There Are Far More Defensive Gun Uses Than Murders

[BHOWPE]

Here is why you hardly ever hear about them.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/22/there-are-far-more-defensive-gun-uses-than-murders/

By John R. Lott, Jr.

October 22, 2021

 

[cosermann]

Thanks for sharing the article.

 

[KellyinAvon]

Here is why you hardly ever hear about them.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/22/there-are-far-more-defensive-gun-uses-than-murders/

By John R. Lott, Jr.

October 22, 2021

Thanks for the article. It’s great that we have Dr Lott on Team 2A.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Apples and oranges.

Americans who look only at the daily headlines would be surprised to learn that, according to academic estimates, defensive gun uses—including instances when guns are simply shown to deter a crime—are four to five times more common than gun crimes, and far more frequent than the roughly 20,000 murders or fewer each year, with or without a gun.

Side A: So on the "bad use" side, we're only going to count how many people died. Not injured, not merely displayed to gain compliance (like a robbery where the gun is shown but never fired, etc.)

Side B: On the "good use" side, we're going to count everything including mere display. Which we'll just guess at, because unlike Murder it isn't easily tracked.

Note the difference?

That's statistically useless and Dr. Lott knows that, but also knows he'll make money to put it in front of you. He does good work, this isn't it, this is pandering.

The only way to measure defensive gun uses is with surveys.

Self reporting studies are the same thing that says we're all better than average drivers and hardly anyone is eating enough calories to be obese... Self reporting is inherently unreliable.

 

[drillsgt]

Apples and oranges.



Side A: So on the "bad use" side, we're only going to count how many people died. Not injured, not merely displayed to gain compliance (like a robbery where the gun is shown but never fired, etc.)

Side B: On the "good use" side, we're going to count everything including mere display. Which we'll just guess at, because unlike Murder it isn't easily tracked.

Note the difference?

That's statistically useless and Dr. Lott knows that, but also knows he'll make money to put it in front of you. He does good work, this isn't it, this is pandering.



Self reporting studies are the same thing that says we're all better than average drivers and hardly anyone is eating enough calories to be obese... Self reporting is inherently unreliable.

Like many on Ingo did you even bother to read the article or just have something against John Lott so you had to pipe up? I'm sure when your cop career is over you can take your logic over to Everytown, they'll welcome you. The point of the article is that the anti-gunners always frame their position around gun deaths and point out that there are only usually around 1500 or so deaths related to defensive gun use so the bad outweighs the good etc. Lott is just pointing out that based on many studies/estimates there are for more defensive gun uses that don't involve death so that should be enough to support the ability of people to protect themselves. The CDC's own study that obama commissioned to try to refute this was eventually buried because even it showed a high prevalence of defensive gun uses, i'm not sure why this offends you.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Like many on Ingo did you even bother to read the article or just have something against John Lott so you had to pipe up? I'm sure when your cop career is over you can take your logic over to Everytown, they'll welcome you. The point of the article is that the anti-gunners always frame their position around gun deaths and point out that there are only usually around 1500 or so deaths related to defensive gun use so the bad outweighs the good etc. Lott is just pointing out that based on many studies/estimates there are for more defensive gun uses that don't involve death so that should be enough to support the ability of people to protect themselves. The CDC's own study that obama commissioned to try to refute this was eventually buried because even it showed a high prevalence of defensive gun uses, i'm not sure why this offends you.

I read it. And his book. And I have no problem with John Lott. I know my posts often hurt your feels, but try to actually read what I wrote instead of reading into it and assigning a bunch of ******** I didn't say to my posts.

None of that changes the statistics quoted are propaganda, not useful information. You can make the claim about defensive uses outweighing the bad uses without BS statistics.

 

[drillsgt]

I read it. And his book. And I have no problem with John Lott. I know my posts often hurt your feels, but try to actually read what I wrote instead of reading into it and assigning a bunch of ******** I didn't say to my posts.

None of that changes the statistics quoted are propaganda, not useful information. You can make the claim about defensive uses outweighing the bad uses without BS statistics.

I did read what you wrote and none of it seemed valid to me, you were the one reading into what Lott posted, I was just pointing that out. You're the arbiter now of what are BS statistics? You don't hurt my feelings, i'm often a bit perplexed by the positions you take as they don't seem concordant with someone that would be comfortable on a gun forum.

 

[HoughMade]

Like many on Ingo did you even bother to read the article or just have something against John Lott so you had to pipe up? I'm sure when your cop career is over you can take your logic over to Everytown, they'll welcome you. The point of the article is that the anti-gunners always frame their position around gun deaths and point out that there are only usually around 1500 or so deaths related to defensive gun use so the bad outweighs the good etc. Lott is just pointing out that based on many studies/estimates there are for more defensive gun uses that don't involve death so that should be enough to support the ability of people to protect themselves. The CDC's own study that obama commissioned to try to refute this was eventually buried because even it showed a high prevalence of defensive gun uses, i'm not sure why this offends you.

This may well be true, but what is set forth in the article does not support that assertion in a statistically reliable way.

Besides, our right to self-defense had better not depend upon an analysis under Act Utilitarianism.

 

[spencer rifle]

Crime deaths are irrelevant.
Injuries are irrelevant.
Defensive uses are irrelevant.

"Shall not be infringed" is relevant.

 

[drillsgt]

This may well be true, but what is set forth in the article does not support that assertion in a statistically reliable way.

Besides, our right to self-defense had better not depend upon an analysis under Act Utilitarianism.

I don't recall any statistical assertions made in the article? The fact that there are a large number of defensive gun uses in the United States is supported by several reports even those done by 'anti-gunners', the anti-gunners do a good job of ignoring them but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Most of the reports are the result of data obtained from large population based epidemiology studies which as BBI noted can have some bias but that's all we have to work with for a number of public health topics. With estimates from 60k to 2.5 million the answer lays in there somewhere. And yes I agree with your last statement, from a Forbes article:

"...when it comes to public policy, no individual’s right to armed self-defense should be up for grabs merely because a social scientist isn’t convinced a satisfyingly large enough number of other Americans have defended themselves with a gun."

 

[HoughMade]

The title is a statistical assertion.

So are these:

"defensive gun uses—including instances when guns are simply shown to deter a crime—are four to five times more common than gun crimes, and far more frequent than the roughly 20,000 murders or fewer each year, with or without a gun."

"As of August 10, America’s five largest newspapers—the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal—have published a combined total of 10 news stories this year reporting a civilian using a gun to successfully stop a crime, according to a search of the Nexis database of news stories. By contrast, those same newspapers had a total of 1,743 news stories containing the keywords “murder” or “murdered” or “murders” and “gunfire,” “shot,” or “shots.” Including articles with the word “wounded,” the total rises to 2,764."

"The U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey indicates that around 100,000 defensive gun uses occur each year—an estimate that, though it may seem like a lot, is actually much lower than 17 other surveys. They find between 760,000 defensive handgun uses and 3.6 million defensive uses of any type of gun per year, with an average of about 2 million."

"Survey data indicate that in 95 percent of cases when people use guns defensively, they merely show the gun to make the criminal back off. Such defensive gun uses rarely make the news, though a few do."

"RealClearInvestigations examined Gun Violence Archive data from January 1 to August 10 of this year, and found 774 defensive gun uses, fully 85 percent involving people shot: 43 percent resulting in death and 42 percent in wounding. Less than 4 percent of cases involved no shots fired."

etc., etc., etc.

All I am saying is that I would be more interested in an apples to apples comparison.

For instance. Compare ALL uses of a gun of any type in the commission of a crime to ALL uses of a gun for legal defensive purposes.

Or, and this is much more difficult- ALL uses of a gun to shoot someone in the commission of a crime to ALL uses of a gun to prevent someone from being shot or suffering serious bodily injury. The reason why this is so difficult is that no one can read a mind or predict how a situation will develop.

Comparing only murders to ALL defensive uses of a gun is pretty useless and seems clearly designed to get the preferred result.

But again, our rights should never depend upon who uses a gun to do what.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

The title is a statistical assertion.

...

All I am saying is that I would be more interested in an apples to apples comparison.

Exactly. We don't need BS statistics on our side because our side already has factual backing. Propaganda like this that's easily shot down weakens the argument. As I said, Lott does good work but this isn't it.

I did read what you wrote and none of it seemed valid to me, you were the one reading into what Lott posted, I was just pointing that out. You're the arbiter now of what are BS statistics? You don't hurt my feelings, i'm often a bit perplexed by the positions you take as they don't seem concordant with someone that would be comfortable on a gun forum.

Common sense tells you the statistics are BS for the apples and oranges reason I laid out. Feel free to refute it. You are perplexed because you assign many ideas and thoughts to me that I don't have and didn't assert. For example, you appear to think that because I recognize the article as propaganda and the apples/oranges statistically as useless except for pandering that somehow equates to being anti-gun or thinking that defensive uses don't out number murders. Despite me saying John Lott did good work in the post you replied to, you ask "just have something against John Lott "

So you're either looking for reasons to be butthurt by my posts so you read things into them that aren't there or you simply don't read them very well. Just like the post about talking to the police after a shooting where you assigned me positions in a post that were directly counter to what I had posted earlier in the thread then claimed to have seen those before and suddenly we agreed.

I don't care about purity tests and if someone who happens to agree with me overall makes a stupid argument, I'll not ignore that just because we agree overall.

 

[Twangbanger]

Exactly. We don't need BS statistics on our side because our side already has factual backing. Propaganda like this that's easily shot down weakens the argument. As I said, Lott does good work but this isn't it.



Common sense tells you the statistics are BS for the apples and oranges reason I laid out. Feel free to refute it. You are perplexed because you assign many ideas and thoughts to me that I don't have and didn't assert. For example, you appear to think that because I recognize the article as propaganda and the apples/oranges statistically as useless except for pandering that somehow equates to being anti-gun or thinking that defensive uses don't out number murders. Despite me saying John Lott did good work in the post you replied to, you ask "just have something against John Lott "

So you're either looking for reasons to be butthurt by my posts so you read things into them that aren't there or you simply don't read them very well. Just like the post about talking to the police after a shooting where you assigned me positions in a post that were directly counter to what I had posted earlier in the thread then claimed to have seen those before and suddenly we agreed.

I don't care about purity tests and if someone who happens to agree with me overall makes a stupid argument, I'll not ignore that just because we agree overall.

I think the real issue here, is the difficulty of statistically pinning down the number of legit defensive uses.

Surveys are obviously problematic, but when discussing data, it's always fair to ask what better data someone else brings to the table.

Are you working some kind of private data-set from within IPD, to which the general public doesn't have access, and which you're going to massage, extrapolate from 860k people to the US population of 360 million, and sell for personal gain? I really don't know, because you haven't specified what that "better data" is, and I don't study these things.

This is kind of an "Ed Sanow vs. Julian Hatcher" intramural type of argument, and the layperson can't really be sure whom to believe, if they each have their own closely-held proprietary data-sets which aren't public domain, subject to data-reduction methods which aren't disclosed. They can both simultaneously be wrong.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Are you working some kind of private data-set from within IPD, to which the general public doesn't have access, and which you're going to massage, extrapolate from 860k people to the US population of 360 million, and sell for personal gain? I really don't know, because you haven't specified what that "better data" is, and I don't study these things.

I did keep my own statistics, some of which are stickied around here somewhere, but it's unrelated to this. I can tell you with pretty good reliability how many people accidentally shot themselves vs shot a bad guy, for example, or how many suicides with firearms, but can't tell you how many people deployed a gun to stop an attack but didn't call the police for whatever reason because how would the police know?

Sometimes the only answer is there is no reliable data.

However, even if you don't know the answer, you know that it's inherently useless to compare two so obviously unequal metrics. Murders (a subset of negative uses) vs *all* positive uses is inherently useless. Remove the emotional reaction of guns and look at this:

Kansas has X number of fatal vehicle crashes caused by dump trucks.
Nebraska has Y number of traffic crashes.

What valid comparison can you make with that data? None. You don't have to know the real numbers for X or Y to know it's useless because it's comparing one subset in Kansas to a much larger set in Nebraska that includes that subset and much more.


But here's the thing: So what? Our rights aren't hinged on if it's statistically more of X or Y, nor does every use have equal weight. I can tell you with great certainty more people shoot and injure or kill themselves or others accidentally than shoot and injure or kill a bad guy. Much more frequently. Like 10 to 1, give or take. The majority of injuries are fairly minor, frequently to the off hand. How many accidental pinky shootings equates to one prevented rape? One prevented murder? That's up to the individual and society to determine as how things are weighted are not facts but opinions. It's also just one subset of data, or rather a subset of a subset. Guns fired and someone hit. Obviously there are going to be many accidents were the gun if fired and nobody is hit so it's never reported. Equally obviously there are going to be defensive uses where the gun is not fired or is fired and nobody is hit and it's never reported.

So the fact is still a fact, but it's limited and leaves many questions both unanswered and unanswerable.

 

[drillsgt]

The title is a statistical assertion.

So are these:

"defensive gun uses—including instances when guns are simply shown to deter a crime—are four to five times more common than gun crimes, and far more frequent than the roughly 20,000 murders or fewer each year, with or without a gun."

"As of August 10, America’s five largest newspapers—the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal—have published a combined total of 10 news stories this year reporting a civilian using a gun to successfully stop a crime, according to a search of the Nexis database of news stories. By contrast, those same newspapers had a total of 1,743 news stories containing the keywords “murder” or “murdered” or “murders” and “gunfire,” “shot,” or “shots.” Including articles with the word “wounded,” the total rises to 2,764."

"The U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey indicates that around 100,000 defensive gun uses occur each year—an estimate that, though it may seem like a lot, is actually much lower than 17 other surveys. They find between 760,000 defensive handgun uses and 3.6 million defensive uses of any type of gun per year, with an average of about 2 million."

"Survey data indicate that in 95 percent of cases when people use guns defensively, they merely show the gun to make the criminal back off. Such defensive gun uses rarely make the news, though a few do."

"RealClearInvestigations examined Gun Violence Archive data from January 1 to August 10 of this year, and found 774 defensive gun uses, fully 85 percent involving people shot: 43 percent resulting in death and 42 percent in wounding. Less than 4 percent of cases involved no shots fired."

etc., etc., etc.

All I am saying is that I would be more interested in an apples to apples comparison.

For instance. Compare ALL uses of a gun of any type in the commission of a crime to ALL uses of a gun for legal defensive purposes.

Or, and this is much more difficult- ALL uses of a gun to shoot someone in the commission of a crime to ALL uses of a gun to prevent someone from being shot or suffering serious bodily injury. The reason why this is so difficult is that no one can read a mind or predict how a situation will develop.

Comparing only murders to ALL defensive uses of a gun is pretty useless and seems clearly designed to get the preferred result.

But again, our rights should never depend upon who uses a gun to do what.

Nothing in the title of that article is a statistical assertion, just simply an observation based on even the most conservative of estimates. Why would an 'apples' to 'apples' comparison be of any use at all, what's that going to tell you? Some of what you want we know, we know there over 100K assaults with firearms and close to 40K robberies with firearms to start, just using that how does it make a difference? The reason DGU's are compared to deaths is because that is the metric that the left uses to promote the 'epidemic' of gun violence and that's the stat they hang their hat on. I don't really care what DGU's are compared to, they can stand on their own as a metric for those that weren't added to the death total. Say there's 1M crimes with firearms involved and only 60K DGU's that's still 60K people that were able to protect themselves. Even the data the left uses from the CDC WISQARS database is itself incomplete and open to bias so we'll never have hard numbers. With the Gun Violence Archive data to me even if there were only 774 DGU's that's still a win, bear in mind they only record what they can find reported in the news. That database is something else though, check it out sometime, it's a database maintained by anti-gunners and publicly available. I just submitted an abstract using that data for an unintentional injury project and covid, even though it's pretty shoddy data people publish on it. I just had an invited commentary published in Pediatrics related to a manuscript that was published using GVA data, if it's anti-gun the medical journals eat it up. In the end I understand what you're saying but the best we will ever have are likely incomplete estimates so I agree our rights should not depend on these metrics.

 

[drillsgt]

Exactly. We don't need BS statistics on our side because our side already has factual backing. Propaganda like this that's easily shot down weakens the argument. As I said, Lott does good work but this isn't it.



Common sense tells you the statistics are BS for the apples and oranges reason I laid out. Feel free to refute it. You are perplexed because you assign many ideas and thoughts to me that I don't have and didn't assert. For example, you appear to think that because I recognize the article as propaganda and the apples/oranges statistically as useless except for pandering that somehow equates to being anti-gun or thinking that defensive uses don't out number murders. Despite me saying John Lott did good work in the post you replied to, you ask "just have something against John Lott "

So you're either looking for reasons to be butthurt by my posts so you read things into them that aren't there or you simply don't read them very well. Just like the post about talking to the police after a shooting where you assigned me positions in a post that were directly counter to what I had posted earlier in the thread then claimed to have seen those before and suddenly we agreed.

I don't care about purity tests and if someone who happens to agree with me overall makes a stupid argument, I'll not ignore that just because we agree overall.

It's not that complicated of an article, i'm not sure why you can't grasp it. For one it's a news piece not a peer-reviewed manuscript and definitely not 'propaganda'. The left uses gun deaths to perpetuate the myth of an epidemic of gun violence, read their journal articles it's usually in the background section to emphasize the 'seriousness' of the problem. All Lott is saying is that far more people use firearms to defend themselves than are killed by firearms hence they can save lives and be a benefit versus relying on the gun death statistics as a sole measure for more gun control. It's good that he's out there and promoting that, we don't hear it enough.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

It's not that complicated of an article, i'm not sure why you can't grasp it. For one it's a news piece not a peer-reviewed manuscript and definitely not 'propaganda'. The left uses gun deaths to perpetuate the myth of an epidemic of gun violence, read their journal articles it's usually in the background section to emphasize the 'seriousness' of the problem. All Lott is saying is that far more people use firearms to defend themselves than are killed by firearms hence they can save lives and be a benefit versus relying on the gun death statistics as a sole measure for more gun control. It's good that he's out there and promoting that, we don't hear it enough.

If you think that's "news" and don't understand there are statistical assertations involved then I doubt we'll have a productive conversation about it.

 

[Steve]

Personally, I don't give a d#@n about statistics. My guns are tools with a purpose. Just like my fire extinguishers or car insurance. Never want to be in a position to use any of them, but if needed, I will not hesitate. That is what they are there for.

 

[manifest destiny]

But here's the thing: So what? Our rights aren't hinged on if it's statistically more of X or Y, nor does every use have equal weight. I can tell you with great certainty more people shoot and injure or kill themselves or others accidentally than shoot and injure or kill a bad guy. Much more frequently. Like 10 to 1, give or take. The majority of injuries are fairly minor, frequently to the off hand. How many accidental pinky shootings equates to one prevented rape? One prevented murder? That's up to the individual and society to determine as how things are weighted are not facts but opinions. It's also just one subset of data, or rather a subset of a subset. Guns fired and someone hit. Obviously there are going to be many accidents were the gun if fired and nobody is hit so it's never reported. Equally obviously there are going to be defensive uses where the gun is not fired or is fired and nobody is hit and it's never reported.

So the fact is still a fact, but it's limited and leaves many questions both unanswered and unanswerable.

The highlighted is a statistical assertion. You're privy to data that I am not. So your assertion may well be an infallible fact. But I'm not privy to your data, and as such, it may well be wildly inaccurate. My observation while reading this thread is that an article was linked. The article, as interpreted by multiple people (you, me, others), resulted in differing opinions. But you and only you can be right with regard to opinion.

 

[BE Mike]

I doubt that LEO's have hard data to support the opinion that them having the drop on a suspect defused a situation so it didn't escalate into the use of deadly force. I would venture to say that it happens much more often than them discharging their weapons. It is a reasonable assumption.