Replies

Are the facts correct is one thing I would ask?

No, they aren't, and in fact they're presented in a way as to be maximally misleading.

For example, she says, "Of the 12,000 guns used to kill people every year, 160 are used in legitimate self-defense."

This "statistic" is taken from the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Reports, and is NOT an actual tally of the total number of justified self defense incidents with a firearm. It's the number of firearm *deaths* (most defensive uses of a firearm do *not* result in the death of the perp) which were IMMEDIATELY determined (by the cops at the scene) as being so overwhelmingly clear as to not even require any kind of arrest or further examination in order to be determined "self defense", case closed. Needless to say, this is a very small percentage of total "perps killed" cases -- usually the cops prefer to have a grand jury check it over to be sure.

Here are some older posts of mine on that subject:

According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, in 1992 there were only 262 justifiable handgun homicides compared with a total of 13,220 handgun murders in the United States.
Also according to the FBI UCR, that number is *not* the total number of justifiable handgun homicides. Again, Albert seems to be getting his half-truths from HCI, which is fond of leaving out the significant parts of the information they misleadingly present. The actual figure is in the thousands. The number in the FBI UCR is *only* those homicides which were *immediately* judged to be justifiable, *and* which the police bothered to properly record and then send to the FBI. As it turns out, most such homicides are sent to grand juries or the courts to be examined in greater detail (which makes good sense), and many police departments don't have the time or inclination to keep the FBI up to date on such things.
Furthermore, please explain to me why you're only counting the number of attackers *killed*, please? Surely you must understand (well, maybe you don't) that the aim of defending oneself with a handgun is *not* to kill the attacker, but to simply halt the attack? Most folks who are attacked would rather *not* kill anyone, as it turns out.Fortunately, just showing the handgun is almost always (about 99% of the time) sufficient to halt the attack, for the excellent reason that most attackers aren't suicidal enough to continue to attack someone who's armed with a gun.
Counting *all* successful handgun defenses, not just those in which the attacker is shot and killed, gives a much more sensible view of the effectiveness of handguns as a self defense tool. That number is in the hundreds of thousands, but you'll never hear Albert, nor his sources at HCI, mention that. You'll also never hear them mention the FBI figures that show that employing a gun as defense against robbery or assault is *the* most effective form of self defense, including cooperating with the criminal.

And:

The DoJ figures are way too low because they rely solely on the basis of how they were classified by the initial police investigation. Unfortunately, the majority of self defense homicides are referred to the DA or the courts for further examination, and are only later declared justifiable homicide. The DoJ figures miss all these.
For example, Time Magazine's July 17, 1989 cover story on a week of gun deaths reported that only 3% of the homicides were self-defense. However, in a May 14, 1990 follow-up story, they reported that 12% of the homicides had eventually been ruled self defense. It's almost a certainty that even more were still pending decisions -- one year is quite often not enough time for the wheels of justice to turn.

And:

Justifiable homicides number around 1500-2000 per year. Sources:
# Bensing and Schroeder (1960): 19.5% of homicides found to be self defense.
# Wolfgang (1958) : 1.6%(?) of homicides found to be self defense.
# Rushforth, et al (1977) : 10.1% of homicides found to be self defense.
# Dietz (1983) : 13.0% of homicides found to be self defense.
# Wilbanks (1984) : 13.1% of homicides found to be self defense.

And:

Al, once again, fails to note that the FBI number counts *only* justifiable homicides that are counted as such *on the spot*, and ignores *all* that are later judged in court to be justifiable (or excusable) homicides.
Someone's bound to ask for documentation for that, so allow me:
49. NO ARRESTEE RECORDS ARE PERMITTED FOR A JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE Group ôAö Incident Reports cannot have arrests when Data Element 6 (UCR Offense Code) is 09C = Justifiable Homicide. By definition a justifiable homicide never involves an arrest of the offender (the person who committed the justifiable homicide).
-- Page 84 of the Uniform Crime Reporting National Incident-Based Reporting System Volume 4 Error Message Manual
Note that this manual, which is part of the instruction manual for the computer system by which police agencies report incidents to the FBI for inclusion in the Uniform Crime Report, specifically says that "BY DEFINITION", a justifiable homicide as tallied by the FBI's UCR (and parroted by Albert) DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY INCIDENT IN WHICH THE SHOOTER WAS ARRESTED, no matter what the ultimate outcome before the grand jury or a court of law. In fact, if the shooter *is* arrested, the computer will reject any attempt to mark the incident as a justifiable homicide -- note that the above passage from the Error Message Manual is explaining why an attempt to do so will cause the computer to reject the attempt, and produce the cited error message.
And, as we all know, *most* shootings involve an arrest no matter how clear the circumstances, because it's not up to the police to single-handedly determine guilt or innocence in a serious matter like the killing of one person by another -- that's almost always left up to the grand jury, and/or the courts.
For example, a number of years ago Mr. Hale shot Mr. Tavai in a well-publicized shooting up near Dallas. Despite the fact that Hale was clearly defending himself (the much larger Tavai was beating the hell out of Hale's head while Hale was helplessly strapped into his parked car), Hale was arrested and charged with murder, specifically so that a grand jury would be able to examine all of the facts. They did, and they no-billed him, on the grounds that his shooting of Tavai was justifiable self defense. The FBI's UCR would not have included this incident in their tally of "justifiable homicides by a private citizen".

Guns in the home are used seven times more often for murder than for self-defense.

Again, this only counts self-defense incidents which resulted in the DEATH of the attacker -- a very small subset of the total.

HCI and other gun-control-nuts have been making this "mistake" for over ten years (the above posts are from the early 1990's), so they've had plenty of time to be informed that they're being grossly misleading. The fact that they continue to use these twisted, carefully selected, not-the-whole-picture factoids after all this time clearly indicates that they *know* they're twisting the facts, and use them anyway. In other words, they're knowingly lying.