this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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If you read your linked articles and surveys you will see, that they’re even arguing against your argument.
Just to quote some stuff:
David Hemenway, who led the Harvard research, argues that the risks of owning a gun outweigh the benefits of having one in the rare case where you might need to defend yourself.
"The average person ... has basically no chance in their lifetime ever to use a gun in self-defense," he tells Here & Now's Robin Young. "But ... every day, they have a chance to use the gun inappropriately. They have a chance, they get angry. They get scared."
"If we don't even have a minimum standard, not for training, but for performance validation for our law enforcement," he says, "how in God's name is anybody going to say, 'Well, just because you have a gun in your pocket, you know how to use it in self-defense?' You don't."
End quote
And some of the other stuff seems very biased:
The largest and most comprehensive survey of American gun owners ever conducted suggests that they use firearms in self-defense about 1.7 million times a year. It also confirms that AR-15-style rifles and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, frequent targets of gun control legislation, are in common use for lawful purposes, which the Supreme Court has said is the test for arms covered by the Second Amendment.
The online survey, which was conducted by Centiment in February and March of 2021, was based on a representative sample of about 54,000 adults, 16,708 of whom were gun owners. Georgetown University political economist William English, who commissioned the survey as part of a book project, presents its major findings in a recent paper available on the Social Science Research Network.
End quote
I mean, a survey for owners of guns… Of course if you own a weapon like that, you will tell everyone that you use it for self defense. And probably enough people who say they did that, just lie…
I haven't clicked his links, but assuming he's linking you to the Harvard study, that study in an effort to debunk Kleck and Lott's figures used by the CDC estimated "a more realistic DGU/yr at 100,000." Well, being that there are 60,000 total gun deaths/yr in this country including suicide, I'm inclined to believe that based on the raw numbers they do in fact get used more for defense than to kill oneself or others, as 100k>60k.
This is a naive comparison, as you are not counting the many cases where people use guns to harm others without killing them. There are on the order of 500,000 fatal and nonfatal violent crimes involving a firearm committed every year in The United States.
No there are not. Stop making shit up.
I appreciate you challenging my numbers, but you're not being very helpful finding actual sources. I found a report from the bureau of justice statistics that says 478,400 total cases of firearm violence in 2011. I see it trending upward from 2008-2011 as well, though that's probably a consequence of the financial crisis.
Firearm violence = a firearm was involved. It doesn't even have to be fired.
Literally firearms just being around in an altercation = firearm violence.
I haven't seen anything corroborating those numbers, however even in that case if we include defensive display in our DGU numbers (which the Harvard study entirely discounted on the basis of "we have no real way of knowing those numbers,") that raises the DGUs as well. Thing is defensive display is by far and wide the most likely defensive use, it is when a person is able to drive off the threat just by showing (drawing, pointing, etc) the firearm on/at the attacker. Harvard is right that there's no way to get an accurate report on how many because they're often not reported to the police, as that takes a lot of time and effort that could easily be shrugged off with a "eh I'm fine, didn't have to fire, fuck it." An example is this video. Though this clerk did likely report it especially given the accompanying video evidence, many in his position (especially not on the clock or camera) don't report.
Some estimates of dgu/yr including those defensive displays are as high as 3mil/yr. I think that's probably a little high, but I'd wager they're in the ballpark of 500,000 dgu/yr as well.
Though this is the "we need more good people carrying able to defend themselves" part, because although the number is growing still only 25% of people carry, and even most of them don't do it every day. Can't defend with what you don't have. Statista says there's 1.2 mil violent crimes in 2022, if guns are indeed i .5mil of those, that leaves .7mil where a defender with a gun would have had an outright advantage over the attacker.
In the end what we need to do is address the underlying socioeconomic issues that most often cause the violent crime. Even if we Thanosed all guns away there's still the matter of .7mil violent crimes and now 100,000-500,000 people can't even do anything to protect themselves against them. Addressing the causes would have a more measurable impact and wouldn't deprive anyone of their rights unduly.
100% agreed with you on that one. Unfortunately I don't see any consensus coming on how to effectively do that.
Well it'll be harder to do, for sure. But I think it's the right way to do things, peace through force is a hollow victory at best.
Like I stated, I didn't vet any of the links - they were the first results on DDG for "defensive gun use statistics." My point was that you can't make a statement like "owning guns causes more harm than it prevents" unless you can back it up with more than just a gut feeling. I also acknowledged the difficulty in getting exact numbers partially because of "conflicting motivations from each side citing their own numbers."
More related reading from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States#Defensive_Gun_Violence
If we're going to make factual declarations based solely on feelings then obviously the real problems with guns are caused by evil spirits corrupting our souls because we've strayed from God's path.