Comment on Concealed Handguns Create a Climate of Fear, Gun Industry Research Reveals
Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works 2 days agoThis 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.
ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Again no matter which you choose to go by, it’s hard for me to call it “low.” I suppose to a point that’s subjective, but even your lowest number, 60k, is on par with our total gun deaths/yr including accidents, homicides, and suicides. So, if it’s low than that’s low too.
Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
You gloss over the context of where most of that number comes from. It doesn’t come defending yourself against some third party who has targeted you for some form of victimization. It comes from people reporting how they used their gun to intimidate someone who they were arguing with, as defending themselves with a gun. Mostly people close to them. Which normal people don’t actually consider a valid reason to say they defended themselves from crime.