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 ...
Standard leftist fantasy, they must have a template to follow.
Pffffft! What a douch bag. Apparently, due to "statistics" his .357 is going to rise up and wax his ass. I wonder if he'll change his opinion if his home is invaded by dirt bags. Maybe he can debate them into leaving.
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. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Michael Schermer is a wuss. The 2nd amendment is not dependent on statistics. Rather than “getting rid” of his gun, wussy Michael should have booked some range time and taken defensive shooting courses to remedy his obvious paranoia about being a gun owner ( He drank the liberal koolaid?).
Scientific American hasn’t been either in decades.
Amid a growing consensus that the staggering toll of gun violence in the United States is an urgent public health issue, the Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health has convened experts on gun policy and violence from the United States and selected other countries to summarize relevant research and its implications for policymakers and concerned citizens.
I smell a rat!
I agree with S.A. We need weapon handling classes in High Schools.
CDC has been repeating this long-disproven lie for many, many years.
At one time I was interested in subscribing to Scientific American. No longer.
You can buy a house in Detroit for $1 - then you'd be real safe.
Besides being a bunch of smoke and mirrors in its own right, this piece is yet another attempt to divert the truth about guns.
2A is about tyranny, not crime. Never was about crime, accidents, cheating spouses or shooting the barking dog next door.
None of us need *anyone’s* permission to protect ourselves, our families and our property. That is as natural & righteous as breathing.
2A does not “give” us the right to firearms, it simply reminds the government that it has no power to abridge that right. A right that we are born with.
The CDC is responsible for collecting all death information to produce their regular Morbidity and Mortality Reports. Goggle that to see how they present their statistics.
***LOL, I never heard of that one. Liberals lie a lot, don’t they?***
Did a search as I had made comments on the article. Found it! Did not know that I had posted so much on FR! Here it is! from Jan 11, 2013!
WHY I GAVE UP MY GUNS.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2977507/posts
What, did he think his Ruger was going to crawl out of it's hiding place one night and get him?
The movie is “Collateral” Tom Cruise & Jamie Foxx. Its the briefcase scene following the hit on the Penthouse guy. I am not a particular fan of Cruise but he played the bad guy Vincent really well but that is more of a credit to the director Michael Mann.
The pistol is a HK USP45.
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Collateral#Heckler_.26_Koch_USP45
I’ve got it. His motto should be ‘Moron Labe’!
Mexico has a near complete gun ban yet has a crime rate much higher than America
Russia bans handguns for all civilians, and also bans long guns for almost all Russians except licensed hunters. However, Russia's overall per capita rate for murders committed with any and all types of weapons is almost 4 times higher than the overall US rate for murders committed with all types of weapons including guns. The study also found that many other Euro nations with very strict gun control laws have as high or higher per capita murder rates as the US has.
Its not the NRA saying all that, it's in part of a study of murder rates in several Euro nations that was made by two Harvard professors, and Harvard isn't exactly what I would call a pro-gun institution. Actually, in view of Harvard's well known hostility to our 2nd A rights I'm surprised that the results of that study were made public.
The propaganda in Scientific America is disgusting. Not once did they mention or dispute the finding of John Lott. or mention that Gun crimes are down. or prove that more gun laws would do anything to stop any more shootings.
we should contact the liar at Questions for Skeptic magazine’s Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief, Michael Shermer, can be emailed to mshermer@skeptic.com.
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