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 ...
I would like to ask this dolt if a relatively physically weak woman would have a better chance with or without a gun against a large person breaking into her residence. Only an anti-gun fool would deny the obvious.
The fact that they are descended from African slaves is only tangentially relevant.
What IS relevant is that many of them self-segregate into violent, lawless urban concrete jungles where there are minimal adverse consequences to blowing-away anyone who displeases them.
Is he perchance an ultra-marathon bicycle rider?
Indeed, “Scientific” American the other day had an article about how it is good that science spending in the government is at an all time low since the steady defunding of research in military and civilian nuclear infrastructure starting in the 50s...
It sounds like scripted agenda-speak to me.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes , very scripted, a former bitter clinger to his gun now converted by the science of statistics? Buahahahaha!
I suppose he has abandoned his bible as well? LOL.
But the question is what other comparable industrial nation has the same ethnic mix.
Both Thomas Sowell (Black Rednecks and White Liberals) and James Webb (Born Fighting) make the point that the southern freed slaves saw (and copied) those same violent behaviors in the white people they observed - the descendents of those immigrants from lowland Scotland, who would just as soon kill you as look at you.
So, ironically, in the modern urban ghetto, when a “brother” shoots a “brother”, they’re actually “acting white”.
Isn’t it kind of late in the game for Scientific American to be singing that song? The “untrained citizens” of this country are already armed to the teeth. The gun-grabbers ain’t putting that genie back in the bottle no matter how much fear-mongering they try to spread.
Webb would look at it that way but I think the black communities simply have a higher rate of schizophrenia.
Now that’s just laugh-out-loud funny! And so true!
That may be...
Oh come on now! I’m black, and I’m not mentally ill. Just ask my invisible demon. He’ll vouch for my sanity. ;)
(making sure to avoid any eye contact) “yeah, sure, uh huh ~ going away ~ bye” (scurring to other side of street, pulling coat up to hide face)
The science of cars proves letting untrained citizens drive is a bad idea.
The science of swimming pools proves swimming by untrained citizens is a bad idea.
The science of tools proves letting untrained citizens operate chainsaws is a bad idea.
etc.
“The Science of Guns” made me laugh right there. What’s your major? I’m majoring in the “science of guns.”
Amen to that. I used to have a subscription and I loved the magazine.
I don’t know if they changed or I just started noticing, but the articles started having a political slant. That was not so surprising when they veered into social “science”, but even in articles that should have been strictly scientific, hard science like physics and chemistry, they managed to wedge in some liberal tripe. Don’t even get me started on global warming.
Needless to say, I no longer subscribe.
That is so true...I have cut back on my shooting lately just because of ammo shortages and I don't want to deplete my rather "substantial" inventory. But when I was shooting regularly there wasn't a LEO who could outshoot me and I used to shoot regularly over 400-rounds a month of large pistol calibers at an indoor range, plus lots of .22 plinking in the desert. Plus, attending advanced pistol and combat pistol and defence courses.
I used to suscribe when I was a science major but got fed up with the politically slanted articles. This is just another of many.
No idea, I never knew him very well, and haven’t seen him in maybe 20 years? I wasn’t impressed then, though.
Since this study came from the "Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery", I'm going to guess that they got their data from shootings that resulted in an ER visit. They count as self defense ONLY cases where the gun was (1) fired, AND (2) the bad guy was hit, AND (3) the case was immediately classified as self-defense.
Cases where the gun owner chased away the bad guy without wounding or killing the bad guy would not be counted as defensive shootings. Cases where the gun owner was initially arrested and the case was later decided as "self defense" would also not be counted.
An additional point: the vast majority of shootings involve inner-city criminals shooting other inner-city criminals, using guns they are legally prohibited from owning. A study which excluded those cases, and covered ONLY shootings where the gun owner was legally allowed to own the gun used, would paint a different story.
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