To Arm, or not, ???????

Glad to see that you aknowledge that pro-gun statistics can be and are heavily skewed

No I said that this site is a bit over the top and to view their mode of interpretation with a grain of salt.

I put that one up as it is as skewed in attitude as the sites from the anti-firearm people.
I would take some of their stats with a grain of salt.

Glad to see that you aknowledge that pro-gun statistics can be and are heavily skewed

As far as the murder rates in the UK and US are concerned, how can you “skew”, “interpret” “analyse” them in any other way than CD has above. Are you suggesting that the murder by firearm statistics given in the government documents are a falsified?

We’ll never know but in principle any emotional irrational knee jerk response is never the best way of making rational decisions about anything.

I was interested to read, in wiki admittedly, that apart from Irish terrorist attacks there have been five gun massacres in the UK in the past century or so since 1842. 1966, 1980, 1987, 1996 and 2010.

‘Knee-jerk’? Certainly. But the wrong decision?

All stemming from the knee jerk reaction to Dunblane, if I remember correctly.

Hand guns are not classed a prohibited weapon. It’s just that you have to have a damned good reason to own one…

That’s news to me; I thought even our Olympic shooting team had to train in the Cannel Islands?

Well, I’m very happy to hear you admit that the ‘americangunfacts.com’ site is skewed! 🙂

Frankly, I couldn’t give a damn about gun-control (or lack thereof) in the United States but I do object to anybody trying to suggest that the strict gun-control laws in the United Kingdom have led to a society with a greater level of violent crime…

…or that violent crime rates in the United Kingdom are abnormally high compared to the United States!

Been looking at some of the ‘facts’ on that ‘americangunfacts.com’ site and it is clear that some of the statistics have been badly skewed to make it appear that the United Kingdom, a country where handguns are prohibited and where gun-ownership is extremely low, is a country with a higher ‘violent crime’ rate than the United States.

For starters the figure quoted by each gun symbol, 31,672, is presumably the number of people killed by guns in the United States in a given year? (Which year?) If there were eighty times this number of incidences of people using guns to ‘protect a life’ then logically there must have been at least that number of incidences where a life was endangered, and presumably this endangerment was a crime, so let’s call this a ‘violent crime’ shall we…

…so, 31,672 multiplied by eighty makes 2,533,769 incidences of ‘violent crime’!

‘Violent crimes’ so bad that somebody had to pull a gun to protect themselves. That makes 792 ‘violent crimes’ per 100,000 head of population; yet, apparently, the same site quotes only 466 ‘violent crimes’ per 100,000 head of population?

And the murder rates for the United Kingdom when compared to the United States don’t look too good either; in the UK in 2013/2014 there were 537 murders, compared to the USA in 2913 there were 14,196 murders. So with a population of only five times that of the UK, the USA has over twenty-six times as many murders!

So are we still willing to accept that the ‘violent crime’ rate per 100,000 head of population is 2,034 for the United Kingdom and yet only 466 for the United States?

Clearly these cannot be like-for-like ‘violent crime’ statistics!

I put that one up as it is as skewed in attitude as the sites from the anti-firearm people.
I would take some of their stats with a grain of salt.:cool:

C.D. Warren, Hand guns are not classed a prohibited weapon. It’s just that you have to have a damned good reason to own one.And that would be to have to regularly attend a Registered gun club, and some Forces even clearly state that the weapon is left at said gun club when not being used, rather than in a gun safe at the owners home.

Jim

Lincoln .7

Been looking at some of the ‘facts’ on that ‘americangunfacts.com’ site and it is clear that some of the statistics have been badly skewed to make it appear that the United Kingdom, a country where handguns are prohibited and where gun-ownership is extremely low, is a country with a higher ‘violent crime’ rate than the United States.

For starters the figure quoted by each gun symbol, 31,672, is presumably the number of people killed by guns in the United States in a given year? (Which year?) If there were eighty times this number of incidences of people using guns to ‘protect a life’ then logically there must have been at least that number of incidences where a life was endangered, and presumably this endangerment was a crime, so let’s call this a ‘violent crime’ shall we…

…so, 31,672 multiplied by eighty makes 2,533,769 incidences of ‘violent crime’!

‘Violent crimes’ so bad that somebody had to pull a gun to protect themselves. That makes 792 ‘violent crimes’ per 100,000 head of population; yet, apparently, the same site quotes only 466 ‘violent crimes’ per 100,000 head of population?

And the murder rates for the United Kingdom when compared to the United States don’t look too good either; in the UK in 2013/2014 there were 537 murders, compared to the USA in 2013 there were 14,196 murders. So with a population of only five times that of the UK, the USA has over twenty-six times as many murders!

So are we still willing to accept that the ‘violent crime’ rate per 100,000 head of population is 2,034 for the United Kingdom and yet only 466 for the United States?

Clearly these cannot be like-for-like ‘violent crime’ statistics!

So what became of all those apparent rulings of yours that claimed massacres were carried out by the mentally ill? — What are you referring to?

Or..are you saying that gun owners are all mentally stable and therefore have a perfect right to carry out these ‘justifiable’ massacres? – – No only you are creating such asinine rhetoric.

Statistics supplied by or paid for by organisations who have a vested interest in the results they display are of value only if printed out then given to paper recycling companys. — Then all statistics are worthless, period.

With the wealth generated by gun ownership for the NRA they can hardly claim to be unbiased, wouldn’t you agree? All that money they pay out to make sure that voting goes their way in order to preserve their lifestyle, well, they wouldn’t just lose their firearms if they didn’t fight, would they…;o)

Hmmm, who said the NRA was claiming to not be biased other than you?

The NRA and GOA ( Gun Owners of America), merely put out numbers, from government and other authorities who compile them, to show that the liberal anti-firearm rhetoric is a fallacy.

In the UK in 2012 there were 39 homicides by firearm, which was 6% of the homicide figure. 0.07 homicides by firearm per 100,000 of the population

In 2013 there were 29 homicides by firearm, 5% of the homicide figure

In the US in 2012 9146 homicides by firearm, which was 60% of the homicide figure. 2.97 homicides per100,000 of the population

Incidentally, if you read one of the sources cited in the justfacts document, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110314171826/http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs10/hosb0110.pdf
Regarding UK homicides and firearms, it is interesting that JF selected their years quite carefully, using 2007 to show a “15% increase” in homicides since the handgun ban in 1997, yet in 2008 the figure dropped back to the 1997 figure, and it has dropped further by 2012.

They also did not mention the homicide by firearm in the UK was such a low percentage of overall homicides compared to the US
So much for their “standards of credibility”

Nope, go read his link number 3, even those who hate guns could find no real connection.

So what became of all those apparent rulings of yours that claimed massacres were carried out by the mentally ill?

Or..are you saying that gun owners are all mentally stable and therefore have a perfect right to carry out these ‘justifiable’ massacres?

Statistics supplied by or paid for by organisations who have a vested interest in the results they display are of value only if printed out then given to paper recycling companys.

With the wealth generated by gun ownership for the NRA they can hardly claim to be unbiased, wouldn’t you agree? All that money they pay out to make sure that voting goes their way in order to preserve their lifestyle, well, they wouldn’t just lose their firearms if they didn’t fight, would they…;o)

Fact are facts but here is link from this year.

http://americangunfacts.com/

WHOA!!! That’s not pro-gun then!!! :rolleyes: 🙂 🙂 🙂

I’ve no real agenda here but that site’s portrayal of the United Kingdom is not a country that anybody who lives here would recognise!

I know the United States pro-gun lobby would regard a country where the owning of handguns is prohibited and the Police are not even routinely armed as something of an utterly lawless hell-on-earth but the reality is something completely different (as supported by that site’s own figures); I wouldn’t even say it was the ‘most violent’ country in the European Union because the figures for each country are probably collected in completely different ways.

Rpr

You have taken a selective part of a much longer article.

The most relevant part of the whole article you put a link to :

So not only is it directly from the NRA, it is also 20 years out of date and is simple Right Wing Propaganda.

As you say, the facts speak for themselves.

No it is from Duke. Edu using a NRA copyright.

Fact are facts but here is link from this year.

http://americangunfacts.com/

^^On this one get by the over done glitz and clink on the sources if you wish.^^

Here is one pretty much without an agenda, take what it says as you wish.

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

How does the NRA deal with the ‘myth’ that people with access to guns are much more likely to commit massacres than those without access?

If it is ‘only’ the mentally ill who commit mass murders using guns, isn’t there a good possibility that the desire or need for a gun is a sign of mental instability?

Nope, go read his link number 3, even those who hate guns could find no real connection.

How does the NRA deal with the ‘myth’ that people with access to guns are much more likely to commit massacres than those without access?

If it is ‘only’ the mentally ill who commit mass murders using guns, isn’t there a good possibility that the desire or need for a gun is a sign of mental instability?

Rpr

You have taken a selective part of a much longer article.

The most relevant part of the whole article you put a link to :

Copyright October 1994 NRA Institute for Legistlative action.

So not only is it directly from the NRA, it is also 20 years out of date and is simple Right Wing Propaganda.

As you say, the facts speak for themselves.

Nice to read the Statistics, but how many potential Criminals were included in these surveys who would no doubt be holding an illegal weapon and were prepared to commit a Felony?.
Jim
Lincoln .7

Too lazy or unsure of your ground?

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-ownership-and-use/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24054955

http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=1661390

Ah the typical left wing articles based on opinion rather than numbers (facts).

Suicide has nothing to with guns being dangerous, your last link also separates them, here is a article that debunks that fallacy you wish to be true.
I am not going to engage in my truth is better than your truth as facts speak for themselves regardless of those who like to make there opinion more important.

MYTH 3:”Since a gun in a home is many times more likely to kill a family member than to stop a criminal, armed citizens are not a deterrent to crime.”

This myth, stemming from a superficial “study” of firearm accidents in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, represents a comparison of 148 accidental deaths (including suicides) to the deaths of 23 intruders killed by home owners over a 16-year period. 2

Gross errors in this and similar “studies”–with even greater claimed ratios of harm to good–include: the assumption that a gun hasn’t been used for protection unless an assailant dies; no distinction is made between handgun and long gun deaths; all accidental firearm fatalities were counted whether the deceased was part of the “family” or not; all accidents were counted whether they occurred in the home or not, while self-defense outside the home was excluded; almost half the self-defense uses of guns in the home were excluded on the grounds that the criminal intruder killed may not have been a total stranger to the home defender; suicides were sometimes counted and some self-defense shootings misclassified. Cleveland’s experience with crime and accidents during the study period was atypical of the nation as a whole and of Cleveland since the mid-1970s. Moreover, in a later study, the same researchers noted that roughly 10% of killings by civilians are justifiable homicides. 3

The “guns in the home” myth has been repeated time and again by the media, and anti-gun academics continue to build on it. In 1993, Dr. Arthur Kellermann of Emory University and a number of colleagues presented a study that claimed to show that a home with a gun was much more likely to experience a homicide.4 However, Dr. Kellermann selected for his study only homes where homicides had taken place–ignoring the millions of homes with firearms where no harm is done–and a control group that was not representative of American households. By only looking at homes where homicides had occurred and failing to control for more pertinent variables, such as prior criminal record or histories of violence, Kellermann et al. skewed the results of this study. Prof. Kleck wrote that with the methodology used by Kellermann, one could prove that since diabetics are much more likely to possess insulin than non-diabetics, possession of insulin is a risk factor for diabetes. Even Dr. Kellermann admitted this in his study: “It is possible that reverse causation accounted for some of the association we observed between gun ownership and homicide.” Law Professor Daniel D. Polsby went further, “Indeed the point is stronger than that: ‘reverse causation’ may account for most of the association between gun ownership and homicide. Kellermann’s data simply do not allow one to draw any conclusion.”5

Research conducted by Professors James Wright and Peter Rossi,6 for a landmark study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, points to the armed citizen as possibly the most effective deterrent to crime in the nation. Wright and Rossi questioned over 1,800 felons serving time in prisons across the nation and found:

81% agreed the “smart criminal” will try to find out if a potential victim is armed.
74% felt that burglars avoided occupied dwellings for fear of being shot.
80% of “handgun predators” had encountered armed citizens.
40% did not commit a specific crime for fear that the victim was armed.
34% of “handgun predators” were scared off or shot at by armed victims.
57% felt that the typical criminal feared being shot by citizens more than he feared being shot by police.

Professor Kleck estimates that annually 1,500-2,800 felons are legally killed in “excusable self-defense” or “justifiable” shootings by civilians, and 8,000-16,000 criminals are wounded. This compares to 300-600 justifiable homicides by police. Yet, in most instances, civilians used a firearm to threaten, apprehend, shoot at a criminal, or to fire a warning shot without injuring anyone.

Based on his extensive independent survey research, Kleck estimates that each year Americans use guns for protection from criminals more than 2.5 million times annually. 7 U.S. Department of Justice victimization surveys show that protective use of a gun lessens the chance that robberies, rapes, and assaults will be successfully completed while also reducing the likelihood of victim injury. Clearly, criminals fear armed citizens.

2 Rushforth, et al., “Accidental Firearm Fatalities in a Metropolitan County, ” 100 American Journal of Epidemiology 499 (1975).
3 Rushforth, et al., “Violent Death in a Metropolitan County,” 297 New England Journal of Medicine 531, 533 (1977).
4 Kellermann, et al., “Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home,” New England Journal of Medicine 467 (1993).
5 Polsby, “The False Promise of Gun Control,” The Atlantic Monthly, March 1994.
6 Wright and Rossi, Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms (N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter, 1986).
7 Kleck, interview, Orange County Register,Sept. 19, 1993.

http://people.duke.edu/~gnsmith/articles/myths.htm