Quote :

"More than 20 years ago, I conducted a study of firearm-related deaths in homes in Seattle and surrounding King County, Washington. Over the study's seven-year interval, more than half of all fatal shootings in the county took place in the home where the firearm involved was kept. Just nine of those shootings were legally justifiable homicides or acts of self-defense; guns kept in homes were also involved in 12 accidental deaths, 41 criminal homicides and a shocking 333 suicides. A subsequent study conducted in three U.S. cities found that guns kept in the home were 12 times more likely to be involved in the death or injury of a member of the household than in the killing or wounding of a bad guy in self-defense. Oh, one more thing: Scalia's ludicrous vision of a little old lady clutching a handgun in one hand while dialing 911 with the other (try it sometime) doesn't fit the facts. According to the Justice Department, far more guns are lost each year to burglary or theft than are used to defend people or property. In Atlanta, a city where approximately a third of households contain guns, a study of 197 home-invasion crimes revealed only three instances (1.5 percent) in which the inhabitants resisted with a gun. Intruders got to the homeowner's gun twice as often as the homeowner did. "

Kind of throws into doubt the arguments about the necessity of handguns for self defense, eh?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/27/AR2008062702864.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

6/30/2008 1:11:14 AM

let the gun people have their guns

if shit happens, let it happen

6/30/2008 1:13:37 AM

I wonder what percent of all suicides were gun suicides.

And i'm a little surprised only 1.5% of crimes people resisted with guns, where 30% of people have guns. Either in the crime-ridden areas people don't have guns, people with guns don't report crimes, people with guns are never at home, or people with guns don't use them to defend themselves. I always bought the argument that owning guns would help lower crime, but that doesn't really seem to be the case, at least in atlanta.

6/30/2008 1:59:55 AM

or...

just throwing this out there

rifles are probably included in that sample

and they don't make great home defense weapons...

6/30/2008 3:26:24 AM

1) The study listed in the OP seems to be concerned exclusively with fatal shootings. This ignores instances of mere injury and, more importantly, instances where merely displaying a firearm was enough to stop a crime.

2) I'm not even sure why we're bothering to include suicides. The United States, where firearm and especially handgun ownership are so easy, ranks 43rd in the world in suicide rates, with fewer incidences than Norway, Canada, Sweden, Germany, China, France, Japan, and a slew of other countries where ownership is considerably more difficult.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate#cite_note-5

In fact, the trend seems to favor higher suicide rates in cold climates, so you could even argue that this guy skewed his results by studying an area with one of the most notoriously depressing climates in the country.

3) Criminal homicides provide a better statistic but still leave something to be desired, namely that no account appears to be given to whether or not the weapons were legally owned. It would make at least some difference if all the guns used in the criminal homicides were illegally owned and all those used in the justifiable homicides were not, don't you think?

4) Accidental deaths provide me with something of a poser. I tend to think that the gun policy that makes the most sense is to phase in a slightly more detailed firearm education in public schools. I'm not talking about taking kids to the gun range, but giving them a better understanding than simply "Don't ever touch one" would be nice. Abstinence-only education doesn't work on sex, I don't see why it should work for guns. Because just like kids are always gonna have sex, they are always (albeit in lesser numbers) find guns.

But since I know this sort of education is probably a pipe dream, I think the thing that makes the next most sense is to preserve a fundamental right than it is to protect people from every single way they can hurt their own dumb asses.

6/30/2008 4:22:40 AM

^ Grumpy largely covered it but a few things:

Quote :

"more than half of all fatal shootings in the county took place in the home where the firearm involved was kept."

Are you trying to argue that guns actually cause violence? That the mere presence of a firearm creates vibrations that cause otherwise normal people to commit acts of violence? Or could it just be that people in violence-prone areas chose to keep guns for whatever reason, good or ill?

Second, this is a statistically misleading sample in that it didn't look at how common violence was in homes where guns existed, but rather, how common guns were in homes where violence existed. A small but statistically important fact.


Plus, as Grumpy pointed out, this only includes fatal shootings. Survival rates for people wounded by handguns is somewhere in the neighborhood of 85%/

6/30/2008 6:41:17 AM

You imply that suicide by handgun is a bad thing.

It's the right tool for the job.

6/30/2008 9:41:28 AM

well, in defense of the gun owners...

Seattle has about the highest suicide rate in the nation. so what do you expect? its like dark and raining for 4 or 5 months straight through the winter.

6/30/2008 11:32:38 AM

boy, I sure am glad that I don't have a gun that I could use to kill myself with.

6/30/2008 11:45:34 AM

Quote :

"a shocking 333 suicides"

hows that shocking? its Seattle

6/30/2008 11:45:59 AM

In the Happening owning a gun was far more preferrable to the alternative of trying to peal your own skin off.

6/30/2008 12:32:44 PM

i know man them dang ol' church bells goin' ring ring ring ring ring gonna drive me outta my dang ol' skin



http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/peal

6/30/2008 12:45:39 PM

If someone wants to kill themself, the availability of a gun will not be the deciding factor in going through with the act, nor will the absence of a gun prevent the suicide.

When figures are included for the purpose of insinuating that suicides would be reduced if guns were less readily available/numerous, the author/publication casts serious doubt on their own persuasive ability, logic, and credibility.

6/30/2008 11:33:08 PM

you can bet that the left will publish as much anti gun stuff as they can to counter the public opinion benefits for gun owners from the supreme court decision. the whole idea is to make guns look bad because they are used in suicides, but for the argument to hold water it would have to show that possession of a gun made people want to kill themselves, instead of using a gun as a means to accomplish an end. there are many ways to commit suicide, but writing about the other ways of doing it is not beneficial to the anti gun lobby and the media right now.

7/1/2008 12:06:05 AM

ban ropes and razor blades or more people will kill themselves

7/1/2008 12:44:15 AM

ban the 12th floor of Sullivan?

7/1/2008 12:51:27 AM

Man, what a shitty article to pick to defend your liberal gun views.

Let's pick the evidence that supports our argument only, while disregarding what is likely 95% of the rest of evidence out there (because it's not shocking enough or it doesn't support our argument), then make smug comments that are disrespectful towards supreme court justices.

I mean, seriously, try it sometime? Has this person ever held a handgun?

The Atlanta comment is also great for failing to mention the context of where the 197 home invasion crimes occurred. Failing to mention the demographics of the 30% of people that own guns, and the breakdown of guns by type, is also more contextual information that is necessary for the purposes of their argument.

Really, post some article that supports your argument that looks at all this information. That Washington Post article is useless.

7/1/2008 12:53:17 AM