That’s why it’s concealed. The robber doesn’t know who has a gun, unless they’re banned, then they’re safe.
Comment on Concealed Handguns Create a Climate of Fear, Gun Industry Research Reveals
Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works 2 days agoUnless you are in a position where you are aware something worth defending yourself with a gun is happening, and you have enough time to access that gun, and ready yourself, you will likely not get to use it to defend yourself. In fact, if someone, willing to do a stick-up, notices something that tips them off to you having a gun, you become a more desirable target, guns are expensive, and easy to fence. They will have their gun drawn before you really notice they are there, then it is very unlikely trying to defend yourself will do anything but get you shot.
Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
You might be surprised how often it is easy to tell someone has a concealed gun, if you know what you are looking for.
Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Yeah. With lengthy observation that is NOT going to happen with a robbery. This isn’t a heist movie.
Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
It doesn’t even take lengthy observation most of the time. Most people are bad at concealing that they have a gun, especially in a way where moving doesn’t make it obvious. There is also the issue that the better something is concealed the slower it is to pull, and more obvious it is you are trying to access it.
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
This just leads to people bringing weapons with them when they commit crimes as they may also need to defend themselves.
To be fair though if you live in a high crime area there might not be a good answer for how to protect yourself.
ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
You’d think that, and then a guy pulls a knife on you and your GF in a walmart parking lot. You have ample time to get to your belt, in fact you have so much time that when time you touch the grip you can give him the “you sure?” look without even pulling it, and he can go “sure not” and turn and walk away to rob someone else. Happened to me, went in and bought my bread instead of whatever that guy had in mind.
Just because sometimes you’re in a Kobayashi Maru and phasers won’t help doesn’t mean you never need phasers or that they never help.
Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
This conversation is not that it NEVER happens, it is addressing why the stats where someone defends themselves with a gun are so low. In practice, defending yourself from armed thieves just gets you killed, or badly injured, the vast majority of the time. If that person had a gun, was standing out initial grabbing distance, and you hadn’t pulled your gun yet, you going to touch that grip would have likely just gotten you shot, and left bleeding in that parking lot, as the person ran off.
ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
Debatable. Define “low” and define what we’re counting as defensive use of a firearm.
The lowest estimate for Defensive Gun Use (hereafter referred to as DGU) we have is 100k/yr, done by Harvard and only using verifiable police reports where the defender killed the attacker. That entirely discounts situations like mine, in which the attacker was scared off by the mere presence of a firearm without a shot being fired. 100k/yr is still more than our gun deaths/yr, so if that’s “low” then our gun deaths incl homicide, accidents, and suicide is too. And even if it is low, I bet the individuals in question are happy to have had it when they did need it and could use it.
The other commonly cited estimate is by Gary Kleck and John Lott, and used to be on the CDC’s website (not sure if still is, but it can be found.) They estimated between 500k and 3mil DGU/yr, and includes situations like mine. Whether or not you want to discount them, the numbers are still higher than I’d call “low.”
Of course drawing from the drop is bad practice, nobody advises it, but you positioning it as a guarantee is clearly not the case at least 100k times/yr. In real reality, defensive gun use happens all the time.
Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Daniel Webster SC.D.; Jens Ludwig Ph.D. 2000 is a paper just dismantling the methodology, and data, behind the Kleck-Lott study. There are, apparently, a lot of studies picking this one apart, but this is the one I was familiar with before this. Basically they manufactured their results to get the conclusion they wanted. Even the best studies acknowledge from suffering from things like the telescoping effect, significantly. With Kleck and Lott, they often make arguments even their own study refutes, but they are hoping most people never actually read it, especially people who have training on reading academic papers. This article has a pretty good, bullet point style, break down of how they report what their study vs what it says, and some of the underlying issues of it, and other studies of it’s type. Here is a paper discussing how this data is collected, confirmed, and reported, and why things like the National Crime Victimization Survey, always come up so much lower (recently mid 80k range). Basically a study on methodology in this line of research.
The Harvard number you cite comes from studies that estimate 60-120k DGU’s per year. They also caution that going to the higher end requires some very loose interpretation, and inclusion, of data. Their research leads them to the conclusion that MOST reported DGU’s stem from escalating fights, from arguments, between two people, and not from someone targeted to be a victim, like a robbery, etc., defending themselves. The majority of DGU’s in home held weapons are used to intimidate family, and close friends, rather than third party assailants, and the defenses here are super varied, and often make the person reporting the DGU the criminal actor. Here is what Harvard has to say about the subject.