Liberal arguments for supporting gun ownership rights

[Missourian]

Deaths (2005).


Cause Deaths
-------------------------------------------

Intentional self-harm by firearm 17,002

Assault by firearm 12,352

Accidental firearm discharge 789

Legal intervention involving firearm 330




http://www.nsc.org/research/odds.aspx

 

[Cecilie1200]

this is from the Orange County Register.....who claim this is from a guy named John Lott who has done a lot of research on guns all over the world.....the last sentence sums up much about what has been debated here...



Gun control would increase the demand for guns in the black market. Increased sales make the black market a very profitable business for criminals, thereby increasing criminal activity.

* "Guns don’t kill people – people kill people" The argument here is that sociological factors are more important than the availability of weapons in determining gun violence and deaths in societies.

* Citizen gun ownership acts as a deterrent against criminals If criminal fears that their potential victims possess guns and can harm or kill them, they will be less likely to commit crimes and take the risks.

* Criminals will find a way to commit crimes and violence with or without guns Guns are not the only means of violence and crime. Determined criminals will find a way to do what they intend. Depriving guns to criminals will not have an effect on crime and violence.

* Low homicide and crime rates are not a direct cause of low gun ownership

* Because guns used in murders and crime are not usually legally held or registered, efforts to enhance gun-protection through legal means are futile: Some have pointed out that in the vast majority of crimes involving firearms, the gun used is not legally held or registered. It is further noted that many of these illegal weapons are imported secretly from abroad, rather than being stolen from registered owners. Gun-control measures will not affect this major body of weaponry that is illicitly held in societies. This extends to the following section in regards to enforceability, but is relevant here in regards to the consequences of the nonenforceable of gun laws.

* Gun restrictions and bans disadvantage citizens against armed criminals

* A study originally commissioned by the Clinton Administration, in 2003 the study found that strict gun laws could not be correlated with crime statistics.

John Lott, Jr., who is a highly respected economist and writes on other subjects using the same research and statistical methods as in economics, wrote a book on the subject of gun control called "More Guns, Less Crime". He has made the point a number of times that criminals are subject to the same market forces as any other group of people, to whit that if you make something easier and more profitable, they will do it, and if you increase the disincentives, they'll do less of it. If they have to worry more about their victims being armed and able to fight back, they will turn their attention to crimes where the victims are not physically present, such as car theft and robbing homes while people are away.

 

[Cecilie1200]

And states with harsher gun laws have more crime over all. Making crime a safer occupation is not a way to minimize it's impact.

Fact five gallon buckets according to the CDC are more dangerous to toddlers than guns.

Fact, trading to gun deaths for five hundred more assaults 100 more home invasion robberies is not a trade sane people make.

What Chris fails to understand is that it isn't the gun control laws making the numbers lower for those states. Those states already HAD lower crime stats than other states to begin with. The important numbers for comparison are not two different states but the same state before and after various gun laws have been passed. I'd have to check for sure, but I believe every place that enacted strict gun control and gun ownership laws experienced an increase in their violent crime rate.

 

[Chris]

What Chris fails to understand is that it isn't the gun control laws making the numbers lower for those states. Those states already HAD lower crime stats than other states to begin with. The important numbers for comparison are not two different states but the same state before and after various gun laws have been passed. I'd have to check for sure, but I believe every place that enacted strict gun control and gun ownership laws experienced an increase in their violent crime rate.

Wrong.

Washington D.C. outlawed handguns and their murder rate is half now what it was in the early 90's. Crime is NOT a function of gun ownership, but of societal factors.

Likewise, Japan has a low crime rate and no guns.

 

[Father Time]

Wrong.

Washington D.C. outlawed handguns and their murder rate is half now what it was in the early 90's. Crime is NOT a function of gun ownership, but of societal factors.

Likewise, Japan has a low crime rate and no guns.

Like I said correlation is not causation

There are lots of factors that contribute to crime rate and to place all the cause on one factor is unfounded.

Here's what I found on D.C. crime rates and remember they put their handgun ban in place in 1975, and just look at the dramatic drop in murder, aggravated assault and vehicle theft.

District of Columbia Crime Rates 1960 - 2007

Yes it's half the rate it was in the 90s but it hasn't been a continuous down slope.

1975 -32.8
2007 - 30.8

A total difference of 2 murders per 100,000 people.

Methinks there's more to it than limiting guns.

Edit: and here's some more facts to chew over, in the 90s the national murder rate per 100,000 fluctuated around 10.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/hmrt.htm

D.C.s by comparison was over 40 every single year of the 90s.

Yes this is still only correlation but if you want to continue using only correlation ...

 

[Bern80]

Wrong.

Washington D.C. outlawed handguns and their murder rate is half now what it was in the early 90's. Crime is NOT a function of gun ownership, but of societal factors.

Likewise, Japan has a low crime rate and no guns.

How in one post can you contradict yourself by saying guns are not a function of crimes than in another say guns need to be more regulated because of violence? If guns are not a function of crime or violence it would seem that regulating them would have little effect on the occurance of crime and violence.

 

[Missourian]

I posted this months ago, but it seemed relevent.

Guns don't kill people, Cities kill people.​

Why do the rural communities with twice as many legal gun owners and four times the owned firearms have 25 times less gun crime than urban communities?


Look here for firearm ownership study


Of the 22 Missouri counties with populations between 25K and 50K, having a combined population of 806,764 persons, there were 163 total firearm assaults and 2604 total assaults utilizing weapons of any kind.


MSHP stats for 22 rural Missouri counties (PDF)


During the same period, in only the city of St. Louis and the city of Kansas City contained within the state of Missouri (half is in Kansas of course), with a combined population of 793,587 persons, there were a total of 4,143 firearm assaults and 8986 total assaults utilizing weapons of any kind.



MSHP stats for St. Louis (PDF)



MSHP stats for KC, MO (PDF)





The 2006 stats on Missouri crime came from this website : Missouri State Highway Patrol Statisical Analysis Center, they are the most recent available.

The 2004 rural/urban chart came from this website : Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA 2004 study.





.

Originally posted in http://www.usmessageboard.com/polit...s-so-important-to-americans-9.html#post763457



Diuretic answers "Because rural communities have less crimogenic factors than urban communities."

And he is right.

Many variables are involved in murder and/or crime rates...most relating to socio-economic factors.

To say more guns cause more crime or more murders is absolutely false as the above example illustrates.

.​

 

[Chris]

How in one post can you contradict yourself by saying guns are not a function of crimes than in another say guns need to be more regulated because of violence? If guns are not a function of crime or violence it would seem that regulating them would have little effect on the occurance of crime and violence.

Once again, the amount of crime is not effected by stricter gun laws, but the lethality of the crime that occurs.

 

[Bern80]

Once again, the amount of crime is not effected by stricter gun laws, but the lethality of the crime that occurs.

Of course. I can only surmise then that your singular, narrow minded goal is to reduce deaths regardless of whether it is the death of the victim or the perpetrator.

One way crimes would become less lethal admittedly is to have fewer guns. However there is also the potential that as a result of knowing the burglary has a higher degree of liklihood of resulting in death, deaths could potentially go down. It would ultimately require restricting guns. Which in reality would mean that law abiding citizens are less able to protect themselves against non-law abiding citizens.

 

[KittenKoder]

Anti-gun laws are stupid.

 

[Chris]

Of course. I can only surmise then that your singular, narrow minded goal is to reduce deaths regardless of whether it is the death of the victim or the perpetrator.

One way crimes would become less lethal admittedly is to have fewer guns. However there is also the potential that as a result of knowing the burglary has a higher degree of liklihood of resulting in death, deaths could potentially go down. It would ultimately require restricting guns. Which in reality would mean that law abiding citizens are less able to protect themselves against non-law abiding citizens.

There are 200 million guns in private hands in this country, so no one is going to take away guns.

But we do need to regulate guns better, and states and countries that do have fewer gun deaths.

We lead the developed world in gun deaths per capita. We can do better than that.

 

[Harry Dresden]

As a gunowner, I have seen statistics that say exactly that. Same as people that own saws are more likely to suffer cuts from saws than those that do not. Given the attitude of some of the less brainy gun owners, it is hardly surprising.

yes and for every stat that says this there is another that says the opposite.....many of those who do these stats will do it for the year that has just passed or for the last two,to compare them,i prefer someone like John Lott who does it by decades and compares and looks at other countries and what happens with them.....it is a little more comprehensive than just taking 12-24 months....

 

[Harry Dresden]

Lott Mustard was completely bogus....

Professor David Mustard, the co-author of Lott's study, has conceded that there were serious flaws in their study - flaws that seriously undermine the conclusions. Mustard was deposed under oath in the Ohio concealed handgun case Klein v. Leis. Mustard admitted that: 1) the study "omitted variables" which could explain that changes in the crime rate are due to reasons other than changes in CCW laws, and 2) the study did not account for many of the major factors that Mustard believes affect crime including crack cocaine, wealth, drugs and alcohol use, and police practices such as community policing. These serious flaws completely undermine Lott's findings.

Lott Claims Computer Ate His Controversial CCW Survey

In his published research analysis, John Lott has claimed that a 1997 survey he conducted found that concealed handguns deterred crime without being fired an astoundingly high 98% of the time. That claim allowed Lott to explain away the fact that extremely few self-defense uses of handguns are ever reported. But when scholars began questioning his survey results, Lott began a series of evasions that culminated in the claim that his computer had crashed and he had "lost" all the data. The University of Chicago, where Lott claims he conducted the study, has no record of it being conducted so Lott began claiming that he funded it himself (and kept no records) and that he used students to make the survey calls (though no students have been identified who participated). Indeed, no records of the survey exist at all. Lott is now facing serious questions about whether he fabricated the entire survey - raising serious questions about his ethics and credibility.

Brady Campaign - Concealed Handgun Fraud: Exposing John Lott

in a forum i believe it was C-Span on gun control John Lott was there and a guy from the Brady people was there,Lott ripped this guy a new ass hole on gun control,Lott showed all kinds of stats from around the world old ones and new ones,the Brady guy used the same old tried and disproven BullShit.....even the audience started laughing at the guys attempt to show how wrong Lott was.....ill pick Lott against any anti-gun person out there in a debate,he has his facts together....

 

[Harry Dresden]

Gun Control Studies

In 1996, the most comprehensive "gun control" study of all time was published by John Lott of the University of Chicago Law School. Fifteen years of FBI files from all 3,054 counties in our country were analyzed regarding the correlation between the occurrence of violent crime and the prevalence of concealed weapons on law-abiding citizens. Invariably, where responsible, law-abiding citizens were allowed to carry firearms, the rate of violent crime plummeted. The criminals were afraid to attack those who "might" be armed.

JOHN LOTT

Professor Gary Kleck is a life long (self-avowed) liberal democrat, author of Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. He had expected the research involved in that writing to infer negatively on gun ownership. He discovered a vast amount of violent crimes were prevented by firearms usage. Even though this was contrary to his original premise, he had the integrity to stand by his research. Although that book was awarded the best book (of 1993) on criminology by the American Society of Criminology it was largely ignored by gun control advocates such as most medical journals and our Government's Justice Department and Center for Disease Control.

GARY KLECK

 

[Chris]

in a forum i believe it was C-Span on gun control John Lott was there and a guy from the Brady people was there,Lott ripped this guy a new ass hole on gun control,Lott showed all kinds of stats from around the world old ones and new ones,the Brady guy used the same old tried and disproven BullShit.....even the audience started laughing at the guys attempt to show how wrong Lott was.....ill pick Lott against any anti-gun person out there in a debate,he has his facts together....

Lott made up his facts.

He can't even provide documentation for his "survey."

1,000,000 Americans dead by gunfire. Those are the facts.

 

[Missourian]

Lott made up his facts.

He can't even provide documentation for his "survey."

1,000,000 Americans dead by gunfire. Those are the facts.

Chris, do you have a link that breaks down those firarm related deaths?

 

[Cecilie1200]

Well, let's look at Chris's totally unsubstantiated claim that John Lott makes up his figures, shall we?

In his book, "Freedomnomics", we find this section:

It is also clear that legally owning a gun makes a person less likely to get hurt by a criminal. While police are, of course, extremely important in fighting crime, officers almost always arrive at the scene only after a crime has been committed. So what can individuals themselves do to deter criminals? Having a gun, in fact, is by far the most effective course of action. This is the finding of the US Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey, an annual survey conducted since 1973 of about 77,000 households comprising nearly 134,000 people. This holds true whether the criminal is armed or unarmed and regardless of the location of the attack.

When we go to the endnote notation for this quote and the subsequent specific breakdown, we find this website: Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime and Victims Statistics

Which does, in fact, contain all the statistics and information that he says it does, and then some. On the other hand, we have merely Chris's assertion that John Lott "makes up his facts", which we are simply supposed to accept at face value. So I think we can all see who is reliable and who isn't on this subject.

 

[garyd]

I doubt he has evidence to support the notion of 1,000,000 Americans dead by gunfire without including military casualties, suicides and people who were wounded and latered died of something else entirely...

 

[Chris]

I doubt he has evidence to support the notion of 1,000,000 Americans dead by gunfire without including military casualties, suicides and people who were wounded and latered died of something else entirely...

Fatal Firearm Injuries in the United States - NCIPC

 

[Chris]

Well, let's look at Chris's totally unsubstantiated claim that John Lott makes up his figures, shall we?

In his book, "Freedomnomics", we find this section:

It is also clear that legally owning a gun makes a person less likely to get hurt by a criminal. While police are, of course, extremely important in fighting crime, officers almost always arrive at the scene only after a crime has been committed. So what can individuals themselves do to deter criminals? Having a gun, in fact, is by far the most effective course of action. This is the finding of the US Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey, an annual survey conducted since 1973 of about 77,000 households comprising nearly 134,000 people. This holds true whether the criminal is armed or unarmed and regardless of the location of the attack.

When we go to the endnote notation for this quote and the subsequent specific breakdown, we find this website: Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime and Victims Statistics

Which does, in fact, contain all the statistics and information that he says it does, and then some. On the other hand, we have merely Chris's assertion that John Lott "makes up his facts", which we are simply supposed to accept at face value. So I think we can all see who is reliable and who isn't on this subject.

Lott Co-Author Admits to Gaping Flaws in Study

Professor David Mustard, the co-author of Lott's study, has conceded that there were serious flaws in their study - flaws that seriously undermine the conclusions. Mustard was deposed under oath in the Ohio concealed handgun case Klein v. Leis. Mustard admitted that: 1) the study "omitted variables" which could explain that changes in the crime rate are due to reasons other than changes in CCW laws, and 2) the study did not account for many of the major factors that Mustard believes affect crime including crack cocaine, wealth, drugs and alcohol use, and police practices such as community policing. These serious flaws completely undermine Lott's findings.

Lott Claims Computer Ate His Controversial CCW Survey

In his published research analysis, John Lott has claimed that a 1997 survey he conducted found that concealed handguns deterred crime without being fired an astoundingly high 98% of the time. That claim allowed Lott to explain away the fact that extremely few self-defense uses of handguns are ever reported. But when scholars began questioning his survey results, Lott began a series of evasions that culminated in the claim that his computer had crashed and he had "lost" all the data. The University of Chicago, where Lott claims he conducted the study, has no record of it being conducted so Lott began claiming that he funded it himself (and kept no records) and that he used students to make the survey calls (though no students have been identified who participated). Indeed, no records of the survey exist at all. Lott is now facing serious questions about whether he fabricated the entire survey - raising serious questions about his ethics and credibility.

Brady Campaign - Concealed Handgun Fraud: Exposing John Lott