Pro-Gun arguments debunked?

[rambone]

This site is bound to **** you off. I thought I'd see how INGO refutes some of his unabashedly anti-gun arguments.

Gun Control and the Second Amendment





Sample:

MYTH: Keeping guns in the home increases personal protection.
TRUTH: Obviously, self defense is not a good argument against gun control since those who own firearms are actually more likely to be victims of homicide. Two studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine revealed that keeping a gun in the home increases the risk of both suicide and homicide. Keeping a gun in the home makes it 2.7 times more likely that someone will be a victim of homicide in your home (in almost all cases the victim is either related to or intimately acquainted with the murderer) (source) and 4.8 times more likely that someone will commit suicide (source). Guns make it more likely that a suicide attempt will be successful than if other means were used such as sleeping pills.

 

[bigcraig]

95% of all statistics are works of fiction.

 

[CarmelHP]

Interesting. The domain was registered by an Australian registrar who then sold a U.S. private registration to the purchaser to mask the origin. Typical anti-gunner tricks.

 

[dustjunky2000]

This site is bound to **** you off. I thought I'd see how INGO refutes some of his unabashedly anti-gun arguments.

Repped for name, courage wolf, and awesome find of nutty anti-gunner site.

 

[MTC]

Ah. Good ol' Arthur Kellerman, originator of the oft-quoted "you are 44 times more likely [to be killed if you keep a gun at home]" scare tactic. If you want to dispute using studies and statistics, look up John Lott and Gary Kleck.
Personally, I don't even go that route, not only since it allows for endless accusations and counter-accusations as to the motives and validity of research methods, but because it implies a justification for the denial of rights, or persuading someone to voluntarily give up rights.

Try this: My rights, your rights, our rights, are not contingent upon the results of any "studies".

 

[dustjunky2000]

Try this: My rights, your rights, our rights, are not contingent upon the results of any "studies".

+1 and repped.


I fully intend to use this quote frequently.

 

[Yeah]

Refutation of the sample: Correlation is not causation.

Not that that is the end of the argument, but thin data in merits thin data out.

 

[VERT]

"Keeping a gun in the home makes it 2.7 times more likely that someone will be a victim of homicide in your home (in almost all cases the victim is either related to or intimately acquainted with the murderer) (source) and 4.8 times more likely that someone will commit suicide (source). Guns make it more likely that a suicide attempt will be successful than if other means were used such as sleeping pills."

Statistics I have an M.S. and took a lot of stat courses in grad school, trust me statistics can be bent to tell a story. Also, I have not read John Lott's book, but let me take a crack at a rebutal. #1) lot of drug dealers, thieves, rapists, wife beaters, child molesters and generally bad people might have a gun in their home. Doesn't mean they should, but they probably do. If they use that gun on a friend or family member...they probably get added to this statistic. #2) I have no doubt that guns make suicide attempts more successful. I can drive a nail with my pipe wrench, but a hammer is a hell of lot more efficient.

In either example the fact that a gun is in the home is not the problem. The fact is that some people have issues and they decide that a firearm offers an easy solution to their problem.

 

[thej27]

I never understood the whole suicide and guns argument. If someone wants to commit suicide and dont have access to a gun they will find other means. Look at the madness in Japan. They have internet groups dedicated to committing suicide. There was even instructions posted on how to mix chemicals to gas yourself to death.

When I was at Vincennes taking Law Enforcement I had a professor that told the class a lot of times when someone attempts suicide with a gun, they chicken out at the last second and pull the gun away while squeezing the trigger ultimately giving themselves a lobotomy.

 

[T-rav]

The New England Journal of Medicine revealed that keeping a gun in the home increases the risk of both suicide and homicide.

Really?....I'm pretty sure if your that unstable your gonna kill yourself regardless. Does this mean that rope, medicine, and belts are going to MAKE YOU kill yourself???

 

[edsinger]

" I can drive a nail with my pipe wrench, but a hammer is a hell of lot more efficient.

This was awesome!

MYTH:Gun ownership is a protection against political tyranny.
TRUTH: Gun ownership was legalized in Germany in 1928, five years before Hitler rose to power. Despite the claims of pro-gun activists, gun ownership did nothing to stop a tyrant like Hitler from seizing power. In 1938, Germany's gun laws were relaxed except in the case of Jews. Although the gun lobby has tried to associate racism with gun control, white supremacists have often praised the Nazis for being pro-gun and have opposed gun control.

This one bothers me, I thought reading in another post

Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.

What are the facts?

 

[antsi]

Highly biased statistical arguments. They're just throwing a bunch of numbers together that don't mean anything because there is no sensible argument behind them.

Two studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine

Throwing out a prestigious medical journal to make their biases sound authoritative. I might just as well cite an article on brain surgery I read in American Rifleman.

revealed that keeping a gun in the home increases the risk of both suicide and homicide.

Correlations are not causation. In order for their argument to work, it has to be the case that the guns caused the suicides and homicides (ie, everyone would still be alive and all outcomes would be better if not for the guns).

Case A: I decide I want to commit suicide. I go out and buy a gun for this purpose and shoot myself. Congratulations, I just became a statistic in favor of these guys' argument. The gun didn't make me kill myself, it was just a means for doing the job. If I couldn't get a gun, I could just as easily go buy a length of flexible hose at home depot and run it from my exhaust pipe into the passenger compartment of my car. I'd be just as dead. Preventing me from buying the gun didn't save my life, any more than buying the gun killed me. In either scenario, I killed myself.

Case B: I live in a high crime neighborhood. I've called the cops on drug dealers I've seen working the streets, and they've been threatening me. I go out and buy a gun for self protection. The thugs come by to make good on their threat.

Case B variant 1: The thugs shoot me and I die. Yes, I'm dead, but I am not dead due to me owning a gun. The gun was not the causative agent.

Case B variant 2: I shoot the thugs and they die. This adds to the anti-gunner argument, because I have now had a homicide in my home. It was a justifiable homicide, true, and the death of these thugs is a good thing given this situation. However, it is still a homicide and still counts in the statistics against gun ownership.

Case B variant 3: I shoot the thugs and they don't die, or I shoot at them and they don't die, or I draw on them and hold them until the police arrive. In all these scenarios, having a gun contributed to a good outcome. But it doesn't count in these stats.

Whenever anyone throws a number at you, you have to ask: what was counted here? What does this number mean? In this argument against self defense firearm use, they have lumped together deaths that would have happened with or without a gun, deaths that were justifiable and necessary, along with unjustified deaths that really wouldn't have happened if no guns were owned in the home. So this number is a heterogenous mish-mash of totally different things and it is utterly meaningless.

Question: How many apples, oranges, and nuclear weapons do I have on my kitchen table? Answer: 3
Does this tell you anything? In order for numbers to mean anything, you have to be counting homogenous entities (ie, instances all of the same phenomenon).

in almost all cases the victim is either related to or intimately acquainted with the murderer

The overwhelming majority of murders are one criminal killing another criminal. Usually these are people who work together in the illegal drug business. So, yes, they're "closely acquainted." Throwing this stat out without any context makes it sound like golfing buddies are constantly killing each other over how many mulligans they took, or Aunt Edna killed Aunt Madge over their green bean casserole recipe. If you aren't in the illegal drug business, this number really doesn't apply to you. If you are in the illegal drug business, then yes, you are very liklely to be killed, but I don't think that being a gun owner is the operative factor here.

Guns make it more likely that a suicide attempt will be successful than if other means were used such as sleeping pills.

Yes. Clinically, suicide attempts are assessed according to the lethality of the method. Guns, falling, and asphyxiation are very lethal methods that very often work. Taking a handful of pills and other non-lethal or less-lethal methods are more properly categorized as suicidal gestures. Yes, serious suicide attempts using lethal methods are much more likely to be successful than non-lethal gestures. Duh.

Again, I don't think the gun is the problem here, any more than gravity is the problem, or carbon monoxide is the problem. If you're suicidal, go to a psychiatrist's office, not to the gun store.

 

[Mog]

"Keeping a gun in the home makes it 2.7 times more likely that someone will be a victim of homicide in your home. . . . . and 4.8 times more likely that someone will commit suicide. Guns make it more likely. . . . .." yada, yada. . . .

If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)

 

[irishfan]

Statistics can be made to show whatever you want if you only account a certain amount of cases and in those cases the majority of them are what you are wanting to show. I remember in college psych classes that our professor showed us how certain mental cases were made more or less prevelant depending on who was funding the research. You can make a study be 95% pro-gun if that is your agenda or 95% anti-gun if that is the position that suits you.

 

[JBob77]

If homocide is defined as a killing of a human being, than that stat could be correct. Having a gun in my home makes it very highly likely that an intruder could become a victim of homocide. Now, that is a completely different thing than a murder, which I believe to be the random, or unjust killing of a human being. The problem here is that most people who would read these statistics do not make any seperation of the two entirely different actions.

Homocide is a very general and broad term that can be used to group a multitude of varying situations together, allowing events that could completely refute an argument to make the very same argument! Suicide, Murder and Self Defense (or Justifiable Homocide) all fall under that very generalized heading.

 

[ocsdor]

I like this one:

Gary Kleck conducted a survey which concluded that 2.5 million people in the US each year use guns to defend themselves. One percent of the US population is between 2 and 3 million. So if only one percent of the survey respondents had answered the survey dishonestly that would make the results of the survey inaccurate by millions.

I guess when it comes to surveys and statistics, any data that goes against their agenda is the result of people being dishonest (in this case 2.5 million being dishonest.

 

[elaw555]

Remember, the Brady Bunch describes a "child" as anyone under 25 when stating their "x number of kids are killed by a gun per day" statistic.

 

[Roadie]

I like this one:



I guess when it comes to surveys and statistics, any data that goes against their agenda is the result of people being dishonest (in this case 2.5 million being dishonest.

AND, notice they don't mention that the dishonesty could swing the other way...

 

[mettle]

This site is bound to **** you off. I thought I'd see how INGO refutes some of his unabashedly anti-gun arguments.

Gun Control and the Second Amendment





Sample:

The New England Journal of Medicine is in no way, shape or form an authority on firearms or their use. That uppity fool is out of league... end of discussion.

 

[Glock21]

This was awesome!



This one bothers me, I thought reading in another post



What are the facts?

We fear you, We hate you!

What a strange set of words to appear when I copy/pasted that link. Oh well - click on it anyway, it goes to JPFO's site and their research into Nazi gun control laws.