and better enforcement. But you know that as does anyone who has virtually any legal sense at all. How many times is anyone going to brandish a firearm to his neighbors in a drunken state where you live without arrest, conviction and a judges order removing firearms from the man?

blah.

You all know as well as I do how many improper/illegal uses of firarms go unreported to anyone, so there would seem to be no further need to go on about it.

only that it happens in any appreciably higher numbers than abusive alcoholics threaten people with kitchen knives, whiskey bottles, baseball bats, pitch forks,...you get the idea. How far does this mindset go to the cause of freeing the oppressed? What other objects should be outlawed? Hey, I have a novel idea, how about society punish the extreme minority of abusive alcoholics and leave the freedom of the super duper overwhelming majority of people in tact?

We can't make people report crimes.

I provided a post a month or so back ( http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x162967#163140) that gave a break-down of not only BenEzra's oft-quoted homicide statistics, but also robberies, aggravated assaults, rapes, and every other bad thing done with firearms I could find annual statistics for.

With all the crimes that were reported for all the bad things I could find, we come up with about 800,000 bad firearm incidents a year, including suicide, murder, robberies, aggravated assaults, rape, and sexual assault.

This means that of the 50 or so million firearm owners, every year about 98.4% of them don't do any bad things with their firearms.

This means that out of 250 million firearms, less than one-half of one percent of them are used to do bad things every year.

Even if we were to double the number of reported bad firearm incidents, we would still see that the overwhelming majority of firearms and firearm owners are never involved in crime.

It looks sensational to post a list of some of the 800,000 bad firearm incidents every couple of days, but the fact is, compared to the number of firearms in circulation and the number of firearm owners, firearm crime is exceedingly rare. If you stay out of the gang and drug scene, it is probably astonishingly rare.

With all the crimes that were reported for all the bad things I could find, we come up with about 800,000 bad firearm incidents a year, including suicide, murder, robberies, aggravated assaults, rape, and sexual assault.

This means that of the 50 or so million firearm owners, every year about 98.4% of them don't do any bad things with their firearms.

And if a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there ...

... it didn't happen!

Just imagine what people might be saying if nearly 1 out of every 50 of modem owners (that we knew of) were using their modems to commit serious, violent crimes ...

...good, now imagine if 1 out of 25 modem owners were using their modems to prevent serious, violent crimes....

Estimates of defensive gun use range from a LOW of about a million violent crimes prevented each year to a high of 3 million per year. The same government statistics that you quote for your blood in the streets rhetoric can also teach the impartial reader that guns help society far more than they hurt it.

Estimates of defensive gun use range from a LOW of about a million violent crimes prevented each year to a high of 3 million per year.

Because I haven't yet met a person who can do basic arithmetic who falls for that one.

So the DOJ can't do basic arithmatic? You had no trouble believing them 3 posts ago when they were estimating 800k violent crimes committed with firearms.

Surveys have been performed by people in academia and government to assess the impact of defense firearm use. They all confirm that defensive gun use by ordinary citizens occurs on a scale that dwarfs criminal gun use.

You had no trouble believing them 3 posts ago when they were estimating 800k violent crimes committed with firearms.

I assumed that when you said:

I provided a post a month or so back ( http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... ) that gave a break-down of not only BenEzra's oft-quoted homicide statistics, but also robberies, aggravated assaults, rapes, and every other bad thing done with firearms I could find annual statistics for.

you were talking about reported crimes. Crimes for which police reports were filled out, and in many cases charges laid and convictions obtained and sentences passed. Not "estimates" of anything. You might want to clarify.


Surveys have been performed

Yes indeed. Just not quite the same thing as collecting data on crimes reported to police, is it?

The great big fat question that arises so easily is: how come those 3 million attempted violent crimes were NOT reported to police, and thus are not included in those actual STATISTICS?

What I want somebody to do is estimate the proportion of the population that has a firearm to hand at any given moment, and thus is in a position to use it to ward off bad guys.

And use that to work out a rate of what proportion of those people have used a firearm to ward off bad guys.

And then apply that rate to the rest of the population, the ones who did not have a firearm to hand when someone tried to victimize them. And tell us why there aren't really just a whooooole lot more robberies and murders and suchlike in the actual statistics, arising out of people without firearms to hand being victimized and unable to avert the offence.

I think it would be not unreasonable to say that 3 million represents at least the number of people with a firearm to hand at any given moment. So on average, each of them wards off a violent crime using a firearm each year.

As I always say: if they're that unlucky, no wonder they feel it necessary to promenade around festooned in firearms.

The rest of the population must just be amazingly lucky, I guess.

in post #7 and again in post #18 you state that your assertions are believable even though the studies to support them are based on surveys not actual police reports yet here you disregard others assertions because they are based on surveys and not police reports?

This is classic:

iverglas post #7: Shake that memory loose now. The "reports" were made in the course of assistance provided or surveys taken by organizations that assist women who are victims of abuse. They were therefore NOT included in any official figures, or news reports, about criminal misuse of firearms.

facepalm #21: Surveys have been performed by people in academia and government to assess the impact of defense firearm use. They all confirm that defensive gun use by ordinary citizens occurs on a scale that dwarfs criminal gun use.

To which you reply:

Yes indeed. Just not quite the same thing as collecting data on crimes reported to police, is it?

The great big fat question that arises so easily is: how come those 3 million attempted violent crimes were NOT reported to police, and thus are not included in those actual STATISTICS?

Great question, how about applying it to your assertions in post #7?

in post #7 and again in post #18 you state that your assertions are believable even though the studies to support them are based on surveys not actual police reports yet here you disregard others assertions because they are based on surveys and not police reports?

I will assert that the study results to which I referred are believable ... because they are.

I assert that the survey results claiming 3 million "defensive firearm uses" per year in the US are not believable ... because they aren't. On their face, they are utter nonsense.

Even if there actually were 3 million people a year waving firearms around and claiming to have averted a crime thereby, this in no way or shape or form establishes that they needed those firearms in order to avert a crime.

Because IF THEY DID, the obvious conclusion is that there would be millions and millions more people who did NOT have firearms to hand and thus were UNABLE to avert some serious crime being committed against them ... and THERE WEREN'T.

I'm failing to see quite such a big fat flaw in the studies indicating that abused women are intimidated by their abusive partners' possession and/or use of firearms to control them.

reporting 700k plus?

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

a) The study states: “There are probably over 220 million guns in private hands in the U.S., implying that only about 1% of them are used for defensive purposes in any one year--not an impossibly high fraction. In a December 1993 Gallup survey, 49% of U.S. households reported owning a gun, and 31% of adults reported personally owning one. <58> These figures indicate that there are about 47.6 million households with a gun, with perhaps 93 million, or 49% of the adult U.S. population living in households with guns, and about 59.1 million adults personally owning a gun.”

b) The study states: “Eleven of the surveys permitted the computation of a reasonable adjusted estimate of frequency. Two surveys for which estimates could not be produced were the Cambridge Reports and the Time/ CNN. Neither asked the question of all ; thus, it would be sheer speculation what the responses would have been among those not asked the question. All of the eleven surveys yielded results that implied over 700,000 uses per year.”

c) The study states: “Nevertheless, in a ten state sample of incarcerated felons interviewed in 1982, 34% reported having been ‘scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim.’”

I would ask since your surveys were produced by "organizations that assist women who are victims of abuse", there is no incentive to dishonestly skew the numbers or over report, even if these agencies are dependent on government funding and public support for their cause?

What is the incentive to skew the numbers higher than they should be for defensive use of firearms by the LA Times or Gallup?

I've provided links to the data sources. Organizations that receive public funding in Canada, at least, are accountable for their use of the funds. See what you can find.

There is not a single testable / verifiable element about these surveys that makes anything about them credible.

They all elicit responses from people who are in a particular class that has particular features by definition -- people who cart firearms around with them are a particular kind of people. They're really not too likely to respond to surveys by saying that they cart the bloodty things around with them for no reason at all, are they?

There simply is no reason to believe a word any of them says. Any one of them may well be telling the truth, at least about some element of their tale. But any one of them could also be making a story up out of whole cloth because s/he is seeking to buttress the case for carting firearms around, and knows full well that there is no checking of the story possible.

There is no way in the world to verify the truth or accuracy of the reports, or of the characterization of the events reported.

And I'm still waiting for someone to do what I have repeatedly asked for, and figure out how many people w/o firearms were unable to avert crimes because of their lack of access to firearm. That figure simply has to be multiple multiples of the crimes allegedly averted by people using firearms. Unless the differences between the two populations are so extreme as to make them essentially different species living in different times and places.

There are orders of magnitude more people walking around at any given time with NO immediate access to firearms than there are people with access to firearms.

There must necessarily be orders of magnitude more crimes committed against people with no immediate access to firearms than there are crimes averted by people with firearms.

And yet there aren't.

How obvious is this little problem with these, er, data?

reports of people with mental defects which puts them in situations resulting in them being repeatedly threatened by abusive significant others. Others included in the surveys you site are perpetual victims, again due to some defect resulting in a need to be a victim or to be viewed as a victim.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

no real explanation or answers, just feelings, in this case feelings of anger for the truth.

A lot of people around here seem to suffer from that disorder that makes them unable to read other people's affects.

I absolutely adore it when people like you write things like you wrote. I'm thrilled. I couldn't make that shit up. And if I ever ascribed filth like that to someone around here, I'd be told I'm just a hater yah yah yah, even though everybody knows that filth like that is what resides inside the skulls of a large proportion of this particular population. And now a bit of it has leaked out, and it's there, for posterity, for whenever I need it.

Angry? Not moi.

pipoman
Mon May-05-08 09:03 AM
Response to Reply #32

35. Yet your surveys are based on

reports of people with mental defects which puts them in situations resulting in them being repeatedly threatened by abusive significant others. Others included in the surveys you site are perpetual victims, again due to some defect resulting in a need to be a victim or to be viewed as a victim.

pipoman's opinions about women victims of violence. True colours, flying high. Don't ever stop!

Notice you are the one injecting gender into my statements as I didn't mention gender in my posts. ANYONE who endures repeated abuse is defective in some way in my opinion, as is the abuser. The proof I would offer is that most who endure repeated abuse require psychological or psychiatric help in breaking the cycle, would you really disagree?

Filth? The truth is sometimes filthy isn't it?

I contend that most people are not abused repeatedly, nor are they abusers and have difficulty understanding the psychosis associated with repeated abuse victims or abusers.

And if I ever ascribed filth like that to someone around here, I'd be told I'm just a hater yah yah yah, even though everybody knows that filth like that is what resides inside the skulls of a large proportion of this particular population.

It looks to me that you did just that only a few posts back...liars the lot of them (or us as it were). Is this assertion by you filth too?

They all elicit responses from people who are in a particular class that has particular features by definition -- people who cart firearms around with them are a particular kind of people. They're really not too likely to respond to surveys by saying that they cart the bloodty things around with them for no reason at all, are they?

There simply is no reason to believe a word any of them says. Any one of them may well be telling the truth, at least about some element of their tale. But any one of them could also be making a story up out of whole cloth because s/he is seeking to buttress the case for carting firearms around, and knows full well that there is no checking of the story possible.

What kind of people would that be?

filth.

about these surveys that makes anything about them credible.

As usual, you are spot on.

Defensive Gun Use
Over the past decade, a number of researchers have conducted studies to measure the prevalence of defensive gun use in the population. However, disagreement over the definition of defensive gun use and uncertainty over the accuracy of survey responses to sensitive questions and the methods of data collection have resulted in estimated prevalence rates that differ by a factor of 20 or more. These differences in the estimated prevalence rates indicate either that each survey is measuring something different or that some or most of them are in error. Accurate measurement on the extent of defensive gun use is the first step for beginning serious dialogue on the efficacy of defensive gun use at preventing injury and crime.

For such measurement, the committee recommends that a research program be established to (1) clearly define and understand what is being measured, (2) understand inaccurate response in the national gun use surveys, and (3) apply known methods or develop new methods to reduce reporting errors to the extent possible. A substantial research literature on reporting errors in other contexts, as well as well-established survey sampling methods, can and should be brought to bear to evaluate these response problems.

.........the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Academies of Sciences.
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10881

Defensive gun use is a completely different kind of statistic, as the National Academies' National Research Council. comments;


"In Firearms and Violence 2004: How many times each year do civilians use firearms defensively? The answers provided to this seemingly simple question have been confusing. Consider the findings from two of the most widely cited studies in the field: McDowall et al. (1998), using the data from 1992 and 1994 waves of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), found roughly 116,000 defensive gun uses per year, and Kleck and Gertz (1995), using data from the 1993 National Self-Defense Survey (NSDS), found around 2.5 million defensive gun uses each year.
Although theories abound, it is not possible to identify the prevalence of defensive gun use without knowledge on inaccurate reporting. Kleck and Gertz (1995) and others suggest that estimates from the NCVS are biased downward, arguing that respondents are reluctant to reveal information to government officials, and that indirect questions may yield inaccurate reports. Hemenway (1997a) and others suggest that estimates from the NSDS are biased upward, arguing that memory telescoping, self-presentation biases, and the rare events problem more generally lead the numbers of false positive reports to substantially exceed the numbers of false negative reports. It is not known, however, whether Kleck’s, Hemenway’s, or some other assumptions are correct. The committee is not aware of any factual basis for drawing conclusions one way or the other about reporting errors."

Statistics from a variety of sources do not confirm that defensive gun use by ordinary citizens occurs on a scale that dwarfs criminal gun use. There are significant differences between studies regarding defensive use of firearms, with some estimates suggesting just over 100,000 defensive gun uses per year, which is a small fraction of the far better documented number of criminal gun uses in a year.

which I do not as out of 13 studies by some groups who are not exactly RKBA friendly the lowest number was 700k+, the 100k figure is around 10 times the number of gun homicides in the US.

I would add that my keeping of a defensive firearm has not one single thing to do with statistics and everything to do with anecdotes. If I were interested in statistics I wouldn't bother to pay fire protection premiums, maintain smoke and CO detectors, carry life insurance while I am in my 40's and a whole host of other highly unlikely yet common sense preventative measures.

Intuitively, it's all so obvious. ;)

"Statistics from a variety of sources do not confirm that defensive gun use by ordinary citizens occurs on a scale that dwarfs criminal gun use."

Precisely.

Plus the whole thing about how many crimes people w/o firearms must *not* have been able to avert if they were victimized at anything resembling the same rate as people who had firearms ... and yet that don't actually seem to have happened.


It's a secondary source, but it's hardly biased against the gun people, so I'll go with it:

http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/hagin/040105

Among 15.7% of gun defenders interviewed nationwide during The National Self Defense Survey, the defender believed that someone "almost certainly" would have died had the gun not been used for protection — a life saved by a privately held gun about once every 1.3 minutes. (In another 14.2% cases, the defender believed someone "probably" would have died if the gun hadn't been used in defense.)

In 83.5% of those successful gun defenses, the attacker either used or threatened force first. So much for the gun control argument that gun availability for self-defense will not make any difference.

That's 15.7% of the 2,452,643 alleged "gun defences".

That's 385,065 homicides that were prevented in a year.

There are actually about 15,000 homicides in the US in a year.


Hardly needs comment, does it?

The respondents in this survey claimed to have PREVENTED some 385,000 homicides IN ONE YEAR.

The people whose answers are being relied on as proof of all these "defensive" firearms uses claimed to believe that someone "almost certainly" would have died had the gun not been used for protection -- in 385,000 SITUATIONS IN ONE YEAR. And almost as many again claimed to believe that someone "probably" would have died had it not been for their trusty firearm.

Why would anyone believe ANYTHING that this population said??

"The respondents in this survey claimed to have PREVENTED some 385,000 homicides IN ONE YEAR."


"The people whose answers are being relied on as proof of all these "defensive" firearms uses claimed to believe that someone "almost certainly" would have died had the gun not been used for protection -- in 385,000 SITUATIONS IN ONE YEAR. And almost as many again claimed to believe that someone "probably" would have died had it not been for their trusty firearm."



Its cute, I'll give you that.

In plain english:

Those surveyed claimed to believe that someone "almost certainly" would have died had the gun not been used for protection -- in 385,000 SITUATIONS IN ONE YEAR. And almost as many again claimed to believe that someone "probably" would have died had it not been for their trusty firearm.

"See?!?!?! They believe that someone "almost certainly" would have died had the gun not been used for protection , in 385000 instances in a single year!?!?!?!?!"

"Why would anyone believe ANYTHING that those surveyed had to say?"


Like I said, its cute, but its not a new trick.


I patiently await the accusation that I'm claiming you said or did something that you didn't. I'll leave our viewing audience with this example of vile and utterly dishonest representation of fact:

"The respondents in this survey claimed to have PREVENTED some 385,000 homicides IN ONE YEAR." - Iverglas.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=169547&mesg_id=170314

The respondents made no such claim.

I didn't REPRESENT anything.

Here it is:

http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/hagin/040105

Among 15.7% of gun defenders interviewed nationwide during The National Self Defense Survey, the defender believed that someone "almost certainly" would have died had the gun not been used for protection — a life saved by a privately held gun about once every 1.3 minutes. (In another 14.2% cases, the defender believed someone "probably" would have died if the gun hadn't been used in defense.)

In 83.5% of those successful gun defenses, the attacker either used or threatened force first. So much for the gun control argument that gun availability for self-defense will not make any difference.

That's 15.7% of the 2,452,643 alleged "gun defences".

That's 385,065 homicides that were prevented in a year.

Are you calling simple multiplication, to extract numbers from percentages, "representation"?

I have no clue what you're talking about, so if you're going to accuse me of acting dishonestly, you'd better come up with some substantiation.

Lets make this simple.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=169547&mesg_id=170314

"The respondents in this survey claimed to have PREVENTED some 385,000 homicides IN ONE YEAR." - Iverglas.

The respondents made no such claim, yet you say they did, and made representations to that effect.

You did that. Everyone reading your now uneditable post knows it, you know it, and I know it. No amount of backpeddling, whining, crying foul, insults, diversionary grooming, or equivocation is going to make that go away or fool anyone with so much as 2 brain cells to rub together.




Just own it already.

"The respondents in this survey claimed to have PREVENTED some 385,000 homicides IN ONE YEAR." - Iverglas.

The respondents made no such claim, yet you say they did, and made representations to that effect.

You did that.


Yes, I DID THAT. And no one here replied -- because I demonstrated the complete bullshit nonsense that these claims of "defensive gun uses" are and there's no way around that and no two ways about it.


But you may just have a tiny point.

Among 15.7% of gun defenders interviewed nationwide during The National Self Defense Survey, the defender believed that someone "almost certainly" would have died had the gun not been used for protection — a life saved by a privately held gun about once every 1.3 minutes. (In another 14.2% cases, the defender believed someone "probably" would have died if the gun hadn't been used in defense.)

15.7% of "gun defenders" reported their belief that someone "almost certainly" would have died blah blah.

There were 2,452,643 alleged "defensive gun uses".


Hmm. How many did each "gun defender" engage in?


If it was, say two each, then maybe only one of the two was one where someone "almost certainly" would have died blah blah.

That would leave us with 192,532.5 homicides prevented.

Hell, maybe each "gun defender" engaged in five "defensive gun uses", and only one of them was one where someone "almost certainly" would have died blah blah.

That would leave us with 77,013 homicides prevented.

Bloody hell -- let's make it one homicide prevented for every 10 "defensive gun uses" -- where each of the respondents who believed someone would have died engaged in 10 "defensive gun uses" each.

That gives us 38,000 some-odd homicides prevented.

Still more than double the number of *actual* homicides.

So forgive me while I continue to laugh.


It should be a simple matter to determine how many people were involved in these alleged "defensive gun uses" -- an average of X per person, i.e. And then apply the percentage to that number -- the number of users -- rather than the number of uses. And hell, even assume that each respondent was only referring to one incident when they said they believed someone would have died blah blah.

I can't find the answer. Do you have it?



I would think everyone knew by now that this ridiculous figure for "defensive gun uses" -- the nearly 2.5 million per annum figure -- had been completely discredited.

Is that what you're meaning to say?

Your still doing it.

Let me put this in simple terms for you.


Whatever the beliefs of those whom DID respond to the survey, those do not apply to your extrapolation.

They only apply to those surveyed.

Therefore your "premise" (with apologies to that word) falls flat. Applying the "feelings" of respondents to a survey, to a larger total number of unsurveyed just doesn't work and no matter how much you'd like it to, does not "prove" anything.

"The respondents in this survey claimed to have PREVENTED some 385,000 homicides IN ONE YEAR." - Iverglas.

The fact that someone would resort to saying obviously untrue things like the above quote- in particular the way it was said , highlights the weakness of that persons position, as well as a few other obvious things, hereabouts.


Now run along and find some other dead horse to beat.

... whatever the hell it is you're saying ... and it won't make what I said false any more than it did the first time.

Surveys are done for a purpose. A population is sampled in order to extrapolate its results to the entire population. What did you imagine they were for, and what did you imagine I did?

Anyone who wants to argue "defensive gun use" based on survey data (about the only data there are) is stuck with what the survey data say.

And these survey data say "look at me! I'm complete nonsense bullshit and you can't believe a word of me!"

I find your attempts to pretend you don't understand what I'm saying - your faux confusion that is - comical.

Unfortunately for you, nobody spells the word comical with the letters b e l i e v a b l e, nor does anyone read it as such.

Once again, for those in the "obstructive view" seats:

"The respondents in this survey claimed to have PREVENTED some 385,000 homicides IN ONE YEAR." - Iverglas.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=169547&mesg_id=170314

Those words were typed by you. You said they made a claim, which they did not make.

I say again, THEY did not make the claim which YOU attributed to them.

That is not in question, and all you have done is to try to sidestep and obfuscate that fact, rather than own up to it like an adult.



We can go back and forth on this all day long. I have all day. By all means, keep bumping this thread so everyone can see you doing that for which you so often chide others - claiming someone did or said something they did not do.

"And these survey data say "look at me! I'm complete nonsense bullshit and you can't believe a word of me!"


MmmHmm. And the reason anyone should believe something like that in spite of the fact that you attributed a claim to the group of respondents that never made it is?

Generally people that have solid footing to make a point, don't make false attributions such as yours, and neither you nor your false attribution are any exception.

I say again, THEY did not make the claim which YOU attributed to them.

Tell us what they did claim.

Really, wouldn't that be easy?

I say again, THEY did not make the claim which YOU attributed to them.
That is not in question, and all you have done is to try to sidestep and obfuscate that fact, rather than own up to it like an adult.

If it is not in question -- which it is not, since I have not questioned it, and you have not questioned it -- why don't you stfu about whether it's in question?

Why are you pretending that I have claimed not to say something I said?

What I have said is that my initial statement may have overstated the survey results somewhat. If you want to make huge hay out of that, feel free -- just remember that I said it AFTER you started this nonsense jig about me denying something when I had never denied it.

3 in 10 respondents to that survey claimed to believe that someone would either "almost certainly" or "probably" have died had they not engaged in a "defensive gun use".

When will you tell us what that means, in terms of how many people would have died if the 2,452,643 "gun defences" alleged by survey respondents had not occurred??

I mean, I said it hardly needed comment, but surely someone has *something* to say.

I have looked at so many stats from so many places my head hurts.
The problem is there is really no standardized criteria for gathering and assembling
this type of information.

I've used a firearm in self defense on a couple of occasions. Statistics and studies don't matter. If you choose to be a victim, that is your choice. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT to make that choice for me, period. I choose to defend myself. I find it quite offensive that you, as a Canadian feel that you should be able to dictate how I as an American live my life and what rules I should live by.

I find it quite offensive that you, as a Canadian feel that you should be able to dictate how I as an American live my life and what rules I should live by.

The complete falsehood you have chosen to utter about me would be ... well, frankly, down near the bottom of the list of things I bother my head about. But unspeakably offensive nonetheless.



And the typo imp strikes again ...

It doesn't matter how much data you provide to show that most firearms and firearm owners aren't involved in crime, the latest dodge is that the data is simply incomplete!

Of course don't bother asking them for any data to support their assertions to the contrary.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

This from the person who doesn't even have enough courage to possess the means for their own defense. That's rich!

Something just seems to have snapped a few days ago, and all pretense at sense-making, or anything other than resentful ego, seems to have just gone out the window, doesn't it just?


This from the person who doesn't even have enough courage to possess the means for their own defense. That's rich!

Well, that statement certain is. In the sense that it's full of a whole lot of stuff, none of which consists of or makes any sense.

But hey, have your picnic. Like I say: it's on you and up to you.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Something just seems to have snapped a few days ago, and all pretense at sense-making, or anything other than resentful ego, seems to have just gone out the window, doesn't it just?

Once you disagreed with providing arms to refugees so that they might resist their oppressors instead of fleeing and relying on foreign intervention, my opinion of you became that you would rather see people suffer under oppression rather than be armed. In my opinion, your position is highly perverse and flies in the face of the principles of armed self-determination upon which my country was founded. That you would deny this ability to others struggling right now in this world today I find unconscionable.

Well, that statement certain is. In the sense that it's full of a whole lot of stuff, none of which consists of or makes any sense.

I suspect it made sense to most people who read it and who have read your posts.

you imagine your audience is this stupid?

Trust me, it doesn't take much imagination for some of the audience members here.

And if a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there ...

... it didn't happen!

I have provided substantial data that provides a very good estimate about how many trees actually fell.

If you wish to assert that the numbers are inaccurate and that more trees actually fell, you're going to have to provide some evidence.

It appears you assume each "bad thing" happened with a different firearm.

Except for suicide, it's possible that more that one "bad thing" happened with each "bad" gun.

It's also true that I didn't account for unreported crime. Unreported crime is as high as 70% by some estimates.

Even if we double my bad thing rate, though, the percentages compared to the huge number of firearms and firearm owners are still quite low.

Unreported crime is as high as 70% by some estimates.

Now just go back to post # 1, delete the rest of the thread, and start over, eh?

Even if unreported crime is 100%, and we say there are 1,600,000 firearm incidents a year, the percentage is of firearms and firearm owners involved in crime are still astonishingly low.

1,600,000 firearm incidents out of 50,000,000 firearm owners: 3.2%
1,600,000 firearm incidents out of 250,000,000 firearms: 0.64%

If we use the 80,000,000 firearm owner figure often cited, the percentage drops to 2%

So even if there are twice as many crimes as reported, the fact is the overwhelming majority of firearm owners - 96.8%+, and the overwhelming majority of firearms - 99.36% - are not involved in crime.

Even if there were five times the amount of firearm incidents as reported, it would still be a drop in the bucket compared to the number of owners and firearms that are not involved in crime.