Gun Control

Try 2.5M times a year,

The study was funded by the Clinton administration. The lead researcher called it the most shocking result of his career. Their intent was to show guns don’t prevent crime to justify laws restricting ownership.

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Seems like there’s problem with the estimation. How can you include ppl in the estimation who don’t even own a gun?

More than 20 years ago, Kleck, who taught at Florida State University, reported a far higher figure, 2.5 million, and that’s been embraced by gun activists. In 1993, Kleck and his colleague Marc Gertz surveyed 5,000 adults and asked if they or their household members had used a gun for self-defense in the past five years, even if it wasn’t fired. Just over 1 percent of respondents said they did. In their National Self-Defense Survey, published in 1995, Kleck and Gertz extrapolated that figure to the entire adult population of 200 million, concluding that Americans use guns for self-defense as often as 2.1 to 2.5 million times a year.

Researchers have found several issues with Kleck’s estimates. While the adult population in the United States in 1993 was around 200 million people, not all of them owned guns — only about 42 percent did. So extrapolating the survey results to the entire adult population yields an overestimate. David Hemenway, ​​director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, who first addressed “extreme overestimates” of DGUs 25 years ago, pointed out problems with Kleck’s math in 1997:

Guns were reportedly used by defenders for self-defense in approximately 845,000 burglaries. From sophisticated victimization surveys, however, we know that there were fewer than six million burglaries in the year of the survey and in only 22 percent of those cases was someone certainly at home (1.3 million burglaries). Since only 42 percent of U.S. households own firearms, and since the victims in two thirds of the occupied dwellings were asleep, the 2.5 million figure requires us to believe that burglary victims use their guns in self-defense more than 100 percent of the time.

They are assuming burglary is the only use. They’re also assuming a max of only 1 use per person.

“Notably, the NCVS figure excludes cases of simple assault. There are other caveats: Survey respondents are only asked about defensive measures if they report being victims of certain crimes, including rape, assault, burglary, larceny, and car theft. That means victims of trespassing and commercial crimes are not given the opportunity to report defensive gun use. And respondents aren’t asked directly about guns — they’re asked what they did to protect themselves or their property; it’s up to them to supply specifics. ”

That’s a pretty big gap and doesn’t even directly ask about gun use. Even their very narrow scope shows gun self-defense is more than 4x more likely than gun homicide.

There are other estimates that are much higher than the 2.5M.

There’s also surveys of criminals:

“ * 60 percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they knew the victim was armed. Forty percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they thought the victim might be armed.”

Armed victims are the #1 thing criminals fear.

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Too funny. Guns and investing all in one post. Read the link and then follow the Twitter link within it to the picture. It appears someone 3-D printed 63 handguns and sold them for thousands at a Houston gun “buy-back.”
If I didn’t live in AZ, where we don’t have this sort of thing; I’d invest in a 3-D printer.

See, even Ozzy is fed up…

Ozzy Osbourne says he’s leaving the US because of gun violence - CNN

Very telling. In theory it’s illegal to use the US military to settle civilian matters on US soil. Kind of scary that our government feels forced to stoop to these sorts of threats against its own people. I smell fear and desperation.
In any event, tell the Taliban how futile resistance against the US military with small arms is.

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I’m starting to think living on acreage is the best play. That or at least not living in an area where democrats dominate the politics.

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To be fair, this mass killing wasn’t done with guns but there were 2 guys…

Live updates: Stabbing in Canada’s Saskatchewan province and manhunt (cnn.com)

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last paragraph with statement from Kelly Clark is a very matured way of dealing complex issues, instead of usual ‘shooter should rot in jail’

“Ezekiel Kelly, 19, a violent felon who was released early from prison this year,…”
Surprise surprise.
And the streaming. Funny what Facebook will ban. And what they will allow.

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Brandishing weapons, pointing them at people’s heads and threatening to kill public officials are all acts which are illegal and cause for confiscation of firearms with or without use of red flag laws.
I’m more interested in the other nearly 900 people who had their guns confiscated - only a third of whom, according to the article, ever had them returned.

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Gun violence outside the US: