A Prayer

[submessenger]

No, your reading skills are beneath me.

I think I'm beginning to understand you. Retracted.

[DCS]

Another thing, people here think that more guns on the streets can prevent killings etc. What are the actual stats about crimes being prevented by armed by passers? Is it a real claim?

It seems the claim has real basis (1) but if the laws regarding legitimate use of deadly force in self defense are not well understood by armed citizens, murders and non-negligent manslaughters increase (2).

Crime is a more complex issue than 'gun control' vs 'gun freedom'.



1.- http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/f...gh-Targets.pdf
2.- http://econweb.tamu.edu/mhoekstra/castle_doctrine.pdf

[It is Fake]

Single point entry, plus a police officer does seem like the option most likely to increase safety at schools. Arming teachers seems like a bad idea. The large majority of teachers don't have anything like the training to make it prudent to expect them to win a shootout. Even with the training that they would no doubt be given, what evidence is there that having frightened amateurs attempting to join an attacker in a gun fight would make students safer?

The "arm the teachers" proponents also need to take into account that a majority of Americans choose not to own guns, and it isn't at all clear why anyone should think that teachers in general want to carry firearms. No doubt it varies a lot by region and other factors, but most of the grade school teachers near my home seem to be very anti-gun.

Further, the chance that large numbers of guns in the schools not in the control of trained, experienced professionals will lead to accidental shootings, gun thefts by students, use of the guns by teachers in confrontations with students, or other problems has to be taken into account. And as Arthur L. Kellermann (M.D., M.P.H.), et al., found in their study, "Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home," published in the Journal of Trauma 45 (1998): 263-267, in their sample set, among people who injured or killed someone with a gun that they kept in their home, 48% of the shootings were attempted or successful suicides, 30% were homicides, attempted homicides, or assaults with a deadly weapon, 18% were accidental shootings, and 4% were self-defense or justifiable homicides or attempted homicides. Now, teachers may be more responsible than the average gun owner (or may not be), but what data I can find does not encourage me that putting more guns into schools would make them any safer.

Oh good lord, I'll PM scrapper for the full stats. I'm not a true gun nut, but you are quoting the easily accessible scare numbers. Those numbers are half truths just like many of the stats the NRA uses.

Get the data for the "guns in schools" especially public ones because I have never seen that data.

[Devil]

A couple things from the news coverage that are catching my attention.

First, it's early and the proposed legislation could very possibly change, but as it stands now, the **** Feinstein's bill would ban the sale of nearly all semiautomatic weapons. That's fucking insane and would be a complete slap in the face to anyone who owns a weapon for self defense purposes. It would also be a crushing blow to the firearms industry in this country, which is one of the few healthy industries in the nation. Great idea to cripple a thriving industry in the middle of shaky economic times.

Second - it never ceases to amaze me how the media can allow their reporting to be completely emotion based with no regard for reality and no attention to detail. Virtually all the reporting is about what Obama would support and what Cuntstein's bill says and Joe Biden heading efforts and a couple Democrat senators who say they're open to the idea of gun control.

The stories that matter are almost nowhere to be found. The only real question that matters here is if Republicans in the House of Representatives can be swayed to vote in favor of gun control legislation. If not, any efforts for more gun control are dead in the water before they even start. And the likelihood of that happening is extremely low, in my opinion. But you have to look hard to find any of that type of discussion.

When the assault weapons ban was passed in 1994 the Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate and we had a Democrat President. And even then, the Democrats had to use heavy party discipline to push it through. AND the Democrats subsequently got their asses handed to them in the next round of Congressional elections. The climate may have changed enough to get some Democrats to change their stance, but good luck with the Republicans in the House.

[patfromlogan]

You wrote about killing a mob and when responded to, the responder was attacked for not getting your trolling (or something to that effect). Therefore you win if taken seriously, win if not, the logical response being countered either way.

So what are the self-defense value in a 30 clip magazine? Taking out a lynch mob circa 1935 Alabama? Please tell me something good, beneficial, that automatics, held by civilians, have done.

[ChuckWepner]

Oh good lord, I'll PM scrapper for the full stats. I'm not a true gun nut, but you are quoting the easily accessible scare numbers. Those numbers are half truths just like many of the stats the NRA uses.

Get the data for the "guns in schools" especially public ones because I have never seen that data.

Actually, I read the article in J Trauma before posting about it. The numbers are just one study, based on data from 3 cities (Memphis, Seattle, and Galveston), over a period of 18 months. If you have some reason to think that the statistics are atypical, I'll be glad to find that out.

The problem is that non-anecdotal evidence on successful use of guns for self-defense is hard to find. I searched for more recent and more extensive studies in the public health literature before I posted. I'd be very interested in seeing more complete information.

[ChuckWepner]

Get the data for the "guns in schools" especially public ones because I have never seen that data.

Poor wording on my part. I didn't mean to suggest that I have seen additional data on teachers handling guns in schools, just that the limited data I have seen about gun owners in general using them successfully for self-defense vs. other, negative consequences does not make me optimistic about the possible results of arming teachers.

And I'm not an anti-gun nut, either. I would like our school safety policies to be based on rational deliberation concerning evidence about what would make kids safe, in light of what else would be sacrificed for each additional degree of safety.

The people who want to arm teachers in the classroom owe us evidence that it would make things safer; I have seen zero so far.

[Scrapper]

Sigh.

*A 1993 nationwide survey of 4,977 households found that over the previous five years, at least 3.5% of households had members who had used a gun "for self-protection or for the protection of property at home, work, or elsewhere." Applied to the U.S. population, this amounts to 1,029,615 such incidents per year. This figure excludes all "military service, police work, or work as a security guard."[19]

* A 1994 survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Americans use guns to frighten away intruders who are breaking into their homes about 498,000 times per year.[20]

* A 1982 survey of male felons in 11 state prisons dispersed across the U.S. found:[21]

• 34% had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"
• 40% had decided not to commit a crime because they "knew or believed that the victim was carrying a gun"
• 69% personally knew other criminals who had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"[22]
* A 1994 survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that Americans use guns to frighten away intruders who are breaking into their homes about 498,000 times per year.[130]

* According to the CDC, there were about 18,498 gun-related accidents that resulted in death or an emergency room visit during 2001[131] (the earliest year such data is available from the CDC[132]). This is roughly 27 times lower than the CDC's 1994 estimate for the number of times Americans use guns to frighten away intruders who are breaking into their homes.[133]

*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]

[Scrapper]

I can print the whole bibliography, if you want...

[submessenger]

You wrote about killing a mob and when responded to, the responder was attacked for not getting your trolling (or something to that effect). Therefore you win if taken seriously, win if not, the logical response being countered either way.

So what are the self-defense value in a 30 clip magazine? Taking out a lynch mob circa 1935 Alabama? Please tell me something good, beneficial, that automatics, held by civilians, have done.

What is the self-defense value of a 1 round magazine? What amount of ammunition would you suggest as appropriate?

Limiting the vast majority of firearms owners because of the misdeeds of a few is heavy-handed.

Millions of Americans have managed to not kill anyone using their AR-15s:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/us...anted=all&_r=0

Mr. Halbrook, who compiled manufacturing estimates for a lawsuit, said that by a conservative estimate, 3.3 million to 3.5 million AR-15s were made in the United States from 1986 through the first half of this year and were not exported.