In the first nationally representative study to examine the relationship between survey measures of household firearm ownership and state level rates of homicide, researchers at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found that homicide rates among children, and among women and men of all ages, are higher in states where more households have guns.
Analyses…found that states with higher rates of household firearm ownership had significantly higher homicide victimization rates for children, and for women and men. The association between firearm prevalence and homicide was driven by gun-related homicide rates; non-gun-related homicide rates were not significantly associated with rates of firearm ownership.
The survey base for this was immense — 200,000 people — controlled for extraneous factors.
Well duh, its like saying that houses that have pools have a higher rate drownings than houses without pools.
Ever think that states with more murders have more guns? Maybe people are trying to protect themselves from the murders. Why does Washington DC have a huge murder rate, when guns are all but banned? I wonder if Eideard has a “This is a gun free home” sticker on his door?
If you ban guns only outlaws will have guns. Of course that means only outlaws kids will accidentally shoot each other.
I simply hate everything about guns. They’re evil devices designed only to kill and destroy. For those who don’t understand the meaning of “kill”, they are meant to take lives away.
Only the military and the police should be allowed to carry guns. Even the police should only be allowed to because many criminals also carry them.
I wonder if we’ll sucker in more newbies like Ron, today — who haven’t noted prior Posts/Comments?
I’m an occasional handgun hunter and there are 3 guns in the house and 1 in my pickup, Bubba. Doesn’t mean the topic shouldn’t be discussed outside the hallowed halls of the NRA.
If we make sure that the laws for obtaining and distributing guns are sufficiently lax and unenforced, then the gun lobby is content. The criminals can get them cheaply and easily, and as a result the citizens need guns to protect themselves, and business is good and pols get lots of campaign donations. It’s really just that simple. If a few kids kill themselves along the way, the pols and gun lobby seem just fine with that.
For reference I do own a few guns, but I live in the country and I use them for hunting and plunking. The moment I need one for protection is the moment I move somewhere else.
In related news, the automated Smith & Wesson Firearm warehousing facility, where are hundreds of thousands of guns, but no humans, reported NO gun related homicides. Ever.
Idiots kill people. Of course, they’d have to work harder at killing people if the idiots only had bows and arrows, or tires irons or baseball bats. Lack of guns never slowed our ancestors down very much. The real killing with firearms got into the big leagues when governments started buying them en mass.
Don’t recall saying you shouldn’t discuss it. [edited: see comments guide]
The Gun Violence Program supports efforts to bring the firearms industry under comprehensive consumer product health and safety oversight as the most promising long-term strategy for reducing deaths and injuries from handguns and other firearms.
That’s the stated goal of the Joyce Foundation. (Gun control.) Guess who paid for the study?
Recent studies have shown that 98.34% of foundations with agendas which fund studies result in studies that support the overall mission of the foundation funding the study. Rocket scientists need not apply.
Anyway, if you read the brief and misleading article linked here, it appears that their main conclusion is that guns kept in a home are a source of guns for criminals… NOT that homeowners with guns are likely to hurt themselves or family members. Thus… it’s misleading from the outset. Of course, counting guns in individual homes and then looking at crime rates for the state as a whole is practically meaningless anyway. There is no provable correlation involved. It’s smoke and mirrors; typical of anti-gun propoganda.
Shhhhh! Careful, you’ll wake the NRA.
It always puzzels me why the anit-gun majority can’t get a counter lobby going on the order of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Although I suspect it may have something to do with the fact that victims of drunk driving accidents probably weren’t as concentrated in poor urban areas as the homicide rates are.
Statistics never lie, but liars often use statistics.
Statistics are worthless IMHO in this case. Considering the sheer number of studies that show a reduced crime rate in areas with higher firearm ownership or even mandatory ownership.
#4
> They’re evil devices designed only to kill and destroy
Not true. In the military, it is more effective to wound than to kill because it requires the enemy to expend more resources in dealing with wounded soldiers than dead ones.
> Only the military and the police should be allowed to carry guns.
You have taken your first step into a tyranny. Disarming the populace makes military rule substantially easier.
“I simply hate everything about guns. They’re evil devices designed only to kill and destroy. For those who don’t understand the meaning of “kill”, they are meant to take lives away.
Only the military and the police should be allowed to carry guns. Even the police should only be allowed to because many criminals also carry them. ”
You don’t see anything bad that could result if the above became reality? You are going to restrict the liberty of others because you are afraid? What gives you the right to impose your morals on others? I don’t see what gives anyone the right to strip another’s access to self defense. The police are not going to be able to save everyone. They are the clean up crew. They come to the scene of the crime in most instances after a crime has been committed.
OO yass, by all means, let’s make gun possession illegal. Stick-up artists, murderers, gangbangers, they’re well known for obeying the law.
It’s like the morons we have in Texas, Florida and other states with concealed-carry permits. These microcephalics fought for and got a law letting them post notices saying “Possession of a firearm, licensed or unlicensed, on these premises is prohibited.”
You really have to wonder about the stupidity – or insanity – that leads to worrying about the actions of law-abiding citizens who – it has been conclusively proven I might add – present no threat to anyone other than violent criminals. Of course, they’re the very same morons who claimed that the passage of concealed-carry would lead to gunfights everywhere. They were utterly 100% wrong, it didn’t happen – but since when has that ever changed the mind of a PC ideologue?
I trust the average pernit-holding armed citizen more than I do many cops of my acquaintance.
So Admitteth The Ghoti
“I trust the average pernit-holding armed citizen more than I do many cops of my acquaintance.” They very people that make this republic great.
“Only the military and the police should be allowed to carry guns. Even the police should only be allowed to because many criminals also carry them. ”
And what about the state of the governement today, or what it could become, says that having an un-armed population is a good idea?
Gotta love the liberals and their simple minded ways. So the very government that you say every day is taking away freedoms and is inching torward tyranny is the SAME government you want to give total control to. Does this make any sense? Do you trust the government to always do what is in the citizens best interest? Based on what? Past record of doing so? Since when?
I grew up in a rural area with two brothers and a sister. We all used firearms from an early age. Guess what? We all grew up and none of us got shot or shot anybody else. Do you know why? Because we had good parents and we children had common sense. We took the NRA gun safety courses as a family.
My conclusion? Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Guns just make it easy.
[edited: see comments guide]
It was a telephone survey. We all know how accurate they are.
Also quoting the article…
“Analyses that controlled for several measures of resource deprivation, urbanization, aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, and alcohol consumption found that states with higher rates of household firearm ownership had significantly higher homicide victimization rates for children, and for women and men. ”
So the idea was to remove all other reasons for murder.
Add to my message above that you can’t even see the study with out paying.
#21 — looks more like they set aside all your usual rationales.
“There are 3 types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics”
“I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him. ”
“If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill always came together, who would escape hanging? ”
– Mark Twain
“You have taken your first step into a tyranny. Disarming the populace makes military rule substantially easier.”
Yes. I’m certain a well armed populace, carrying shotguns and pawn shop-bought handguns will easily defeat a military only armed with stealth fighters, armored tanks, Blackhawk copters and tactical nuclear weapons. Those Navy Seals and other special forces types are toast once they get a piece of Bubba’s squirrel shooter.
20#
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Amendment II, US Constitution
“I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.”
— George Mason, in Debates in Virginia Convention on
Ratification of the Constitution, Elliot, Vol. 3, June 16, 1788
“Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress shall have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American … The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the People.”
— Tench Coxe, 1788.
There is the right to own a gun. I don’t see any place where it say ‘except when….’
“Yes. I’m certain a well armed populace, carrying shotguns and pawn shop-bought handguns will easily defeat a military only armed with stealth fighters, armored tanks, Blackhawk copters and tactical nuclear weapons. Those Navy Seals and other special forces types are toast once they get a piece of Bubba’s squirrel shooter.”
Dont agree with you there, seems to be working pretty well against our government forces in Iraq.
“You really have to wonder about the stupidity – or insanity – that leads to worrying about the actions of law-abiding citizens who – it has been conclusively proven I might add – present no threat to anyone other than violent criminals.”
Hey fish — maybe you’ve missed the statistics of the thousands of gun injuries and deaths from accidents, kids getting into the guns, and not to mention all the drunk yahoos with guns. Guns transform a harmless situation where two drunks are trying to duke it out into a deadly one. Hell, I just read within the last few days where one guy shot another guy over an argument about how tall James Brown really was. (Turns out he wore shoe lifts — who knew?)
I think we have a lot more ignernt yahoos shooting their kids, themselves, and each other by accident or in a drunken rage than shooting home invaders.
But hey, it’s a free country and you’re free to be as stupid as you want. However, willful stupidity shouldn’t be free, so I think that people who own guns should pay more in homeowner’s insurance, health insurance, etc., because of the clear correlation between death & injury and the possession of guns.
And another thing — keeping guns as a check against the government might have worked back when the citizens had muskets and the government had muskets and cannons. But now, the citizens have handguns and hunting rifles, and the government has machine guns, grenades, bombs, tanks, planes, etc. Give it up — armed rebellion is no longer possible.
“And another thing — keeping guns as a check against the government might have worked back when the citizens had muskets and the government had muskets and cannons. But now, the citizens have handguns and hunting rifles, and the government has machine guns, grenades, bombs, tanks, planes, etc. Give it up — armed rebellion is no longer possible.”
Again, tell that to the Iraqi’s. So you mean to tell me that if/when the government or another armed force invades you will welcome them into your home? Not me, not without a fight.
If you havent noticed, throughout history it is the people willing to fight for freedom that allow the people who wont fight to live.
I don’t see how a responsible person owning a gun and keeping it in their house could be a cause for high murder rates….
“I think we have a lot more ignernt yahoos shooting their kids, themselves, and each other by accident or in a drunken rage than shooting home invaders.”
THE FACTS
There are approximately two million defensive gun uses (DGU’s) per year by law abiding citizens. That was one of the findings in a national survey conducted by Gary Kleck, a Florida State University criminologist in 1993. Prior to Dr. Kleck’s survey, thirteen other surveys indicated a range of between 800,000 to 2.5 million DGU’s annually. However these surveys each had their flaws which prompted Dr. Kleck to conduct his own study specifically tailored to estimate the number of DGU’s annually.
Subsequent to Kleck’s study, the Department of Justice sponsored a survey in 1994 titled, Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms (text, PDF). Using a smaller sample size than Kleck’s, this survey estimated 1.5 million DGU’s annually.
There is one study, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which in 1993, estimated 108,000 DGU’s annually. Why the huge discrepancy between this survey and fourteen others? Who paid for the study? hmmm, still a huge number.
#32….And it probably was Bill Clinton’s fault.