Posted: 6/1/2011 1:15:50 PM EDT
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I was recently having a discussion with my anti-gun liberal left wing brother when he told me that firearms are #1 when it comes to homicide in the USA.
I thought the order was objects (fists, bricks, vases, etc), sharps (knives, swords, axes), then guns in final order. Anyway, he shared this with me: http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_07.html Is this because of biased reporting? Does anyone here have any insight into this? Just a query in my local newspaper reveals that most murders here in my sleepy town of 50k in the past few years were done with fire, bricks, cars, and knives and only occasionally a firearm. Appreciate a response as my smug liberal brother is really rubbing it in. |
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instead of trying to hit him headlong with his own data (even though it does seem skewded to me), do some research on the numbers of murders/assaults/robberies/rapes etc that are STOPPED or AVOIDED because someone had access to a firearm.
Just think there were "only" just over 15k murders in the entire US (over 300million people) in 2009. Imagine how many crimes were potentially stopped because someone had access to a firearm, i'd be willing to bet that the numbers for that are in alot higher. J- |
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Around here, most murders are committed with firearms.
However most of our murders are drug related, in one way or another, with very, very few domestic murders or agg. Assaults. I would wager that most "heat of the moment" homicides use whatever is at hand, usually knives. |
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Quoted:
Around here, most murders are committed with firearms. However most of our murders are drug related, in one way or another, with very, very few domestic murders or agg. Assaults. I would wager that most "heat of the moment" homicides use whatever is at hand, usually knives. Here in the City 99% of our homicides are gangbanger on gangbanger |
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Well, all my internet searches (including the FBI) say that he's right. This sux. The point of my previous post - if people are going to murder one another, what difference does it make how they do it? People killed each other long before gunpowder was invented, let alone the gun. People who choose to use this "statistic" as a means to point out that guns are somehow "bad" are looking for any means to persuade their argument, because they have such limited ammunition available (pun intended) in which to make their argument. They are grasping at straws. It's a meaningless datapoint. |
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I was taught that when it came to rape, the weapon of choice was something that scared the woman through the threat of disfigurement. Whether or not that is true, this article shows that in sexual homicide, the preferred weapon of choice is something more "intimate" than a gun (although the article does point out that overall, for all murders, guns rank up there).
Overall and on numbers alone, the other side will probably win the argument.....at least as long as guns are available. Considering, however, how often people off others and one method over another may be more desirable to a killer, for example in that a strangler has more control over when their victim will die, taking guns out of the equation will probably not solve much of anything. _______________________________________________ ("The convicted has his choice of methods. Death by phaser fire, death by hanging, death of gas, death by electrocution, death by.....,"––Spock "Mr. Spock, the key word in all of that is DEATH."––Harry Mudd, (w,stte), ST:TOS "I, Mudd") |
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in my completely un-scientific and unresearched observation of murders in my area, the vast majority are committed by gang members, with drugs being the motivation, and firearms used to do the deed. After that, its domestic related, with guns still being used. Knives, blunt objects, etc are actually a rarity 'round these parts. |
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Of course guns are being used.
If there were no guns then knives or cars would be used - like in countries where its difficult to get a gun. Its not the gun, its the person. You can put a gun on a table for a thousand years and it'll never kill anyone. Tell your brother he needs to worry about the people using the guns on each other, not the guns themselves. |
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Quoted:
do some research on the numbers of murders/assaults/robberies/rapes etc that are STOPPED or AVOIDED because someone had access to a firearm.
J- I am pretty sure that you won't find statistics on crimes that didn't happen...just a thought.  ORLY? Ever hear of Kleck, Gertz, Cook or Ludwig? Gun Owners of America 2004 Fact Sheet * Guns are used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year—or about 6,850 times a day.1 This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.2
* Even anti-gun Clinton researchers concede that guns are used 1.5 million times annually for self-defense. According to the Clinton Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of self-defense with a firearm every year. The National Institute of Justice published this figure in 1997 as part of "Guns in America"—a study which was authored by noted anti-gun criminologists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig.3 1 Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun," 86 The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, 1 (Fall 1995):164. Dr. Kleck is a professor in the school of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He has researched extensively and published several essays on the gun control issue. His book, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, has become a widely cited source in the gun control debate. In fact, this book earned Dr. Kleck the prestigious American Society of Criminology Michael J. Hindelang award for 1993. This award is given for the book published in the past two to three years that makes the most outstanding contribution to criminology. Even those who don't like the conclusions Dr. Kleck reaches, cannot argue with his impeccable research and methodology. In "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed," Marvin E. Wolfgang writes that, "What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator. . . . I have to admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and this research. Can it be true that about two million instances occur each year in which a gun was used as a defensive measure against crime? It is hard to believe. Yet, it is hard to challenge the data collected. We do not have contrary evidence." Wolfgang, "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed," The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, at 188. Wolfgang says there is no "contrary evidence." Indeed, there are more than a dozen national polls—one of which was conducted by The Los Angeles Times—that have found figures comparable to the Kleck-Gertz study. Even the Clinton Justice Department (through the National Institute of Justice) found there were as many as 1.5 million defensive users of firearms every year. See National Institute of Justice, "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," Research in Brief (May 1997). As for Dr. Kleck, readers of his materials may be interested to know that he is a member of the ACLU, Amnesty International USA, and Common Cause. He is not and has never been a member of or contributor to any advocacy group on either side of the gun control debate. 2 According to the National Safety Council, the total number of gun deaths (by accidents, suicides and homicides) account for less than 30,000 deaths per year. See Injury Facts, published yearly by the National Safety Council, Itasca, Illinois. 3 Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," NIJ Research in Brief (May 1997); available at http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/165476.txt. The finding of 1.5 million yearly self-defense cases did not sit well with the anti-gun bias of the study’s authors, who attempted to explain why there could not possibly be one and a half million cases of self-defense every year. Nevertheless, the 1.5 million figure is consistent with a mountain of independent surveys showing similar figures. The sponsors of these studies—nearly a dozen—are quite varied, and include anti-gun organizations, news media organizations, governments and commercial polling firms. See also Kleck and Gertz, supra note 1, pp. 182-183. 
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