Comment on Concealed Handguns Create a Climate of Fear, Gun Industry Research Reveals
Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works 2 days agoDaniel 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.
ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I mean most kidnappings are from family or friends, not strangers. Most rapes are from family and friends, not strangers. It’s not outside of the realm of possibility to actually have to defend yourself against family or friends. In fact if it follows the trend it’d be more likely than having to defend yourself from strangers. Hell my friend’s house was broken into and he was pistol whipped by a masked dude, and everyone in the house said the same thing, “It was [Name Redacted], I would recognize that voice anywhere.” He had been our friend, y’know, until the armed home invasion. None of us had a gun at the time though unfortunatly, but had they one and it was used, it would have been used to defend against said “friend.” Not a stranger, a “friend.” Another friend in that same neighborhood pulled up to another mutual friend to (admittedly) sell him 2oz of weed, and that mutual friend stabbed him. That’s two people who were supposedly “friends.” The one that happened to me at walmart was a stranger, but as the data and my empirical evidence suggest, actually having to defend yourself from someone you know is more common, so, yeah I’m not surprised by that and never argued the opposite. My argument was that regardless of one’s familiarity with the attacker, DGU happens at a higher rate than “low.”
(Home invader did time in prison for robbing a gas station with a shotgun after this. Idk if he’s out now or what, that was the last I heard of him. No clue what became of stabby either, but stabee is doing fine now, took up a trade.)
Duh “most DGU stems from escalating arguments,” if an argument gets heated enough that someone needs to defend themselves however, they still need to defend themselves. Sure “letting the argument get to the point where uncle Steve pulls a knife” is “socially undesirable,” but if uncle Steve pulls a knife, he’s still pulled a knife. Whether or not you find it “socially undesirable,” if it happens then it happens. Not everything that takes place on this earth is “socially desirable.” While you should take steps to deescalate the situation, those don’t always work, maybe Steve likes meth (which is also socially undesirable, yet prevalent), whatever the reason, if they don’t work and Steve pulls the knife, as far as I’m concerned it’s more socially undesirable for me to be stabbed, uncle or not.
Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
It is called a crime, and if you read further into what harvard talks about this.