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The mere presence of my shotgun in my 5' tall female friends hands prevented her from being raped. A knife wouldn't have worked... need a bit of skill and stren

The mere presence of my shotgun in my 5' tall female friends hands prevented her from being raped. A knife wouldn't have worked... need a bit of skill and strength. Kung Fu wouldn't have saved her... she's 5' tall and not strong. A gun is a force equalizer. People like you bemoan the fact that anyone can pick up a gun and use it to deadly effect without any training. I can say without reservation that that makes me very happy.

jacquesm 14y ago
For this to make sense you have to look at statistics, not individuals. Statistically speaking your argument holds no water, but I'm happy for your friend. In her case it worked out well. But that's the exception, unfortunately. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121216092406AAY4h54 http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121216092406AA... "People like me" like to judge things on a wider basis than the exceptions confirming the rule.
- glenra 14y ago
  The anti-gun studies tend to be pretty terrible as a rule. Including that one. Have you looked into any of the studies on the other side? Suppose a woman in an isolated place avoids a rape via one of these methods: - credibly yelling "go away - I've got a gun!" - brandishing a gun - aiming a gun at the attacker - firing a "warning shot" - firing at the attacker, but missing ...and the attacker runs away. She's not likely to report this to the authorities. The attacker certainly isn't going to report it. So a study of "shooting incidents" won't include it. A study that starts by looking at cases where somebody was actually shot is counting most of the social costs but only some of the social benefits of gun ownership.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    You can fantasize situations until the cows come home, but until you get some hard numbers involved it doesn't amount to anything. Are we going to count cases where people were wounded? Where guns were used but no shots were fired? How many dead people is worth how many raped women? And so on. And when you've done all that you're going to have to compare with countries that have gun control in place, look at the rape incidence before and after the change (if there was one) and do a plain comparison of rape incidence in countries with and without. Those studies have been done, but since you're going to dismiss those with 'anti gun studies tend to be pretty terrible as a rule' it probably won't matter much. Keep at it. How many dead will it take? Until one of your family is murdered? Or will you still stand by your claim even then?
    - glenra 14y ago
      In other words, you didn't even look at the details of your own study and whether it related to the post you were responding to, you just did a keyword match to see that it reached "the right conclusion". Got it. If you never look at anything the other side is saying about your side, you're doomed to talk nonsense. Like Kellerman's "43-to-1" claim. Pro-gun people consider it a win if a gun deters a murder, deters a rape, deters a theft or other nastiness. But anti-gun researcher often run studies that assume the only benefit of guns is if they actually kill a bad guy. (They also have been known to occasionally interpret "the victim knew the attacker" as "the person shot was a family member or loved one".) Given those sort of assumptions, it's trivial to generate "some hard numbers" that are useless, like a 4-to-1 or 12-to-1 or 43-to-1 ratio between "bad" things happening and "good" ones happening to those who own a gun. The study you gave also assumed a dubious direction of causality - if people who know they are in danger of being attacked tend to go buy a gun, that alone could adequately explain the discovered correlation between being shot and carrying a gun. (A nice orthogonal issue is that most murderers and most murder victims have multiple prior violent felony convictions, so this Philly study is probably telling us mainly what happens within and among the criminal class. If you aren't a violent felon and don't know any violent felons, the chance of you being killed goes waaaay down.)
      - jacquesm 14y ago
        In a dysfunctional society, one where there is no law and where you have to take matters into your own hands to get a modicum of safety guns have their place. That was America a few centuries ago. If you still feel that unsafe than you have another problem than the one you're trying to solve with your guns. Try living in a country with gun control laws for a bit and see where you feel safer. And be sure to ask the women there too if they feel safe or not. Fear is an incredibly powerful motor behind a lot of stupidity, if you're so afraid that you can't walk around for fear of being robbed or raped if you're not 'packing heat' then why don't you do something about that problem, rather than to go around and compound it by escalation? And yes, I read those studies, and quite few besides. The consensus is very clear (outside the NRA and their stooges, that is): guns in large numbers in society make that society a more dangerous place. Period. So you can talk until the cows come home, the facts simply don't support your conclusions.

jacquesm 14y ago

For this to make sense you have to look at statistics, not individuals. Statistically speaking your argument holds no water, but I'm happy for your friend. In her case it worked out well. But that's the exception, unfortunately. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121216092406AAY4h54 http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121216092406AA... "People like me" like to judge things on a wider basis than the exceptions confirming the rule.

glenra 14y ago
The anti-gun studies tend to be pretty terrible as a rule. Including that one. Have you looked into any of the studies on the other side? Suppose a woman in an isolated place avoids a rape via one of these methods: - credibly yelling "go away - I've got a gun!" - brandishing a gun - aiming a gun at the attacker - firing a "warning shot" - firing at the attacker, but missing ...and the attacker runs away. She's not likely to report this to the authorities. The attacker certainly isn't going to report it. So a study of "shooting incidents" won't include it. A study that starts by looking at cases where somebody was actually shot is counting most of the social costs but only some of the social benefits of gun ownership.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  You can fantasize situations until the cows come home, but until you get some hard numbers involved it doesn't amount to anything. Are we going to count cases where people were wounded? Where guns were used but no shots were fired? How many dead people is worth how many raped women? And so on. And when you've done all that you're going to have to compare with countries that have gun control in place, look at the rape incidence before and after the change (if there was one) and do a plain comparison of rape incidence in countries with and without. Those studies have been done, but since you're going to dismiss those with 'anti gun studies tend to be pretty terrible as a rule' it probably won't matter much. Keep at it. How many dead will it take? Until one of your family is murdered? Or will you still stand by your claim even then?
  - glenra 14y ago
    In other words, you didn't even look at the details of your own study and whether it related to the post you were responding to, you just did a keyword match to see that it reached "the right conclusion". Got it. If you never look at anything the other side is saying about your side, you're doomed to talk nonsense. Like Kellerman's "43-to-1" claim. Pro-gun people consider it a win if a gun deters a murder, deters a rape, deters a theft or other nastiness. But anti-gun researcher often run studies that assume the only benefit of guns is if they actually kill a bad guy. (They also have been known to occasionally interpret "the victim knew the attacker" as "the person shot was a family member or loved one".) Given those sort of assumptions, it's trivial to generate "some hard numbers" that are useless, like a 4-to-1 or 12-to-1 or 43-to-1 ratio between "bad" things happening and "good" ones happening to those who own a gun. The study you gave also assumed a dubious direction of causality - if people who know they are in danger of being attacked tend to go buy a gun, that alone could adequately explain the discovered correlation between being shot and carrying a gun. (A nice orthogonal issue is that most murderers and most murder victims have multiple prior violent felony convictions, so this Philly study is probably telling us mainly what happens within and among the criminal class. If you aren't a violent felon and don't know any violent felons, the chance of you being killed goes waaaay down.)
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      In a dysfunctional society, one where there is no law and where you have to take matters into your own hands to get a modicum of safety guns have their place. That was America a few centuries ago. If you still feel that unsafe than you have another problem than the one you're trying to solve with your guns. Try living in a country with gun control laws for a bit and see where you feel safer. And be sure to ask the women there too if they feel safe or not. Fear is an incredibly powerful motor behind a lot of stupidity, if you're so afraid that you can't walk around for fear of being robbed or raped if you're not 'packing heat' then why don't you do something about that problem, rather than to go around and compound it by escalation? And yes, I read those studies, and quite few besides. The consensus is very clear (outside the NRA and their stooges, that is): guns in large numbers in society make that society a more dangerous place. Period. So you can talk until the cows come home, the facts simply don't support your conclusions.