second amendment threatened!

I haven't thought of everything, but I do know that I am not qualified to go use a gun to take a room back from someone, particularly a room with an intruder and my child in it. That would be reckless. Too many unknown unknowns.

I would stay put and call the cops.

 

You're fucking kidding, right?

The DATA you should be requesting would be the DATA from the supposed "STUDIES" that were cited by REAL_LARGE!!

WTF, lady? You're asking ME to cite data to debunk a claim, when you should be asking the claimant to cite the data that establishes it!

You have it backward, miss.

But even that does not change the fact that a quick check online can find people's essays that shred the claims of Dr. Arthur Kellerman (he's the one principal guy who made up the "a gun is X number of times more likely to get you killed" crap).

It's not my fault you aren't familiar with the fact that no one takes his study seriously since its major flaws have been exposed.

 

you said it had "been debunked". I was wondering "by who?".

simple enough... and I'm a dude.

 

The way you talk, it seems that you don't have the capacity for motherly protection of young. I hope that is not the case.

You talk now in a calm, collected manner about "staying put" while an intruder heads into your children's rooms! OMFG. I never said that you had to be trained like a S.W.A.T. professional, but it's not rocket science or brain surgery to shoot a person. Did we say that your home has been raided by a commando team? No. You're checking out a "bump in the night" that you believe or know to be an intruder (by definition, someone you should consider a danger to you and yours since he clearly does not even belong in your home). You're making it sound like he's some impossible-to-vanquish uber-intruder.

"Use a gun to take back a room from someone"? All I'm thinking of is entering the room and shooting him. There isn't much left to "take back" after you've done that--the room'd pretty much be yours.

I really am startled by the idea that you say it would be too reckless to try to fight the attacker (by shooting him) when you know he's in your kid's room, but you don't characterize waiting 15 minutes for cops to arrive while he does who-knows-what to your kid in those minutes as reckless.

Have you thought about the fact that the cops are going to probably alert the guy to their presence, which may spur him to do something worse to your kids than was originally intended? They may become hostages. If you were to creep down the hall with your own gun (and yes, after calling 911 and apprising them of the situation, leaving the phone call connected), you might well be able to surprise him, which won't give him the opportunity to use your kids as a pawn in the events.

 

Sorry. I saw "Maryjohn" and thought it might be like "Maryanne" or "MaryBeth" or something. Whence the monicker?

 

Why aren't you asking, "It was claimed -- by whom??"

 

First, I stated clearly that I could not care less about gun ownership as an issue. I was simply trying to submit some empirical data to counter all the shrill anecdotal evidence that was being posted for and against gun restrictions. Stories posted on the NRA website about Jim or Joe who shot a burglar are not helpful. English trends are irrelevant. Different culture, different society,

Data is data. It makes no value judgment. Just because it doesn't fit my beliefs doesn't mean it's flawed. Belief is faith -- or, to use your phrase, "bullshit."

The New England Journal of Medicine studies show that states with tighter gun laws suffer less crime. Homes with guns suffer more gun deaths than homes without. It is what it is.

Moreover: If, as you claim, it's all "preposterous" and "debunked," I'd like to see a source other than the NRA for equivalent data to refute my "ridiculous" claim. The tone of your response seems "soooo" emotional and "suuuch" a product of personal bias that, with respect, it's hard to buy at face value.

The fact that this topic evokes such knee-jerk rhetoric is an issue in itself. I love to hunt. I have many friends and family (several of whom are cops) who own many different kinds of guns, but none of them display this odd emotional/paranoid attachment to these weapons that makes them attack when faced with common-sense questions about our country's gun laws.

If you want a gun brother, go for it. Stock up. Be safe.

 

The one problem is that it is NOT "empirical data," it is bullshit data that has been massaged and distorted in order to arrive at a conclusion that the so-called "researchers" wanted from the start.

I am sorry that I don't have an encyclopedic memory of exactly what has been said over the numerous years since the "Kellerman study" was released and then debunked. But it is out there, and if you are interested in objectivity you would look for it and read it and understand it, and you would surely come to understand why gun owners treat that "study" with such scorn. (It's also pretty obvious that any gun owner who has not had gun ownership cause him to get killed will pretty much dismiss those claims on their face.)

They sure do help to dispel the ridiculous claims that guns cannot and do not help people survive violent encounters with criminals.

They don't prove that guns will help in every case, but they sure do illustrate that guns can be used that way and are used that way. And many of the people in those "anecdotes" might have been severely injured or killed, were it not for the gun they had with them and which they used for self defense.

This claim itself is bullshit. If you don't understand how people with agenda can and do misuse "data" by warping it, or not telling the whole story, or a hundred other things they can do to twist things, then I can't help you.

That, again, is bullshit. I have read of other studies that said the opposite. Who's right?

Let's assume that you're correct, that homes with guns suffer more gun deaths. Does that give the full picture? Does it address the idea of homes without guns possibly falling victim to violence for which they have no defense?

Let me ask you: do you happen to know, in the homes with guns in them, where these deaths occur, are the guns that the homeowners kept in the home always germane to the deaths that occur? That is to say, is it the guns that the homeowners kept that are doing the killing? Or is it a case of, "Burglars broke in, killed the homeowner, and the homeowner happened to own and keep guns in the home (though the homeowner's gun(s) were in a safe and never got involved in the killing"? Because that's very possible. It's very possible that in these killings, the fact that the home had guns is only tertiarily relevant. (In other words, not at all, if causation is being examined.)

The tone of my response arises from the fact that I have spent the last 15+ years as a gun owner, never had a negligent discharge, never had to draw my gun on anyone, never had to shoot in anger, never had an accident, never had a gun stolen, never had a gun pointed at me... and I've read extensively on the subject and I have seen the studies you are representing and I know the ways in which they were distorted in order to arrive at the "guns are more harm than good" conclusion. And I know that it makes no sense whatsoever to sound an alarm about the horrific danger of keeping guns in the home when every single day, tens of millions of people do exactly that and suffer no ill effects from it whatsoever.

I wasn't faced with a "commense-sense QUESTION." You made an ASSERTION. You STATED, as if it is settled FACT, that keeping a gun in my home puts me in more danger, statistically (even if not personally), than I would be in if I didn't keep a gun in my home. Near as I can figure, the only thing that could make that true would be if having the gun in my home caused me to do something in the vicinity of my home that I would not ordinarily do if I didn't have the gun; or if I got killed with one of the guns that I keep in my home. I don't see either of those things happening.

Thank you. I shall.
And by the way, I don't mean any belligerence toward you. I know that I come off very heavy and heated on this subject. That is the product of a decade and a half spent defending my rights against those who would trash them--often on the basis of "junk science," which is what I believe those studies you mentioned truly are.

 

Here's one example like I was talking about:

THIS is really the article you ought to read, regarding the debunking of Kellerman Please do me the courtesy of reading it before arguing further.

 

For those who for whatever reason don't want to click the link, here is the intro of that article, with the highlighting of the pithy parts done by me:

Folks cite the "43 times" study (and often, we find, the number has been inexplicable changed, usually in the downward direction, too) but they NEVER ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE SAME NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE LATER PUBLISHED THE PAPER THAT DEBUNKED THE KELLERMAN STUDY.

YOU even touted how this was published in the NEJM, Real_Large! Did you mention that the NEJM also published the work that debunked it?​

 

The important thing to note when debating the Kellerman study is this:

Kellerman weighed the killing of the homeowner against the killing of the intruder, and used that as the basis for saying that it's just not worth it to keep a gun in the house, but he never acknowledged that it's a SUCCESS if you STOP the attack and REPEL the invader, even if you don't kill him, even if you merely wound him, even if you don't even hit him, and even if you don't have to fire!

Kellerman also neglects to establish whether the gun kept in the house even had anything to do with the killing of the homeowner. One might have been just as likely to include mention that the home contained a washing machine and dryer.

What do you think about these facts? Do they begin to paint a picture for you about how results-driven Kellerman was with his study?

Did you know that the SIX MILLION DOLLARS that the government gave to Kellerman for his study was the exact amount by which Congress PENALIZED the Centers for Disease Control when its budget came up for review, specifically because of the shenanigans of Kellerman using CDC as a bully pulpit from which to spout politically driven gun control factoids?

 

How can the Supreme Court's unanimous statement in Heller that the right to arms is an individual right, judicial activism? Both the majority and dissent agreed on that fundamental question . . .

The dissent also stated that the majority decision was consistent with all Supreme Court precedent. Nothing new was established by Heller.

From Breyer's dissent, pg 3:

"In interpreting and applying this Amendment, I take as a starting point the following four propositions, based on our precedent and today’s opinions, to which I believe the entire Court subscribes:

(1) The Amendment protects an “individual” right—i.e., one that is separately possessed, and may be separately enforced, by each person on whom it is conferred. See, e.g., ante, at 22 (opinion of the Court); ante, at 1 (STEVENS, J., dissenting). . . . "
​

Heller did however upset the worm infested apple cart of 2nd Amendment jurisprudence of the lower federal courts, otherwise known as the 'state's right" interpretation. The Supreme Court NEVER embraced such stupidity.

Again, where's the activism?

But there is plenty of evidence that when gun control is enacted as a crime control measure it is horrible failure.

While the European Utopias have had strict[er] gun control, in some instances, centuries longer than the US, those measures were enacted for political purposes, not crime control. The laws more recently enacted to combat crime have not worked as planned.

How many laws are enacted without any intention of ever enforcing them? With gun control that seems to be the MO.

The Brady Law is the perfect example; lying on the federal transfer form (ATF 4473) is a violation of federal law punishable by ten years for each offense. Clinton and Reno would get up and tout "600,000 prohibited persons were stopped from buying a gun this year by the Brady background check" -- guess what, that was 600,000 criminals let go scott free. Such actions do two things; it emboldens criminals who know the law has no teeth and creates an atmosphere of distrust of and resistance to government by the law-abiding.

Don't even ask about how federal Brady gun charges are just used as tokens to be thrown away for guilty pleas for other offences . . . Clinton's "pit bull" Janet Reno took the Bush (GHW) DoJ's 76% percent conviction rate for Brady Law gun offenses (Sec. 924) and flipped it to a 65% dismissal rate.

More gun laws we do not need, become more laws they will not enforce, which becomes further "evidence" that more laws are needed.

Where I live in Philadelphia "straw buying" for a prohibited person is supposedly a real problem. Not so big a problem that all the tools (laws) already in the "law enforcement" toolbox are used, it just makes for good sound bytes from the Mayor and Police Commissioner's press conferences when a cop gets shot every couple months. Not so big a problem it seems that Philadelphia doesn't ask the ATF to stop sending the city the federal multiple gun purchase reports because it costs too much money to comply with the records destruction rules . . .

No, it's a helluvalot easier to just demand a "one-gun-a-month" law.

Bullshit.

These travesties don't represent crime fighting initiatives, only a political agenda and that is the what fuels the frustration and yes, fear that gun owners again feel with Obama, his inner circle and a Democrat controlled Congress or in power anywhere.

They just can not be trusted to protect us or our rights.

 

Wow a lot of activity here over the weekend.
First off the Kellerman article has been shown to have serious flaws several times since its initial publication. A quick google search will show this to be true. And before you say "its only pro-gun websites saying this" do you really think an anti-gun site would post these problems with this study? Look a little further and you will fins neutral sites that discuss the pros and cons of the study.

As far as shotguns go, they are a good defense weapon. They are not made to go "clearing" a house. They are a stay put and protect yourself weapon. Individual circumstances will dictate which weapon is the proper choice for home protection. There is no one right or one wrong choice.

Defensive gun use is a hot topic since the exact number of these cannot be pinpointed exactly. However even the most conservative figures are around 60,000 per year. That is a large freaking number, other estimates range up in the millions. If you are really interested here is a sight that list verifies stories of civilian defensive uses that is updated regularly. Be sure to check the archives also.
http://www.claytoncramer.com/gundefenseblog/blogger.html

You are right in the fact that you cannot compare the US with the UK. However you can compare the UK stats from before 1997 with any year after 1997 and you will find that the GUN HOMICIDES remains at a steady even level through out the subsequent years. Now I say to use GUN HOMICIDES because there is no mitigating circumstances to confuse the issue. After all if someone is killed by a gun they are killed by a gun. Now remember 1997 is when the UK banned handguns and most all long guns. All guns must be registered and permitted. Hundreds of thousands of guns were turned in to the government and destroyed at a cost of hundreds of millions of British pounds. My question is if it had no discernible effect on illegal gun uses would not that time, effort and money have been better spent on tackling social and criminal problems?

Another thing concerning the second amendment I am wondering about is; why does President Obama's questionnaire for possible appointees ask about individual and immediate family's gun ownership?