Posted on 01/27/2015 11:58:18 AM PST by longtermmemmory
...
Tragically, a record number of Americans subscribe to some version of this mythology, with 63 percent (67 percent of men polled and 58 percent of women) believing that guns truly do make them safer. The public’s confidence in firearms, however, is woefully misguided: The evidence overwhelmingly shows that guns leave everybody less safe, including their owners.
... That is, in the absence of guns, would-be criminals are not switching to knives or some other weapons to carry out homicide. These results are supported by a host of previous studies that illustrate that guns increase the rate of homicides.
The evidence against firearm ownership becomes even stronger when suicides and accidents are included in the analysis—guns make both much more likely and more fatal. There can be nothing closer to a consensus in the gun debate than this point. Indeed, every single case-control study ever conducted in the United States has found that gun ownership is a strong risk factor for suicide, even after adjusting for aggregate-level measures of suicidality such as mental illness, alcoholism, poverty, and so on.
One might accept that firearms are dangerous and that they substantially elevate the risk of homicide, suicide, and fatal accidents, but still believe that policies regulating gun ownership are ineffective—criminals, after all, won’t follow them. However, another recent study from May of 2013 analyzed the impact of state firearm laws on firearm-related fatalities. It found that the most gun-restrictive states have significantly fewer firearm fatalities than the states with the least restrictive laws. The results are in line with previous academic studies tackling the same question.
... The costs of gun ownership unequivocally outweigh the benefits. ....
In light of the overwhelming evidence that guns are a public health threat,...
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Read this as know the enemy. Useful idiot and stupid people will treat this as gospel (aka journalists and reporters)
They throw in all manner of red herrings to create a big lie news story. This article is damage control to convince NYC and DC mental midgets they are right to ridicule fly over country.
Evan DeFilippis writes on public health and gun violence at the Atlantic, Huffington Post, Boston Review, and ArmedWithReason. He manages the evaluation of poverty-reduction projects in Nairobi, Kenya.
I don't know about anyone else, but I just love reading stories like this in Slate. Gun control is one of the few areas where Conservatives are not only winning, but routing Liberals. So we see stories like this where some Lib Slate reporter weeps and wails about the tragedy of Americans believing that guns keep us safe. The writing careens from mocking disdain to weepy depression. The message is simply that Libs are losing and have no idea how to change that dynamic.
From another thread, this is an excellent rebuttal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pELwCqz2JfE
BS. Been to UK lately?
Only if you assert a criminal has more right to stay alive than an innocent has to use deadly force in defense of their life.
There is no middle ground.
It’s no myth. Right now I am a good guy with a gun. Keep pushing though, keep pushing.
The problem is that they didn't consider the overall effects of gun ownership in their assessment of "unequivocal", including crime, and I'm not sure I believe their statistics on gun-related deaths (i.e., were they selective in their use of the stats?).
And, they didn't consider the fact that gun ownership is a Constitutional right.
Negative. The message here is their only recourse for changing the dynamic is "indoctrination."
that is the gist of the article. essentially “for the childrens, some civil rights must be eliminated by the government”
Note ALL their solutions are government dependent.
For instance, the gun-related death of those in the progress of committing a crime is not a bad thing!
The author is conciously lying and manipulating data to support his preconceived world view.
what are alinsky’s rules for leftists.
first they ignore you,
then they ridicule you,
then they fight you,
then you win.
This author is not even active in US society.
I'm sure their statistics are spot on; the problem is they don't differentiate between people who were intentionally shot by a "reasonable man" and those shot for all other reasons.
fake but accurate.
(see dan rather, walter kronkite, rolling stone articles)
Abolishing the option of keeping government in check is more important than truth.
BIG GOVERNMENT IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH
the premise of this article is “the absence of big government will have you shot”...
big left loves you.
Because they have no respect for individual freedom or responsibility, they have no way of looking at a question except through statistics which cover a large group. They must always think of people as a collection, because they believe in the collective.
My gun makes me safer. I don't do stupid things with it. I don't leave it lying around loaded. I don't put it in my mouth and pull the trigger. I don't forget that it is loaded, because I always treat it like it is loaded. I follow the Four Rules.
This means the danger to me from my gun is much less than the national average, so all of these statistics are meaningless to my individual case.
As the Progs and Statists lose more and more battles, mark this: they will become increasingly hostile to the idea that ANYONE except the enforcers of the federal government should own arms. They will openly advocate for the disarmament of local police, and even of state police forces.
At the end, they they will use what power they retain to attempt to consummate their position, and therefore start a hot civil war, or they will fade into the twilight, mad as rabid dogs and twice as mean. Only time will tell which.
This author is apparently unfamiliar with the research of John Lott, and reality. Any moron knows that a personal firearm makes you safer from criminals. The 40% who don’t believe it have been brainwashed by propaganda like this story.
If you’re enough of a wacko to kill someone (i.e. spouse, ex-spouse, employer, etc.) then it stands to reason that you’ll use the most effect tool possible. What this article can’t say is that many, if not all, of those killed by guns would be killed by some other means.
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