quote:Originally posted by jamaica17: I also agree with PrincessL. I dont support guns at all. They just bring death and danger to everyone. While its true its used for protection, but still, having a gun means killing no matter if your intention is to protect yourself.
I also agree with PrincessL. I dont support guns at all. They just bring death and danger to everyone. While its true its used for protection, but still, having a gun means killing no matter if your intention is to protect yourself.
i support guns for service use, such as police, military, and so on. im not sure how i'd fel about guns at home if i thought about it, but right off the bat i don't think i approve. it just causes problems, and yeah its used for self-defense purposes, but weapons are used more often in murders than in self-defense. there are other ways to defend yourself or your home than guns.
i think that cracking down on drug use is a step in the right direction. but when it comes to getting rid of the problem completely or starting to make it go away, we need to go futher than drug use. we need to make carrying concealed weapons illegal again. it's true that drugs can sometimes be the cause of violence but it's not always.
Actually, Britain and Australia are examples of mostly "gun-free" societies that are seeing skyrocketing crime rates, including gun crimes, as are other European nations. They both lead the industrialized world in violent and overall crime now since passing almost total bans in 1996 and 1997. Still, you make a lot of good points.
"i do not think that there should b guns in out society. cuz if u really sit down and think about it, there would not be half of the deaths, and injuries if there were no guns. little kids are dying now because of guns. just imagine if u were walking down the street and someone wanted to have a shoot out where u were walking. u dont know about it, and u end up dead. thats wat happens all over the place. innocent people end up dead because of guns."
Mmk. Lesse if I can sift through this without retching all over my computer screen.
"i do not think that there should b guns in out society. cuz if u really sit down and think about it, there would not be half of the deaths, and injuries if there were no guns"
If there were no guns, then I'm sure that crime rates would be insubstantially lower. But not being able to obtain a firearm has never stopped a murder, or assault. Any number of other items work well enough for the job of brutalizing another human. But, people need to realize, guns are here ta stay. They aren't going anywhere, so go about admitting that they exist, and are a part of society.
"just imagine if u were walking down the street and someone wanted to have a shoot out where u were walking"
Uh 'kay. Just imaine if you were all alone in your house, and a 200 pound rapist comes through the door with a knife...whachoo gonna reach for? Your phone? Well, if you did, I 'spose you'd only get assualted for a half hour or so...that's not so bad.
"thats wat happens all over the place. innocent people end up dead because of guns.""
This is another thing the anti gun crowd seems to fail to realize....that guns are inatimate objects, much liek false teeth, and have no will of their own. Thats right! Just cold, unthinking hunks of metal. Whoda thunk it? Innocent people end up dead because of other people...not guns, or knives, or cars, or a bumblebess machine. People.
quote:i do not think that there should b guns in out society. cuz if u really sit down and think about it, there would not be half of the deaths, and injuries if there were no guns. little kids are dying now because of guns. just imagine if u were walking down the street and someone wanted to have a shoot out where u were walking. u dont know about it, and u end up dead. thats wat happens all over the place. innocent people end up dead because of guns.
Half??? where did you get this, Id like to see the source saying half of deaths are caused by guns. Less kids die because of guns then they do gettting strangled by the cord on curtins then they do guns. Stop making stuff up.
i do not think that there should b guns in out society. cuz if u really sit down and think about it, there would not be half of the deaths, and injuries if there were no guns. little kids are dying now because of guns. just imagine if u were walking down the street and someone wanted to have a shoot out where u were walking. u dont know about it, and u end up dead. thats wat happens all over the place. innocent people end up dead because of guns.
I forgot to address all your questions. The answer to the first one is "yes". The term "interaction assault" has no official definition in criminology that I'm aware of, but is apparently used to differentiate between assaults in which the victim is totally unaware of the situation, versus violent confrontations with attackers. That's pretty close to how I've read that previously. IIRC, the former tend to constitute a small fraction of all assaults, so I suspect this differentiation is rarely made in statistical breakdowns.
The answer to all your questions is generally "no".
First, you generally can't talk your way out of violent encounters. It just doesn't work that way, and that's at best wishful thinking. About 98% of DGUs do not require a shot being fired, but that's because the gun does all the talking. Persons hell-bent on committing violence generally don't think completely rationally, for whatever reason; perhaps they're hyped up on drugs or alcohol, and probably in almost all cases on natural adrenaline. Humans - and all creatures - have one of two basic reflexive responses to a situation, "fight or flight". Aggressive people are already in "fight" mode, and, in most cases, only the threat of death or an otherwise unwinnable scenario can force them to switch to "flight" mode.
In the DGU statistics, a little less than 2% require a shot being fired, and a much smaller number result in death. However, whether or not it results in death or injury is immaterial - what matters is that the innocent person lives. If you were a witness to a murder and one of the perps comes back to silence you, what would you rather have: one dead criminal, or you and possibly your family dead? Or what about just a one-on-one encounter with a violent armed robber?
So, in answer to your last question, guns have an undeniably positive role in society. Again, there are two fundamental things to think about and remember always on this issue: First, bear in mind that cops carry guns for a reason. If guns were really more likely to be misused, it would be an immense liability - if not recklessly criminal - to allow armed police officers. Second, bear in mind that no gun control advocates are calling for the disarming of the police or military, which means they realize on some level that guns ultimately make society safer.
hi. okay I skimmed over those links, and okay, guns were useful in instances of self-defense. That's their main use, according to these sources, am I correct? So guns benefit these victims of assault, violence, etc. But what deems an interaction "assault"? I mean... couldn't some of those encounters be solved through words instead of injuring someone? And what about the such and such percentage that was used to kill people? Isn't that saying guns have had negative effects on our society?
It's worth nothing that the study you cited from the New England Journal of Medicine was done by one Dr. Arthur Kellerman, who has been so thoroughly discredited that even some gun control-advocacy groups have a hard time citing his work.
If you've followed the gun control issue for any length of time, you are probably familiar with a bogus statistic to the effect that "a gun in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder." This phony statistic arose out of a 1986 study by Kellerman using a sampling of three counties in Washington which - this must be just by pure coincidence (yeah, right) - had the highest suicide and alcoholism rates in the nation.
But, here's the kicker: Kellerman never released his data, so nobody could verify his 1986 claim. In the research community, this is effectively academic fraud, since one is making claims without offering a method for verifying them.
Of course, the "43 times" statistic was so outlandish that even many gun control-advocacy groups didn't embrace it. You don't need to be a rocket to see, if this were even close to being true, that millions of Americans would be dying by gunshot every year.
Gun control advocates downplayed the numbers further and further. It's surprising they're still citing Kellerman.
Lemonpepper, aside from some of the statistics you cite being specious if not false, they do not address the bottom line: Society is vastly safer with widespread civilian gun ownership. Societies with strict gun control, on the other hand, tend to be with few exceptions awash in violence that makes the U.S. pale by comparison. Here's some stats rehashed from an old post with some new stuff:
I already posted this and some other info somewhere under the topic called "Seven Myths of Gun Control". Here are a little more specific sources. There are about 2.5 million Defensive Gun Uses annually. The 2.5 million DGU statistic comes from ongoing studies by a criminologist by the name of Gary Kleck, of Florida State University. The study is drawn out of earlier studies, described in Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America (1991).. The study itself was published in 1995 in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol. 86, issue 1, of Northwestern University. You will have to go to a law library to find the original source, although an online reprint is here. (Sorry, NWU's site redirects you to an archive service called Heinonline, but apparently you have to be authorized to access it.) Kleck's study was later published in full detail in his book, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control. This book sold fairly well, so you may be able to find a library carrying it, but even at $12 used it's cheap as books of its kind go. Kleck interviewed about 4,500 respondents, of which 1.3% stated that they had used a gun in some sort of defensive manner, against some threat, real or perceived. Projected across the adult population that works out to about 2.5 million people.<BR><BR>The 400,000 estimate comes from Kleck's research, which in turn is augmented by that of another researcher by the name of Lawrence Southwick, Jr. Of course, like the Kleck study, a citation from original, official sources is going to cost you money, so here is an a citation. from the St. Louis University Public Law Review, vol 18, no. 1. In a nutshell, these are uses that involved more than merely brandishing a gun. The 2.5 million DGU accounts from cases such as a homeowner, hearing a his window, checks it out while carrying his pistol or whatever. Kleck and Southwick include situations in which violence was actually used or indicated by perpetrators. Southwick uses similar police deterrence data as his method of assessing his findings. Incidentally, here is a link to a good side-by-side comparison of various studies. While not an unbiased source, archive searches at law reviews and scholastic journals typically aren't free, so you're stuck with that unless you know of a law library. Incidentally, part of the reason why Kleck's study is considered so valid is because one of the gun control lobby's primary researchers, Philip J. Cook, attempted to debunk the study, and ended up with closer to 4 million Defensive Gun Uses. Cook replicated the methodology used by Kleck, albeit with a sample size a little over half of Kleck's and a response of 1.6% DGUs. Cook presented his findings to a gun control organization called the Police Foundation, in November of 1996, in a paper called "You Got Me: How Many Defensive Gun Uses Per Year?". Needless to say, he never formally published this in a research paper, and after word got out, and downplayed it in a National Institute of Justice report. The 100,000 or so criminal uses of a firearm comes from, IIRC, the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. I don't recall if that includes actual shootings or things like muggings, although I believe the former. I hope this proves useful to you.
It's also worth noting the International Crime Victimization Survey (Leiden University, Holland) shows that many nations with "strict gun control" lead the world in crime, both property and violent (contact) crime. Britain and Australia have been running neck-and-neck for the top crime rates in the industrialized world. It's worth noting that their crime rates began skyrocketing after both nations implemented some of the toughest gun control laws in the world, both in 1997 following mass-shootings in those respective countries.
The curious thing is that, in the ICVS data, the U.S. ranks about 10th. Many other European nations, which gun control advocates cite as being "proof of the success of gun control", lead the U.S. in crime and violence, including the Netherlands, Canada, France, and so on.
There's a link to the Leiden University (Holland) site on the Telegraph article, but you'll have to do a search to find the survey itself from Leiden's homepage. You'll also have to read Dutch.
yes but the concealed weapons act is in 47 states or somthing like that. it has not been a big problem.
This post has proudly been deemed racism free by the Honorable Coalition of Bushsupporter, Marine 16, notsojoey, FreeMarketLover, and Redrepublican and their endless pursuit to cast out the bigotry that has infiltrated youthNOISE.
hey outspokenme. Alright I'll find you some crime statistics for you. but here's something to think about. You can't say you haven't heard of murders by a gun...and you can't say that most murders/genocides/crimes don't involve guns. Secondly, how does animal population control have to do with gun control? unless you're talking about hunting...but that seems a bit irrelevant.
alright here are some stats for you. they're a bit outdated but should get my point across.
In 2001, firearms were used in 63% of homicides, and 49% of homicides were committed with a handgun (78% of firearm homicides were committed with a handgun). (For a breakdown of weapon types used, see page 23 of the 2001 FBI Uniform Crime Report [1995-2001 FBI UCR's]).
In homes with guns, a member of the household is almost three times as likely to be the victim of a homicide compared to gun-free homes. "Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home," New England Journal of Medicine, October 7, 1993, Vol. 329 No. 15, pp. 1084-91.
The school shootings by students over the last eight months killed 11 youths and six adults. That is fewer kids than are murdered by parents , and fewer adults than are killed by partners, in just two days of household violence in the United States. Los Angeles Times Opinion column (May 31, 1998,
--btw... there are plenty more on the web... so you can't way that my statement is COMPLETELY unwarranted
[This message was edited by lemonpepper on June 19, 2004 at 09:35 PM.]
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