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In reply to the discussion: The Concealed-Carry Fantasy [View all]Straw Man
(6,627 posts)16. I wonder why the NY Times ...
... chose to cite the VPC rather than the study by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council, commissioned by the CDC at President Obama's request. That report included the following conclusion:
Guns are used for self-defense often and effectively. Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year
in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008, says the report. The three million figure is probably high, based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys. But a much lower estimate of 108,000 also seems fishy, because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use. Furthermore, Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was 'used' by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2013/06/handguns_suicides_mass_shootings_deaths_and_self_defense_findings_from_a.html
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One glaring omission in this article is the number of non-injury incidences where harm was averted
jonno99
Oct 2015
#1
MY proof is merely anecdotal, which I know doesn't carry any weight around here with a LOT of people
Ghost in the Machine
Oct 2015
#14
It's clear that you haven't done any homework whatsoever on the gun violence issue.
pablo_marmol
Oct 2015
#20
Yet the best available data (also, again, not falsifiable even though it supports my position)
MillennialDem
Oct 2015
#21
LOL -- "the best available data" never comes from the agenda-driven medical community!
pablo_marmol
Oct 2015
#31
That's why those studies about defensive gun uses are called "not falsifiable" - which means they
MillennialDem
Oct 2015
#22
The "I'm an asshole who waved my gun at another asshole who backed down" defense of gun love.
hunter
Oct 2015
#27
The idea that more guns make us safer is like saying more fast food joints make us thinner
MillennialDem
Oct 2015
#23
Has anyone ever actually said "concealed permit holders never commit crimes?"
Lizzie Poppet
Oct 2015
#33
As people keep pointing out, we have no idea how many times a weapon was used defensively
Recursion
Oct 2015
#11