Quake3World

Nightshade wrote:More Guns = More Gun Death and Injury

Dumbest argument I've seen yet. You can't attribute causality to existence. OMG! CARS DRIVEN BY DRUNKS KILL PEOPLE!!! WE MUST BAN CARS!!! Guns wielded by suicidal people cause fatal gunshot wounds, imagine that. The person pulling the trigger is the reason someone ends up dead.

Question: Do any of you think that linking suicides to guns is a valid argument for banning guns altogether?

tnf wrote:I have noticed that as the number of pirates on earth has declined, glacial recession has been increasing. We need to bring back the pirates.

HM-PuFFNSTuFF wrote:

Nightshade wrote:More Guns = More Gun Death and Injury

Dumbest argument I've seen yet. You can't attribute causality to existence. OMG! CARS DRIVEN BY DRUNKS KILL PEOPLE!!! WE MUST BAN CARS!!! Guns wielded by suicidal people cause fatal gunshot wounds, imagine that. The person pulling the trigger is the reason someone ends up dead.

Question: Do any of you think that linking suicides to guns is a valid argument for banning guns altogether?

Nightshade,

answer me this. what is your theory as to why the murder rate with handguns in the USA is 14.5 times higher than it is in Canada?

perhaps also theorize as to where criminals get their guns for me?

Nightshade wrote:I've seen plenty of stats that show that the majority of criminals get their guns by stealing them.

Nightshade wrote:2.)This is simply ridiculous. Is that 449,150 the total number of crimes committed in the US? I doubt it, and you don't know, yet it doesn't stop you from leaping to a conclusion about it.

4.)"just labeled 'number'"? Are you really trying to infer something from this? Seriously? Because that's pathetic.

Geebs wrote:

Nightshade wrote:2.)This is simply ridiculous. Is that 449,150 the total number of crimes committed in the US? I doubt it, and you don't know, yet it doesn't stop you from leaping to a conclusion about it.

4.)"just labeled 'number'"? Are you really trying to infer something from this? Seriously? Because that's pathetic.

Yes, it is pathetic that the DoJ can't even explain the basis for it's figures. It's not even a matter of pro or anti guns, thta page is really not much use on either side of the argument

Geebs wrote:

Nightshade wrote:I've seen plenty of stats that show that the majority of criminals get their guns by stealing them.

Meaning that, if the numbers of legal weapons available in the country were lower, then there would be fewer "stealable" weapons for the criminals

The US exports stolen handguns for use in crime

Nightshade wrote:

Geebs wrote:

Nightshade wrote:I've seen plenty of stats that show that the majority of criminals get their guns by stealing them.

Meaning that, if the numbers of legal weapons available in the country were lower, then there would be fewer "stealable" weapons for the criminals

The US exports stolen handguns for use in crime

Yeah, let's infringe the rights of those that DON'T commit crimes with firearms because of scumbags that do. Brilliant logic, peasant. You really like being controlled, don't you?

Geebs wrote:Hey, the decline in gun crime since 1993 coincides with the Brady act, which instituted background checks on people seeking to procure firearms! Wow, I guess that must mean that.....wait for it..... tighter gun control results in fewer gun crimes!

HM-PuFFNSTuFF wrote:

Nightshade wrote:

Geebs wrote: Meaning that, if the numbers of legal weapons available in the country were lower, then there would be fewer "stealable" weapons for the criminals

The US exports stolen handguns for use in crime

Yeah, let's infringe the rights of those that DON'T commit crimes with firearms because of scumbags that do. Brilliant logic, peasant. You really like being controlled, don't you?

What about the public's right to be safe and secure? If less guns meant less murder would you agree that the public's right to safety is more important than the right to bear arms?

Geebs wrote:Did you know that one of the arguments which explains discrepancies in the reported rate of defensive gun uses is that many of these gun uses occured in situations in which the victim was committing a crime by being in posession of the gun in the first place? Hmm, who's the criminal, eh?

Blimey, I just checked and the 2.1 million comes from a study of 5000 people! lol

"...88% of the violent crimes which respondents [Rs] reported to NCVS interviewers in 1992 were committed away from the victim's home, i.e., in a location where it would ordinarily be a crime for the victim to even possess a gun, never mind use it defensively. Because the question about location is asked before the self-protection questions, the typical violent crime victim R has already committed himself to having been victimized in a public place before being asked what he or she did for self-protection. In short, Rs usually could not mention their defensive use of a gun without, in effect, confessing to a crime to a federal government employee."

Nightshade wrote:Cite your proof for your second comment, please.

And did you read any of Kleck's work? It seems not, because you've shot yourself in the foot.
He......is a self-proclaimed gun control skeptic.

NSPOF wrote:Defensive gun uses

NSPOF estimates. 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
data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics'
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.[13] 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!

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.[14]

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.

False positives. Regardless of which estimates one
believes, only a small fraction of adults have used
guns defensively in 1994. The only question is
whether that fraction is 1 in 1,800 (as one would
conclude from the NCVS) or 1 in 100 (as indicated
by the NSPOF estimate based on Kleck and Gertz's
criteria).

Any estimate of the incidence of a rare event based
on screening the general population is likely to
have a positive bias. The reason can best be
explained by use of an epidemiological
framework.[15] Screening tests are always subject
to error, whether the "test" is a medical
examination for cancer or an interview question for
DGUs. The errors are either "false negatives" or
"false positives." If the latter tend to outnumber
the former, the population prevalence will be
exaggerated.

The reason this sort of bias can be expected in the
case of rare events boils down to a matter of
arithmetic. Suppose the true prevalence is 1 in
1,000. Then out of every 1,000 respondents, only 1
can possibly supply a "false negative," whereas any
of the 999 may provide a "false positive." If even
2 of the 999 provide a false positive, the result
will be a positive bias--regardless of whether the
one true positive tells the truth.

Respondents might falsely provide a positive
response to the DGU question for any of a number of
reasons:

o They may want to impress the interviewer by their
heroism and hence exaggerate a trivial event.

o They may be genuinely confused due to substance
abuse, mental illness, or simply less-than-accurate
memories.

o They may actually have used a gun defensively
within the last couple of years but falsely report
it as occurring in the previous year--a phenomenon
known as "telescoping."

Of course, it is easy to imagine the reasons why
that rare respondent who actually did use a gun
defensively within the time frame may have decided
not to report it to the interviewer. But again, the
arithmetic dictates that the false positives will
likely predominate.

In line with the theory that many DGU reports are
exaggerated or falsified, we note that in some of
these reports, the respondents' answers to the
followup items are not consistent with respondents'
reported DGUs. For example, of the 19 NSPOF
respondents meeting the more restrictive Kleck and
Gertz DGU criteria (exhibit 7), 6 indicated that
the circumstance of the DGU was rape, robbery, or
attack--but then responded "no" to a subsequent
question: "Did the perpetrator threaten, attack, or
injure you?"

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.

Unclear benefits and costs from gun uses. Even if
one were clever enough to design a questionnaire
that would weed out error, a problem in
interpreting the result would remain. Should the
number of DGUs serve as a measure of the public
benefit of private gun possession, even in
principle? When it comes to DGUs, is more better?
That is doubtful, for two kinds of reasons:

o First, people who draw their guns to defend
themselves against perceived threats are not
necessarily innocent victims; they may have started
fights themselves or they may simply be mistaken
about whether the other persons really intended to
harm them. Survey interviewers must take the
respondent's word for what happened and why; a
competent police investigation of the same incident
would interview all parties before reaching a
conclusion.

o Second and more generally, the number of DGUs
tells us little about the most important effects on
crime of widespread gun ownership. When a high
percentage of homes, vehicles, and even purses
contain guns, that presumably has an important
effect on the behavior of predatory criminals. Some
may be deterred or diverted to other types of
crime. Others may change tactics, acquiring a gun
themselves or in some other way seeking to preempt
gun use by the intended victim.[16] Such
consequences presumably have an important effect on
criminal victimization rates but are in no way
reflected in the DGU count.

Geebs wrote:Hey, the decline in gun crime since 1993 coincides with the Brady act, which instituted background checks on people seeking to procure firearms! Wow, I guess that must mean that.....wait for it..... tighter gun control results in fewer gun crimes!

Geebs wrote:It's not my argument, it's Kleck's. Any problems with it are therefore his.

Geebs wrote: Note that they used the same logic as I did to point out that the estimates of defensive gun uses are vastly inflated. Sorry, I win.