Michael Shermer
Posted on 05/10/2013 6:51:56 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 31,672 people died by guns in 2010 (the most recent year for which U.S. figures are available), a staggering number that is orders of magnitude higher than that of comparable Western democracies. What can we do about it? National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre believes he knows: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” If LaPierre means professionally trained police and military who routinely practice shooting at ranges, this observation would at least be partially true. If he means armed private citizens with little to no training, he could not be more wrong.
Consider a 1998 study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery that found that “every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.” Pistol owners' fantasy of blowing away home-invading bad guys or street toughs holding up liquor stores is a myth debunked by the data showing that a gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, an accidental death or injury, a suicide attempt or a homicide than it is for self-defense. I harbored this belief for the 20 years I owned a Ruger .357 Magnum with hollow-point bullets designed to shred the body of anyone who dared to break into my home, but when I learned about these statistics, I got rid of the gun.
More insights can be found in a 2013 book from Johns Hopkins University Press entitled Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis, edited by Daniel W. Webster and Jon S. Vernick.....
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
1st off, IIRC most of those gun deaths are deliberate suicide. Take those out right away.
2nd, I’m sick of fools acting like using guns requires genius or tons of training. 1 of the main advantages of guns over other implements, such as swordplay or archery, was the reduction in time needed to train.
How much easier are they to use now than 400 years ago? Things are much less complex now.
What about the six years of military and six years of security police training like I have. Many veterans, sportsmen/women, hunters, target shooters, etc. out there have more and better training than the average police officer.
This statement may be true, but it is cherry picking data. It is a thinly veiled racial attack on the black man in the White House. And it is oppressive to all LGBTQ people. Republicans just want to end all the social safety net, take away the vote for women and bring back slavery for blacks!
I agree with S.A. We need weapon handling classes in High Schools.
My point is simply that the author’s claim that arming untrained people is a bad idea... is flat wrong. It’s a good idea, as hundreds of years of our history proves. Not only do bad guys fear an armed (but largely untrained) populace, regular people do not fear them. The more the b***ards say the 2nd Amendment is bad for reasons X, Y and Z, the more we have to push back and correct them on every point. imo.
Michael Shermer
***I’ve read a lot of scripts here in Hollywood and this is one creative bullcrap.****
It is as bad as the lib who claimed he had a 12 guage and when someone tried to break into his house he was so nervous he was loading and ejecting the shells at the same time.
Fool didn’t realize that most shotguns lock up when a cartridge is placed in the chamber and will not open until the gun is fired or a small button near the trigger or guard is pushed.
BS is BS.
I was trained to be a soldier and a cop. Most of neither could hit the broad side of a monster. Only a very few out of many of either can focus fire very well at all. Vanities, you know, and class war between those constituents who own soldiers and cops, and those who don’t.
I went to the site and read the comments. Scientific American is getting eviserated with them.
Dropped it when they started watering down the articles and became an early rendition of USA today.
I recently subscribed on a whim and am nauseated by the political pap they pass as "science." Terrible.
I'm done with them (...fool me twice, shame on me).
“Scientific” American...
They went over to the libtard dark side way early. Even before Global Warming became all the rage.
“It is as bad as the lib who claimed he had a 12 guage and when someone tried to break into his house he was so nervous he was loading and ejecting the shells at the same time.”
LOL, I never heard of that one. Liberals lie a lot, don’t they? A liberal knows about guns the same way Bill Clinton knows about chastity.
For every gun they get from a bad guy they would take away many thousands from good guys.
So instead a thousands of good guys with guns against one bad, you will have one bad guy with a gun against thousands without guns.
Was it a bad idea on April 19, 1775?
BullS*** like this is what caused this geologist to ditch this douchebaggian “pergressive” rag near 20 years ago...
31,671
http://reason.com/blog/2013/01/16/the-problem-with-the-public-health-resea
This article from “Reason” magazine takes a look at these claims.
Keep yer booger hook off the bang switch if you don’t want what it’s pointing at to get dead.
Not hard.
They just have spelling problems, the rag is actually Socialistic American misspelled.
This publication doesn’t care how stupid they come across and who they offend. Their circulation is probably guaranteed by almost every liberal college and institution out there. Brainwashing is this article’s agenda and students around this country probably have to read this and submit as part of a curriculum.
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