Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

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Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

Post by Dardedar »

I've been debating the gun issue for a long time. To many NRA types it is a religion for them and along with this comes all of the spin, dishonesty and irrational cult like behavior in spades. I just ask that people be honest. My position? Countries can choose their own path, I'll abide by their rules. Canada may be a tad strict, the US not strict enough. The US chooses to have very little restriction on guns (see Gun Shows) until you use them in a criminal manner. Because of this the US reaps an amazing onslaught of death and destruction directly attributable to it's lack of gun control.

What follows is a compilation of some of the assorted guns stats I have used to roast gun nuts over the years.

*****

"Homicide rates tend to be related to firearm ownership levels. Everything else being equal, a reduction in the percentage of households owning firearms should occasion a drop in the homicide rate".
--Evidence to the Cullen Inquiry 1996: Thomas Gabor, Professor of Criminology - University of Ottawa.
--http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF01.htm

CLAIM:

"...the vast majority of academic research finds that concealed handguns reduce violent crime generally."

Lambert responds:

"This is not true. The table below shows that there are more works that don’t find that they reduce violent crime. Note also that fully half of the ones finding that they reduce crime have Lott as an author, and that Michael Maltz, the only researcher with papers on both sides of the table has repudiated the paper that found that carry laws reduced crime. In any case, not all papers should be weighted equally, and Ayres and Donohue, the most comprehensive paper, found that carry laws tended to increase violent crime."
--http://timlambert.org/2003/07/0728/

***
ATLANTA -- The United States has by far the highest rate of gun deaths -- murders, suicides and accidents -- among the world's 36 richest nations, a government study found.
The U.S. rate for gun deaths in 1994 was 14.24 per 100,000 people. Japan had the lowest rate, at .05 per 100,000.
The study, done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is the first comprehensive international look at gun-related deaths. It was published Thursday in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

<<SNIP>

The 36 countries chosen were listed as the richest in the World Bank's 1994 World Development Report, with the highest GNP per capita income.

The study used 1994 statistics supplied by the 36 countries. Of the 88,649 gun deaths reported by all the countries, the United States accounted for 45 percent, said Etienne Krug, a CDC researcher and co-author of the article.

Japan, where very few people own guns, averages 124 gun-related attacks a year, and less than 1 percent end in death. Police often raid the homes of those suspected of having weapons.

The study found that gun-related deaths were five to six times higher in the Americas than in Europe or Australia and New Zealand and 95 times higher than in Asia.

Here are gun-related deaths per 100,000 people in the world's 36 richest countries in 1994:

United States 14.24; Brazil 12.95; Mexico 12.69; Estonia 12.26; Argentina 8.93; Northern Ireland 6.63; Finland 6.46; Switzerland 5.31; France 5.15; Canada 4.31; Norway 3.82; Austria 3.70; Portugal 3.20; Israel 2.91; Belgium 2.90; Australia 2.65; Slovenia 2.60; Italy 2.44; New Zealand 2.38; Denmark 2.09; Sweden 1.92; Kuwait 1.84; Greece 1.29; Germany 1.24; Hungary 1.11; Republic of Ireland 0.97; Spain 0.78; Netherlands 0.70; Scotland 0.54; England and Wales 0.41; Taiwan 0.37; Singapore 0.21; Mauritius 0.19; Hong Kong 0.14; South Korea 0.12; Japan 0.05."

Source: http://www.guncite.com/cnngunde.html
***

DAR
"In 1993, the FBI counted 24,526 murders (13,980 by handguns), 251 of these were justifiable homicides by civilians using handguns."
--FBI, Crime in the United States, 1994, 1995.

Updated:
"An estimated 15,241 persons were murdered nationwide in 2009..." FBI

"Of the 13,636 murder victims in 2009 for which supplemental data were received, most (77.0 percent) were male."
"Of the homicides for which the FBI received weapons data, most (71.8 percent) involved the use of firearms. Handguns comprised 70.5 percent of all firearms used in murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2009.
"In 2009, 24.2 percent of victims were slain by family members; 53.8 percent were killed by someone they knew (acquaintance, neighbor, friend, boyfriend, etc.)."
"Law enforcement reported 667 justifiable homicides in 2009. Of those, law enforcement officers justifiably killed 406 felons, and private citizens justifiably killed 261 people during the commission of a crime."
FBI Homicide Data

Note, this means justifiable homicides with guns by private citizens represent about 1.9% of total gun homicides. Law enforcement's "justifiable killings" represents 2.98% of the total.

***
"...the international statistics, which also show a clear correlation between handgun ownership and murder rates. (Note: the first two statistics are for handguns, not guns in general.)"

Percent of households with a handgun, 1991 (21)

United States 29%
Switzerland 14
Finland 7
Germany 7
Belgium 6
France 6
Canada 5
Norway 4
Europe 4
Australia 2
Netherlands 2
United Kingdom 1

Handgun murders (1992) (22)

Handgun 1992 Handgun Murder
Country Murders Population Rate (per 100,000)
-----------------------------------------------------------
United States 13,429 254,521,000 5.28
Switzerland 97 6,828,023 1.42
Canada 128 27,351,509 0.47
Sweden 36 8,602,157 0.42
Australia 13 17,576,354 0.07
United Kingdom 33 57,797,514 0.06
Japan 60 124,460,481 0.05

DAR
Compare:

Total population of the other countries: 242 million (10m less than the US)

Total handgun murders: 367 v. 13,429.

That's 36 times the US number, and a comparison with a similar population.

http://pearlyabraham.tripod.com/htmls/myth-guns2.html

***
"Firearms are the second-leading cause of death (after motor vehicle accidents) for young people ages 1-19 in the U.S."

--WISQARS, Leading Causes of Death Reports, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control, 2005 data, http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcaus10.html

***
"Suicide attempts with firearms are much more likely to be fatal than attempts with other methods. Firearms are used in only 5% of all suicide attempts, but more than 90% of the attempts are fatal. In comparison, drugs or cutting are the methods used in 85% of suicide attempts, but the attempt is fatal only 3% of the time."

--Matthew Miller, David Hemenway, Deborah Azrael, "Firearms and Suicide in the Northeast," Journal of Trauma 57 (2004):626-632. (See also: E. D. Shenassa, S. N. Catlin, S. L Buka, "Lethality of Firearms Relative to Other Suicide Methods: A Population Based Study," Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 57 (2003): 120-124.
***

Keeping a firearm in the home triples the risk of suicide and increases the risk of suicide with a firearm by a factor of 17(1). Thirty-four percent of U. S. households contain a gun(2), and half of gun-owning households don't lock up their guns, including 40 percent of households with kids under age 18(3).

Notes:
1. Douglas Wiebe, "Homicide and Suicide Risks Associated with Firearms in the Home: A National Case-Control Study," Annals of Internal Medicine 41 (2003):771-782.
2. Tom Smith, Public Attitudes Towards the Regulation of Firearms (2006), (Chicago, Illinois: National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago, 2007): Figure 2.
3. Renee Johnson, Tamera Coyne-Beasley, Carol Runyan, "Firearm Ownership and Storage Practices, U.S. Households, 1992–2002: A Systematic Review," American Journal of Preventive Medicine 27:2 (2007): 175.

***
"An additional 71,417 people were shot and survived their injuries -- 52,748 people injured in an attack; 3,190 people injured in a suicide attempt; 14,678 people shot accidentally, and 801 people shot in a police intervention."

--WISQARS, Nonfatal Injury Reports, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control, 2006 data, http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/nfirates2001.html.

***
Guns cause the death of over 30,000 per year:

"In 2005, 30,694 people in the United States died from firearm-related deaths – 12,352 were murdered; 17,002 killed themselves; 789 were accidents; 330 died by police intervention, and in 221, the intent was unknown."

--WISQARS, Injury Mortality Reports, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control, 2005 data, http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html (hereafter Injury Mortality Reports).

***
"WASHINGTON, April 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- States in the South and West with weak gun laws and high rates of gun ownership lead the nation in overall firearm death rates according to a new analysis issued today by the Violence Policy Center (VPC) of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.

The new VPC analysis uses 2005 data (the most recent available) from the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. The analysis reveals that the five states with the highest per capita gun death rates were Louisiana, Alaska, Montana, Tennessee, and Alabama. Each of these states had a per capita gun death rate far exceeding the national per capita gun death rate of 10.32 per 100,000.

By contrast, states with strong gun laws and low rates of gun ownership had far lower rates of firearm-related death."
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRel ... RN20080424

"...states with the highest rates of gun ownership have much greater gun death rates than those where only a small percentage of the population is armed. So, Hawaii, where only 9.7 percent of residents own guns, has the lowest gun death rate in the country, while Louisiana, where 45 percent of the public is armed, has the highest." http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... unslinger/

***
DAR
US accidental fire arm death rate: about 800 per year.

Canada's accidental fire arm death rate:

"Accidental firearm deaths stood at 0.1 per 100,000 in 2000."

That's about 35 people per year.

Lot's of slippery fingers here in the US I guess. Maybe it's the handguns in the houses?

D.
---------------------
"Youth who commit firearm suicide usually get the gun from a parent. Eighty-five percent of youths under age 18 who died by firearm suicide used a family member's gun, usually a parent's."

--Harvard Injury Control Research Center, National Violent Injury Statistics Center, Characteristics of Victims of Suicide (Boston, MA: Harvard School of Public Health, 2001).

***

“…the rate of firearm deaths among children under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. American children are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die in a firearm accident than children in these other countries.”
--Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rates of homicide, suicide, and firearm-related deaths among children in 26 industrialized countries. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 1997; 46 :101 –105

http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/00046149.htm
***

DAR
"Based on the NSPOF, an estimated 0.9 percent of all
gun-owning households (269,000) experienced the
theft of one or more firearms during 1994. About
211,000 handguns and 382,000 long guns were stolen
in noncommercial thefts that year, for a total of
593,000 stolen firearms. Those estimates are
subject to considerable sampling error but are
consistent with earlier estimates of about half a
million guns stolen annually.[10]

--Cook, Molliconi, and Cole, 1995, use
data from the National Crime Victimization Survey
for the period 1987-1992 to estimate 511,000 stolen
guns per year. (See Bureau of Justice Statistics,
Guns and Crime, April 1994, NCJ-147003)

Source:
National Institute of Justice
Research in Brief

Link:
http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/165476.txt

D.
--------------------------
"Between 1987 and 1990, David McDowall found that guns were used in defense during a crime incident 64,615 times annually."
--McDowall, David, Brian Wiersema (1994). "The Incidence of Defensive Firearm Use by US Crime Victims, 1987 through 1990". American Journal of Public Health 84: pp. 1982–1984. PMID 7998641

Summary:

"Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, College Park 20742-8235.

It is well known that many crimes in the United States are committed with firearms. Less adequately documented is the frequency with which victims use guns in self-defense. We used National Crime Victimization Survey data to examine incidents where victims employed guns against offenders. Between 1987 and 1990 there were an estimated 258,460 incidents of firearm defense, an annual mean of 64,615. Victims used firearms in 0.18% of all crimes recorded by the survey and in 0.83% of violent offenses. Firearm self-defense is rare compared with gun crimes."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7998641
***

"During the 1980s and early 1990s, homicide rates surged in cities across the United States... Handgun homicides accounted for nearly all of the overall increase in the homicide rate, from 1985 to 1993, while homicide rates involving other weapons declined during that time frame."
--Committee on Law and Justice (2004). "Chapter 3", Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. National Academy of Science.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309091241&page=53

***
"Review of these data indicate that while the United States does not have the highest rate of homicide or firearm-related homicide, it does have the highest rates for these among industrialized democracies. Homicide rates in the United States are two to four times higher than they are in countries that are economically and politically similar to it. Higher rates are found in developing countries and those with political instability. The same is true for firearm-related homicides, but the differences are even greater. The firearm-related homicide rate in the United States is more like that of Argentina, Mexico, and Northern Ireland than England or Canada. While certainly not the highest homicide or firearm-related homicide rate in the world, these rates in the United States are in the upper quartile in each case."

--National Academy of Sciences

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10881&page=54

***
"In 2005, 17,002 U.S. residents killed themselves with a firearm, including over 2300 young people (ages 10-25)."

http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars/

***

"If suicide is attempted with a firearm, it is almost certain the person will die. Many fewer people make it to the hospital than would be the case if another method were used. Consequently, the number of hospitalizations for firearm suicide attempts is much lower than the number of deaths. In 2005, only 3,190 people survived an attempt to kill themselves with a gun and made it to the hospital."

http://www.bradycampaign.org/issues/gvstats/suicide/

***

"In 2005, 75% of the 10,100 homicides committed using firearms in the United States were committed using handguns, compared to 4% with rifles, 5% with shotguns, and the rest with a type of firearm not specified.[34] Due to the lethal potential that a gun brings to a situation, the likelihood that a death will result is significantly increased when either the victim or the attacker has a gun.[35] The mortality rate for gunshot wounds to the heart is 84%, compared to 30% for people who sustain stab wounds to the heart.[36]"

--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_gun_violence

***

"States with high household gun ownership have more suicides than states with low household gun ownership. The excess suicides are almost entirely due to firearms."
--Matthew Miller, Steven Lippmann, Deborah Azrael, David Hemenway, "Household Firearm Ownership and Rates of Suicide across the 50 United States," Journal of Trauma 62 (2007):1029-1035.

http://www.bradycampaign.org/issues/gvstats/suicide/

***
"Thirty-four percent of U. S. households contain a gun, and half of gun-owning households don't lock up their guns, including 40 percent of households with kids under age 18."

--Renee Johnson, Tamera Coyne-Beasley, Carol Runyan, "Firearm Ownership and Storage Practices, U.S. Households, 1992–2002: A Systematic Review," American Journal of Preventive Medicine 27:2 (2007): 175.

***

"In the United States, a quarter of commercial robberies are committed with guns.[38] Robberies committed with guns are three times as likely to result in fatalities compared with robberies where other weapons were used,[38][39][40] with similar patterns in cases of family violence."
--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_gun_violence

***

"Gun violence in the United States is associated with the majority of homicides and over half the suicides."
--"Self-inflicted Injury/Suicide". National Center for Health Statistics. Retrieved on 2006-11-06.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violen ... ote-nchs-0
***

"Suicide attempts with firearms are much more likely to be fatal than attempts with other methods. Firearms are used in only 5% of all suicide attempts, but more than 90% of the attempts are fatal. In comparison, drugs or cutting are the methods used in 85% of suicide attempts, but the attempt is fatal only 3% of the time."
--Matthew Miller, David Hemenway, Deborah Azrael, "Firearms and Suicide in the Northeast," Journal of Trauma 57 (2004):626-632.

***
"Levels of gun violence vary greatly across the world, with very high rates in South Africa and Colombia, as well as high levels in Thailand, Guatemala, and some other developing countries.[7] Levels of gun violence are low in Singapore, Chile, New Zealand, and many other countries.[7] The United States has the highest rates among developed countries, which some account to the loose firearm laws in the U.S. compared to other developed countries."
--Cook, Philip J., Gun Violence: The Real Cost, Page 29. Oxford University Press, 2002

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence#cite_note-7
***

"A British citizen is still 50 times less likely to be a victim of gun homicide than an American."

http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/gunaus.htm

***
"In 2004, firearms were used to murder 56 people in Australia, 184 people in Canada, 73 people in England and Wales, 5 people in New Zealand, and 37 people in Sweden.
In comparison, firearms were used to murder 11,344 in the United States."
--WISQARS, Injury Mortality Reports.

***

"In Canada, where new gun laws were introduced in 1991 and 1995, the number of gun deaths has reached a 30-year low."
--http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/gunaus.htm

***

1) "Firearms are the second-leading cause of death (after motor vehicle accidents) for young people ages 1-19 in the U.S."

--WISQARS, Leading Causes of Death Reports, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control, 2005 data, http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcaus10.html

2) “…the rate of firearm deaths among children under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. American children are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die in a firearm accident than children in these other countries.”
--Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rates of homicide, suicide, and firearm-related deaths among children in 26 industrialized countries. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 1997; 46 :101 –105
http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/00046149.htm

***

The number of kids killed by guns (1995):

0 children in Japan
19 in Great Britain
57 in Germany
109 in France
153 in Canada
and
5,285 in the United States

http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/gunaus.htm

***
BRITAIN

Here are the number of total firearm deaths in Britain, per year, from the gov:

Homicide from all firearms, per year, England & Wales:
1999/00... 62
2000/01... 73
2001/02... 97
2002/03... 81
2003/04... 68
2004/05... 78
2005/06... 50
2006/07... 59
2007/08... 53

Government PDF here: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs09/hosb0209.pdf
Or these nice folks have it up: http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF05.htm

Here's a neat trick. The UK population is about 60 million, so the US is about five times larger. If you average the numbers above and times they by five, you get: 345. So, this number should give us a per capita comparison with one year of US gun homicide.

UK = 345
US = 12,352 (in 2004)

Notice that these numbers are adjusted for population. There is no reason why they should be different at all. The US number is *35 TIMES* larger than five of Britain’s years combined. This makes the UK number a rounding error.

Apparently gun control is not working very well for those Brits. We have 35 times the per capita gun murder per year that they do, but apparently, they just need more guns. Then perhaps they could enjoy the death and destruction we do from our lax gun laws.

Guns for Felons
How the NRA Works to Rearm Criminals

http://www.vpc.org/studies/felons.htm

***
Gun availability and state homicide rates, 2001-2003

Using survey data on rates of household gun ownership, we examined the association between gun availability and homicide across states, 2001-2003.

Major findings: States with higher levels of household gun ownership had higher rates of firearm homicide and overall homicide. This relationship held for both genders and all age groups, after accounting for rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and resource deprivation (e.g., poverty). There was no association between gun prevalence and non-firearm homicide.

Publication: Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. "State-level Homicide Victimization Rates in the U.S. in Relation to Survey Measures of Household Firearm Ownership, 2001-2003." Social Science and Medicine. 2007; 64:656-64.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hi ... index.html

***
John Lott roasted (Skeptical Inquirer): http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/mythsofmurder.htm

Deltoid: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/lott.php#coding

More response to John Lott: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_Lott

And: http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/1 ... ott/191885

And: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2004/02/

***

Gun rate Death.

Country Gun Death Rate per 100,000

Japan 0.07
Singapore 0.24
Taiwan 0.27
Kuwait 0.37
England/ Wales 0.4
Scotland 0.49
Netherlands 0.55
Spain 0.74
Ireland 1.24
Germany 1.44
Italy 2.27
Sweden 2.27
Denmark 2.48
Israel 2.56
New Zealand 2.67
Australia 2.94
Belgium 3.32
Canada 3.95
Norway 4.23
Austria 4.48
Northern Ireland 4.72
France 5.48
Switzerland 6.2
Finland 6.65
USA 13.47

Source: W. Cukier, Firearms Regulation: Canada in the International
Context, Chronic Diseases in Canada, April, 1998 (statistics updated
to January 2001)
http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/international.html

***
"U.S. homicide rates are 6.9 times higher than rates in 22 other populous high-income countries combined, despite similar non-lethal crime and violence rates. The firearm homicide rate in the U.S. is 19.5 times higher"

"Among 23 populous, high-income countries, 80% of all firearm deaths occurred in the United States"
--Richardson, Erin G., and David Hemenway, “Homicide, Suicide, and Unintentional Firearm Fatality: Comparing the United States With Other High-Income Countries, 2003,” Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, published online ahead of print, June 2010

***
Canada has lots of guns. Out of 178 nations they come in 13th for gun ownership: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... _ownership

What they don't have is lots of hand guns. The gun ridden US has far more homicide and 11 times (!) the handgun homicide of Canada. Regarding crime in Canada, see statistics Canada: "Crime comparisons between Canada and the United States" http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidie ... 8b-eng.htm

***
Canada US comparison:

"Three impressive studies appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA):

-- ``Handgun Regulations, Crime, Assaults and Handguns,`` in the New England Journal (by John Henry Sloan`s group), compared homicides and suicides in Seattle and in Vancouver, B.C., between 1980-86, finding that almost everything about the cities, 140 miles apart, was the same except gun-control laws and homicide rates. Your chances of being shot were eight times greater in Seattle."
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1992-0 ... ntrol-laws
***
Update: 7/29/12

"The United States leads the world in private gun ownership. We also lead the industrialized world in gun deaths, which occurred in the United States at a rate eight times higher than our economic counterparts between 1990 and 1995. A 2003 study by Harvard School of Public Health professor David Hemenway found that the firearm homicide rate in the United States is 19.5 times higher than the average rate found in other high-income nations. A study by the Firearm and Injury Center at the University of Pennsylvania concluded that the availability of firearms is correlated with increased gun homicide rates in high-income industrialized countries. This is certainly born out in the United States where states that have the highest gun ownership and loosest gun laws also often have the highest rates of gun death." Media Matters

***
Gun shows
"Undercover stings at gun shows in Ohio, Tennessee and Nevada documented that:
--63 percent of private sellers sold guns to purchasers who stated they probably could not pass a background check;
--94 percent of licensed dealers completed sales to people who appeared to be criminals or straw purchasers (City of New York, 2009, p. 6, 7)
http://www.bradycampaign.org/legislatio ... ophole?s=3

Much more documentation of this, which is standard procedure at gun shows, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_l ... w_loophole

***
Excellent page on yearly gun stats in the US.

Image

***
How the gun nut lobby was able to stifle government research on violent gun death in the US:

"How the Government Stifled Gun Research"

LINK

Bonus: 10 Pro-gun Myths Shot Down

Regarding claims about the UK being far more violent than the US (while have almost no guns), nicely debunked here: Is the UK really 5 times more violent than the US?

Image

Charts: Challenging the Myth That Guns Stop Crime
One of the gun lobby's favorite talking points is that America's arsenal of 300 million civilian firearms makes us safer by preventing millions of crimes. This contentious idea has taken fire as of late for relying on bogus stats and ignoring that most criminal shootings involve people who know each other, not gun-toting homeowners and midnight intruders. A new report from Violence Policy Center shoots even more holes in the argument that a well-armed society is a safer society.

The report finds that less than 3 percent of gun-related homicides are committed in self-defense (mouse over charts for the raw numbers):

LINK

***
New Data Shows Increase in Percentage of Out-of-State Guns Used to Commit Crimes in NYC
Jul 31, 2013 | NYC.gov

"Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and Criminal Justice Coordinator and Mayor’s Chief Policy Advisor John Feinblatt today released the most recent available crime gun trace data, which shows the percentage of out-of-state guns used in crimes in New York City has increased from 85 percent in 2009 to 90 percent in 2011. Moreover, the data – from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – reveals that the increase in proportion of out-state guns used to commit crimes occurs even as the total number of guns recovered in the city has decreased by more than 44 percent.
Despite the ongoing drop in violence in the five boroughs with homicides and shootings at all-time recorded lows, the data demonstrate the impact of weak gun laws at the Federal and State levels on the safety of New Yorkers, and the need to prevent thousands of illegal guns from being transported across state lines."

Image

LINK

***
"How Big Is The Internet Gun Sales Loophole Conservative Media Claim Doesn't Exist?"

"A new study finds that in June and July, a single website allowed sellers of more than 15,000 firearms in ten states to utilize the loophole in federal law allowing people to buy guns on the Internet without passing a criminal background check -- a loophole that conservative media claim doesn't exist."

In a new study, the center-left think tank Third Way examined June and July listings in ten states whose senators did not support Manchin-Toomey:

-- 15,768 for sale ads listed by private sellers of firearms.
-- 5,168 of these ads were for semi-automatic weapons, including assault weapons.
-- 1,928 ads were from prospective buyers asking to buy specifically from private sellers (thereby ensuring that no background check is required).
-- 1,018 private individuals were selling four or more firearms simultaneously.
-- Many listed numerous weapons for sale at the same time. One person had 22 separate guns listed for sale in Arkansas, while another listed 21 in Nevada, and a third listed 21 in Ohio.

Media Matters

Image

"A higher number of firearm laws in a state are associated with a lower rate of firearm fatalities
in the state, overall and for suicides and homicides individually."
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article ... id=1661390

---
"Seven US children are shot dead every day on average"

For every U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan during 11 years of war, at least 13 children were shot and killed in America.
More than 450 kids didn’t make it to kindergarten.
Another 2,700 or more were killed by a firearm before they could sit behind the wheel of a car.
Every day, on average, seven children were shot dead.
A News21 investigation of child and youth deaths in America between 2002 and 2012 found that at least 28,000 children and teens 19-years-old and younger were killed with guns. Teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 made up over two-thirds of all youth gun deaths in America. ...

Most of those killed by firearms, 62 percent, were murdered and the majority of victims were black children and teens. Suicides resulted in 25 percent of the firearm deaths of young people: The majority of them were white. More than 1,100 children and teens were killed by a gun that accidentally discharged."
Link.

***
Our gun access problem is so bad it spills over into other countries. And not just the neighboring ones.

Guess Where the Gangs Get Their Guns?
Excerpt:
"Penate, a Cuban-American from New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen, is the ATF’s only agent for all of Central America. From his desk at the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador, he is the one responsible for tracing U.S. guns smuggled into the Northern Triangle: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. That role has given him a front-row seat to a bloodbath. Looking beyond the region’s homicide rates, which are some of the world’s highest, what stands out is the number of gunhomicides. And since Penate took on the job two years ago, he has come to an inescapable conclusion: U.S. weapons are partly to blame for the carnage—and in turn for the kids who are fleeing it. “I feel as bad about guns going into Central America and Mexico as good, hard-working Colombians feel about cocaine going into the U.S.,” he says.
By the ATF’s count, more than a third of the traceable guns seized from criminals last year in the Northern Triangle that originated from the United States were purchased from a retail dealer. The weapons are then smuggled south in cars and trucks, or in checked airline luggage, air freight, or even boats. That may sound like a lot of effort, but buying from U.S. gun stores is a lot more convenient for gang members. Thanks to our lax gun laws, there is little official paper trail, and the weapons (Northern Triangle gangs favor semi-automatic pistols) are cheaper than buying locally. “It’s a lot easier for me to go to a gun store in the U.S., buy a Glock, and ship it in parts in a microwave oven and have it show up at a relative’s house,” Penate says."
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1190 ... ca-come-us
***
Excellent resource:
"Gun violence in America, in 17 maps and charts"
http://www.vox.com/2015/8/24/9183525/gu ... statistics
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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

Post by Dardedar »

Image

In one year, guns were used to murder:

17 people in Finland
35 in Australia
39 in England
60 in Spain
194 in Germany
200 in Canada
11 in Japan

And...

9,484 in the United States.

Interesting that gun control seems to work, when it's implemented.

Now this is interesting, if you add up the populations of all of those countries except the US, you get: 382 million (includes Japan).

Total number of people murdered by guns in those countries: 556

The US, with it's population of 315 million, had: 9,484 (actually, in 2010, the number of firearm related homicide was over 11,000)

But if we go with the lower number (to be consistent), we find the US, while even having a smaller population, has 17x the total amount of homicide by firearm. American Exceptionalism indeed.

And consider Japan. 127 million people, 11 gun murders. The US is only 2.5 times bigger than Japan, yet has 862 times the number gun homicides. Adjusting per capita, if we had the same gun homicide rate as Japan, we'd have 28. But we didn't have 28, we had 9,484 which is a rate 338 times that of Japan.

Update: The Real Gun Problem: It's not the massacres...

If you add up the total carnage of all the big gun massacres (more than 4 killed) in the US last 30 years, the answer is: 513.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... -full-data

More people than that are shot with guns every two days in the US (about 270).

That many people die from guns every 6 days in the US. (85 per day, 2007, see pg 11: http://www.cdc.gov/NCHS/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_19.pdf )

Also: here.

Again, realize, as many people are killed by guns in the US every 6 days, as were killed in all of the major gun massacres in the last 30 years, combined. If you subtract the suicides, it's 13.5 days.

These massacres are a fly on the elephants back. The real problem is the daily death and destruction from guns.

Note: "The firearm homicide rate for children under 15 years of age is 16 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. Among those ages 15 to 24, the U.S. firearm homicide rate is 5 times higher than in neighboring Canada and 30 times higher than in Japan,... A teenager in the United States today is more likely to die of a gunshot wound than from all the "natural" causes of death combined." http://www.ojjdp.gov/pubs/gun_violence/sect01.html
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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

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Great resource. I'll try to send some 2nd Amendment folks your way.
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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

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The Myth Of NRA Dominance Part IV: The Declining Role Of Guns In American Society

"...fewer and fewer Americans own guns. Data from the General Social Survey show that rates of gun ownership have been decreasing steadily for three decades. In 1977, 54 percent of American adults lived in a household that contained a gun. By 2010, that figure had declined a full 22 percentage points to 32 percent.

Image

"The explanations for this drop vary; a declining interest in hunting and the steady exodus from rural areas to suburbs and cities almost certainly play a role. Whatever the combination of causes, there have been steady declines in gun ownership among all age groups. Of particular note is the decline among young adults. In the GSS studies in the 1970s, around 45 percent of respondents under 30 years of age reported that their household owned a gun; in the most recent surveys that number has fallen below 20 percent, a decline of more than half. The decline has also occurred among all birth cohorts."

Think Progress

More on the decline of guns in America

"The household gun ownership rate has fallen from an average of 50 percent in the 1970s to 49 percent in the 1980s, 43 percent in the 1990s and 35 percent in the 2000s, according to the survey data, analyzed by The New York Times.
In 2012, the share of American households with guns was 34 percent, according to survey results released on Thursday." --NYT's, ibid
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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

Post by L.Wood »

"...You have nothing to fear but the absence of fear."

Yes, the head of NRA said that. Here's the video link. Good for laughs until you realize there are millions buying into this fear-mongering.

After watching I was truly surprised to learn of all the "ruling class" groups we have in this nation. Perhaps I need more
tinfoil than I thought.
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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

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PROBLEM: Keeping a gun in the home increases the risk of injury and death. Gun owners may overestimate the benefits of keeping a gun in the home and underestimate the risks.

DID YOU KNOW? Where there are more guns, there are more gun deaths.

Gun death rates are 7 times higher in the states with the highest compared with the lowest household gun ownership. (Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, 2009).

An estimated 41% of gun-related homicides and 94% of gun-related suicides would not occur under the same circumstances had no guns been present (Wiebe, p. 780).

Household gun ownership levels vary greatly by state, from 60 percent in Wyoming to 9 percent in Hawaii (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2001).

DID YOU KNOW? Keeping a gun in the home raises the risk of homicide.

States with the highest levels of gun ownership have 114 percent higher firearm homicide rates and 60 percent higher homicide rates than states with the lowest gun ownership (Miller, Hemenway, and Azrael, 2007, pp. 659, 660).

The risk of homicide is three times higher in homes with firearms (Kellermann, 1993, p. 1084).

Higher gun ownership puts both men and women at a higher risk for homicide, particularly gun homicide (Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, 2009).

DID YOU KNOW? Keeping a gun in the home raises the risk of suicide.

Keeping a firearm in the home increases the risk of suicide by a factor of 3 to 5 and increases the risk of suicide with a firearm by a factor of 17 (Kellermann, p. 467, p. Wiebe, p. 771).

The association between firearm ownership and increased risk of suicide cannot be explained by a higher risk of psychiatric disorders in homes with guns (Miller, p. 183).

DID YOU KNOW? A gun in the home is more likely to be used in a homicide, suicide, or unintentional shooting than to be used in self-defense.

Every time a gun injures or kills in self-defense, it is used:

11 times for completed and attempted suicides (Kellermann, 1998, p. 263).
7 times in criminal assaults and homicides, and
4 times in unintentional shooting deaths or injuries.

DID YOU KNOW? Many children and teens live in homes with firearms, including ones that are loaded and unlocked.

One third of all households with children younger than eighteen have a firearm (Johnson, 2004 p.179).

More than 40% of gun-owning households with children store their guns unlocked (Schuster, p. 590).

One fourth of homes with children and guns have a loaded firearm (Johnson, 2004 p.179).

Between 6% and 14% of firearm owning households with a child under 18 have an unlocked and loaded firearm (Johnson, 2004, p.175).
In almost half of unintentional shooting deaths (49 percent), the victim is shot by another person. In virtually all of these cases, the shooter and victim knew each other (Hemenway, p. 1184).
DID YOU KNOW? Parents may underestimate their children’s access to guns in the home. Women may not know about guns in the home or be unable to assure safe storage, despite wanting it.

Among gun-owning parents who reported that their children had never handled their firearms at home, 22% of the children, questioned separately, said that they had (Baxley and Miller, p. 542).

For unmarried mothers, when an adolescent boy reports a handgun in the home, nearly three-fourths of the mothers say there is no handgun in the home (Sorenson, p. 15).

Of youths who committed suicide with firearms, 82% obtained the firearm from their home, usually a parent’s firearm (The National Violent Injury Statistics System, p. 2).

When storage status was noted, about two-thirds of the firearms had been stored unlocked (The National Violent Injury Statistics System, p. 2).

Among the remaining cases in which the firearms had been locked, the youth knew the combination or where the key was kept or broke into the cabinet (The National Violent Injury Statistics System, p. 2).

Among married women living in gun-owning households, 94 percent believed in safe gun-storage practices but 43% of those households stored their family’s gun unsafely (Johnson, 2007, pp. 5, 8).

Women are less likely than men to own the guns in their homes (Johnson, 2007 p. 4).

Women are less likely than men to report a gun’s presence in the home (Johnson, 2004 p. 180).

***
Sources and links here: http://www.bradycampaign.org/?q=risks-o ... n-the-home
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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

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The NRA's big secret: Nobody is actually trying to take your guns

Sales of firearms are spiking on completely unrealistic fears that the Colorado shooting will lead to new gun control

"In the days following the Aurora theater massacre, gun sales in Colorado shot through the roof. But all the arms and ammo moving across gun shop counters are not being purchased in anticipation of another anonymous misfit springing out of nowhere with guns blazing. Instead, people are stocking their home armories to get ahead of new gun control laws that might restrict access to firearms.

It seems not to make any difference to these people that there is zero chance that any new restrictions will be imposed, or that none are being seriously pondered by anyone who could make it happen, or that any law that might conceivably get through the solid bulwark of the gun lobby would not do anything significant to inhibit the right to keep and bear arms.

Nevertheless, Colorado guns sales spiked 43 pecent. From the time of the Friday shooting to the end of the following weekend, 2,887 people were approved to buy firearms through state background checks. This gun rush was not happening in Colorado alone. From Connecticut to Washington state, gun sellers were as busy as elves at Christmas. And everywhere, buyers were giving the same reason for their shopping spree: fear of gun control.

This bizarre disconnect from reality defies rational thought. Passage of new laws sharply curtailing gun ownership is less likely than lightning striking Paris Hilton as she gets out of a Chrysler minivan wearing long underwear.

Congress has not passed meaningful gun legislation in more than 10 years. Not only has the Obama administration not pushed for new gun restrictions, the president has actually loosened prohibitions by allowing guns in national parks. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has defined gun rights in the broadest way, dispensing with the argument that the Second Amendment applies to state militias, not individuals.

Gun rights advocates have won their long battle, but they refuse to claim victory...."

The rest at the Baltimore Sun
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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

Post by Dardedar »

Image

***

Timeline Of Mass Shootings In The US Since Columbine

"On Friday morning, 27 people were reportedly shot and killed at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, CT. According to sources, 18 of these casualties were children. This is the second mass shooting in the US this week, after a gunman opened fire in an Oregon shopping mall on Tuesday, killing 2. ABC News reports that there have been 31 school shootings in the US since Columbine in 1999, when 13 people were killed.

The rate of people killed by guns in the US is 19.5 times higher than similar high-income countries in the world. In the last 30 years since 1982, America has mourned at least 61 mass murders. Below is a timeline of mass shootings in the US since the Columbine High massacre..."

See here:

LINK
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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

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Homicide, suicide, and unintentional firearm fatality: comparing the United States with other high-income countries, 2003.
Richardson EG, Hemenway D.

Department of Health Services, UCLA School of Public Health, Los Angeles, California

Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Violent death is a major public health problem in the United States and throughout the world.

METHODS:
A cross-sectional analysis of the World Health Organization Mortality Database analyzes homicides and suicides (both disaggregated as firearm related and non-firearm related) and unintentional and undetermined firearm deaths from 23 populous high-income Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development countries that provided data to the World Health Organization for 2003.

RESULTS:
The US homicide rates were 6.9 times higher than rates in the other high-income countries, driven by firearm homicide rates that were 19.5 times higher. For 15-year olds to 24-year olds, firearm homicide rates in the United States were 42.7 times higher than in the other countries. For US males, firearm homicide rates were 22.0 times higher, and for US females, firearm homicide rates were 11.4 times higher. The US firearm suicide rates were 5.8 times higher than in the other countries, though overall suicide rates were 30% lower. The US unintentional firearm deaths were 5.2 times higher than in the other countries. Among these 23 countries, 80% of all firearm deaths occurred in the United States, 86% of women killed by firearms were US women, and 87% of all children aged 0 to 14 killed by firearms were US children.

CONCLUSIONS:
The United States has far higher rates of firearm deaths-firearm homicides, firearm suicides, and unintentional firearm deaths compared with other high-income countries. The US overall suicide rate is not out of line with these countries, but the United States is an outlier in terms of our overall homicide rate.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20571454
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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

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Americans United explains why Mike Huckabee is a tool:

Strange Gods: The Religious Right’s Offensive Response To The Tragedy In Connecticut

"As soon as I heard about Friday’s horrific school shootings in Newtown, Conn., I knew it would only be a matter of time before some Religious Right extremist blamed it on the lack of mandatory prayer in public schools.

It didn’t take long. First out of the crazy box was former Arkansas governor and erstwhile presidential candidate Mike Huckabee...."

LINK

***
Also, this...

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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

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“The NRA is the enabler of mass murderers”

‎"New York Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler called for a “war” on the National Rifle Association in light of the mass shooting in Connecticut today in an interview with Salon, saying the gun lobby group is the “enabler of mass murderers.”

Nadler, a rare fierce advocate of gun control on Capitol Hill, said the shooting should be a wake-up call to our “crazy attitude to guns” and the power of the gun lobby. He noted that other modern industrialized countries like the U.K., Sweden and Germany witness fewer than 50 gun homicides every year, compared to the roughly 10,000 people killed here. The difference, he said, is that they have “rational gun control regimes,” while we can barely even discuss gun control thanks to the power of the gun lobby.

“Al-Qaida killed 3,000 people in the World Trade Center in 2001. The United States went to war because of that. Because of the NRA, we’ve lost 10,000 people last year unnecessarily. It’s time we went to war,” he said. “And you have to say the National Rifle Association is the enabler of mass murderers. And we’ve got to stomp on them instead of kowtowing to them.”

Salon
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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

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Image

Full article HERE

"...we can look for inspiration at our own history on auto safety. As with guns, some auto deaths are caused by people who break laws or behave irresponsibly. But we don’t shrug and say, “Cars don’t kill people, drunks do.”

Instead, we have required seat belts, air bags, child seats and crash safety standards. We have introduced limited licenses for young drivers and tried to curb the use of mobile phones while driving. All this has reduced America’s traffic fatality rate per mile driven by nearly 90 percent since the 1950s.

Some of you are alive today because of those auto safety regulations. And if we don’t treat guns in the same serious way, some of you and some of your children will die because of our failure." --Nicholas Kristof, http://tinyurl.com/ct3k9n7
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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

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On the Guns Thing, I would Just Like to Point Out…

LINK

Image

"See the differences? See the statistically significant correlation between homicide by firearms and ownership of firearms? See the massive difference between the United States and other developed countries?

Now, since yesterday, we have heard a whole bunch of rationalizations as to why this has nothing to do with guns. So, let me unpack some of these rationalizations.

Rationalization #1: violence is part of human nature.

If that were the case, the rates of violence between the United States and comparable countries would be, well, comparable. Heck, violence rates all over the world would be roughly at the same rate. There is nothing “natural” about violence. There is nothing genetic about it. It is not universal. To state that violence is universal and part of human nature fails to explain the scatterplot above.

Rationalization #2: If the killers had not used guns, they would have used something else (follows a long list of potential weapons).

Except, they did not, did they. These killer had access to these alternative weapons all along. So why did they pick guns? R#2 does not explain the choice of guns in the first place. The reason they picked guns was that guns are available relatively easily. They are also lethally effective (and a lot of people pointed out that the Chinese attacker went after the same number of children with a knife and none of them died). And the kind of guns these killers chose were those that would provide them with great and easy means of piling up a solid body count.

Also, no one knows whether the killers would have turned to other weapons. had guns not been available. It is pure speculation.

Actually, we may suspect that they would not. When other societies removed weapons, the number of homicides drops to low levels. Again, just look at the scatterplot above.

To be fair though, the scatterplot below shows what percentage of homicides were committed with firearms. The correlation becomes weaker, but still holds with three outliers."

The rest here.
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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

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More Guns, Less Crime hypothesis: still dead

"The 2 million figure — often inflated to 2.5 million in N.R.A. literature — is bogus. Defensive gun use is actually quite rare.
A new paper from the Violence Policy Center states that “for the five-year period 2007 through 2011, the total number of self-protective behaviors involving a firearm by victims of attempted or completed violent crimes or property crimes totaled only 338,700.” That comes to an annual average of 67,740 — not nothing, but nowhere near the N.R.A.’s 2 million or 2.5 million.
Readers can judge for themselves whether the V.P.C. or the N.R.A. is likely to have better numbers. The V.P.C. used data from the National Crime Victimization Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The N.R.A.’s estimate is the result of a telephone survey conducted by a Florida State University criminologist.
The V.P.C. also found that in 2010 “there were only 230 justifiable homicides involving a private citizen using a firearm” reported to the F.B.I.’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Compare that with the number of criminal gun homicides in the same year: 8,275. (That’s not counting gun suicides or unintentional shootings.) Or compare it with the number of Americans killed by guns since Newtown: 3,458.
As the V.P.C. paper states, “guns are rarely used to kill criminals or stop crimes.”
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/201 ... -use/?_r=1

***
Older rebuttal:
Tim Lambert

The complete unpack of Kleck's 2.5 million Defensive Gun Uses statistic: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/archive/dgu/

From an exchange I had back in 2006:
The following really sums up quite nicely, I think, how the Kleck numbers are untenable. Kleck breaks down his DGU's into categories and Mr. Lambert carefully roasts them:

KLECK: About 8 percent of the defensive uses
involved a
> sexual crime such as an attempted sexual
assault. About 29
> percent involved some sort of assault other
than sexual assault.
> Thirty-three percent involved a burglary or
some other theft at home.

TIM LAMBERT responds
33% of 2,500,000 is 825,000. NCS data gives
1,000,000 burglaries each year when there is
someone at home. So in 83% of these burglaries a
gun was used for defence??
NCS asked: 3% said they used a gun for self-defence.

KLECK
> Twenty-two percent involved robbery.

TIM responds
22% of 2,500,000 is 550,000. NCS data gives
about 1,000,000 robberies each year. So in 55%
of these robberies a gun was used for defence??
NCS asked: 1% said they used a gun for self-defence.

KLECK
> criminal. And then in 8 percent they actually
did wound or kill the offender.

TIM responds:
Kleck has estimated that 15% of gunshot wounds
are fatal. So: 15% of 8% of 2,500,000 is 30,000.
If we believe this survey, we must conclude that
there are 30,000 justifiable with-gun homicides
in the US each year.
This is much more than twice the number of
with-gun homicides, criminal and non-criminal.
This is 10-20 times Kleck's estimate of the
number of justifiable with-gun homicides in the
US each year.
It is 80 times the official FBI count of
justifiable with-gun homicides.
Sorry, this statistic is totally unbelievable.

DAR
Now I ain't no plumber, but this seems to
thoroughly demolish the "2.5 to 3 million
defensive or anticrime uses of firearms in the
United States every year. (Lott, Kleck, etc.)"
This is interesting. Kleck has to say something
about the NCVS numbers that so radically
disagree with his. Here it is:

From p. 168, Kleck says "only about 3% of DGUs
among NCVS Rs are reported to interviewers." On
pp 154-6 he argues that this is because Rs are
worried they might get into trouble if the
authorities find out about the DGU.

So he just disregards 97% of contradicting data
from this survey of 56,000 families as
inaccurate. And if you can believe that, then you
can believe the 2.5 to 3 million number. Oh, and
you also have to think that "the official FBI
count of justifiable with-gun homicides is 80
times TOO SMALL.
I can't bring myself to do that. Perhaps you can.
And there are many more reasons Klecks numbers
don't remotely fly, if you're interested:

http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/archive/dgu/

***
More:

"Between 1987 and 1990, David McDowall found that guns were used in defense during a crime incident 64,615 times annually."
--McDowall, David, Brian Wiersema (1994). "The Incidence of Defensive Firearm Use by US Crime Victims, 1987 through 1990". American Journal of Public Health 84: pp. 1982–1984. PMID 7998641

Summary:

"Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, College Park 20742-8235.
It is well known that many crimes in the United States are committed with firearms. Less adequately documented is the frequency with which victims use guns in self-defense. We used National Crime Victimization Survey data to examine incidents where victims employed guns against offenders. Between 1987 and 1990 there were an estimated 258,460 incidents of firearm defense, an annual mean of 64,615. Victims used firearms in 0.18% of all crimes recorded by the survey and in 0.83% of violent offenses. Firearm self-defense is rare compared with gun crimes."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7998641

Adjusted short version from Lambert: "[most] violent crimes do not result in the victim’s death. In fact, only 0.35% of assaults result in death (Kleck table 5.8)."

So if we take 0.35% * 80,000 this equals "300 lives saved with guns each year.

"Japan, where very few people own guns, averages 124 gun-related attacks a year, and less than 1 percent end in death." LINK

***

How many lives are saved by defensive gun use?

"The death rate from robberies is about 1.5 per thousand robberies. If
the same death rate occurs in other crimes, then guns save 1.5*65, or
about 100 lives per year."

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/1992/05/04/dgu-00009/
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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

Post by Dardedar »

The NRA is basically a publicity sales front group for the billion dollar firearm industry. Here's their latest sales gimmick:

"On Friday, National Rifle Association vice president Wayne LaPierre proposed a program that would put armed guards and perhaps other adults with guns in every school, saying “good guys” with firearms were the surest way to protect the nation’s children.

Nichols, of the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, described the NRA’s proposal as preposterous.

“I think it’s an absurd and dangerous idea,” Nichols said. “But as with so many of their proposals I think its real aim is to encourage the sale of more firearms. The biggest donors to the NRA are firearms manufacturers. Besides, arming and equipping all these people he wants to put in schools, having guns where kids see them daily is a tool to market weapons to the next generation.”

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"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Dar's Handy Dandy Gun Stat thread

Post by Dardedar »

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Sorry, Gun Nuts: Hitler Actually Relaxed Most Gun Laws:

"Here's the deal, oh, sweet, stupid gun nuts: Have a history lesson. Gun control laws had nothing to do with the rise of the Nazis or the Holocaust. In fact, they were initially part of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I, punishing Germany by eliminating private ownership of guns. In the Weimar Republic, new laws liberalized gun ownership, allowing hunting rifles and more. The other gun control laws in Germany post-WWI were specifically put in to prevent armed takeover of the government by groups like the Nazi Party, which did not, in fact, stage a coup, but used electoral power to solidify its hold on the government (along with the Gestapo and the repression of demonized Communist groups). In fact, Hitler and the Third Reich opened up gun ownership even more, even if they did ban all Jews from owning guns. Yeah, the 1938 law said "a hunting license entitles the holder to carry firearms and handguns." That was new. It also lowered the age of gun ownership from 20 to 18 and changed one-year permits to three-year.

Oh, by the way, the law also took away any "stabbing weapons" from Jews. And if the Jews had been more strongly armed and attacked the government, all that would have happened is that even more people would have turned on them because the propaganda that said that evil Jews wanted to enslave the country would have appeared to be proven true. No, the Holocaust wouldn't have been worse. But it would still have happened. (This leaves out the enormous amount of armed Jewish resistance against the Nazis.)

The Rude Pundit understands that there's a lot of people out there who like to fellate their guns and call it love. He understands that there's so many who are jonesing for that first rampaging black man to come bursting in during a race riot so they can finally find out what really happens when Bushmaster fire hits human flesh. He understands that there's a whole lot of people invested in chasing the phantoms of resistance, as if they could actually survive if the government turns on us.

If you think you need to be armed with assault weapons because you might have to fight a government that wants to take your assault weapons away through laws passed by a legally-elected body, you are a traitor and kind of a dick. And if that's the best you've got for your argument on why you need to have military style weapons, then you, dear, dumb friend, are believing a whole heaping shovelful of lies.

...Fantasize that many non-Jewish Germans opposed Hitler and wanted to rise up against him. You know what would have happened? The enormous Nazi army would have massacred them. The Third Reich existed because the German people wanted it to exist. Give it up.

Fantasize now that the American government wants you dead. Fantasize about the sound of that drone carrying missiles. It's a nearly silent whoosh. You hear it? You think your semi-automatic whatever could stop it? Now imagine being turned into blood vapor.

Really, though, it's never gonna happen. And neither is the race war. And chances are pretty damn good that you're never gonna get to point a gun at anyone other than a family member or yourself.

But, if nothing else, give up the Nazi analogy. Considering all the Nazi shit that shows up at gun shows in an approving way, you just look like hypocritical yahoos attempting to be smart, and that's just fuckin' pathetic."

LINK

And:

Stop Talking about Hitler
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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