In the wake of the Las Vegas spree killing, gun control advocates are busy advocating for gun control. This they do by trotting out various facts to try to undermine the case for gun rights. One of the most common: your gun is far more likely to kill you or someone in your home than save you from a violent attack . . .
Here’s how The New York Times rolls that into their editorial Guns Aren’t a Bulwark Against Tyranny. The Rule of Law Is (set to be fully fisked later):
Stories about the use of guns in self-defense — a good guy with a gun dispensing with a bad guy with a gun — are legion among gun enthusiasts and conservative talk radio hosts.
But a 1998 study in The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, to take one of many examples, found that “every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides and 11 attempted or completed suicides.”
That means a gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, an accidental death or injury, a suicide attempt or a homicide than it is for self-defense.
Notice the weasel words “a gun in the home.” That totally discounts guns used for self-defense in the workplace or on the street. Also notice no mention is made of the number of defensive gun uses(DGUs).
Even the most stalwart [anti] gun researchers place the number of DGUs at between 55k and 80k per year. Other estimates place the number well over a million. Either way, firearms freedom is a net positive for society.
But here’s the thing: the antis’ “gun owners are inviting death into their homes” stat don’t apply to you.
You are a responsible gun owner. You understand the danger that guns (and other items in your home) pose if misused or abused. So you secure your gun, follow the four rules of gun safety and teach your children how to safely and responsibly handle firearms.
You are not mentally ill. You keep your firearms secure, especially if someone in your home is suffering from mental illness. You don’t abuse your spouse or children. You are not a gang banger or a drug dealer.
You don’t live in the kill zones of Detroit, LA, Houston and other cities suffering the majority of this country’s non-suicide firearms-related homicides.
In short, the statisticians are lumping you in with populations who have a FAR higher risk of a gun in their home being used to harm to themselves or family members. A fact that businessinsider.com — the publication supplying these charts post-Las vegas spree killing — admits:
The chart above does not account for a person’s specific behaviors, age, sex, location, or other factors that can shift the results; it’s an average of the entire US population. But it clearly show gun violence is a leading cause of death in the US.
Does it? Even ignoring the disclaimer, “assault by gun” is, by their reckoning, the 14th “leading” cause of death in the United States.
Anyway, in case you hadn’t figured it out, the antis are using their skewed data to try to take away YOUR guns.
To stop you from exercising your natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms to protect your family. To hunt. To target practice. To defend yourself, your family, your community and your country from tyranny. Or for whatever reason you desire.
Over at The New York Times, at least, that’s 100 percent true.
Your chances of dying have nothing to do with their “chances of protecting you” (which is only safe to assume is ZERO). You know what happened after ~ 2001 when Oklahoma legislators repealed car and truck inspection requirements ? Not a fing thing, except that the state inspection stations lost the fees. MV accidents didn’t spike, the people who maintained their vehicles still did, and those who didn’t STILL DIDN’T. The government isn’t protecting you from sh_t, and people don’t let them know enough that we’re not expecting them to.
Pay your taxes and take your chances.
“Guns Aren’t a Bulwark Against Tyranny. The Rule of Law Is ”
The Rule of Law can’t get out of bed in the morning without enough of a coalescence of a population imbued with Societal Agreement to EVEN FORM (MUCH LESS CODIFY) THE LAW [J.M. Thomas R., TERMS, 2012]. Nobody’s going to allow the Rule of Law to get out of bed if they think it’s only going to be used to wage war against them. The same goes for government, and despite the best intentions, no government in the world has lasted more than ~ 100 years in its original form (i.e., regulation springs up in a variety of places that are fostered by the security of government UNDER Societal Agreement). So we might need to chuck this one some time.
KEEP YOUR GUNS FOR THE END OF AMERICA. You might get a say in what comes next, but your RTKABA will last until JESUS comes back.
For the record, CDC declared in 2014 that death by accidental gunshot rated position 100 on the list of causes of death in the US. Homicide due to gun use checked-in at number 107.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr65/nvsr65_05.pdf
Dat’s uh fac, Jack. An’ dat’s de name of dat tune.
That diatribe is so old coming from the left, rocks don’t live that long! As for the above list, scratch off heart attack, car accident, falling, any other accident, and assault with firearm. Been there, done that and I’m still alive because I chose to shoot back! It continually amazes me how many democrats and liberals are responsible for most of the mass shootings, assassination attempts, deranged shooters and murders. A serious study once came up with a figure of well over 55% of all those were by those individuals. All assassination attempts were liberal or democratic. So perhaps an appropriate statement would be if “democrats or liberals have a gun in their hands or possession, your odds of being shot are 1 in 256!” So the serious discussions on gun control they have been crying for are to find ways to keep firearms out of the hands of liberals and democrats.
Even though CDC rates “gun death” at 100 or lower on the list of causes of death, I am willing to accept that in homes, offices and vehicles of people who are afraid of guns, people who want to confiscate all the legally owned guns, the risk of death or injury due to a gun being present is likely markedly higher than for the rest of the population.
“””Here’s how The New York Times rolls that into their editorial Guns Aren’t a Bulwark Against Tyranny. The Rule of Law Is (set to be fully fisked later):””
NY times—when laws fail to protect…guns don’t fail to protect freedom!!!
Then we should take the guns away from the cops and give them to the criminals. That way, if they try to use them, we can just take them away and use the guns on them because they’re the ones in danger from having guns.
BRILLIANT! !
Except you forgot that in some cases the criminals are already better armed than the police.
The rule of law is a bulwark against tyranny? Bullshit. If tyrants are making the laws, then the rule of law IS tyranny.
You know who had great, strong, well-enforced laws? Nazi Germany. Soviet Russia. Fascist Italy. China has a very orderly and law-oriented government. Great Britain was very interested in the rule of law; everything it did to precipitate the American Revolution was duly enacted through established legal authority.
The list could go on. As a small-time example closer to home, there’s the egregiously named NY SAFE Act. But the NYT looooves that one. It’s not tyranny we’re doing it to you for your own good. (Right… And if you jump off the top of the Times office building at the next full moon, you’ll fly right up to the stars. Why don’t you have your editorial board give that a try?)
Rule of law? Like restrictions on guns such as CA and MA despite the law (constitution is the highest law of the land). Like snooping on American people, reading emails, etc? Rule of law seems to be a bit malleable. Slavery was the law. Jim Crow laws were the law. Segregation was the law….
Rule of law only protects against tyranny so long as tyrants do not write the laws.
Slavery
Segregation
Jim Crow
Jewish Registration
Japanese Internment
Honor Killings
No Female Voting
No Black Voting
These were or are laws in various areas of the world. So please Mr. NYT Editorial Board Guy tell me how did the Rule of Law allow this to happen?
It’s not tyranny if champagne-swilling progressives are doing it to us for our own good.
I ate an MRE for lunch today. I’m bout to fill a bottle with something they can swill and after said swilling promptly expire.
And WHO made that lamebrain judgement that progressives had any viable thought processes or an IQ larger than their dicks/bra size? From the outright violence we have seen from the entire left wing mob, they certainly have no right to decide anything for anyone!
Without guns in the 1700’s and 1800’s, we would be under the law of the British king…
actually that makes your odds of death by gun about 1 in 1433 unless im doing math wrong or you can die of multiple causes. 1433 (7+7+20+28+30+30+43+53+73+84+95+96+114+127+256+370) people, 14 deaths. now i am kind of curious how the other 1429 people in this study died. or are they they the control group and they get to live forever?
This is a stupid and tired old canard, rather like saying owning a car puts you at risk of drunk driving. Average risk has nothing to do with the distribution of risk, and some people and some homes are much riskier than others! For the vast majority, this does not apply.
http://peopleofarms.com/does-having-a-gun-make-you-less-safe/
“…rather like saying owning a car puts you at risk of drunk driving. ”
Actually….
The proper relationship description is, “People who drive or ride in automobiles have a much greater risk of dying in an automobile than people who do not drive or ride in automobiles.”
I know how dangerous my guns are, so I keep them away from bright light, won’t let them get wet and never feed them after midnight.
So far, so good.
Meh!!! A lot of my friends have always laughed at me for carrying and would say I would have a better chance of being hit by lightening before getting shot at. I know about 20,000+ people in Vegas who would disagree
Did we leave out chance of being shot by the constabulary? I dare you to take out one of your tail lights. 🙂
What bites the antis who run stats on me is this. There are 3-4 hundred million guns in America then statistically if they were a problem there would be a lot more carnage.
They go,”oh, yeah.”
Fiscally conservative and socially liberal? like a car that runs on air
Let me spell it out for you:
As a fiscal conservative, I want a balanced budget, and virtual elimination of deficits (and debt). As a social liberal, I want everyone to have everything they want.
Klar?
Is it really necessary?
“But a 1998 study in The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, to take one of many examples, found that “every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides and 11 attempted or completed suicides.”
That means a gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, an accidental death or injury, a suicide attempt or a homicide than it is for self-defense.”
1) That JTACS study did not separate prohibited criminals who own firearms from the great majority of firearms owners who legally possess firearms. More than 97 out of 100 of unintentional shootings, criminal assaults, and homicides in homes of firearms owners, are in the 3% of the Us that owns firearms illegally, typically because they are life long criminals. Having a criminal domiciled in the home is the risk factor. Remaining households with firearms, those with legal gun owners markedly safer than households that have no firearm.
AS far as suicide, there is no elevation whatsoever when one controls for gender, age, employment status, rural, suburban and other known risk factors. and uses self inflicted death by means associated with suicide
The simple fact is owning a firearm makes a household safer than not owning one.
2) the study cited by the Times does not include defense gun uses in which the gun is not fired. It excludes not just the majority but the huge majority over 99% of the time when brandishment prevents the crime