The second amendment of the constitution guarantees the right to keep and bear arms. As the specter of gun violence continues in our workplaces, roads and schools, the question keeps arising: do guns keep you safe, or just increase the level of violence?
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Guns in the Home Increase Risk of Gun Violence
- From Freedom States Alliance
By Freedom States Alliance - Working to Prevent Gun Violence
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2%? I'll keep my guns, thank you...
It is a sad fact that some do harm themselves and loved ones with guns. They also do it more often with automobiles but I digress. To blame the availability of a thing is to miss the point entirely. It's a lazy dodge to blame the inanimate object for the foibles of humanity. It's not unlike blaming the alcoholic for having a mouth in which to pour the source of their affliction. We tried prohibition and you see what that got us; rum runners, gang wars, criminalizing the average citizen, etc.
Your suppositions hold as much water as a colander. In the latest data which was done in 2006, the percentage of ALL gun deaths in the home where either a family member or acquaintance was killed equaled 2%. Agreed, that’s too many. BUT, for the same period involving ALL gun deaths via police on innocents, try 10%! So, if we’re to bandy stats for the sake of argument, where do you have a better chance of getting whacked? Excuse me, but I’ll think I’ll stay home tonight… with my guns.
- BLZeebub
September 3, 2008 3:09PM
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2% of what BLZeebub?
What are samples from which these percentages are drawn and who did the data collection in 2006? It's impossible to evaluate your statements based on what you have written here.
- rudbeckia September 3, 2008 9:32PM
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Validity of cliam
His statistics are just as valid as anything the FSA is claiming.
- ravenshrike
September 5, 2008 9:00AM
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Uh no.
These may very well be legitimate statistics. However, BLZeebub hasn't provided us with enough information to even know that the 2% if of. All I am asking for is clarification.
Is s/he trying to say that 10% of all police fatalities are of innocent victims?
that 2% of all fatalities in a residential property are family or friends?
And if so, what's the source? I can provide sources for very different statistics and so I'm wondering how they compare. If you want to have your arguments taken seriously you have to provide that much at least. If these are self-reported data from members of the NRA, I'm likely to take them with a grain of salt. If they are data lifted from government crime databases (such as the annual CDC reports) by a nonpartisan group, I'll take them more seriously.
- rudbeckia September 5, 2008 12:30PM
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What about law-abiding homes with guns
There are several statistical problems with the claim that a household with a gun is at added risk.
The biggest problem is including households with convicted criminal gun owners in the pool--People who are already breaking existing gun laws. Being a felon is extremely risky, roughly half of all murder victims are convicted felons. If you were to separate the law-abiding gun owners from armed criminal households, the numbers would look much different.
It is difficult to determine which homes are truly gun-free--Many people will not admit to having guns, either in fear of prosecution, or fear of theft, so many "nonviolent gun" homes get counted as "nonviolent gun-free". On the other hand, it is easy to determine that a house where gun violence occurred had a gun in it.
- sevesteen
September 4, 2008 4:55PM
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One of the worst arguments ever.
Using this argunment it follows that access to knives increases knife violence, or access to the internet increases internet usage. It's not even a valid argument just a statement of the obvious. If there were no guns there would be no gun violence, if there were no knives there would be no knife violence and if there was no internet there would be no internet usage.
- Aegiltheugly
September 8, 2008 2:34PM
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Actually it's not
The study was measuring how guns are used, not does having them enable use.
One of the NRA's bedrock claims is that having guns on the street makes us safer, and that gun owners use their guns overwhelmingly to prevent crime. Shouldn't this study have concluded that a gun in the house, when shot at somebody, is almost always used to shoot a criminal if this was true? How could guns be killing innocent people, even suicidal people, at such a higher rate than criminals? Suicidal people should be a minor blip in the results compared to criminal deaths if the NRA claims are true. But they're not.
Ask your insurance company what your life insurance and homeowners rate is once you keep a gun in the house and compare that to no gun. Keep in mind they don't pay out for suicide. They will raise your rate on the impassionate, calculated risk that the gun will be used to hurt/kill someone by accident to a much higher degree than the gun will lower your risk of theft or assault.
- nbkwx55
September 12, 2008 2:19PM
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Insurance Correction
I sell both Life and Property and Casualty Insurance. None of the Life companies I deal with ask if you own a fire arm. It'snot taken into account in our morbidity and mortality rates. All of them will pay for suicide after a two year exclusion period. If you kill yourself two years and oner day after the effective date of the contract we will pay out. It's Life Insurance 101.
The P&C companies only want to know if the value of the firearms exceeds certain limits on the policy. If they do, we schedule the fire arms and charge an additional premium. This is based on the value of the firearms and not on any additional liability.
- Aegiltheugly
September 15, 2008 7:08AM
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re: Actually it's not
Maybe it's because suicidal people don't run when a gun is pointed at them. Bearing in mind that criminals are a small subset of people as a whole, as are suicidal persons, it's a safe bet that people who put the barrel to their temple are more likely to get hit than those who duck and run.
Also, the law-abiding citizens of the world generally don't fire on the ones who run away, because they are no longer a threat. We also don't fire on the ones who surrender, because they're no longer a threat. If we fire, it's because the attack continued after the gun was presented, which is an overwhelming minority of cases.
- bmk069 September 19, 2008 11:05AM
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Where's the proof?
"Shouldn't this study have concluded that a gun in the house, when shot at somebody, is almost always used to shoot a criminal if this was true? How could guns be killing innocent people, even suicidal people, at such a higher rate than criminals? Suicidal people should be a minor blip in the results compared to criminal deaths if the NRA claims are true. But they're not."
Let's see the proof. There are plenty of studies that show that guns are used far more to prevent crime than commit it. But since you seem to be privy to the only known study that shows otherwise, perhaps you wouldn't mind sharing it with the rest of us?
- LagerHead
October 1, 2009 4:58PM
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re: One of the worst arguments ever.
It's similar to the argument that having insulin in the house increases the risk of diabetes.
- bmk069 September 19, 2008 11:00AM
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Quick Question...
Is this another attempt to cite a study or "fact" that when a gun in the home is present, including ones CRIMINALS bring in the home, a loved one is more likely to get shot?
Shouldn't we ban swimming pools for the same reason?
- F2XL
October 13, 2008 5:01PM
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Post a "Gun Free Zone" Decal on ALL your doors & windows
If you really believed that guns in homes are an unacceptable danger and that they have no redeemable value, why don't you and others holding the same belief, put decals on their window and doors declaring your dwelling as a gun free zone.
Think of all the health care cost savings that would be realized when the bad guys would know which residences they could rape and plunder without risk of getting shot!
- captinjack
February 10, 2009 10:07AM
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First things first
Alcohol increases the risk of violence in the home far more than guns and has been do so long before guns were invented. So if you are interested in public welfare, go after alcohol , AIDS , tobacco and a host of others that all create problems. Gun ownership solves problems and any responsible gun owner does not leave guns around for kids .
In the Boy Scouts I was taught gun safety long before I pulled my first trigger. Let's try some of that instead of a disproportionate fanatic anti-gun hate trip.
- ChiefSkeptic
June 3, 2009 11:54AM
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