'Open Carry' Law Contoversy: Gun Owner Cited

jillio said:
I don't have the need to carry a weapon of any kind, despite the fact that I am regularly in areas that would cause you to, and I quote, "shit your pants".

And, just as I said, I would never pull a gun without full intention of using it. I was raised around firearms and fired my first gun, under strict supervision, at the age of 9. I am well versed in gun safety, and also in the negative consequences of those who decide, as an adult, that they have some need to have a gun available to "protect themselves" from imagined threats.
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so if you DO have a full intention of using it... how would that happen if you stated that you don't have the need to carry a weapon of any kind?
 
Jiro said:
so if you DO have a full intention of using it... how would that happen if you stated that you don't have the need to carry a weapon of any kind?
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I already told you that, jiro.
 
Jiro said:
best to keep in mind that there is a disclaimer notice - it is jillio's interpretation of it.
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Nope. The entire field of clinical psychology will back me up. Read a little theory and you will see.
 
Daredevel7 said:
I love numbers too. However, in this case, it's going to be hard to quantify the number of times that gun owners "used a gun to protect themselves". Even if a number was posted, people are just going to say "Oh, I bet there's a lot more that went unreported to the police. I know someone who ___fill in the blank___"

The number of accidental deaths (especially for kids) can be easily quantified (and easily found through Google) but people will just say "How many of those guns were recklessly unlocked? I bet the parents didn't even teach the kids, etc etc. Improve gun safety!" Basically, if someone accidentally gets killed, it's the stupidity of this gun owner and all gun owners feel like they should not be punished for the stupidity of this particular guy.

So, do you still want the numbers?
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I see what you're saying, and I agree. But Jillio made the statement that gun owners are many times more likely to kill someone accidentally than to use their gun to protect themselves. I'd just like to see *something* that validates that statement. Just knowing the number of accidental deaths does not show that it's many times higher than the number of times a gun owner used a gun to protect themselves.
 
PoiToy said:
I see what you're saying, and I agree. But Jillio made the statement that gun owners are many times more likely to kill someone accidentally than to use their gun to protect themselves. I'd just like to see *something* that validates that statement. Just knowing the number of accidental deaths does not show that it's many times higher than the number of times a gun owner used a gun to protect themselves.
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Jillio stands behind that statement, and the stats back her up.
 
naisho said:
Daredevel7, PoiToy. I did the homework you were supposed to do. :giggle:
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Ah man, nobody told me there'd be homework! :giggle: But those numbers don't really tell me how many times gun owners use their weapons to protect themselves, either by displaying it and frightening off an attacker, shooting at an attacker and missing but still frightening off the attacker, shooting and injuring the attacker or shooting and killing the attacker. Those numbers would include also include criminals killing or injuring innocent people.

I've seen the accidental statistics (and posted them myself) and those are absolutely relevant. But I need the other half of the comparison to verify Jillio's statement. See what I mean?
 
jillio said:
Oh, well. I have presented the statistics. If I can find them, you can find them. You are free, of course, to ignore them. Many people do. That is why children and adults continue to die at an alarming rate from unsecured firearms in the home.
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Wow. Well, I just rechecked the entire thread, in case I had missed or misread your post with statistics that show the number of times gun owners use a gun to protect themselves. It's not there. I've read the CDC statistics. Also not there. I'm sorry if I'm bothering you by asking you to support a statement you make as fact, especially considering your statement regarding children being injured more than adults turning out to not be true when I looked up the CDC numbers. Besides, if it's so simple to find, it shouldn't be difficult to post a link to.

Jeez, I could say: Owning a gun makes you 10 times more likely to survive a robbery. The statistics that prove it are easy to find. Go find them. (my saying all that doesn't make it true)
 
jillio said:
Uhh, naisho, did you limit your statistic out of convenience or space? You failed to tell the whole story when you left things out.

There are many more statistics available. Might want to check out the 10 leading causes of death in various age groups and see how often firearms have come into play. I got mine from the CDC, too. Changes the picture completely. You really need to look from all angles before drawing a conclusion.
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Yep, firearms are #9. 98 kids died accidentally from firearms in 2008. That's awful, times 98. Put into perspective, #1 is MVA, with 2829 accidental deaths. Which is why I'm 28 times more worried about my children in a car.
 
PoiToy said:
Ah man, nobody told me there'd be homework! :giggle: But those numbers don't really tell me how many times gun owners use their weapons to protect themselves, either by displaying it and frightening off an attacker, shooting at an attacker and missing but still frightening off the attacker, shooting and injuring the attacker or shooting and killing the attacker. Those numbers would include also include criminals killing or injuring innocent people.

I've seen the accidental statistics (and posted them myself) and those are absolutely relevant. But I need the other half of the comparison to verify Jillio's statement. See what I mean?
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Yep, I just found the most legal trusted site I could regarding statistics pertaining to gun accidents. Never drew a conclusion from the data yet, just got the base work done. Well, we already have data, just need to narrow it to find the variable of debate. Wasn't intending spend my afternoon on AD figuring that out. :giggle:

But at least we know now that there are 592 accidental deaths from guns in 2008. We're still missing the other half, which is supposed distinguish the differences between defense cases vs accidental deaths like you said.
If we set that value as the maximum, we just need to see if it is +/- of 592 to see where cases pertaining truly to defense stood.
In a real world perspective I don't think it would be exactly 592 cases of deaths, there's got to be some random cases like accidental misfire, or people who got shot by accident by police, CCW holder, etc... But sadly the CDC doesn't offer an indepth search feature like that. Anyway, it should be a nice bar to set nonetheless to get somewhere for the sake of debate.
 
jillio said:
Jillio stands behind that statement, and the stats back her up.
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I will totally concede that (and therefore take it into account with my own decisions regarding guns) if you will only, only point me at the stats regarding the number of times guns were used to protect someone. I can't imagine how those stats could possibly have been gathered, but that's not my field of study.

Perhaps you are misunderstanding my intentions, and I'm getting extremely frustrated, but I'll repeat: If you have data that shows it's more dangerous....please, please, share it. I'm not sure why you're resisting if you actually have that information, but at this point I'm ready to give up and carry on as usual. I'm probably placing too much emphasis on what you say, but I assumed from other posts that you were an intelligent person and that I could benefit from your knowledge. Anyhow, I'll leave it alone now.
 
Daredevel7 said:
Yes... but I was responding to PoiToy's question to see the statistics of a gun accidentally killing someone. I brought up the children's deaths because I'm pretty sure I saw somewhere that children was the number 1 victim of accidental killings by guns. I suppose I can just focus only on the accidental killings that occurred in public places (this would pertain to CCW/OC). But this would have to be compared to the number of crimes prevented only in public, too.
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Thanks for responding, even though it's off the original topic : ) I consider this information extremely important as I have guns and would like to make logical decisions about them.

Regarding the number of children accidentally killed by guns, it's about 1/4 of the number of adults, so definitely not #1, according to the CDC site. Still, too many.
 
PoiToy said:
Wow. Well, I just rechecked the entire thread, in case I had missed or misread your post with statistics that show the number of times gun owners use a gun to protect themselves. It's not there. I've read the CDC statistics. Also not there. I'm sorry if I'm bothering you by asking you to support a statement you make as fact, especially considering your statement regarding children being injured more than adults turning out to not be true when I looked up the CDC numbers. Besides, if it's so simple to find, it shouldn't be difficult to post a link to.

Jeez, I could say: Owning a gun makes you 10 times more likely to survive a robbery. The statistics that prove it are easy to find. Go find them. (my saying all that doesn't make it true)
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Maybe you didn't look hard enough. It is in the CDC stats.:dunno2:
 
PoiToy said:
Nowhere in the CDC stats do they show how many times a gun owner used a gun for protection.
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Those aren't the stats I was talking about. If you will look at all the stats combined, you will see that you don't need actual numbers on that one. It is a matter of inferential statistics.
 
jillio said:
Those aren't the stats I was talking about. If you will look at all the stats combined, you will see that you don't need actual numbers on that one. It is a matter of inferential statistics.
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I'm not being deliberately dense. All *which* stats combined?

The only inferences I've found regarding the use of guns for protection are here, 13 studies:

GunCite: Frequency of Defensive Gun Use in Previous Surveys

The lowest number from the 13 studies is 764,036 uses of a gun for protection over the course of 5 years, so 152,000 +/- times per year. Compared to about 700 accidental deaths per year, that number is significantly higher and it would seem that you're many times more likely to use a gun for protection than to accidentally kill someone.

What did you use to draw your conclusion?
 
PoiToy said:
I'm not being deliberately dense. All *which* stats combined?

The only inferences I've found regarding the use of guns for protection are here, 13 studies:

GunCite: Frequency of Defensive Gun Use in Previous Surveys

The lowest number from the 13 studies is 764,036 uses of a gun for protection over the course of 5 years, so 152,000 +/- times per year. Compared to about 700 accidental deaths per year, that number is significantly higher and it would seem that you're many times more likely to use a gun for protection than to accidentally kill someone.

What did you use to draw your conclusion?
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You have to use the stats for accidental deaths across all ages, the number of injuries/deaths from firearms, and the stats on childhood death, the stats on weapons fired in actual self defense that was deemed necessary, etc. Somewhere the statistical calculations have been done using CDC data. Let me look for it. I posted it a while back in another thread.

Survey response data is not really reliable.
 
lots of children die in vehicle accidents. Do we ban cars and make everyone ride bicycles? Everything has risks.

Daredevel7 said:
I love numbers too. However, in this case, it's going to be hard to quantify the number of times that gun owners "used a gun to protect themselves". Even if a number was posted, people are just going to say "Oh, I bet there's a lot more that went unreported to the police. I know someone who ___fill in the blank___"

The number of accidental deaths (especially for kids) can be easily quantified (and easily found through Google) but people will just say "How many of those guns were recklessly unlocked? I bet the parents didn't even teach the kids, etc etc. Improve gun safety!" Basically, if someone accidentally gets killed, it's the stupidity of this gun owner and all gun owners feel like they should not be punished for the stupidity of this particular guy.

So, do you still want the numbers?
Click to expand...
 
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