Surprisingly even-handed Bloomberg article

[MLeake]

My dad found this. It was a bit of a shock, coming from a Bloomberg publication. The article actually makes a case of sorts for lawful gun ownership, by looking at numbers of defensive gun uses:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-27/how-often-do-we-use-guns-in-self-defense

The author finds Gary Kleck's estimate of 2 Million defensive gun uses per year to by high, but he finds David Hemenway's estimate of 100,000 per year to be low. (Personally, I find it enlightening that a strident anti-gunner from Harvard concedes 100,000, yet still favors much stronger gun control...)

The author opines that 250,000 to 370,000 is probably a more accurate estimate.

I wonder if Bloomberg ever reads his own magazines?

 

[Evan Thomas]

Here's a dumb question. I know that Kleck's figure of 2 million DGUs/year includes incidents in which a gun was produced but not fired; I've been poking around the various .gov sites which report National Crime Victimization Survey data, on which Hemenway based his estimate of 100,000 DGUs/year, and I can't for the life of me find any info on how the NCVS defines a "gun use."

Is their definition the same as Kleck's, or does it include only incidents in which a gun was fired?

Excuse my ignorance -- someone here must know this...

 

[Tom Servo]

The author opines that 250,000 to 370,000 is probably a more accurate estimate.

I may not be a big-city mathemeticianist, but that number is way bigger than the number of criminal uses of guns.

That said, I'm always leery of arguing from the standpoint of gun control as social policy or crime prevention. The rebuttal is always, "well, that's still 11,000 murders! If we can only save one life..."

 

[Spats McGee]

That said, I'm always leery of arguing from the standpoint of gun control as social policy or crime prevention. The rebuttal is always, "well, that's still 11,000 murders! If we can only save one life..."

I have that same reservation. The few fence-sitters that I know get a little uneasy when I tell them, "If you choose to give up the ability to protect your children to improve the odds for a bunch of strangers, that's fine. You're not authorized to give up my ability to protect my daughter, though." I usually follow up with something like, "Just remember that if I can't protect my child, I won't be able to protect your child when she's at our house."

 

[MLeake]

Spats, I use similar arguments.

However, a dyed in the wool anti would counter with, "I would not feel safe allowing my child to play at your house, knowing that there are guns there."

And Tom, while I understand the potential downsides to a numbers game, I still think it's informative that the antis do NOT have numbers on their side, even if we use their own preferred sources.

 

[Spats McGee]

Spats, I use similar arguments.

However, a dyed in the wool anti would counter with, "I would not feel safe allowing my child to play at your house, knowing that there are guns there."

You are absolutely right. A dyed in the wool anti would counter with that, and it is entirely within their rights to decide where their children are allowed to play. I am fortunate in that all of my daughter's best friends are already aware that I own guns, and they're comfortable with that. Eventually, I'll run across one that isn't, and that's OK. That kid just won't come to our place, I guess.

 

[MLeake]

We'll see what happens when my boy is old enough to have school friends. (It'll be a while; he is still under development, due date late April.)

But several of his cousins-to-be are military brats. My local friends who have kids are all gun owners.

I guess the odds are we will eventually encounter a really gun-shy parent, but those are probably less common around our neck of the woods than they might be, elsewhere.

 

[Spats McGee]

Location: Outside KC, MO

I guess the odds are we will eventually encounter a really gun-shy parent, but those are probably less common around our neck of the woods than they might be, elsewhere.

Yeah, umm, I'mma guess that gun-shy parents probably aren't any more common in Little Rock, Arkansas, than they are in KC, MO.

 

[MLeake]

Probably not; then again, Little Rock did give us the Clintons, and thus the 1994 AWB and the S&W ILS.

For that matter, I live in a farming area a ways north of KC. Gun politics in the city itself are more variable.

 

[Spats McGee]

Yeah, ya got me on that one.

I would also guess that gun-shy parents, while rare in LR, are more common here than in our less populous areas.

 

[USA SHARK]

We are new to our neighborhood and were a bit worried about our neighbors, who's kids have become our kids best friends. They have 4 girls under 10, and we have 2 girls under 10. The parents are very over protective.

Fast forward 6 months and the dad just got his FOID card to be able to buy a gun, and he wants to go to the range with me!