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A frustration I have with articles like this is that it's very easy to for the author to make the statistics support the conclusion they want to write. For exam
by Zak 7y ago
A frustration I have with articles like this is that it's very easy to for the author to make the statistics support the conclusion they want to write. For example, from this article:
> One study by the Violence Policy Center found that in 2012 there were 259 justifiable homicides by a private citizen using a firearm.
The implication is that firearms were only successfully used for self defense 259 times in 2012, but that's not true. Most incidents of successful self defense using a firearm do not lead to the death of the attacker. The same report from the VPC[0] says people used firearms in self defense an average of 67,740 times per year from 2007 to 2011.
> Tightening Gun Laws Lowered Firearm Homicide Rates
But did it lower homicide rates overall? I don't think it's much of a benefit if murderers switch weapons and complete the same number of homicides. If the overall homicide rate is reduced, that would be a much more persuasive figure to cite, which leads me to suspect it isn't.
[0] http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable15.pdf http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable15.pdf - note that the VPC is an anti-gun advocacy group, and this study is written to be persuasive rather than analytical.
- usrusr 7y ago> I don't think it's much of a benefit if murderers switch weapons and complete the same number of homicides. I guess you'd keep the deviously planned murders (even if guns are available, I'm not sure they would be the weapon of choice in most cases), but lose most of the escalated arguments, escalated property crime, fights that would otherwise have ended with a fracture or two. And mass shootings. Mass stabbings can be surprisingly deadly as well, but the same killer with a bag of guns? Surely not less deadly than with a knife.
- Zak 7y agoThat may be true, but if it is, why don't people quoting this statistic talk about the overall homicide rate?
- samdunham 7y agoI had issues with more than a couple of the statistics in the column, but that one in particular stood out to me. Saying that guns were only used in self defense when the perpetrator is killed (or even injured) is super disingenuous. It would actually be quite difficult to account for every real time a gun is effective in self defense. For instance, a potential perpetrator deciding not to take any action at all either because an area has concealed carry and anyone in that area could be carrying or because they see someone carrying and decide not to take the chance.