gun control statistics...

[carguychris]

...you explain that the problem isn’t the availability of guns or the specific types of guns that are available; rather, the problem is the propensity for violence in American culture, that we are an inherently violent society, where violence is sanctioned as a legitimate form of conflict resolution.

You then explain that most of the gun crime and violence are the consequence of mental health issues, that we have failed to afford citizens access to comprehensive mental healthcare detection and treatment, and if that comprehensive mental health treatment were readily available, much of the gun crime and violence wouldn’t occur.

IMHO both of these arguments are defensive in nature, better for preaching to the converted than reaching the unconverted.

If we accept that American society is inexorably violent, and that this problem is intransigent, then it's easy to argue that the best solution is to take as many weapons out of circulation as possible, thus ensuring that fewer people get killed. This is perhaps the most common argument for strict gun control in the U.S. from the 1960s to present!

Furthermore, this argument fails to explain why vast demographic swaths of the U.S. population are overwhelmingly peaceful despite high gun ownership rates, and its underlying premise is contradicted by violent crime rates having been much lower before WWII when gun-purchase regulations were very lax compared to today (re: 44 AMP).

The mental-health argument is also a very slippery slope. Many people with mild mental health issues pose minimal danger to themselves and others, while some of the more severe disorders are hard to identify and treat, often because people with such problems are hesitant to seek treatment. If society enacts punitive measures, such as prohibiting people with mild mental disorders from possessing firearms, it's likely to stigmatize the mild cases while driving the really dangerous ones further underground. Additionally, recall that mental-health diagnoses have a distressing habit of varying with predominant cultural mores (e.g. homosexuality was long considered a disorder), and have often been used to beat down politically unpopular groups if not oppress them outright.

 

[Tom Servo]

Antigunner: "90% of Americans support an Assault Weapons Ban!"
Spats: "How many people were polled? How were those people selected for polling? For example, if 300 people in San Francisco were all that were polled, I'd hardly call that a representative sample."

The simple answer is usually this: OK, show me the data, please. That shuts it down real quick.

The Quinnipiac group that did the "study" leading to the 90% figure did their best to refuse to share their raw data. Then they tried to obfuscate it behind a paywall. Then it turned out they'd only polled students at a couple of local colleges and extrapolated that to represent the whole country.

If they want to claim their bent statistics are science, fine. Scientists have no problem showing their work. Let's not forget the infamous Kellerman "if you have a gun in the home, you're 43 times more likely to be shot" study from 1993. He refused to show his data. When he was backed into a corner, he claimed he'd lost it in an office flood. When his hand was finally forced, his methodology and data were so poor they wouldn't have passed muster in a high school term paper.

In that case, the antis let it fade into obscurity, waited a few years, and trotted it back out hoping nobody would check their work.

Yeah, well with the internet and all, that's not really possible these days.

Recently, the Violence Policy Center (our friends who invented "assault weapons") published a study that was going to ROCK THE WORLD. It claimed that Kleck, Mustard, and all the other folks claiming 1 to 3 million defensive gun uses per year were totally off base and that true defensive uses only occurred a couple of hundred times a year.

They did so by only counting justified homicides. Crafty, right? Let's remember that most handgun wounds are survivable, that guns are rarely actually fired in DGU situations, and that many locales don't have an actual "justified homicide" statute.

I have a friend who's actually a statistician. He utterly abhors the sloppy and often deliberate misuse of statistics.

 

[5whiskey]

I have a friend who's actually a statistician. He utterly abhors the sloppy and often deliberate misuse of statistics.

I take it he can't watch any news outlet, read any newspaper or news magazine, or really anything else without puking. Poor guy.

 

[rickyrick]

I used to fight that battle, but I grew weary of the nonsense rebuttals.
I stay out of most of the political issues now, at least as far as trying to prove my side. There's not much logic and reason in the opposing viewpoints. No sense arguing with a group that ignores fact and includes emotion as an element of logic.

Of topic, but people put too much stock in social media; social media is the modern version of the bathroom wall.

 

[DaleA]

social media is the modern version of the bathroom wall.

!!!
Got that right!

 

[g.willikers]

This usually helps deal with people who believe the anti-gun propaganda:
"It's not what is in a person's hand that matters, but what is in their hearts."
Then remind them that violence of one human against another didn't just suddenly appear with the invention of the gun.

 

[44 AMP]

You might also mention that while firearms are abused, without them we are reduced to the law of the jungle, where the strong prey on the weak, with impunity.

If gun prohibitionists truly followed their own arguments, then people should not be allowed to have children. That would solve the problem of people doing evil, with any and every tool. No more people, no more evil people. Simple solution.

Not one I would agree with, though.

 

[TDL]

I don't think it is a good idea to use data from, or about other countries in a debate or discussion about US gun control.

Sometimes yes but sometimes no.

I do think Japan and S., Korea are relevant. In response to the "90 per day" one should say" "So you are talking about all lethal 'violence' ie suicide+homicide as the vast majority of your number is suicide? OK S. Korea and Japan have higher suicide+homicide lethal violence death rates than the US. Why do you insist dying from jumping from a building, or jumping in front of a train or being knifed to death less violent that gunshot?

 

[TDL]

Recently, the Violence Policy Center (our friends who invented "assault weapons") published a study that was going to ROCK THE WORLD. It claimed that Kleck, Mustard, and all the other folks claiming 1 to 3 million defensive gun uses per year were totally off base and that true defensive uses only occurred a couple of hundred times a year.

They did so by only counting justified homicides. Crafty, right? Let's remember that most handgun wounds are survivable, that guns are rarely actually fired in DGU situations, and that many locales don't have an actual "justified homicide" statute.

What I counter that with is saying that the gun control researchers employed by Josh Sugerman are saying VP Joe Biden was lying when he variously said said racking a shotgun or firing in the air would stop a crime. and that never stopped or deterred any crime according to VPC and Sugerman.

VPC is saying firing and injuring a perp has never stopped or deterred any crime
VPC is saying firing a warning shot has never stopped or deterred any crime
VPC is saying racking and brandishing a firearm in self defense has never stopped or deterred any crime
VPC is saying showing a firearm has never stopped or deterred any crime.

In fact the above are probably 99.97% of the cases where a firearm is used lawfully to stop or deter a crime.

 

[TDL]

I also love to counter using their own favorite model: Australia.

Australia did see a drop in homicide the past 25 years as gun ownership decreased -- but the US saw a larger decrease in homicide rate as guns increased.

And Australia saw no real drop in suicide. For every 10 less suicides by gun there were a) about 5 or 6 new suicides by other means and b) about 5 new increased self caused "accidental deaths" by means commonly used in suicide but ruled accidental.

On point "b" either we 1) posit Australians suddenly become, exactly when the gun confiscation occurred -- suddenly more lethally clumsy -- and more likely to "accidentally" drive into abutments, fall of buildings, anciently poison themselves etc, or we accept the fact that reduction of gun access simply swept more suicide under the rug though a huge and immediate spike in suicide undercount though new larger misclassification as accident:

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/die...ustralias-suicide-epidemic-20090820-es3p.html

What a half dozen peer reviewed studies of data from the ten years after gun confiscation there showed was the ratio of "accidental" death to suicide increased right at the time of gun control. In fact the current ABS (Australian bureau of statistics) "gave up" trying to correct for this and all the academic expert in Australia say you can not longer validly compare 1990's suicide rates to any current rate

In fact if you jus google scholar -- Australia suicide misclassification -- you will see this discussed. But the gun control lobby keeps using the bogus comparison over time that Australian experts explicitly say is false do to the proven increased misclassification of non gun suicide as accident.

In fact this is also posited in the USA. US medical examiners also are posited to take a presumptive stance of suicide on self inflicted gunshot (and hanging), and a presumptive stance of accident in other self caused death. meaning they are likely producing a very large relative over-count of gun suicide, by accurately counting gun suicide but severely undercounting other suicide by ruling it an accident absent affirmative proof of intent.

 

[ShootistPRS]

I don't talk guns with the anti gun folks. I talk about violence. It's that half of "Gun Violence" that they don't talk about.
In places where guns are taken away violent crime goes up. Rape, robbery and home invasion crimes almost always more than make up for the number of gun crimes that drop. The crooks still use guns but the punks use knives or clubs to do the same crimes they were doing before. There are more victims of violence than when people had their guns.

 

[g.willikers]

In the final analysis, it's important to realize that all the statistics and claims of those whose agenda is to disarm the citizens of the US, is just a smoke screen.
It's only to disguise their true agenda.
Nothing more than to bog us down and confuse us to their advantage.
Up until now, our best approach has been to vote for those who support us, (if they exist), and probably more important to support the organizations who are continually out there fighting for our gun rights with legislators and in the courts.

 

[44 AMP]

Some time ago (maybe the late 90s, I no longer remember) I heard about a change in Japan, concerning the way they reported a certain "crime".

The situation is an over pressured "worker" nearly always male, and often the head of the household, "snaps" and kills his family, then himself, nearly always with an edged weapon, a knife, family heirloom sword, or some other handy blade.

While it happens in virtually all cultures, it was SO COMMON in Japan and Japanese culture being what it was, and is, that this situation was not even reported as a crime in their statistics, for generations. In other words, it didn't get counted as either murder OR suicide. Today, apparently it is.

This would (if what I heard was true) seriously skew any statistical comparison of death rates with any other nation that "counted" things differently.

I have fairly recently seen articles describing how British crime statistics have been DELIBERATELY skewed by the British government. WHAT you count, and HOW YOU COUNT IT MATTERS.

Another thing that matter is how (what you count and how you count it) is REPORTED.

The recent "study" where the figure of 1300 children killed per year, by "guns" is just the most recent case in point. While announcing their numbers in large bold type, in the finer print they admit that they did NO surveys. Not one. They asked NO ONE any questions.

What they did was take numbers from "studies" done earlier by other people, and created statistics (and conclusions) based on them. They admit that, without making a big point of it.

In other words, they created numbers that we are expected to accept as accurate (and all too many will) without even knowing what was counted or HOW it was counted. IT is, literally "hearsay". Rumor. Gossip. And yet presented as fact.

In any other field of endeavor, such behavior would be considered unethical, if not outright fraud.

 

[Tom Servo]

Some time ago (maybe the late 90s, I no longer remember) I heard about a change in Japan, concerning the way they reported a certain "crime".

That skews things tremendously. There are several major counties in England that only report it as a homicide if a suspect is arrested and charged. Until then, it's an unsolved case and isn't reported.

 

[thallub]

Don't get caught up in arguing "statistics" put out by the anti gun bunch.

The anti-gunners refer to all gun related deaths as "gun violence" or some other catchy thing.

Facts:

1. Each year there are about 32,000 deaths by firearm in the USA.

2. About 18,000-19,000 of those deaths by firearm are suicides.

3. About 12,000-13,000 of those deaths are homicides. The antis often lump self defense shootings with murders and call all homicides "murders".

 

[doofus47]

TDL:

I do think Japan and S., Korea are relevant. In response to the "90 per day" one should say" "So you are talking about all lethal 'violence' ie suicide+homicide as the vast majority of your number is suicide? OK S. Korea and Japan have higher suicide+homicide lethal violence death rates than the US. Why do you insist dying from jumping from a building, or jumping in front of a train or being knifed to death less violent that gunshot?

crappy guy thought for the day:
Does this mean that we're going to see Bloomberg fund a group to stop "building violence" in Japan?

 

[thallub]

The figures that the Bloomberg bunch gives for gun deaths in the USA are pretty accurate:

1. About 93 folks are killed every day in the US by guns.

2. About 12,000 homicides by gun occur each year in the US.

3. For every person killed by guns two more are wounded.

4. 62 percent of gun deaths in the US are suicides.

There is some other stuff that may be unreliable. Including this one:

1. The presence of a gun in the home raises the possibility of a murder in a domestic violence situation by five times.


https://everytownresearch.org/gun-violence-by-the-numbers/

 

[44 AMP]

OK, I'm not a statistician, but I can work a calculator, and some numbers aren't adding up, to me. Just what am I missing (assuming I am?)??

About 93 folks are killed every day in the US by guns.

Ok, 93 x 365= 33,945

62 percent of gun deaths in the US are suicides.

33,945 x 0.62 = 21,045.9 (round up to 21,046)

About 12,000 homicides by gun occur each year in the US.

21,046 +12,000 = 33,946

OK, perhaps its not as bad as I first thought, I've worked the numbers front to back, and back to front and there is about a 900 difference. I suppose this can be covered by rounding up, or down, and the fact that the base numbers are "About 93" and "about 12,000"

The presence of a gun in the home raises the possibility of a murder in a domestic violence situation by five times.

I suppose this is better than the oft repeated (and debunked DECADES ago) "43 times more likely to be killed" study.

but it does beg the question, What IS the percentage possibility of murder in a domestic violence situation (without a gun)???
It must be small, certainly less than 20%, because if it were 20% then raising that 5 times would be 100%, which is certainty, and the real world shows that every domestic violence where a gun is present in the home results in murder. Why don't they tell us the percentage??

Perhaps it is so small that raising it 5x is STILL an irrelevant number??
if, for example the possibility is one half of one percent, then raising it 5x would equal 2.5 percent. Which would mean that even with a gun in the home, there would be a 97.5% chance NO MURDER would occur in a domestic violence situation.


And it also begs the question why do they use the phrase "presence of a gun in the home?" Why don't they give us the numbers when a gun is actually USED?? And remember that the use of a gun does NOT automatically equal a murder.

What percentage of cases where there is "a gun in the home" during a domestic violence dispute turn out to be a duck gun or deer rifle locked in a safe, (or even just put away in the upstairs closet) and which plays NO PART at all in the domestic violence, other than being under the same roof at the same time????

The people who tout these numbers never give out the additional information that EXPLAINS the numbers relevance. They can't, because if they did, the explanation of what the numbers actually mean would weaken their arguments, or show them for the overblown fallacies that they actually are.

The last census put our population at about 330,000,000
using their numbers, and rounding up to 34,000 "gun deaths" a year, if I've pushed the buttons right, and counted the zeros right, that works out to ONE HUNDREDETH OF ONE PERCENT of our population.

That's counting all the suicides, and homicides, the intentional murders, and the people justifiably killed by people defending their lives and the police in the course of doing their duty.

1/100 of ONE PERCENT...

That would be one penny out of $100
think about that...

 

[thallub]

44 AMP is right. The number of folks murdered with guns each year are miniscule.

The anti-gunners build their case for gun control on the very few mass murders that occur each year.

Statements are carefully worded to appeal to the uninformed. Example: "Young black men are 14 times more likely than white men to be shot with guns". The anti-gunners have conveniently neglected to inform you that young black men are also doing the killing.

BTW: Last year 60,000 thousand folks died in the USA from drug overdoses.

 

[ShootistPRS]

Gun related deaths don't even make the top 10 causes in the USA


Number of deaths for leading causes of death

Heart disease: 633,842
• Cancer: 595,930
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 155,041
• Accidents (unintentional injuries): 146,571
• Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 140,323
• Alzheimer’s disease: 110,561
• Diabetes: 79,535
• Influenza and pneumonia: 57,062
• Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 49,959
• Intentional self-harm (suicide): 44,193

Source: Health United States, 2016 Table 19[PDF- 11.1 MB] (Data are for 2015)

I think we would be better served by focusing on health issues. Flu and pneumonia kills 23000 more than are killed with guns.