SirEDCaLot

I wish they did also. The stat would still be incomplete as many go unreported, but I'd still at least like a number of people who call and report a DGU.

Excuse me what? The Grandma is shot dead before she could even pull the trigger.

And she could be stabbed from behind, or hit in the back of the head with a bat before she even saw her attacker. Yeah there's no guarantees in any sort of fight.

You are right on one thing- she'd probably never be quite as happy. I think you assume gun owners are spoiling for a fight, eagerly awaiting 'their moment to shine'. It's really not true though. Not for myself or anyone I know at least.

As a gun owner, I've spent a lot of time thinking about such things. Being shot isn't like in the movies where someone falls down and music plays and the hero rescues the girl, it's ugly and painful, it's like stabbing someone with a giant screwdriver by remote control. I hope I can live the rest of my life without ever shooting anybody or taking a life by any other means, because I'm pretty sure I'd never be quite whole ever again. I've always declined invitations to go hunting because I don't want to be the one to take the life of an animal, I don't even squish insects most of the time I capture and release them outside. So taking the life of another human is not something I ever want to do.

But what I want even less than that, is to do nothing while people I love are harmed. And so, if I have to trade my conscience and mental health for the physical wellbeing of my family or myself, then I will consider that a more than fair trade.
And I think the granny in our analogy would rather be alive and feeling guilty than dead. I know I would be.

Yes, mental illness might also be an issue but you also dont do shit to solve that issue.

This is one thing I HATE about my country- we have forgotten how important it is to take care of our own citizens. And I blame conservatives (the usually pro-gun ones) for this a lot more than liberals, but liberals deserve plenty of blame as well. Both parties find it effective and expedient to whip up voters with 'those other guys hate America!'.
It's not just mental health, it's everything. Look at student loans- kids take on crushing debt because they're told it's the only way to get a good job, only wages are stagnant and they can't make ends meet. Do we help them, the millions of our fellow countrymen who are in a really bad situation? Nah, fuck them, they did it to themselves.
And look at healthcare as a whole. People get cancer and go bankrupt with health insurance and it's just like oh well, like that's the way things are supposed to be.
Meanwhile the wealth of our nation is being extracted by a bunch of business interests that basically have the government in a state of regulatory capture (that video is from 2011 and it's even worse today) and the people of the nation are too busy blaming each other to work together and FIX some of our VERY REAL problems.

So yes, I support gun rights. But please don't lump me in with the loud and obnoxious lemming-conservatives who only use mental health as a way to defend against gun control then do nothing at all to actually improve mental health.

If it were up to me, we'd be spending BILLIONS on mental health, if not tens or hundreds of billions. If it were up to me, our defense budget would get a haircut (we really don't need to spend more on military than the next 10 nations, including all of our major enemies, combined) and that money would be re-invested in America's PEOPLE. Education, mental health, health care, etc. Schools should be palaces and teaching kids should be a well-paid, sought-after, competitive position that carries respect and prestige, not the current situation where teachers are basically underpaid babysitters that are expected to teach the test and then we act confused when entire generations of kids grow up with no critical thinking skills.

I believe the markets, and the corporations, and the government, do and should exist for the benefit of the populace overall, not the other way around. I think many in the US have forgotten that ideal.

My pleasure.

Various types of crimes are tracked by the FBI which then publishes an awful lot of statistical data. In question for us is expanded homicide table 8- same data is available on a different page that doesn't deep-link well up to 2021, but the result for all is the same- about 10k-12k firearm homicides per year.
Side note- rifles (including 'assault' rifles and other rifles like hunting rifles) are used in about 300-400 homicides/year, never more than the number of people who are punched and kicked to death. Suggests that maybe trying for 'assault weapon bans' is a waste of time that won't have much effect.

But back on track. 10k-12k firearm homicides per year, the vast majority committed with handguns or 'unknown type' guns. A gun might be 'unknown type' if it's not recovered- for example if there's a drive-by shooting and the perpetrators are not caught, you can't say for sure what kind of gun it was because even pistol rounds can be fired from certain rifles.

Measuring defensive gun uses (DGU) is much harder. In the vast majority of incidents (90-95%) the criminal sees the gun and runs away so there's not much to report. That means a great many go unreported, and of those that do get reported, there's no central tracking system the way there is for homicides. That means the only way to get any sort of number is with surveys and statistical analysis, which are of course open to the interpretation and opinions of the statistician crunching the numbers.

Wikipedia has a good page on that subject which I would encourage you to read. But to briefly summarize- anti-gun researcher Hemenway puts it at 55,000-80,000/year, pro-gun researchers Kleck and Gertz put it at 2.1 million/year, pro-gun researchers Cook and Ludwig put it at 4.7 million/year. More direct analysis of the government NCVS survey data put it between 100,000 and 370,000 DGU/year which is the area I think is probably most accurate. However the one thing just about every researcher involved seems to agree on is that the question hasn't been answered reliably and considerable uncertainty exists.

Thus, for the sake of argument, I take the lowest number from that- 55,000 DGU, and compare it with the highest number of say 12k firearm homicides, and I say there are AT LEAST 4.58x more DGUs as there are firearm homicides.

With that in mind, the argument that 'a successful DGU where your own gun isn't used against you is one in a million' becomes statistically impossible.

A lot of the whole 'owning a gun makes you more likely to get shot' bit comes from bad stat analysis and selection bias. Put simply, if you live in an unsafe area, you're more likely to get shot, but you're also more likely to want a gun for self-defense. That makes the connection between gun ownership and getting shot a correlation, not a causation; but many people confuse the two.

Another big misused stat is suicide. You've probably heard a stat like '35,000 people die of gun violence every year'. How does 12k become 35k? Simple answer is that the rest are suicides. But I think it's disingenuous to count suicides as 'gun violence' because the term 'gun violence' sounds like something that will happen to you, not something you do to yourself. There is a small correlation between gun ownership and suicide rate- I believe that's partially due to socioeconomic factors (the guy who lives in a bad neighborhood more likely has no money and thus is more likely to suicide) but it's also causative (happens because of the gun)- a gun will kill you instantly; whereas many other methods take time during which you may change your mind or fail in your suicide attempt. I still don't believe that self-harm is a valid reason to restrict gun ownership though, but I respect that many disagree with that.

Hope that helps! Does it give you what you were looking for?

Being forced to defend yourself from a person with a gun is a thought no child should ever have.

I agree 100%. I think it's a failure of our society that ANY child has to think about defending themself from ANY sort of violence- be it a psycho with a gun, or crime on the street, or a bully who will beat them up. We should aim to do better as a society.

But the society I'd consider ideal is not the society we have. We have violent people in our society. A few go psycho and commit mass murder, most don't. And thus, we do our children a disservice by pretending otherwise.

We do a bigger disservice by doing little or nothing to identify violent people and help them become less violent.

Blaming the gun is a placebo pill we can take to make ourselves feel better about Doing Something. But it's like blaming the car for the actions of a drunk driver.

“Having a gun means you can defend yourself” is a dangerous thing to let live.

It may be dangerous, but it's also not wrong.

If 65yo grandma is approached by a 25yo male thug, she cannot defend herself whether thug is armed or not. The thug is bigger, stronger, and faster than she is.
If 65yo grandma is approached by a 25yo male thug, and she has a gun, she CAN defend herself. The worst case scenario for her is he also has a gun, in which case they are physically equal.

To be clear- I agree with you that we should not HAVE to defend ourselves. I'd love a society where nobody ever needs a gun. But pretending that society exists when it really doesn't does nobody any favors.

Um, please think this through. You're basically saying that weapons cause violence.

But that's not how human nature works. Some PEOPLE are violent, and they commit acts of violence whether they have weapons or not.

I could approach you on the street and beat you up- that's a violent crime. No guns involved.

I could approach you on the street and stab you or hit you with a baseball bat- that's a violent crime. No guns involved.

Guns don't cause violence. Weapons don't cause violence. Weapons in the wrong hands can make violence worse, or in the right hands can prevent violence or stop it.

Okay so full answer from a real keyboard. Please consider this one to supercede the last one which was written on my phone on my way to sleep.

First- addressing your argument:

I argue there ARE NOT would-be bombers out there saying 'I really wanna blow some people up but I can't get explosives, my reign of terror ended before it began :(, curse you explosives licensing schemes! Guess I have no choice but to get a job and therapy.'. Evil men will always find the tools they need to dispense their evil.

But there's a sliding scale. The more determined someone is, the more stringent restrictions it will take to stop them from getting whatever they want. There's a limit to what's practical, and a higher limit to what's possible. Look at prisons- the most secure, controlled, patrolled environment in the world, and yet prisoners still get drugs and weapons and cell phones. Evil men will always find the tools they need to dispense their evil, but assholes are more likely to settle for whatever's convenient.

So by 'if 7-11 started selling dynamite', that means drop the difficulty of acquisition to zero. And in that sense, of course there'd be more bombings- both because 'Dynamite sale! 12 sticks for $12' posters in the window would bring bombs closer to peoples consciousness, and because you now cover the entire scale of determination.

Second, my argument:

Bombs are a bad analogue because you can't use a bomb defensively. If someone threatens to bomb my car, having my own bomb won't help me much. And a bomb isn't directed, it's broad destruction that harms everything in its vicinity (buildings, people, vehicles, etc). So I can't use a bomb to defend my home from an intruder as I'll just blow up my own house & family; I can't use a bomb to defend against street crime because I'd blow myself up too.

A gun however CAN be used defensively. It doesn't harm everything in the vicinity, just whatever you shoot at. The gun doesn't also harm the shooter, doesn't also harm everybody nearby. I can shoot the intruder or street criminal without also harming myself or my family.

So consider Night City, or any similar society where you can assume everyone you meet is armed. In that society, much like in ours, you have two classes of people. There's the criminal class- which includes the main character V. They go about their illegal actions, using violence against anyone who stands in their way. And there's the average people. In a game like CP2077 or GTA, the average people are the NPCs that populate the city but with whom you have little or no interaction other than stealing their cars or wishing they'd get out of your way.
Obviously we'd like to disarm the criminals. But as people who don't follow the law, that's easier said than done.

When in the beginning of the game you hear the news report that there were 87 murders last week, notice that it's talking about gangs and cartels, not innocent bystanders? Art imitates life.

But now consider the NPCs. Imagine if every time you had to steal a car, the owner would try and shoot you, and if you shoot back then random bystanders would shoot you. Would that impact your willingness to steal cars? I think it would, you'd go looking for parked cars to avoid firefights.

And that's why I say having a mostly armed society is not an awful thing.

Try HomeSeer. I ran it for years before switching to HA.

You see a lot of criminals walking around with dynamite? I don't.

Do you think that's because explosives are hard to make or buy? They're not. Starting with nothing but a bit of money, it's far easier to get something that will explode than a gun.

Blowing shit up isn't hard. It's also not useful, and a bomb won't usefully stop someone out to harm you. Thus criminals have little use for them.

Ok you say it's selection bias... Can you show me some news stories of people who's guns were taken from them? Surely if as you say a successful defensive gun use is one in a million there are tens of not hundreds of millions of failed DGU gone wrong stories...

I doubt you will find many. Even anti gun researchers say there are minimum 4x as many DGUs as firearm homicides. I can cite stats on that when back at my desktop if you want them.

There's plenty of valid reasons to be against gun ownership. But the idea that DGU is one in a million is not one of them.

While I recognize your good faith argument, I don't believe it fits with the reality of how criminals operate, or the practicality of what most people can afford.

You can turn your house into a prison/fortress, which is expensive and only protects you when you're inside with everything locked up. Panic rooms are expensive as fuck, if you weren't aware.

And the odds of self-defense are MUCH better than you think. It's not a 'one in a million' shot that your gun helps you- in 90+% of defensive gun uses, the criminal sees the gun and runs away because he's not there to fight to the death, he's there to steal things he can get somewhere else from someone else without risk to his life. He wants a helpless victim, not a fight.

Click this reddit link- it goes to reddit's /r/ccw (concealed carry weapon) but filtered to show only stories of when /r/CCW members had to use their guns in self-defense.

Please just go read some of those stories and rethink your 'one in a million shot' position.

Therefore, we should acknowledge reality and form policy around that rather than pissing into the wind while pretending we're doing something useful.

For example- if you want to attack the lion's share of gun violence, address the causes of it, rather than the tools used in it. That means address drugs and drug gangs. Decriminalize or legalize drugs, put the gangs and cartels out of business. Treat addicts like patients who need help rather than criminals who need punishment, or at the very least stop locking up non-violent drug users with violent criminals (and thus turning them into violent drug users).
Let's also tackle poverty. Poverty is strongly correlated with drug use, so let's give people some hope and upward mobility so they don't feel desperate enough to use drugs. Doesn't work for everybody, but a good intervention that takes a young kid from the hood and gives him opportunity and resources so he has an obvious path to make something of his life will keep an awful lot of kids out of gangs and drugs.

Of course these solutions require more work and money than passing another law that criminals will ignore and getting your photo taken and saying I Did Something!.

Perhaps, but it depends on the customer. A crackhead who wants a gat probably won't even know what ammo to load in it. (Apparently it's somewhat common for police to arrest street criminals with a gun loaded full of the wrong caliber ammunition). And unless you seriously overpack the round or make the barrel out of pot metal, more likely the quality problem that you will get is the gun failing to fire or failing to cycle. Remember though, you are talking about criminals, not people like you and me who care about safety ratings.