NRA Hijinks

Tsing Tao said:
Regarding that "study". Sure speaks volumes to how well you fare in all those global warming threads when you use statistical nonsense "studies" like that one.

22 Times Less Safe? Anti-Gun Lobby's Favorite Spin Re-Attacks Guns In The Home

Is a firearm in your home "22 times more likely" to be used to kill or injure a family member than to be used for protection? Or "43 times more likely?" How about "18 times more likely?" Anti-gun groups and politicians say it is, citing research by Arthur L. Kellermann, M.D.

Dr. Kellermann's dubious conclusions provide anti-gunners propaganda they use to try to frighten Americans into voluntarily disposing of their guns—in essence, to do to themselves what the anti-gunners have been unable to do to them by legislative, regulatory, or judicial means.

Kellermann admits to the political goal of his work, saying "People should be strongly discouraged from keeping guns in their homes." ("Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home," New England Journal of Medicine, Oct. 1993.) Anti-gun groups have seized upon his most recent attempt in this regard, a "study" from which the bogus "22 times more likely" risk-benefit ratio is derived. ("Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home," Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection and Critical Care, Aug. 1998.) The study suffers numerous flaws common to previous Kellermann efforts, including the fact that it is a very small-scale survey of sample jurisdictions that are not representative of the country or even of one another.

Most significant, though, Kellermann severely understates defensive uses of guns, by counting only those in which criminals are killed or injured. Dr. Edgar A. Suter, writing in the Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia, explains the error in the context of an earlier Kellermann study, which compared family member deaths to killings of criminals:

"The true measure of the protective benefits of guns are the lives saved, the injuries prevented, the medical costs saved, and the property protected—not the burglar or rapist body count. Since only 0.1% to 0.2% of defensive gun usage involves the death of the criminal, any study, such as this, that counts criminal deaths as the only measure of the protective benefits of guns will expectedly underestimate the benefits of firearms by a factor of 500 to 1,000." ("Guns in the Medical Literature—A Failure of Peer Review," March 1994, p. 134.)

Similarly, criminologist Gary Kleck notes, "More commonly, guns are merely pointed at another person, or perhaps referred to or displayed, and this sufficient to accomplish the ends of the user." (Targeting Guns, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997, p. 162.) Kleck's 1995 landmark survey of defensive gun uses found guns used for protection as many as 2.5 million times annually, a number much smaller, obviously, than the number of criminals killed or wounded. ("Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Fall 1995.)

Kellermann's "22 times more likely" study suffers yet another flaw: only 14.2% of criminal gun-related homicides and assaults he surveyed involved guns kept in the homes where the crimes occurred. With a similar sloppiness in his "43 times more likely" study, suicides (never shown to correlate to gun ownership) accounted for the overwhelming majority of gun-related family member deaths he pretended to compare to defensive gun uses.



Yes, if you're ever held up at gun point, please try your favorite karate moves and see how well that works out for you. I'm serious. Because this forum, at least, would benefit from your experience in that regard.
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So you would like to see me killed. You're a prime example of the type person that should not be allowed to have guns. You are obviously mentally unstable.
 
futurecurrents said:
So you would like to see me killed. You're a prime example of the type person that should not be allowed to have guns. You are obviously mentally unstable.
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No, what I'd like to see (or read about) is some idiot who tried karate on a thug holding a gun on him. That'd be Darwinism alright!

If that idiot is you, I wouldn't be surprised, or lose sleep.
 
Tsing Tao said:
No, what I'd like to see (or read about) is some idiot who tried karate on a thug holding a gun on him. That'd be Darwinism alright!

If that idiot is you, I wouldn't be surprised, or lose sleep.
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But I would not do that. I would give him my money. An idiot like you would pull a gun on someone robbing you and get shot dead rather than just being robbed. Of course most of the idiot gun nuts would also do the same so you're not alone.
 
futurecurrents said:
But I would not do that. I would give him my money. An idiot like you would pull a gun on someone robbing you and get shot dead rather than just being robbed. Of course most of the idiot gun nuts would also do the same so you're not alone.
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A little disconnect between what you said here:

futurecurrents said:
As the study above shows, self defense is no rational argument for owning a gun. Any martial arts lesson would be more useful here. Especially because these lessons usually also teach respect, self control and non-violent ways to resolve a potentially dangerous situation. At least that's what a good martial arts teacher should do.
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Regardless, people who give their money end up just as dead.

Going back to the original conversation, though, let us know if you ever think up a way to get all guns off the street.

It's too bad we don't have a photo of you we could create a meme with. "Thinks guns are evil" and then below "owns a gun".
 
Tsing Tao said:
A little disconnect between what you said here:



Regardless, people who give their money end up just as dead.

Going back to the original conversation, though, let us know if you ever think up a way to get all guns off the street.

It's too bad we don't have a photo of you we could create a meme with. "Thinks guns are evil" and then below "owns a gun".
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Do you think it is EVER possible to prevent people from speeding. I mean, what's the point of traffic laws?
 
futurecurrents said:
Do you think it is EVER possible to prevent people from speeding. I mean, what's the point of traffic laws?
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Only if you banned cars. The difference is that I can put together a law that would ban all cars from being used and it would be almost 100% effective at removing speeding. You are unable to do the same with firearms.

The laws that are in effect to prohibit speeding are much like those in effect to prohibit murder (with the notable exception in penalty for the guilty). Ie, there are already laws in effect, and people still do it. So the only way to completely be sure is to remove the item being "abused" 100%. You can do this with cars quite easily, since a car used when there were no cars allowed would be rather difficult to hide. You can't do such with firearms. Confiscation and destruction of all cars would also be a large task, but doable since hiding cars isn't the easiest thing in the world - especially if you want to use the automobile.

Hiding guns from a government confiscation is much, much more simpler - especially if the gun has already been illegally acquired.

That was easy. What else ya got?
 
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