Gun control works….two 13 year old boys shot in Britain. You know, where guns were banned and confiscated.

[2aguy]

Kindly point out the post where I ever made such a claim? I have always stated that there is no causality between declines in crime rates and increased gun purchases, which is your claim. See below:


The fact that you then proceed with a torrent of your regurgitated cut and paste BS demonstrates conclusively you cannot prove causality, you're just making things up in pursuit of your gun nut agenda.

These are the research papers that show more guns decrease crime...

Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns, John R. Lott, Jr. and David B. Mustard, Journal of Legal Studies, 1997
The Effect of Concealed Weapons Laws: An Extreme Bound Analysis by William Alan Bartley and Mark A Cohen, published in Economic Inquiry, April 1998 (Copy available here)
The Concealed‐Handgun Debate, John R. Lott, Jr., Journal of Legal Studies, January 1998
Criminal Deterrence, Geographic Spillovers, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns by Stephen Bronars and John R. Lott, Jr., American Economic Review, May 1998
The Impact of Gun Laws on Police Deaths by David Mustard, published in the Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001
Privately Produced General Deterrence By BRUCE L. BENSON AND BRENT D. MAST, Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001
Does the Right to Carry Concealed Handguns Deter Countable Crimes? Only a Count Analysis Can Say By FLORENZ PLASSMANN AND T. NICOLAUS TIDEMAN, Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001
Testing for the Effects of Concealed Weapons Laws: Specification Errors and Robustness By CARLISLE E. MOODY, Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001
Right-to-Carry Concealed Weapon Laws and Homicide in Large U.S. Counties: The Effect on Weapon Types, Victim Characteristics, and Victim-Offender Relationships By DAVID E. OLSON AND MICHAEL D. MALTZ, Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001
Safe-Storage Gun Laws: Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime By JOHN R. LOTT, JR., AND JOHN E. WHITLEY, Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001 — see Table 3 on page 679
Confirming More Guns, Less Crime by Florenz Plassmann and John Whitley, published in the Stanford Law Review, 2003
Measurement Error in County-Level UCR Data by John R. Lott, Jr. and John Whitley, published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, June 2003, Volume 19, Issue 2, pp 185-198
Using Placebo Laws to Test “More Guns, Less Crime” by Eric Helland and Alexander Tabarrok, published in Advances in Economic Analysis and Policy, 4 (1): Article 1, 2004
Abortion and Crime: Unwanted children and out-of-wedlock births, John R. Lott, Jr and John Whitley, October 2006.– page 14, Table 2.
The Impact of Banning Juvenile Gun Possession By Thomas B. Marvell, Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001 — page 707, fn. 29
Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement By John R. Lott, Jr. and William Landes, published in The Bias Against Guns
More Readers of Gun Magazines, But Not More Crimes by Florenz Plassmann and John R. Lott, Jr. — many places in the text.
“More Guns, Less Crime” by John R Lott, Jr. (University of Chicago Press, 2010, 3rd edition).
“The Debate on Shall-Issue Laws” by Carlisle e. Moody, Thomas B. Marvell, Paul R Zimmerman, and Fasil Alemante published in Review of Economics & Finance, 2014
“An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates” by Mark Giusa published in Applied Economics Letters, Volume 21, Issue 4, 2014
“The Debate on Shall-Issue Laws” by Carlisle e. Moody and Thomas B. Marvell, published in Econ Journal Watch, volume 5, number 3, September 2008 It is also available here..
“The Debate on Shall Issue Laws, Continued” by Carlisle e. Moody and Thomas B. Marvell, published in Econ Journal Watch, Volume 6, Number 2 May 2009
“Did John Lott Provide Bad Data to the NRC? A Note on Aneja, Donohue, and Zhang” by Carlisle e. Moody, John R Lott, Jr, and Thomas B. Marvell, published in Econ Journal Watch, Volume 10, Number 1, January 2013
“On the Choice of Control Variables in the Crime Equation” by Carlisle E. Moody and Thomas B. Marvell, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Volume 72, Issue 5, pages 696–715, October 2010.
“The Impact of Right-to-Carry Laws: A Critique of the 2014 Version of Aneja, Donohue, and Zhang,” Carlisle E. Moody and Thomas B. Marvell, Econ Journal Watch, January 2018: 51-66.
“Do Right to Carry Laws Increase Violent Crime? A Comment on Donohue, Aneja, and Weber,” Carlisle E. Moody and Thomas B. Marvell, Econ Journal Watch, Volume 16, Number 1, March 2019: 84-96.
More Guns, Less Crime: A Response to Ayres and Donohue’s 1999 book review in the American Law and Economics Review by John R. Lott, Jr.
Right-to-Carry Laws and Violent Crime Revisited: Clustering, Measurement Error, and State-by-State Break downs by John R. Lott, Jr.

 

[M14 Shooter]

Had I done so, I might well. However, you are confusing me with another poster, go talk to him.

You are correct.
So, I amend my statement:
We are -both- clear he offered a post-hoc fallacy.

 

[Vagabond63]

You are correct.
So, I amend my statement:
We are -both- clear he offered a post-hoc fallacy.

As I said, you'll have to take it up with him. Personally I doubt we'll ever agree on anything, although I like your "avatar" picture. Trying to remember which board wargame it comes from.

 

[Vagabond63]

These are the research papers that show more guns decrease crime...

Oh good grief! John Lott and his disciples cut and paste again. None of these so called studies prove the causality you inferred, i.e. that since more Americans bought more guns, the various crime rates dropped as a result.

 

[Vagabond63]

Never claimed causality with the Pew research......the 27 years of increased gun ownership and the 49% decrease in gun murder, and the 75% decrease in gun crime...

Well, you did infer causality originally, until I destroyed your "argument"; then you changed to your "more guns did not cause an increase in crime" mantra.

 

[2aguy]

Oh good grief! John Lott and his disciples cut and paste again. None of these so called studies prove the causality you inferred, i.e. that since more Americans bought more guns, the various crime rates dropped as a result.

Shithead....Lott is the best researcher out there on this topic and, of course, you pretend his are the only studies I listed......

I didn't infer anything, and each time a doofus like you tries that line of attack, I specifically point out the truth...

That as more Americans bought guns, and over 19.4 million of them carried guns in public for self defense over 27 years, gun murder went down 49%....gun crime went down 75%...

That means, doofus...that normal people who own and actually carry guns do not increase the gun crime or gun murder rate.....

You can't explain how that is possible since you feel that more guns = more gun crime.......

And you never answered the question.....

A woman wants a gun to prevent being gang raped in a London park...the British police say she does not have "Good Reason," to own a gun.....

A member of the House of Lords wants to hunt quail with his rich friends on his private country estate..........according to the British police this is a "good reason," to own a gun.....

Do you think this makes any fucking sense?

 

[2aguy]

Well, you did infer causality originally, until I destroyed your "argument"; then you changed to your "more guns did not cause an increase in crime" mantra.

You didn't destroy anything, you doofus......I exposed the stupidity of your argument when you tried to lie about my point.....

You can't explain how it is that over 27 years, Americans not only bought more guns, they actually carried them in public, and the gun murder rate went down 49%.....the gun crime rate went down 75%.....

You can't explain that.......you are wrong on every aspect of the gun debate and you have nothing to support what you feel about guns...

Over the last 27 years, we went from 200 million guns in private hands in the 1990s and 4.7 million people carrying guns for self defense in 1997...to close to 400-600 million guns in private hands and over 19.4 million people carrying guns for self defense in 2019...guess what happened...

New Concealed Carry Report For 2020: 19.48 Million Permit Holders, 820,000 More Than Last Year despite many states shutting down issuing permits because of the Coronavirus - Crime Prevention Research Center


-- gun murder down 49%

--gun crime down 75%

--violent crime down 72%

Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware

Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49% lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation’s population grew. The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75% lower in 2011 than in 1993. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades.


This means that access to guns does not create gun crime........

Why do our democrat party controlled cities have gun crime problems?

1) the democrat party keeps releasing violent gun offenders...they have created a revolving door for criminals who use guns, and will release even the most serious gun offenders over and over again....why? Probably because they realise that normal people don't use their guns for crime, so if they want to push gun control, they need criminals to shoot people.....so they keep releasing them....

2) The democrat party keeps attacking the police.....driving the officers into not doing pro-active policing, cutting detective forces so that murders go unsolved..........

 

[Vagabond63]

No....they did the research, and realized it wasn't going to refute what Kleck found....so they hid the research.

Prove it.
Every DGU study that "contradicts" Kleck's theory, demonstrates that there is insufficient evidence available to make a determination one way or the other. Basically extrapolations based on telephone surveys on small sample groups are meaningless.

 

[2aguy]

Well, you did infer causality originally, until I destroyed your "argument"; then you changed to your "more guns did not cause an increase in crime" mantra.

And again...you refuse to answer these questions...

A woman is grabbed by a violent serial rapist at a bus stop, a train platform or in her apartment...he plans on beating, raping and murdering her. She has a gun, and can stop the rape with the gun......
Do you want her to use that gun to stop the rape?
A woman stops an attack with a gun, a brutal rape, torture and murder...in a public space....if you had the ability to go back in time, and prevent her from having that gun...would you?

 

[2aguy]

Prove it.
Every DGU study that "contradicts" Kleck's theory, demonstrates that there is insufficient evidence available to make a determination one way or the other. Basically extrapolations based on telephone surveys on small sample groups are meaningless.

Kleck's isn't the only study, and you know it....over 18 now....all the way back to the 1990s....

You guys have nothing....actual research, by trained research professionals in both private and government research have shown that Americans use their legal guns upwards of millions of times a year to stop rapes, robberies, stabbings, beatings, and murders.......

Two of those groups...the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Justice...under the Clinton Administration, specifically did their research to refute Kleck after his research came out....

Both failed........the CDC found that American use their legal guns 1.2 million times a year to stop violent crime, and the Department of Justice found the number to be 1.5 million times a year....

A quick guide to the studies and the numbers.....the full lay out of what was studied by each study is in the links....

The name of the group doing the study, the year of the study, the number of defensive gun uses and if police and military defensive gun uses are included.....notice the bill clinton and obama defensive gun use research is highlighted.....

GunCite-Gun Control-How Often Are Guns Used in Self-Defense

GunCite Frequency of Defensive Gun Use in Previous Surveys

Field...1976....3,052,717 ( no cops, no military)

DMIa 1978...2,141,512 ( no cops, no military)

L.A. TIMES...1994...3,609,68 ( no cops, no military)

Kleck......1994...2.5 million ( no cops, no military)

2021 national firearm survey, Prof. William English, PhD. designed by Deborah Azrael of Harvard T. Chan School of public policy, and Mathew Miller, Northeastern university.......1.67 million defensive uses annually.

CDC...1996-1998... 1.1 million averaged over those years.( no cops, no military)

Obama's CDC....2013....500,000--3million

--------------------


Bordua...1977...1,414,544

DMIb...1978...1,098,409 ( no cops, no military)

Hart...1981...1.797,461 ( no cops, no military)

Mauser...1990...1,487,342 ( no cops,no military)

Gallup...1993...1,621,377 ( no cops, no military)

DEPT. OF JUSTICE...1994...1.5 million ( the bill clinton study)

Journal of Quantitative Criminology--- 989,883 times per year."

(Based on survey data from a 2000 study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology,[17] U.S. civilians use guns to defend themselves and others from crime at least 989,883 times per year.[18])

Paper: "Measuring Civilian Defensive Firearm Use: A Methodological Experiment." By David McDowall and others. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, March 2000. Measuring Civilian Defensive Firearm Use: A Methodological Experiment - Springer


-------------------------------------------

Ohio...1982...771,043

Gallup...1991...777,152

Tarrance... 1994... 764,036 (no cops, no military)

Lawerence Southwich Jr. 400,000 fewer violent crimes and at least 800,000 violent crimes deterred..

2021 national firearms survey..

The survey was designed by Deborah Azrael of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Matthew Miller of Northeastern University,
----
The survey further finds that approximately a third of gun owners (31.1%) have used a firearm to defend themselves or their property, often on more than one occasion, and it estimates that guns are used defensively by firearms owners in approximately 1.67 million incidents per year. Handguns are the most common firearm employed for self-defense (used in 65.9% of defensive incidents), and in most defensive incidents (81.9%) no shot was fired. Approximately a quarter (25.2%) of defensive incidents occurred within the gun owner's home, and approximately half (53.9%) occurred outside their home, but on their property. About one out of ten (9.1%) defensive gun uses occurred in public, and about one out of twenty (4.8%) occurred at work.
2021 National Firearms Survey

 

[2aguy]

Prove it.
Every DGU study that "contradicts" Kleck's theory, demonstrates that there is insufficient evidence available to make a determination one way or the other. Basically extrapolations based on telephone surveys on small sample groups are meaningless.

Again.....answer these questions....

A woman is grabbed by a violent serial rapist at a bus stop, a train platform or in her apartment...he plans on beating, raping and murdering her. She has a gun, and can stop the rape with the gun......
Do you want her to use that gun to stop the rape?
A woman stops an attack with a gun, a brutal rape, torture and murder...in a public space....if you had the ability to go back in time, and prevent her from having that gun...would you?

 

[Vagabond63]

Lott is the best researcher out there on this topic and, of course, you pretend his are the only studies I listed......

ROFL!
Even Kleck thinks Lott is wrong! Lott has been fired, sorry, "resigned" from every academic position he had which forced him to create his own "think tank" which he subsequently left and has now returned to after another failure working for the government.

Oh, I said Lott and his disciples, do keep up. Many of the other studies you list state they used Lott's data, say no more.

 

[Vagabond63]

Shithead....Lott is the best researcher out there on this topic and, of course, you pretend his are the only studies I listed......

I didn't infer anything, and each time a doofus like you tries that line of attack, I specifically point out the truth...

That as more Americans bought guns, and over 19.4 million of them carried guns in public for self defense over 27 years, gun murder went down 49%....gun crime went down 75%...

That means, doofus...that normal people who own and actually carry guns do not increase the gun crime or gun murder rate.....

You can't explain how that is possible since you feel that more guns = more gun crime.......

And you never answered the question.....

A woman wants a gun to prevent being gang raped in a London park...the British police say she does not have "Good Reason," to own a gun.....

A member of the House of Lords wants to hunt quail with his rich friends on his private country estate..........according to the British police this is a "good reason," to own a gun.....

Do you think this makes any fucking sense?

Constantly cutting and pasting BS, does not stop it being BS. Here we go again with your firehose of falsehood, no surprise.

 

[2aguy]

ROFL!
Even Kleck thinks Lott is wrong! Lott has been fired, sorry, "resigned" from every academic position he had which forced him to create his own "think tank" which he subsequently left and has now returned to after another failure working for the government.

Oh, I said Lott and his disciples, do keep up. Many of the other studies you list state they used Lott's data, say no more.

No.....Kleck and Lott disagree based on their respective disciplines.....you don't know what you are talking about....

You just lie.....you have nothing, so you lie.......I give you 18 studies.....two of them from anti-gun, government agencies...and you still lie.....

And again....you didn't answer the questions....

A woman is grabbed by a violent serial rapist at a bus stop, a train platform or in her apartment...he plans on beating, raping and murdering her. She has a gun, and can stop the rape with the gun......

Do you want her to use that gun to stop the rape?

A woman stops an attack with a gun, a brutal rape, torture and murder...in a public space....if you had the ability to go back in time, and prevent her from having that gun...would you?

A woman wants a gun to prevent being gang raped in a London park...the British police say she does not have "Good Reason," to own a gun.....

A member of the House of Lords wants to hunt quail with his rich friends on his private country estate..........according to the British police this is a "good reason," to own a gun.....

Do you think this makes any sense?

 

[2aguy]

Constantly cutting and pasting BS, does not stop it being BS. Here we go again with your firehose of falsehood, no surprise.

Constantly refusing to admit you are wrong, no matter how many times you see the actual research shows you really are nothing more than a moron.........you don't have facts, truth or reality on your side...

You believe it is better that a woman is gang raped in a London park than she have a gun to stop the rape.....while the member of the House of Lords should have his fowling piece so he can shoot quail on his private country estate....

You are an idiot....

A woman wants a gun to prevent being gang raped in a London park...the British police say she does not have "Good Reason," to own a gun.....

A member of the House of Lords wants to hunt quail with his rich friends on his private country estate..........according to the British police this is a "good reason," to own a gun.....

Do you think this makes any fucking sense?

A woman is grabbed by a violent serial rapist at a bus stop, a train platform or in her apartment...he plans on beating, raping and murdering her. She has a gun, and can stop the rape with the gun......
Do you want her to use that gun to stop the rape?
A woman stops an attack with a gun, a brutal rape, torture and murder...in a public space....if you had the ability to go back in time, and prevent her from having that gun...would you?

You consistently refuse to answer these questions...because you know the "logic" of your answers is really stupid.....

 

[2aguy]

ROFL!
Even Kleck thinks Lott is wrong! Lott has been fired, sorry, "resigned" from every academic position he had which forced him to create his own "think tank" which he subsequently left and has now returned to after another failure working for the government.

Oh, I said Lott and his disciples, do keep up. Many of the other studies you list state they used Lott's data, say no more.

Here you go, dumb ass.......the actual debate...

In addition, while Gary doesn’t seem to believe that the changes in the percent of adults who are legally carrying deters criminals, there is considerable evidence that criminal behavior changes, with violent crime rates falling as the percentage of people with permits increases.
-----
Everyone knows of Gary’s work on guns being used defensively, but there is a contradiction here. While Gary points to guns being used defensively and those defensive uses exceed the number of times guns are used in the commission of crime, he repeatedly says that increased gun ownership doesn’t reduce crime.

I don’t understand why Gary claims that more gun ownership doesn’t mean less crime, and I have asked him about this in multiple conversations, but whenever I have asked him to explain how these different claims could be reconciled he has declined to do so.
-----
There is a large economics literature showing that higher arrest and conviction rates as well as punishment, such as the death penalty, deter criminals (a survey is provided in Chapter 4 in my book Freedomnomics).

As to evidence that armed victims deter criminals, there is a wide variety of evidence:

• States that issue the most permits have the biggest drops in violent crime and as the percentage of the adult population with permits increases you see further drops in violent crime.
• Concealed carry permits have different effects on different types of crime. For example, violent crimes fall relative to property crimes for the simple reason that violent crimes involve direct contact between the victim and the criminal where the presence of a concealed handgun might make a difference. Or mass public shootings fall relative to murder rates because the greater the probability that someone can defend themselves, the greater the drop in crime. When you are talking about a shooting in a public place where there a large number of adults, the probability that at least one adult out of many will be able to defend themselves is much greater than when you are dealing with a criminal attacking a lone victim.
• If you look at adjacent counties on opposite sides of a state border, the county in the state adopting a right-to-carry law sees a drop in violent crime at the same time that the adjacent county across the state border in a state without a right-to-carry law sees and increase in violent crime. The increase in the neighboring county is about 20 percent of the size of the drop in the country with the law.

If Gary is correct that passage of right-to-carry laws have no impact on the number of people who carry, how can he explain all these different changes in crime rates? Why would crime rates change in these adjacent counties so differently? Why would violent crimes go down relative to property crimes? Or mass public shootings go down relative to other types of murders?

------
Cross-sectional evidence is not particularly useful in accurately determining relationships, simply because purely cross-sectional doesn’t allow one to account for all the differences in crime rates across places. A detailed discussion is available here.

Take a simple example, many point out that compared to the US the UK has relatively low murder rates and very restrictive gun control. They then attribute the lower homicide rate in the UK due to its gun control regulations. But the problem is that the UK’s homicide rates went up by 50 percent for eight years after the handgun ban was imposed in January 1997, and it only stopped going up and started going down after a large 18 percent increase in police.

That said, despite Gary’s claim, cross-sectional data isn’t the only data that we have “on the relationship between national gun ownership rates and national homicide rates.” One very simple example is that every single place in the world that has banned guns has seen an increase in murder rates. It isn’t just places such as Washington, DC and Chicago that banned handguns and saw increases in murder rates. Gun control advocates claim that bans can’t work in those cities because criminals can still get guns in neighboring areas or states. While this explanation might explain why crime rates don’t fall as much as gun controllers predicted, this can’t explain why the murder rates soared. In addition, even when island nations have adopted gun bans, you see large increases in murder rates.

Thus Gary is incorrect on all these counts.

Gary Kleck and John Lott Offer Closing Thoughts in Dispute over Gun Research - Ari Armstrong

Recently I conducted interviews with two prominent researchers, criminologist Gary Kleck and economist John Lott, each of whose work routinely is cited by people who advocate the right of civilians to own guns for self-defense. Both scholars discuss a wide range of topics related to gun...

ariarmstrong.com

 

[2aguy]

ROFL!
Even Kleck thinks Lott is wrong! Lott has been fired, sorry, "resigned" from every academic position he had which forced him to create his own "think tank" which he subsequently left and has now returned to after another failure working for the government.

Oh, I said Lott and his disciples, do keep up. Many of the other studies you list state they used Lott's data, say no more.

Hmmmm...still waiting for you to answer these questions.......

A woman is grabbed by a violent serial rapist at a bus stop, a train platform or in her apartment...he plans on beating, raping and murdering her. She has a gun, and can stop the rape with the gun......
Do you want her to use that gun to stop the rape?
A woman stops an attack with a gun, a brutal rape, torture and murder...in a public space....if you had the ability to go back in time, and prevent her from having that gun...would you?

The British government will not allow a woman to own and carry a gun to prevent being gang raped in a London park.....saying she does not have "good reason," to own the gun.

A member of the House of Lords wants to quail hunt with his rich friends on his private country estate, and the British government gives him the gun....because he has "good reason."

How does this make sense?

 

[Vagabond63]

Kleck's isn't the only study, and you know it....over 18 now....all the way back to the 1990s....

Correct. There are as many studies, if not more, refuting Kleck as there are supporting him. You just cherry pick those in support while ignoring contrary data.

...actual research, by trained research professionals in both private and government research have shown that Americans use their legal guns upwards of millions of times a year to stop rapes, robberies, stabbings, beatings, and murders...

No they don't. They can't because the available data is inconclusive and suspect at best. No-one knows who owns what or how many guns in the US, no-one really knows exactly how many times a gun is used in "self defence", which is why the figures are merely extrapolations of small sample surveys.

Two of those groups...the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Justice...under the Clinton Administration, specifically did their research to refute Kleck after his research came out....

Both failed........the CDC found that American use their legal guns 1.2 million times a year to stop violent crime, and the Department of Justice found the number to be 1.5 million times a year....

Prove that that was their motive. Both studies merely looked at the available data from the "studies" you keep citing and found that there was insufficient accurate data to make a determination one way or the other.

 

[Vagabond63]

Constantly refusing to admit you are wrong, no matter how many times you see the actual research shows you really are nothing more than a moron.........you don't have facts, truth or reality on your side...

Ah, seems you are projecting your own inadequacies onto me again.

 

[2aguy]

Correct. There are as many studies, if not more, refuting Kleck as there are supporting him. You just cherry pick those in support while ignoring contrary data.

No they don't. They can't because the available data is inconclusive and suspect at best. No-one knows who owns what or how many guns in the US, no-one really knows exactly how many times a gun is used in "self defence", which is why the figures are merely extrapolations of small sample surveys.

Prove that that was their motive. Both studies merely looked at the available data from the "studies" you keep citing and found that there was insufficient accurate data to make a determination one way or the other.

Professional researchers.....trained researchers.......working for both the government and private research institutions......

The Kleck sample is 5,000 people.....a huge amount for any research sample.....dittos the DOJ study.....

I listed 18 that state the numbers they found.....you say they made it up....trained researchers from both private and public research groups from the 1990s to 2020.....

I guess we can't know how many people do anything at all........no clue, no idea.....because we can't count each and every individual act they perform..........

And yet these methods are used to find out much of what we know today about every aspect of life....but.....they can't be used to find the number of gun uses in self defense....because....you don't like people who own guns......

Good argument.