Guns used for lawful self defense

[Seth]

Seth

I have already explained, in detail, why your 2 million figure is so much crap.
If you depend on that as the quality of your "evidence", it is no wonder you keep talking bullshit.

Here is something from the female perspective.
http://www.vpc.org/studies/myth.htm

Nothing from the Violence Policy Center is reliable. It's all rabid anti-gun propaganda and misuse of data.

I quote :

"how often are handguns actually used by women to kill in self-defense? The answer, as revealed by unpublished Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data, is hardly ever. Women were murdered with handguns more than 1,200 times in 1998 alone. As these numbers reveal, handguns don't offer protection for women, but instead guarantee peril.4

I agree with Gallstones, this single word puts paid to the assertions made by the VPC. The claim is also false because it is both an example of the biased sample fallacy and it cites "unpublished" data as determinative. Moreover, in limiting the parameters of armed self defense to only those occasions where the handgun is used to "kill in self defense" is to falsely imply that handguns are not effective in deterring or thwarting a crime when they are used as a threat to stop the attack, or when they are fired and the assailant is merely wounded, both of which are valid uses of handguns by potential victims.

This sort of manipulation of secret statistics is also irrelevant because, once again, if handguns in the hands of innocent citizens save JUST ONE LIFE it's worth it (to parrot the favorite vacuous argument of anti-gunners). You still evade the argument that it's not about statistics, it's about individual lives of individual people, each of whom has an unalienable right to keep and bear arms (and according to the Supreme Court handguns specifically) for self defense.

For all of the promises made on behalf of the self-defense handgun, using a handgun to kill in self-defense is a rare event.5 Looking at both men and women, over the past 20 years, on average only two percent of the homicides committed with handguns in the United States were deemed justifiable or self-defense homicides by civilians.6 To put it in perspective, more people are struck by lightning each year than use handguns to kill in self-defense."

See once again how the VPC manipulates their statements to create plausible sounding propaganda that's simply false at its core. They deliberately and mendaciously ignore the deterrent and non-lethal defensive value of handguns because admitting this occurs would prove their arguments to be false.

I myself have used my handgun on several occasions to thwart crimes, both as a police officer and as a civilian, and never once have I had to discharge my weapon at a suspect. The mere threat that I CAN do so is usually enough to prevent or stop the attack.

And still more ...


"In 1998, for every time a woman used a handgun to kill in self-defense, 101 women were murdered with a handgun".

I would say that, from the female perspective, hand guns are an unmitigated disaster!

Bullshit argument. This is the fallacy of confusing of cause and effect. Ignoring for the moment the number of non-lethal DGUs (Defensive Gun Uses) by women where the crime was stopped or simply never occurred because of the presence of a handgun in the hands of a potential victim, there is no correlation between the number of times women killed someone in self defense with a handgun and the number of times that women were killed with handguns.

And what about the nonsense so often spouted that homicides of non criminals are carried out by criminals, and black ones at that?


"Of the 12 handgun self-defense killings by women reported to the FBI in 1998, eight involved attackers known to the woman, while only four involved strangers.

What about it? I've never heard that argument, and race-bating is a lame argument.

All the attackers that the women justifiably killed were males, as were an overwhelming number of offenders in female handgun homicides. For the majority of both justifiable and criminal homicides, both the shooter and the victim were of the same race."

So, there ARE justifiable homicides...in other words effective DGUs. That constitutes adequate justification for innocent citizens of any gender to be armed, because their individual right to life and effective armed self defense is not to be infringed using bullshit statistical arguments.

The majority of people murdering women with a hand gun were white, and the smaller number of black guys who murdered women with a handgun, their victim was normally a black woman. Most such murders are carried out by a spouse, or by a person the woman knows. Not by an invading criminal. Makes the macho crap spouted by the gun nutters on this forum look a bit silly.

All the more reason for women to be well trained in defensive pistol operations and tactics and for them to carry handguns. Your preferred option is to disarm them all, thus allowing anyone who wants to victimize them free rein to do so without fear of being shot dead in the process.

Pretty fucking stupid idea if you ask me, or even if you don't.

[Seth]

Gallstones

I am not interested in opinions. I prefer facts, especially in the form of hard numbers.

No, you're interested in red herring arguments using false and misleading data.

My source is no more credible in terms of conclusions than any other source, but when they quote hard numbers, then take heed.

Except that the numbers that you quote are mendacious, inaccurate, incomplete and deliberately designed to mislead and confuse credulous people who haven't the background to detect the lies.

Like, for each woman who successfully kills her attacker with a hand gun, there are 101 women killed by attackers with hand guns. Defense is not exactly shown to be successful!

Except of course for each and every one of those women who successfully kills her attacker, something that you completely missed, you dunce.

And never forget that, even though 8,000 people are murdered each year with hand guns, the total number who receive a bullet in their body from a fire arm is 100,000, which includes terrible wounds, like paraplegia. Ready availability of firearms, and especially hand guns, carries a massive human toll. American gun culture is a terrible thing.

Your OPINION is noted...and dismissed forthwith without further consideration as being irrelevant and idiotic.

[Blind groper]

You still evade the argument that it's not about statistics, it's about individual lives of individual people, each of whom has an unalienable right to keep and bear arms.

I evade nothing.

Let me state it clearly, since you failed to understand it the first time.

One human life is enormously valuable. Two lives are twice as valuable.

Given the choice between ten people dying and 100 people dying, the ten deaths are preferable. Statistics are vitally important, because otherwise we devolve to bullshit arguments about individual rights.

And there is no such thing as a human right, whether 'natural' or 'supernatural' (given by God). Human rights are merely the privileges granted by those in power to the people they rule over. They are given as a result of what is expedient, and can be removed just as easily. The government giveth, and the government taketh away.

Anyone who believes that human rights mean more than this is utterly naive and idiotic.

[Sean Hayden]

Holy shit, you just got scary.

[Blind groper]

Don't mistake my meaning. I fully appreciate those privileges granted by my, or other, governments. I just do not ascribe to them any special meaning. Nor do I make the mistake that Seth does, of ascribing to them religious status. Seth says that owning and using a tool designed to kill human beings is a human right, and he will die to preserve that right. That is a 100% dyed in the wool, complete and total irrational and religious statement.

[Seth]

You still evade the argument that it's not about statistics, it's about individual lives of individual people, each of whom has an unalienable right to keep and bear arms.

I evade nothing.

Let me state it clearly, since you failed to understand it the first time.

One human life is enormously valuable. Two lives are twice as valuable.

Given the choice between ten people dying and 100 people dying, the ten deaths are preferable.

And given the choice between 8000 homicides and 12,000 suicides and 2.5 million people being victimized and/or killed by violent criminals that would result from banning handguns, the 20,000 deaths are preferable. Thanks for admitting that your argument is completely fucked.

Statistics are vitally important, because otherwise we devolve to bullshit arguments about individual rights.

It's all about individual rights, so that's a perfectly appropriate argument. The Constitution does not grant me a statistical right to life that's determined by some bureaucrat crunching numbers in an office somewhere. My right to life is absolute, and my right to protect my life using effective tools of self defense is likewise absolute. Fuck the majority, my rights prevail over the majority

And there is no such thing as a human right, whether 'natural' or 'supernatural' (given by God). Human rights are merely the privileges granted by those in power to the people they rule over.

They are for you because you have no way to enforce your rights and must perforce take whatever crumbs fall from your master's table.

Doesn't apply here in the US though because we DO have the power to enforce our rights, and that's what the 2nd Amendment protects.

They are given as a result of what is expedient, and can be removed just as easily. The government giveth, and the government taketh away.

That's absolutely true in your case, and in the case of the UK and many other slave states. You're a willing slave, but you may not always be quite so willing if your masters decide to crack the whip and take away your valued liberties. But you're completely fucked because you gave up the most essential and valuable right of all; the right to be armed, which is the only right anyone really needs if they are willing to use it to enforce their other rights.

Anyone who believes that human rights mean more than this is utterly naive and idiotic.

That's certainly true in NZ, and the UK, and most other places, because you're all compliant, cowed sheeple who haven't the tools or the spine to insist that your rights do not issue from government but rather they are an inherent and unalienable part of your humanity.

Who gives a fuck what sheeple think? Not me. They're mutton for the spit is all.

Free men claim and defend their rights. That disincludes you.

[Seth]

Don't mistake my meaning. I fully appreciate those privileges granted by my, or other, governments. I just do not ascribe to them any special meaning. Nor do I make the mistake that Seth does, of ascribing to them religious status.

There's nothing in the least bit religious about my rights. They exist because I exist and because I claim them and will defend them against intrusion by others. It is my capacity to defend my freedoms of action against intrusions by others that makes my freedoms rights. No deity involved, just nature, red in tooth and claw. If you dispute my rights, then come try to interfere with them. One way or another I'll resist such attempts, but in the end it will come down to the Law of the Jungle and it will be death for one of us. As it happens, I'm fully confident that it will be you who dies because I spend a good deal of time preparing and training for the defense of my rights, whereas you graze dumbly on the pasture your masters set before you in servile complacence and sheep-like ignorance. When the wolves come for you, you'll bleat and run about in panic, but you'll end up dead because you haven't the wit or the skills to survive.

Seth says that owning and using a tool designed to kill human beings is a human right, and he will die to preserve that right. That is a 100% dyed in the wool, complete and total irrational and religious statement.

No it's not, it's a perfectly rational and reasonable statement, but even if it isn't, it doesn't matter because you and your ilk don't have the power to deny me that right.

[Blind groper]

Seth

I have already explained why your 2 million or 2.5 million is a rubbish datum.
The USA is the only nation with widely available hand guns among all the western civilised group, and it has the highest, by far, murder rate, and one of the highest robbery rates. Even apart from the fact that your number is the result of a very, very dubious survey, even you must realise that all those hand guns are really, really, really ineffective at stopping murders and robberies. Duh!

You claim your right to carry a hand gun devolves on your ability to shoot your way out of any threat to that right. That is the same as arguing that a criminals right to kill people is based on his ability to kill people. Again, duh!

However, if the government decided to take back your guns, and you resisted, you would become another Darwin Award, and the average quality of the human gene pool would be improved. The irrational nature of your insistence that owning a tool for committing homicide is a 'natural' human right is an aspect of the religious nature of your obsession. You even demand that, if that is threatened, you will become a martyr to your religion. Third time - duh!

[Seth]

Seth

I have already explained why your 2 million or 2.5 million is a rubbish datum.

No, you've denied it, which is something quite different from "explaining" it.

The USA is the only nation with widely available hand guns among all the western civilised group, and it has the highest, by far, murder rate, and one of the highest robbery rates. Even apart from the fact that your number is the result of a very, very dubious survey, even you must realise that all those hand guns are really, really, really ineffective at stopping murders and robberies. Duh!

Wrong. Europe's numbers demonstrate the stupidity of your claim and support the claims of Kleck, Lott et. al. that more guns equals less crime. To wit:

Blaze Magazine Report: Is Gun Control Helping or Hurting Europe?

by Chris Field

Blaze Magazine Report: Is Gun Control Helping or Hurting Europe?Editor’s note: Every issue of TheBlaze Magazine, contains exclusive content not found anywhere else—online or in print. The magazine’s stories, research and special reports are reserved for subscribers to the print edition (and, yes, there is a digital version of the magazine that works on your mobile devices, too), which is created by the same team that brings you TheBlaze.com.

Within the cover story, “Disarming the Constitution,” is a sidebar report on gun control in Europe titled “Is Gun Control Helping or Hurting Europe?” Many anti-Second Amendment activists in the United States advocate gun control similar to the more restrictive laws seen in much of Europe. But is gun control really helping Europe’s crime rates or creating more victims? This data is pretty hard for gun-grabbers to explain.

Below is the special sidebar report on gun control in Europe from the November 2012 issue of TheBlaze Magazine.

———–

If decreasing the number of legally owned guns is supposed to help prevent crime, it’s not working in Europe. Many developed nations with high rates of gun ownership have murder rates that are actually lower than many developed nations where gun ownership is much more rare. For example, as Table 1 shows, the murder rate in Luxembourg, where handguns are banned and ownership of any type of gun is almost nil, was about nine times higher than Germany.

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So what causes the violence? A 2007 Harvard study titled “Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?” published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy says that “the determinants of murder and suicide are basic social, economic, and cultural factors, not the prevalence of some form of deadly mechanism.”

As the authors point out, just as American cities with the highest violent crime rates are also the cities with the most stringent gun controls, European nations with severe gun restrictions also have high crime rates. As Table 2 demonstrates, European nations with stricter gun controls have higher murder rates than their neighbors that allow handguns.

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This “does not necessarily prove” that a nation’s gun-control measures cause higher murder rates than a neighboring nation with greater handgun ownership. But we do see that “nations which have violence problems tend to adopt severe gun controls, but these do not reduce violence.”

What the Harvard study finds is that those who claim more guns do equal more death cannot bear the burden of proof “because there simply is no large number of cases in which the widespread prevalence of guns among the general population has led to more murder.” And those same advocates cannot consistently show that “a reduction in the number of guns available to the general population has led to fewer deaths.” It appears that gun ownership is, in fact, irrelevant (or has little relevance) to a nation’s murder rate, as shown in Table 3, which shows Eastern European countries hold to the pattern that that higher rates of gun ownership do not lead to higher rates of murder.

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Finally, gun-control advocates specifically hate handguns. They are determined to ignore socio-cultural and economic factors in order to convince the American public that these guns are an especially evil form of weaponry. But if handguns are the problem, then Table 4 should be awfully hard for them to explain.

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Only in the newest issue of TheBlaze Magazine will you find the full report on gun control and the Left’s attempts to disarm the U.S. Constitution by watering down and eventually eliminating our Second Amendment rights

You claim your right to carry a hand gun devolves on your ability to shoot your way out of any threat to that right.

No, defend that right. There are many ways short of using lethal force to defend one's rights, including the law. But ultimately, all rights are enforced by the ability of those who claim them to defend them physically. This is simply nature, the Law of the Jungle and the survival of the fittest. You may claim as your right the ability to rape little children simply because you have the present ability to do so, but others may challenge your exercise of that right by applying force against your actions, up to and including lethal force, in defense of their right to keep their children from being raped. Ultimately, whomever has the power to enforce the claimed right vindicates that right because that's just how nature works.

I claim the right to keep and bear arms, including handguns, for defense of my person, family, community and nation. You may challenge that right through politics or law or force in support of your claim that my exercise of that right infringes on your claim of a right to be free from handgun violence. In the end it all comes down to whether you can succeed in enforcing your vision or I can succeed in enforcing my vision. And in that calculus, it's my estimation that those who have arms who choose to defend their right to keep and bear them will always prevail over those who do not have arms, although the resolution may be a bloody one.

That is the same as arguing that a criminals right to kill people is based on his ability to kill people. Again, duh!

And if, like the warlords of Somalia, they have the power to enforce that right, then it is their right because no one is in a position to oppose them in that exercise.

However, if the government decided to take back your guns, and you resisted, you would become another Darwin Award, and the average quality of the human gene pool would be improved.

Probably, because I'd remove a large number of anti-gun, totalitarian tyrants and their minions before they succeed in killing me.

The irrational nature of your insistence that owning a tool for committing homicide is a 'natural' human right is an aspect of the religious nature of your obsession.

It's not irrational, it's perfectly rational. My tools are in my possession for the primary purpose of defending me, my family, my community and my nation against those who would use force against us in violation of our rights to live freely and peacefully. If no one threatens that peace and security, those arms will be used only for secondary and tertiary purposes like marksmanship training, recreation and hunting, and will be utterly harmless to my family, community and nation. But in the event of an attack on my rights, my family, my community or my nation, I stand ready and able to use those arms for their primary purpose, which is rendering those who would attempt to infringe upon my or anyone else's rights or do them harm incapable of continuing that behavior.

It is my right as a human being to possess any arms that I deem necessary and desirable for the defense of myself, my family, my community and my nation, and that includes everything from a rock or a sharp stick to my 7.62/308 LaRue OBR, my Barrett M107A1 .50 cal semi automatic rifle and everything in between. No one, absolutely no one has any authority to tell me that I must submit to being victimized by anyone, criminal or terrorist, and no one has any authority to disarm me and force me into that position. Anyone that tries to do so is risking sudden death.

Your abject and paranoid fear of inanimate lumps of metal and plastic that you think has no other purpose than "committing homicide" is just an example of the derangement syndrome suffered by all hoplophobes. In your case it's severe enough that you probably should be hospitalized before you hurt yourself or someone else.

You even demand that, if that is threatened, you will become a martyr to your religion. Third time - duh!

A coward dies a thousand deaths. (that's you) A hero dies but one. (that's me) I'll happily sacrifice myself to take out a plethora minions of the tyrant. Enough people willing to do that can destroy the tyrant and his regime regardless of how strong his minions are. The trick is to keep the ratio as high as possible, say 100 to 1 or more. And that takes training and skill, both of which I have and continue to hone.

To take my guns, you see, first the minions have to find me. Good luck with that.

[Blind groper]

Seth

Several points.

First. You tried to say my earlier reference was invalid due to biased sources. So what do you call Blaze magazine?

Second, compare apples with apples, for Finagle's Sake! Adding places like Russia into your so-called comparisons are stupid. Why not try Somalia. makes it look even better. The USA is supposed to be a western civilised nation. Thus, it needs to be compared to other western civilised nations. Not to bloody Russia. Sheesh!

Third, I see you have changed your tune on rights. No longer a 'natural' right. Holding guns is a 'right' because you claim no one can take them off you without you committing multiple murder. And you still do not see your arguments as irrational? Wow! And you still offer yourself as a martyr to your religious beliefs. Yep. Sanity is not strong in your ideas.

Fourth, your table 4 shows how terrible hand guns are with respect to suicide. Such small numbers of hand guns and such a large number of successful hand gun suicides. The bright side is that both murders and suicides from hand guns in those countries are still way less than in the USA, due to much fewer hand guns being around. Kinda makes my point.

[FBM]

In Seth's data, I'm not seeing anything like 1:1 correlation between gun/handgun ownership and suicide/murder rates.

[Blind groper]

FBM

That is because
1. There is not a big difference in hand gun ownership (1.2% to 6.8%) across those countries, assuming you mean table 4.
2. There are other factors. When the actual murder rate is made low due to the relatively small number of hand guns, other factors become much more important in the relative sense. These other factors are often cultural.

[FBM]

I meant in all the tables. I don't see how anyone can derive from them the formula "If the US gets rid of all privately owned handguns, suicide and murder rates will fall significantly."

The data aren't there. It seems to me that cultural factors play the biggest roles, whereas the presence of firearms is incidental. I don't like the level of violence in the US, nor its glorification by the various entertainment media, but I don't see how that can be blamed on private gun ownership. That's putting the cart before the horse. Address the culture first, and the wagon will follow. I would do that with education, not legislation.

[Blind groper]

FBM

Any table that compares Russia to Sweden, say, is a bullshit table. You get nowhere comparing apples and oranges. Russia is so, so different to civilised western nations.

The key stats for the USA are that it has a murder rate four times as high as most of its peer group nations; half of all those murders are with hand guns, and (surprise!) it has massively the highest ownership of hand guns. Combine that with a seriously evil gun culture, and you got problems. 8,000 hand gun murders each year, and a total of 100,000 people every year having a bullet pass through some part of their bodies. To deny that constitutes a problem, and a very bad problem, is head in the sand.

I agree that cultural factors are always a part of any such problem, and I have stressed the American gun culture as being equal to gun ownership as a causative agent. There are no doubt other, lesser cultural influences on this murder rate also. However, how do you 'educate' people away from an all pervasive gun culture, when guns are everywhere, and Hollywood insists on turning the gun slinger into a hero? Much easier to simply remove hand guns from society, and thus drop the murder rate by a substantial amount.

[JimC]

Don't mistake my meaning. I fully appreciate those privileges granted by my, or other, governments. I just do not ascribe to them any special meaning. Nor do I make the mistake that Seth does, of ascribing to them religious status. Seth says that owning and using a tool designed to kill human beings is a human right, and he will die to preserve that right. That is a 100% dyed in the wool, complete and total irrational and religious statement.