Even cheap junk can save lives...

[ileus]

http://www2.wkrg.com/news/2013/feb/25/turning-tables-intruder-ar-5679038/


The woman- afraid she was about to be robbed or attacked- grabbed a pistol from underneath her mattress and pulled the gun on the intruder.

The burglar backed down and left- but before police arrived- he returned and left an apology letter- claiming he was sorry he screwed up again.

Turns out...the suspect lives next door to the victim.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi-point bashers need not apply. While I wouldn't use on for self defense it's all some can afford.

Good news is she didn't have to shoot someone. This is what firearms were designed to do, protect and save lives.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. on aggregate guns take lives, they do not save them.

[nonoyes]

2. Very true. Homes with gun-owners experience 43 times as

many KILLINGS than those where no gun is owned in the home.

According to research completed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a gun kept in the home is forty-three times more likely to kill someone known to the family than to kill a stranger in self-defense. In homes with guns, the risk of suicide increases five times and the risk of homicide increases three times over the rate of homes with no guns.

http://www.onetoughjob.org/safety/safety/gun-safety-and-your-child

Some of these deaths involve a child using the weapon, either in play, or in anger, or suicide.

Many additional injuries involve children and adolescents, mentally unstable friends or relatives of the gun-owner, or cases of simple mistaken use of a firearm in a mistaken identity defense of one's home.

Forty three times more likely to needlessly end a life with a gun in the house.

[holdencaufield]

3. People without cars ...

... are involved in significantly fewer automobile deaths than those with them.

What is your point?

[nonoyes]

5. That false equivalency doesn't cut it.

And here is the reason why.

If 43 times as many people died driving an automible for every pedestrian fatality, would you say we would have a major problem?
Perhaps not, since everyone is either a pedestrian, passenger in a common carrier, or auto driver or passenger. Everyone is not a gun owner, so comparing gun owners to those to get around on their feet, bicycles, common carriers, or in cars is not a useful analogy, it is a false equivalency.

Guns are simply not a neccessary tool for those who live in a modern 21st century world. True for some a car is not necessary, but for most homes in America, a car is a necessary tool for day-to-day living. By contrast, how many homes use a gun 7 days a week in carrying out their daily lives? None!

Also, for those who live in a modern 21st century world and need to operate motor vehicles in order to carry-on a productive life:
One "arms" oneself with safe driving practices, licensure, insurance, and a safe vehicle, one doesn't consume alcohol to excess before operation of the vehicle and doesn't allow children to be close to the driving wheel. They also assume the risks of driving on roads wherein they may become the victims of auto deaths or injury, it's part of the package any responsible automobile owner and operator must agree to in order to be licensed. Not every operator of an automobile always takes those steps, but those who do lower their risk of death or injury considerably.

The same is not always true of gun owners, and not at all true for the other people in their household.

Lastly, no one assures a zero risk of early accidental death to either the automobile driver or the home with or without a gun. The issue is reduction of risk to the lowest possible level.

A factor of 43 times increase in risk is worthy of reasonable restriction, authorization, education, and safety practices. That's my point.

[gejohnston]

6. Let's see the study that makes the claim

and see how valid it is first.

[GreenStormCloud]

7. That stat comes from the Kellerman study, and has been debunked many times here.

For one thing, if the burglar brought a gun with him, Kellerman counted that as a gun in the house.

Kellerman only counted corpses. If the burglar fled, he did not count that as a defensive gun use.

And he counted gun suicides, pretending that if there were no gun the person would not have killed themselves.

And he did not make a distinction between those who had guns legally and those who had them illegally. Illegal gun owners have a much higher gun fatality rate than legal gun owners do.

[Eleanors38]

4. Sounds like an old antacid commercial.

[GreenStormCloud]

10. Close: ...absorbs 47 times the excess acid. N/T

[GreenStormCloud]

8. Most of the casualties are from illegal guns, not from legal ones.

It is extremely rare for a legal gun owner to commit murder as his first felony. Please not that "rare" does not mean "never". On occasion it will happen, but it is so rare as to be statistically insignifigant.

Legal concealed carry saves more innocent lives than it takes.

In Texas the detailed statistics are compiled annually by the Department of Public Safety and published on the internet. It is likely that the Texas experience with Concealed Handgun Licenses would be about the same in other states. The last year for which statistics are published is 2011 for convictions. http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/rsd/chl/index.htm

In 2011 there were 512,625 people who had CHLs. Out of those people there were exactly three (3) murder convictions and three (3) manslaughter convictions. Out of the general population there were 578 convictions for murder in its various forms.

So very, very few CHL holders go bad, but some do.

The DPS also publishes an annual Crime in Texas Report. http://www.dps.texas.gov/crimereports/10/citCh3.pdf
From that report, page 15:

Statistics on murder circumstances, victims, and
victim/offender relationships on the next page
include justifiable homicides. Justifiable homicide
is the killing of a felon by a peace officer in the
line of duty or the killing (during the commission
of a felony) of a felon by a private citizen. In
2010, there were 98 justifiable homicides, of
which, 50 were felons killed by private citizens,
and 48 were felons killed by police.

In Texas all homicides, even those that are clearly self-defense, have to go before a grand jury which will rule if the killing was justified or not. So those 50 justified private citizen homicides were ones in which the defender genuinely and legitimately feared for his life. Since most shootings are merely woundings there would be a much larger number of justified woundings in which the defender genuinely feared for his life, but that number is not kept. Obviously there are dozens of cases each year in which a CHL holder uses their gun to save themselves.

Dozens of innocent lives saved versus six innocents killed shows the concealed carry is working in Texas. As already stated, there is no reason to believe that other CCW states have a different experience.

Legal concealed carry saves innocent lives.

[Warren Stupidity]

11. well of course as soon as a legal gun is used illegally you all want to

pretend we should ignore that data. No thanks.

[GreenStormCloud]

12. Nope. By illegal gun I mean one that was already illegal at the time of the crime.

The fact is that murder is rarely commited as a first offense. Usually a murderer has an existing criminal record.

You ignored the stats that I posted from Texas Department of Public Safety.

[GreenStormCloud]

9. Hi-points are actually very good for the price.

They don't have some features that I would like and are heavy, but they are reliable and accurate. They are cheap because they use a blowback action which needs a very heavy slide, but is much simpler to make.