Quote:
Originally Posted by EricOKC
Probably because you claimed that ALL people who carry are like those whom you knew.
No, those were not "facts" which you expressed. You used your personal opinion of the actions of a few whom you knew. Actions which you probably interpreted differently than most would because you were privy to information which caused you to see their actions in a negative light - said information being that you knew they carried.
In turn, you projected your biases and limited experience onto everyone, and in the process accused many of us of behavior we find abhorrent.
Sure, no problem. Here you go:
http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/165476.pdf
Read it and LEARN.
Here are the results of another 13 studies which find the number of uses to be between 764k per year and 4.5 million per year.
GunCite: Frequency of Defensive Gun Use in Previous Surveys
In addition, there is the NCVS result which, while substantially smaller than the rest, is STILL orders of magnitude greater than the number of criminal uses at 108,000 times per year.
In short Goober, the number of legal and legitimate uses of a firearm far outstrip the number of criminal uses. On that basis alone, gun ownership is demonstrably of greater benefit than harm. |
If all these people were being saved by their guns then the crime and victimization rates should be much higher in those places where people don't have easy access to guns to protect themselves, but that's not what we see is it?
If Americans prevented 108,000 murders by having guns available, then the streets of Canada should be rivers of blood, but they're not are they?
My theory is that people who carry guns are more likely to be paranoid, and have a distorted view of the world. They are more likely to believe that they are somehow safer by carrying around a weapon, and they are more likely to report that their weapon has saved them.
Your link reports that one woman reported she had used her firearm to protect her from life threatening situations 52 times in the past year.
To me that's a sick person running around with a deadly weapon, while I don't doubt that there are situations where firearms save lives, on the whole I think that they are very rare, and vastly over reported.