Within less than a day of the Aurora shootings, a BJ reader sent me word of the absolutely predictable gun-nut push to claim that guns prevent more crime/save more lives than gun-use takes.
We’ve seen plenty of that in the days since, with the blame-the-victim, where-are-our-John-Waynes trope getting its usual airing, as it always does after such tragedies.
I wrote on this topic after the Gabrielle Giffords tragedy referencing some of the actual research that shows, over and over again that more guns = more gun tragedy. Go check it out if you want to be further depressed by the American gun-fetish eternal return of the same pathology.
Here I just want to deal with one zombie lie — the one my BJ correspondent passed on to me:
Guns used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year — or about 6,850 times a day. This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.
That’s from a “factsheet” produced by Gun Owners of America. GOA helpfully footnotes the two sentences above, claiming independent scholarly support for the claim, which, they assert, is backed up by official federal government research:
Even the Clinton Justice Department (through the National Institute of Justice) found there were as many as 1.5 million defensive users of firearms every year. See National Institute of Justice, “Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms,” Research in Brief (May 1997).
And your guns shall set you free, I guess.
But wait just a minute.
One of the things we do at the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing in which I have the honor to teach is to make sure that our students develop a nose for funny numbers. Your olfactory neurons should be firing pretty hard right now. 2.5 million instances of gun defense? 1 for every 12 120 or so US citizens, infants at the breast, gaffers spooning their soup and all and sundry in between? Almost 7,000 a day, and nary a mention on the nightly news? No blog of “Real American Heroes” or some such?
But what the hell. It’s documented, right?
Right – by a study from 1994, confirmed, allegedly, by a US government-sponsored analysis in 1997. So let’s do something radical. Let’s read the referenced material. Here’s the relevant passage from “Guns in America…[pdf]:”
Private citizens sometimes use their guns to scare off trespassers and fend off assaults. Such defensive gun uses (DGUs) are sometimes invoked as a measure of the public benefits of private gun ownership. On the basis of National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data, one would conclude that defensive uses are rare indeed, about 108,000 per year. But other surveys yield far higher estimates of the number of DGUs. Most notable has been a much publicized estimate of 2.5 million DGUs, based on data from a 1994 telephone survey conducted by Florida State University professors Gary Kleck and Mark Gertz. [the study the GOA “factsheet” references in its claim] The 2.5 million figure has been picked up by the press and now appears regularly in newspaper articles, letters to the editor, editorials, and even Congressional Research Service briefs for public policymakers.
The NSPOF survey is quite similar to the Kleck and Gertz instrument and provides a basis for replicating their estimate. Each of the respondents in the NSPOF was asked the question, “Within the past 12 months, have you yourself used a gun, even if it was not fired, to protect yourself or someone else, or for the protection of property at home, work, or elsewhere?” Answers in the affirmative were followed with “How many different times did you use a gun, even if it was not fired, to protect yourself or property in the past 12 months?” Negative answers to the first DGU question were followed by “Have you ever used a gun to defend yourself or someone else?” (emphasis in original). Each respondent who answered yes to either of these DGU questions was asked a sequence of 30 additional questions concerning the most recent defensive gun use in which the respondent was involved, including the respondent’s actions with the gun, the location and other circumstances of the incident, and the respondent’s relationship to the perpetrator.
Forty-five respondents reported a defensive gun use in 1994 against a person (exhibit 7). Given the sampling weights, these respondents constitute 1.6 percent of the sample and represent 3.1 million adults. Almost half of these respondents reported multiple DGUs during 1994, which provides the basis for estimating the 1994 DGU incidence at 23 million. This surprising figure is caused in part by a few respondents reporting large numbers of defensive gun uses during the year; for example, one woman reported 52! [That’s once a week, for those of you keeping score at home. Even if you’re living in a truly bad neighborhood, that’s impressively bad luck as far as being targetted by crime goes.–ed.]
A somewhat more conservative NSPOF estimate is shown in the column of exhibit 7 that reflects the application of the criteria used by Kleck and Gertz to identify “genuine” defensive gun uses. Respondents were excluded on the basis of the most recent DGU description for any of the following reasons: the respondent did not see a perpetrator; the respondent could not state a specific crime that was involved in the incident; or the respondent did not actually display the gun or mention it to the perpetrator.
Applying those restrictions leaves 19 NSPOF respondents (0.8 percent of the sample), representing 1.5 million defensive users. This estimate is directly comparable to the well-known estimate of Kleck and Gertz, shown in the last column of exhibit 7. While the NSPOF estimate is smaller, it is statistically plausible that the difference is due to sampling error. Inclusion of multiple DGUs reported by half of the 19 NSPOF respondents increases the estimate to 4.7 million DGUs.
Some troubling comparisons. If the DGU numbers are in the right ballpark, millions of attempted assaults, thefts, and break-ins were foiled by armed citizens during the 12- month period. According to these results, guns are used far more often to defend against crime than to perpetrate crime. (Firearms were used by perpetrators in 1.07 million incidents of violent crime in 1994, according to NCVS data.)
Thus, it is of considerable interest and importance to check the reasonableness of the NSPOF estimates before embracing them. Because respondents were asked to describe only their most recent defensive gun use, our comparisons are conservative, as they assume only one defensive gun use per defender. The results still suggest that DGU estimates are far too high.
For example, in only a small fraction of rape and robbery attempts do victims use guns in self-defense. It does not make sense, then, that the NSPOF estimate of the number of rapes in which a woman defended herself with a gun was more than the total number of rapes estimated from NCVS (exhibit 8). For other crimes listed in exhibit 8, the results are almost as absurd: the NSPOF estimate of DGU robberies is 36 percent of all NCVS-estimated robberies, while the NSPOF estimate of DGU assaults is 19 percent of all aggravated assaults. If those percentages were close to accurate, crime would be a risky business indeed!
NSPOF estimates also suggest that 130,000 criminals are wounded or killed by civilian gun defenders. That number also appears completely out of line with other, more reliable statistics on the number of gunshot cases.
The evidence of bias in the DGU estimates is even stronger when one recalls that the DGU estimates are calculated using only the most recently reported DGU incidents of NSPOF respondents; as noted, about half of the respondents who reported a DGU indicated two or more in the preceding year. Although there are no details on the circumstances of those additional DGUs, presumably they are similar to the most recent case and provide evidence for additional millions of violent crimes foiled and perpetrators shot.
…..
The key explanation for the difference between the 108,000 NCVS estimate for the annual number of DGUs and the several million from the surveys discussed earlier is that NCVS avoids the false-positive problem by limiting DGU questions to persons who first reported that they were crime victims. Most NCVS respondents never have a chance to answer the DGU question, falsely or otherwise.
[All bold emphases added by yours truly.]
Sorry for such a long block quote, but there is method to my tl;dr madness. There is a figure out there that has been enshrined as “fact.” Guns prevent crimes — and in such great numbers as to outweigh any tragedy. 13 dead and 48 wounded? Sad, but merely sacrifices to the greater good of an armed society…
Except, of course, it’s bulsh*t. The lie persists because the liars rely (soundly, it appears) on the certainty that almost no one will go back through the literature and see if anything they say is actually, you know, true. The very piece of government research GOA cites as support explicitly and at length debunks the core claim. But no matter. Who reads fifteen year old reports anyway?
You do, if you’ve stuck it this far. Lots of other folks — including media makers — have not, at least as suggested by the persistence of this zombie lit.
And so we permit zombies to continue to suck our brains out, as such lies become public policy fact. Such failure — the failure of folks within the gun community to speak honestly, and the disastrous failure of the media to report the story clearly and accurately — costs lives. People die. Kids die, old folks die. Time and again real people, not mere tallies on a false record of those lost against those saved…are ripped from their families, their loved ones, their own selves. We can do better, but we choose not to.
Just to drive that last claim home let me point you to one study from those cited in my Giffords post referenced above:
PHILADELPHIA – In a first-of its-kind study, epidemiologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that, on average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. The study estimated that people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.
I’m not a gun-ownership absolutist. I don’t think we could (politically) or should remove guns from every hand and every home. But, as Bernard wrote this morning, there’s a lot of room between such a ban and where we are now — and I’d move a long way through that space of possibility.
Which we can’t, as long as the media permit the gun nuts to lie with impunity. I’ve written before about imposing a strict insurance scheme on gun ownership, and I still think that’s a step that could be made possible over time. But not that nor any other useful idea while we permit the argument to be hijacked by stuff its partisans know to be so, but isn’t.
Images: Eugene Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830
Francisco de Goya, Friar Pedro Shoots El Maragato as His Horse Runs Off, 1806
gex
Colorado has conceal and carry. The NRA sold that public policy as a safety issue. So why didn’t that work? And why should we continue to think that that makes things safer if it did not in this case?
The only place left for gun nuts is insanity. They think gun control doesn’t work. Optional conceal and carry doesn’t work, obviously. All that’s left is mandatory heat packing.
beltane
Great post. However, I harbor few hopes for a country whose entire national identity has been forged by Hollywood B movies.
Bud
I’d like to know how all these assholes know for a fact that nobody else in that theatre was armed.
Maybe nobody carrying a concealed weapon knew who to aim at in a theatre filled with a toxic gas, screaming and panicking people and a action flick going full blast distoring all sound and vision.
How the fuck do these assholes know what happened?
trollhattan
Keep hammering this point home! Otherwise smaht people I know and socialize with spout this nonsense in “polite circles” time and again. Their bottom line is generally summed up as, “I want my wife to be able to defend my family when I’m away and somebody’s trying to get into the house.”
Ugh.
When, against my better judgment (or after too much syrah) I join in, I’ll state, “If I were to bring a handgun home my family would at that moment become less, not more safe. Don’t take my word for it, ask an epidemiologist or actuary.” Having thus evidently grown a second head and a tail, I kill any further role I might have had in the conversation.
“Clinging to guns” isn’t just for hicks and wingnuts.
Butch
I made the mistake of reading some conservative blogs full of “heroes” who would have calmly aimed and dispatched the perp. Except, well, not.
Lee
Everyone single one I’ve asked has not answered.
Also point out to them, that if it actually was tear gas that he tossed into the crowd (I have no found any verification that it was) that the only thing any other armed person would be doing is firing blind (exposed to tear gas various times USMC 84-90).
NonyNony
If we have to rely on “the media” doing journalism here then we are screwed.
“The media” does not correct the lies of fellow plutocrats until it becomes so obvious that they are lying that “the media” loses credibility by not calling them out on it. The lies of the gun industry have not reached that level of obviousness yet – and probably never will because they don’t have the liabilities of, say, the tobacco industry (i.e. the tobacco industry’s lies were based around saying “our product doesn’t kill people” – which eventually became ludicrous. The gun industry doesn’t pretend that their products don’t kill people, in fact, it’s a selling point that they do.)
The plutocrats in question here is the gun manufacturing and retailing industry. That is the force behind the NRA – without the gun industry behind it, the power of the “gun lobby” would be no more or less than any other group based around the Bill of Rights.
With the force of an entire industry behind it, one of the country’s oldest astroturf operations is a powerhouse that almost no Congressperson can stand up against. And no media CEO wants to step on the toes of a golfing buddy. So expect more circling of the wagons around the gun industry while the gun nuts simultaneously become convinced that their precious penis substitutes are about to be taken away from them (so they drive up the demand – and the prices – for guns an bullets even more – win/win/win for the gun industry here!)
malraux
@gex: As I recall from other news reports, the theater had a no guns policy. You aren’t supposed to bring a concealed weapon, even if you are licensed, into a place that asks you not to.
NonyNony
Hm. Moderation.
I wonder what forbidden word I typed today…
60th Street
I know one thing for sure. If someone in that theater WAS armed. They failed, miserably, to save anyone. Especially considering that, at some point, it appears Holmes’ AR-15 jammed.
Also, if no one was armed, then what does it say about the popularity or public desire for such laws?
So, anyone purporting that conceal/carry laws work is full of fucking shit. They’re not popular. They don’t work. They’re lies sold to you by soulless assholes.
But hey, if Holmes hadn’t had easy, no-questions-asked access to all that unnecessary firepower, he almost certainly would have used a trebuchet and 6,000 throwing stars, instead.
Because, crayzees gonna cray
Sinister eyebrow
Yes, that is what would have made the situation in Aurora better: crossfire.
Anyone not an idiot who had taken a concealed carry class would know better than to whip out a gun and start shooting in a panicked crowd.
Chyron HR
@malraux:
Well, obviously the government needs to force these private businesses to let people bring their guns inside. That’s the Republican way!
red dog
If there were armed people in the theater then they all ran rather than stand and shoot. Targets are one thing, someone shooting back is another.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Just another example of conservatives ascribing to ‘bleeding the patient’ to cure yet another ill.
It’s scary the kind of Call of Duty, Action Hero fantasies people are concocting to insist that the only reason this happened was because the audience themselves weren’t packing. Something that seems to be louder than the same sentiment was post Gabby Giffords.
And of course, the ‘debate’, if you can call it that, is always cast in ‘Right wants free guns for everyone! Left wants NO GUNS EVER!!!!!!’ despite the Gun control debate never being anywhere NEAR “Ban All Guns!”. But no, Conservatives are batshit insane, the Libbies must be just as insane or even more in the opposite direction, forget the much more reasonable suggestions leveled and the fact that the left-wing crazies can’t even get into the building, forget have a place at the speaking table.
Sloegin
Sad. Apparently nobody these days is old enough to remember the rash of hijackings in the seventies (and the armed storming of said planes/buses that would occur sometime later).
The depressing bit was finding out who ended up with a higher body count of innocent bystanders after the storming, the terrorists or security forces. Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other.
Mind you, these were trained law enforcement agents, not some random civilian with a concealed carry and dreams of heroism.
tkogrumpy
I have been beating back this zombie for days on a number of forums. It is absurd on it’s face. If it were true, there would be a story on every local news program every day of the week, describing just such an scenario.
Anniecat45
Reminds me of an accountant I once worked with who insisted his gun had saved his life one night. When I asked him to describe what happened, he said he had heard noises outside his house and gotten his gun out of the drawer and walked around the house (indoors). He never actually saw anybody, never knew if the noise was a person or the wind rattling the shrubbery, and no one tried (that night or at any other time) to break into his house or attack him.
But you better believe, his gun saved his life that night!
trollhattan
@malraux:
Well that’s it then–commie policy prevented Patriots(tm) from stopping a needless tragedy. Hope you sleep well knowing that, hippies.
Liberty60
My reaction to this line of BS was less mathematically rigorous, but in a similar vein.
When, in your entire lifetime, have you ever once been in a situation where you would have needed or benefited from having a gun?
What about your family? Friends? Aquaintances? Do you even know personally anyone who ever was in such a situation?
For the overwhelming majority of us, the answer to all those questions is no.
For nearly everyone, the odds of being in a situation where you need to use lethal force is lower than getting struck by lightning, yet if I lobbied hard for the right to walk around wearing a personal lightning rod helmet, I would be though of as…um, “odd”.
anthrosciguy
Here’s what happens when someone tries to take out a guy who’s wearing body armor. More info at the Wiki page on the shootings:
And the dubious research of Kleck and Gertz, together with John Lott’s, are covered at Deltoid as well as numerous other places online.
MikeJ
@Lee: WaPO had a chart claiming that 34.7% of people in Colorado own firearms. It seems like it would be far more likely for a theatre full of people to have at least one person with a gun than none.
trollhattan
@red dog:
Given the dude was armored head to toe, wouldn’t they have also needed armor-piercing (i.e., cop-killer) rounds?
Downpuppy
Um, 300/2.5=120, not 12.
Otherwise, yes, if you called 1000 people and asked them if they’d been anally probed by aliens in the last month, I’d be shocked if less than 1% said Yes.
malraux
@Chyron HR: I’m not sure if you’re serious or not, but yeah, they’ve tried that. link
Davis X. Machina
@trollhattan:
We clearly need laws that say you can keep colored people, or anyone else you dont’ much care for the look of, out of your own private place of business, but can’t keep folks with guns out of your own private place of business.
I wish we had a candidate to run on that platform.
rea
“Within the past 12 months, have you yourself used a gun, even if it was not fired, to protect yourself or someone else, or for the protection of property at home, work, or elsewhere?”
“Why, yes!” answers the guy who has kept his gun in the gun safe in the basement all this time.
Wag
@Bud:
to which I would add; and at an armored psychopath intent on killing anyone and everone. Where would you aim? Full body armor? check. ballistic helmet and face guard? check. neck protector? check. groin protector? check. Might as well turn your gun on yourself rather than make youself a target.
Unless the armed citizen had a 50 caliber with armor piercing bullets, they wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Tom Levenson
@Downpuppy: Well yeah. More coffee. Less of MM’s calculator. Fix it I will.
Butch
@Liberty60: Long ago I was working at a major hospital; a patient well known to us walked in and asked to see his doctor. She approached the reception area and he tilted his hand in the pocket of his ski jacket and shot her, and then pulled the gun out and shot himself. (Neither one survived.) I can tell you because I was there that we could have had six-guns strapped to our damn hips and wouldn’t have been able to react in time to stop him. The sad thing is that the guy had a history of mental illness and shouldn’t have been able to buy a gun; I’ve heard the “then only outlaws will have guns stuff,” but if you’re basing laws on 100 percent efficacy then there will be no laws.
Brachiator
Thanks very much for this. I hope that people post relevant passages on FB, conservative blogs and as a response to the inevitable dumb chain emails that will be floating around.
SatanicPanic
@Wag:
Which is why every citizen should own a 50 caliber with armor piercing bullets!
Lee
@MikeJ:
I had not seen that. It certainly now seems likely that someone else in the building would have been armed.
jibeaux
Jason Alexander had a nice dry understated version of this.
Wag
@SatanicPanic:
When 50 caliber armor piercing bullets are outlawed, only outlaws will have 50 caliber armor piercing bullets.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@malraux: They’ll just argue that it means theaters should allow people to bring in their guns. You still have to challenge them on whether they think they could have actually stopped him from killing.
Southern Beale
We hear the shorter edition of this zombie lie all the time: “Obama/Rahm/Axelrod, etc. need to explain the homicide rate in Chicago.” But here’s some perspective:
jibeaux
Not to mention the fact that I assume the theater was dark. No problem for our madman, since he doesn’t give a shit who he shoots, but a distinct disadvantage for our proposed vigilante.
Then there was the idiot former AZ state senator who tried to blame the audience and talked about all the situation needed was one brave man! Where were the men of flight 93? Egads, the appalling stupidity. The information that you can’t be brave without a gun WOULD HAVE BEEN NEWS TO THE PEOPLE ON FLIGHT 93 WHO HAD A BEVERAGE CART, ASSHOLE.
p.a.
next time anyone hears these bozos claim more guns will stop crime remind ’em we’ve already tried it- Dodge City. And it was a disaster.
trollhattan
@Butch:
Ugh, how horrible.
We receive annual “active shooter” training at work, delivered by law enforcement officers. They lay out various scenarios and response options and importantly, advise on what they and the other responders will be doing and how to ensure not being mistaken for one of the bad guys.
They also offer additional details on actual incidents beyond the general public understanding of what occurred. A takeaway is no two incidents are remotely alike and it’s impossible to predict how anyone will respond should something actually occur. It has gotten me into the habit of surveying my surroundings WRT quick exit. Ironically, as I work on the top floor at work, there’s no such thing as a quick exit that doesn’t involve defenestration.
jimmiraybob
@gex:
I used to tongue-in-cheek argue for this as an argumentum ad absurdum of where the zealous guns-rights nuts were going. I quit about 5 years ago when I realized that there was little to no room left between my mocking and their increasingly successful campaign.
MikeJ
@jibeaux: That tears it. Everyone should be required to have a beverage cart.
quannlace
Nah, they want to turn the country into Deadwood.
MikeJ
@p.a.:
No. Dodge City police were allowed to shoot on sight anyone carrying a gun. There was strict gun control.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-winkler/did-the-wild-west-have-mo_b_956035.html
muddy
I posted this comment yesterday, sorry to repeat but it fits:
muddy Says:
Here’s a true story of how helpful a gun would be in a scary situation. Years ago I had a roommate who was the biggest gun nut I’ve ever met, and I know plenty. He went to school in Colorado to become a gunsmith. He was a Bircher, and full of very silly conspiracy theories. He kept saying I needed a gun in the nightstand, just in case. This is in a really safe rural area, and on an island, so people can’t readily run away. I said I wasn’t having it, nor should he have any lying about as my son was 7, and that was not on.
One night I am sleeping (light sleeper), and I hear some fumbling about in the hallway. At first I thought it was him, drunk and bouncing about. Then I hear a whisper, “Where’s the light switch?” This was gun nut’s house, he knows where the light switches are. I sat up in bed, grabbed the lamp as a weapon, and thought, “Maybe I should have put a gun in here, oh noes!” I did not turn on the lamp as I wanted to surprise the intruder. The door bursts open, and it was these 2 other friends of ours (also gun nuts), who came over all wasted late at night because it was the birthday of one of them. “Hurhurhur We sure scared you, Muddy!”
I told them how roommate wanted me to have a gun at the bedside, and it was good I did not have it, as I may well have shot the silhouette of the intruder, and it would have gone through and hit them both. The birthday was on April Fools. Would not have been a funny prank if I killed my best friend’s husband!
Instead of being shot, they were flayed to the bone by the sharp edge of my tongue (I’m told this is quite terrifying when I get on a roll). They were lucky. And so was I, assholes though they were, I would not want to kill someone for such a stupid reason.
Woodrowfan
Actually I believe Dodge City enacted strict gun control, which didn’t end fights but it sure cut back on the killings!
quannlace
Maybe it was Scout, Jem and Dill.
beltane
Atrios just posted a wise little quip to the effect of “Funny how the people decrying the lack of heroism on the part of the moviegoers are the same people who would never lift a damn finger to help others.” http://www.eschatonblog.com/2012/07/as-though-nothing-could-fall.html
True, isn’t it.
nitpicker
If phone-polled, George Zimmerman would claim to have used his weapon defensively, too.
pseudonymous in nc
The NRA believes that having semi-regular mass shootings is a price worth paying in exchange for their gun-manufacturer-approved interpretation of the Second Amendment. The NRA is too cowardly to say this in the aftermath of a mass shooting, though it will send out robocalls that say more or less the same thing to people on their contact list. The press, for the most part, is too cowardly to ask that question.
If the NRA truly believes that arming everybody is the solution — and how much liberty is there in that fucking imposition? — then it should advocate for a Swiss-style civilian militia with mandatory issue and training. Instead, it advocates for the right of its white-guy demographic to buy up personal arsenals “just in case” there’s a need to turn their hero fantasies into reality.
Nylund
I have a friend who would have answered “yes” to that for two incidents and neither would have gotten thrown out based on the criteria.
Incident 1: An intruder entered his apartment and he scared him off with a .45 caliber handgun. (details: His next door neighbor got really drunk and entered the wrong apartment by accident. Sloppy drunken mistake, no ill intentions whatsoever. Just too drunk to remember where he lived.)
Incident 2. A strange man knocked on his door at 4am and acted suspicious on the porch. My friend scared him off with a gun. (details: Turned out the “suspicious man” was his neighbor who was leaving for an early morning work shift. The neighbor had noticed that my friend had left the lights on his car, and despite the odd hour, thought it better to wake him up than have him wake up to a dead car battery.)
My friend tells people these stories as examples of how a gun protected him and his home, but in my mind, all I see is a case of some guy almost getting shot for coming home while too drunk and another of a neighbor trying to be helpful, just at a very odd hour. Neither really strike me as situations where anyone was in danger or situations where anyone deserved to be shot. Not by a long shot. Luckily, no one was, but I fear it’s only a matter of time before my friend shoots someone.
Liberty60
@quannlace:
Were that we were in fact Deadwood!
The arc of that story (both the reality and the HBO show) is one of a lawless place determined to create laws and regulation and a social order premised on the idea that “You didn’t build that alone”.
Ed Drone
The Constitution says that “A well- regulated militia” being necessary, then it seems to me that gun ownership should automatically enlist said owner in the state’s militia, complete with training, ranks, uniforms, and two-week summer exercises.
Mandatory. Even to finding reduced duties, but duties nonetheless, for little old ladies.
Ed
kdaug
@quannlace:
Boo wasn’t packing…
jafd
Re the statistics on ‘defensive gun use’
Check _Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower_, by Jon Wiener, which reports on the original ‘survey’ here, and its credibility, if any.
trollhattan
@pseudonymous in nc:
“Something, something, something…watering the Tree of Liberty(tm) with gore.” We’ve been “battling” Castro for over half a century while the NRA has done infinitely more damage to the nation.
Redshift
@muddy: The biggest gun nut I’ve ever met was a one-time boyfriend of one of my friends, who actually got into making his own bullets.
He likely had problems with depression. Somewhat later, well after they broke up, he shot and killed himself.
JCT
@Butch: I’ve mixed it up with these paranoid whackos over guns on campus many times.
They just can’t understand why I wouldn’t want to “protect myself” from an unhappy student who wanted to punish me for a bad grade.
My usual answer is that to actually have any hope of getting a “drop” on some pissed-off grad student who shows up at my office intent on shooting me I would have to work with a pistol on my fucking desk and pick it up when anyone came to the door. Not EXACTLY the way I want to conduct my day-to-day work, you think? I might have a little trouble getting grad students to join my lab…
And the usual answer? “What’s the problem with that?”
They want everyone else to join them in their frightened little parallel universe. It’s beyond pathetic.
AHH onna Droid
@Liberty60: I know one such person. The incident occurred in a state park in the 70s when the violent crime rate was much higher than today and, notably, the two gun-toting heroes (and they did save a life, if the story, told 30yrs later is accurate) were, significantly, combat veterans.
Contrawise, I know a woman who defended herself UNARMED against an armed assailant’s attempted rape in the 70s. She was ex-IDF.
Training matters.
jibeaux
@MikeJ: Yes. And vodka is not optional.
Culture of Truth
@Nylund: Those two incidents were planted false flags to get your friend to shoot innocent people to take our guns away.
batgirl
The other side of having a gun at home for protection: Off-Duty Officer Mistakenly Shoots Son to Death
Downpuppy
@Ed Drone: It’s kind of odd that the people who imitate the historical militia practices are even nuttier than the ones who forget them, want a huge standing army, AND unlimited private weaponry.
Nowadays jury duty every 3 years is a big deal. 8 days a year marching in the Lower Middlesex Regiment? We’d probably end up starting an accidental war with Nurthern Suffolk.
Rafer Janders
Here’s a nice illustration of what happens when an armed man in civilian clothes intervenes: two cops shot an ATF agent they thought was a robber. So you’ve got two law enforcement officials, all well-trained in the use of firearms, in broad daylight, with no tear gas, no mass of panicked bystanders, and they still manage to shoot a federal agent who they wrongly think is the criminal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/nyregion/no-charges-in-agents-friendly-fire-death-on-long-island.html
Jay in Oregon
@jimmiraybob:
The NRA runs Refuse To Be A Victim training and seminars (“Experts agree that the single most important step toward ensuring your personal safety is making the decision to refuse to be a victim“) to educate people on how to reduce the likelihood of being a victim of crime.
I haven’t seen any of the training material, but I’m willing to bet that one of the recommended techniques is the purchase of at least one firearm, along with obtaining a concealed carry permit.
It’s pretty obvious that the NRA won’t be happy until everyone, without exception, is exercising their Second Amendment rights. It would be irresponsible not to speculate that the NRA’s official position is that anyone who elects not to exercise their right to own and carry firearms is “choosing to be a victim.”
Calouste
@Butch:
Maurice Clemmons, aka “The reason that Mike Huckabee won’t run for President again”, managed to shoot and kill four armed, on duty police officers with at least 8 years experience each in broad daylight. The police officers managed to get in one hit between the four of them.
It was about the best possible scenario for any defenders, and the element of surprise still allowed to attacker to come out 4-0.
Jay in Oregon
@batgirl:
So an armed and (presumably) competent and well-trained individual actually perpetrated an awful incident?
DivideByZero*ERROR* Smoke must be pouring out of Wayne LaPierre’s ears right now. (If only.)
Gravenstone
One series of follow up questions I’d love to see for anyone answering in the affirmative about using a firearm in self defense.
Did you report the incident to law enforcement afterward?
If not, why not?
By failing to report the incident, did you feel it appropriate to allow the other individual an opportunity to act again where others who might not have a weapon with which to defend themselves?
Yes, I saw that they used law enforcement reportage as a filter for false positives, but I’d love the opportunity to see whether I could poke the conscience (or lack thereof) of the gun fetishists who tried to claim they got to play John Wayne.
muddy
@Redshift: I have done a lot of reloading, not sure if that is what you mean by making his own bullets. Bullets, shotgun shells, etc. It’s the thrifty move if you shoot a lot in one place, pick up the brass and re-use. Also doing special loads for a particular use. I think a lot of people re-load, at least I know a lot of people here in Vermont who do so. It’s not a big deal, or difficult to do.
Gravenstone
Bah, all three questions were supposed to be italicized. FYWP strikes again.
Jay in Oregon
@JCT:
It seems to be that “refusing to be a victim” is actually more along the lines of self-victimization, because you adopt a mindset that any interaction could be a matter of life or death and failure to prepare for that is weakness.
What if an unhappy grad student comes to punish you?
What if you’re in line at a bank and it gets robbed?
What if terrorists attack the plane you’re on?
What if you cut some guy off on the highway and he comes after you?
What if you’re out for a night on the town and gangbangers start shooting at each other?
What if you are in a public place and a maniac pulls out a gun and starts shooting for no discernible reason?
The Tragically Flip
@Nylund:
That really calls for a link to this Harvard page on Gun research with summaries:
(emphasis mine)
It’s really shocking that people who are scared of imaginary sharia law, feminazis, UN black helicopters and socialism are also people who wet their pants and reach for a gun at the slightest perception of a possible threat and then run around bragging about what big brave men they are when they scare off the paper boy or shoot a stray pet in their yard.
The Tragically Flip
@Nylund:
That really calls for a link to this Harvard page on Gun research with summaries:
(emphasis mine)
It’s really shocking that people who are scared of imaginary sharia law, feminazis, UN black helicopters and so-shall-ism (hello filters) are also people who wet their pants and reach for a gun at the slightest perception of a possible threat and then run around bragging about what big brave men they are when they scare off the paper boy or shoot a stray pet in their yard.
Rafer Janders
Oi, why am I in moderation for posting an article from the NY Times? I didn’t mention any of the Words That Must Not Be Said.
The Tragically Flip
I also think this fact deserves more notice:
Responsible gun owners! If he hadn’t been prosecuted, he probably would have reported this as a “DGU.”
(the full article is great)
Roy G.
It is well established that kids can always get their hands on booze, yet i’ve never heard that used as a reason for not controlling the sale of alcohol.
Mnemosyne
Having grown up around guns and hunters, I can understand why, say, people living in rural areas where it takes the sheriff up to 30 minutes to get to your house after a 911 call would want to keep a gun in the house. Sure, it’s a remote possibility that Dick Hickock and Perry Smith are going to come knocking at the door, but when law enforcement is that far away, it’s sensible to have a way to defend yourself until they get there.
I do not understand the yahoos who feel it necessary to carry a gun with them everywhere they go, whether it’s a church, a bar, or a movie theater. Seriously, crime rates at at their lowest level in 30 years and yet the world is so very scary that you have to keep a close eye on the guy walking the opposite direction on the sidewalk at all times?
Cris (without an H)
I’ll tell you where they are, former-Senator Pearce. They’re dead. So is everybody else on the plane. Are you suggesting that the theater-goers were in a similar situation, where they were all going to die anyway so they should have burned the place to the ground to save more lives? Your analogy sucks as bad as your legislative record.
El Cid
Because I can imagine scenarios in which gun-toters would save the day, this means it is true, because the pictures I think in my head are always true.
So shut up with your stupid ‘facts’ and ‘science’ and ‘data,’ because my conservative patriot American head-pictures tell me the true truth.
Redshift
@muddy: Maybe that’s all it was; I never actually saw what he was doing. My impression at the time was that it was some kind of craft thing with brass (and he had a bit of a survivalist mindset), but perhaps I was mistaken and it was just reloading.
muddy
@Redshift: A lot of that variety of nutter is into the survivalist thing. I think a lot of the time it’s just an excuse for “needing” so many guns.
Jay in Oregon
This conversation reminds me of the “Bad Jackie” articles that Fred Clark posts over at Slacktivist.
The original “Bad Jackie” article is here:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2010/09/19/jackie-at-the-crossroads/
He has a new one today:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/07/23/wheaton-college-c-s-lewis-bad-jackie-on-preferring-the-nightmare-to-reality/
Fred refers to the people who breathlessly recite every horrible rumor they hear about a particular group or class of people: atheists, minorities, LGBT people, liberals, etc. When it is pointed out that the rumor they have passed on isn’t true, there are one of two possible reactions.
The “Good Jackie” expresses genuine relief that world can’t possibly be as bad as she feared it might be, and might even be enough of a good sport to tell this story on herself as a teachable moment.
The “Bad Jackie” doubles down on the rumor instead. Why, you must have heard that false debunking from the liberal media, or Media Matters!
Bad Jackie does this, Clark suggests, because she wants to believe that the world is as bad as she fears it is, because her identity is based around being one of the “good and honest” people surrounded by deviants and monsters. She is hooked on the outrage.
I sense a lot of this in the people who have been duped, or are willing to be duped, by the NRA. Their lives and their identities are rooted in the idea that they are the Few True Patriots and they have to believe that rapists and home invaders and terrorists lurk around every corner, and that the government wants to take their guns away and leave them at the mercy of the Bad Guys.
Dice
@batgirl: That happened to me in the ’70s. I was coming in late/drunk while home from college, and my Dad thought I was a prowler. When I came through the door, the lights came on and I found myself literally inches from the ugly business end of a .357 Colt. I know my way around firearms from growing up a cop’s son, but I will never, ever, have one in my house.
Hypatia's Momma
@Liberty60:
Multiple times in my life, actually.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Why, yes, I do.
Happy now?
Rekster
There you go, presenting actual FACTS! We all know that FACTS don’t sound as good as pure bullshit, which is what these loons pull out as their reasons for gun ownership.
BobS
@Mnemosyne: We moved to the rural area where we still live over 20 years ago. Not long after our German Shepherd Max died, I was out of town and my wife was home alone with our two then young kids. Around 3AM she was awakened by a pounding on the front door by someone who’d navigated the quarter mile long driveway in the dark. Through the door a man was asking to come in to use the phone because his car had broken down. My wife told him she’d call 911 to help him and suggested he return to his car. Instead he walked around the house to a back door and repeated his pounding while demanding to use the phone. At that point my wife got a shotgun and racked it while telling him 911 was on the way. Whether it was the sound of her racking the shotgun (we’ve always assumed he heard it- when she gets home we’ll see if the unmistakable sound can be heard through the door) or the mention of 911, he left immediately.
mrmike
@MikeJ:
In fact, the infamous “OK Corral” shootout was at least partially the fault of gun control laws. The perpetrators had been disarmed (forcibly) earlier in the day by the Earps because of the local laws against carrying weapons and didn’t take kindly to it (IIRC).
Ron McCune
Everyone read my web page at http://www.mybetteramericaplan.com to see an idea for a new gun control plan. It is mid way down the Home section and on the Current Events section of my web page. Enacting a new gun control law that says that anyone who can buy a gun can ONLY purchase two more guns and that is all will eventually dry up the market place for illegal guns. Also this new law will say that there won’t be any more semi-automatic gun sales allowed and people won’t be able to buy all the ammunition they want. President Obama will sign this law. Romney and the Republicans won’t pass this law. It’s important that we re-elect President Obama and the Democrats. Many reasons why are on my web page.
BruinKid
Ezra Klein, filling in for Rachel Maddow, opened the show with a very good segment detailing what the actual gun and violence statistics show, by region and by state. Very informative.
I also got into it with a Ron Paul gun nut over some more zombie lies. He actually argued that gun laws don’t work because… criminals will still break the law. By that “logic”, we should have no laws at all, right?
Mister Harvest
I am reminded of a professor of mine who corrected a student’s rather egregious quoting of a made-up statistic, and concluded with:
“Before, when you quoted that statistic, you were misinformed. In the future, you will be lying. You’re welcome.”
g
This surprising figure is caused in part by a few respondents reporting large numbers of defensive gun uses during the year; for example, one woman reported 52!
Oh, yeah, I know her. She hangs out in the bar next to the trailer park, been there for years.. Fortunately, her gun’s not loaded and no one takes her seriously.
Mr_Gravity
Do I have this right? Weapons of mass destruction are grounds for unilateral war, assault rifles with 100-round capacity are never to be questioned?
Just trying to figure out where the line is crossed.
TKMom24
@malraux: And how did that “no weapons policy” work out for them? (Of course, even if someone had managed to sneak one in and attempt to use it in defense the shooter was pretty well protected.)