Suicide without a gun...

[follower of Christ]

Japan has a very strict gun control law, and only 0.3% of suicide victims use guns (24). Of those, most are police officers, soldiers, and criminals. In Japan, however, we see a recent example of a different suicide means restriction, involving paraquat. Between 1984 and 1985, the number of deaths in Japan that resulted from drinking the poisonous paraquat increased dramatically from 594 to 1021. Among the 1021 deaths in 1985, 96.5% were suicides (25). One possible reason for this sharp increase is that paraquat was used in a series of indiscriminate killings wherein victims received contaminated soft drinks from vending machines: in 1985, 17 innocent people were killed. The mass media reported these criminal acts sensationally, and it became widely known that paraquat was extremely lethal. This may have made it attractive as a means of suicide. ...



...Since hanging has always been available as a means of suicide, increased access cannot account for the changes. Nevertheless, it is now the leading method of suicide in young people, accounting for 36.1% and 36.8% of young male and female suicides respectively in Australia in 1994 (27).



http://ww1.cpa-apc.org:8080/publication ... eview4.asp

 

[follower of Christ]

To recap a bit....since Im now making most of this part of my own website for future debates


Suicide and Guns

1.0
Japan
Japans Gun FREE Society and is horrible SUICIDE rates prove that suicide ISNT slowed by removing guns...

Gun control in Japan is the most stringent in the democratic world.
The weapons law begins by stating 'No-one shall possess a fire-arm or fire-arms or a sword or swords', and very few exceptions are allowed.[3] Gun ownership is minuscule, and so is gun crime. As gun crime in other nations increases, many advocates of gun control urge that Japan's gun control policy be imitated.[4]

http://www.davekopel.com/2a/lawrev/japa ... ontrol.htm

And yet Japan has a higher suicide rate than the USA...

Why So Many Suicides in Japan?It's the economy, stupid. And the health-care system. And the religious beliefs. And the …
By Christopher BeamPosted Thursday, May 31, 2007, at 6:39 PM ET


Japan's agriculture minister hanged himself Monday amid allegations of bid-rigging and padding government expenses. The following day, an executive allegedly linked to one of the scams leapt to his death. In 2005, 32,552 people killed themselves in Japan—one of the highest suicide rates among industrialized nations. Why are there so many suicides in Japan?

There's no single factor, but experts point to a combination of economic woes, poor mental-health resources, lack of religious prohibition, and cultural acceptance of the practice.* The economic recession that hit in the late 1990s seemed to increase the number of suicides, which jumped by 35 percent in 1998. Japan's high-interest loan system and historically strict bankruptcy laws may have contributed to this effect. But the Japanese suicide rate remains elevated, even though the economy has since recovered. Even before the recession, the rate was already a third higher than that of the United States. (Not that Japan is setting any records: Hungary, Estonia, and Latvia, among others, have more suicides per capita than Japan.)

Japan has a very strict gun control law, and only 0.3% of suicide victims use guns (24). Of those, most are police officers, soldiers, and criminals. In Japan, however, we see a recent example of a different suicide means restriction, involving paraquat. Between 1984 and 1985, the number of deaths in Japan that resulted from drinking the poisonous paraquat increased dramatically from 594 to 1021. Among the 1021 deaths in 1985, 96.5% were suicides (25). One possible reason for this sharp increase is that paraquat was used in a series of indiscriminate killings wherein victims received contaminated soft drinks from vending machines: in 1985, 17 innocent people were killed. The mass media reported these criminal acts sensationally, and it became widely known that paraquat was extremely lethal. This may have made it attractive as a means of suicide. ...



...Since hanging has always been available as a means of suicide, increased access cannot account for the changes. Nevertheless, it is now the leading method of suicide in young people, accounting for 36.1% and 36.8% of young male and female suicides respectively in Australia in 1994 (27).



http://ww1.cpa-apc.org:8080/publication ... eview4.asp

Canada

As for the death rate from firearms accidents, Canada continued to enjoy a decline that had begun in 1971.

Suicides involving firearms fell noticeably after 1978, reversing the previous trend. The overall suicide rate, however, did not drop, which leads to the inference that the availability of particular weapons has no impact on a nation's suicide rate. America's suicide rate, already slighter lower than Canada's, declined some more. In short, the evidence indicates that Canada's handgun crackdown/long gun licensing had little effect on crime or suicide.

http://www.davekopel.com/2a/Mags/The-Fa ... ontrol.htm

2.0

Controversy has also swirled around Dr. Kellerman's claim that gun availability increases the risk of suicide. Dr. Faria says "the overwhelming available evidence compiled from the psychiatric literature is that untreated or poorly managed depression is the real culprit behind high rates of suicide."

Backing this up is the observation that countries with strict gun control laws and low rates of firearm availability -- such as Japan, Germany and the Scandinavian countries -- have suicide rates that are 2 time to 3 times higher than for the U.S. In these countries, people simply substitute for guns other suicide methods such as Hara-Kiri, carbon monoxide suffocation, hanging, or chemical poisoning.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,7217,00.html

2.1

Guns and suicide: possible effects of some specific legislation

CL Rich, JG Young, RC Fowler, J Wagner and NA Black
Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego.

The authors describe suicide rates in Toronto and Ontario and methods used for suicide in Toronto for 5 years before and after enactment of Canadian gun control legislation in 1978. They also present data from San Diego, Calif., where state laws attempt to limit access to guns by certain psychiatric patients. Both sets of data indicate that gun control legislation may have led to decreased use of guns by suicidal men, but the difference was apparently offset by an increase in suicide by leaping. In the case of men using guns for suicide, these data support a hypothesis of substitution of suicide method.

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/con ... /147/3/342

2.2

"While gun-related suicides were reduced by Canada's gun control legislation of 1978, the overall suicide rate did not go down at all: the gun-related suicides were replaced 100% by an increase in other types of suicide -- mostly jumping off bridges"

"The authors describe suicide rates in Toronto and Ontario and methods used for suicide in Toronto for 5 years before and after enactment of Canadian gun control legislation in 1978. They also present data from San Diego, Calif., where state laws attempt to limit access to guns by certain psychiatric patients. Both sets of data indicate that gun control legislation may have led to decreased use of guns by suicidal men, but the difference was apparently offset by an increase in suicide by leaping.
In the case of men using guns for suicide, these data support a hypothesis of substitution of suicide method."

http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/suicide.html

 

[Drew]

To recap a bit....since Im now making most of this part of my own website for future debates so I dont have to do this mindnumbing repetition with those who simply cannot accept facts....



Suicide and Guns

1.0
Japan
Japans Gun FREE Society and is horrible SUICIDE rates prove that suicide ISNT slowed by removing guns...

Not relevant. There is nothing in this data that supports your specific assertion that "that suicide ISNT slowed by removing guns.." Again, the fact of higher suicide rates in a country with few guns is not evidence that:

(1) the suicide rate in that nation would not be worse if there were guns;
(2) the availability of guns in other countries does not worsen the suicide rate in those other countries.

 

[follower of Christ]

The overall Canadian suicide rate has consistently been slightly higher than the U. S. rate, but suicide rate by firearm is significantly higher in the U. S. each year. (The suicide rate by firearm in 1986 was about 4 per 100,000 population in Canada and almost 7. 5 per 100,000 in the U. S. , but overall suicide rates were close at around 13 per 100,000. Mundt saw no particular effect in suicide rates that he would attribute to the Canadian gun restrictions of 1977.

http://search.cga.state.ct.us/dtsearch_ ... Index=I%3A\zindex\1994&HitCount=0&hits=&hc=0&req=&Item=1526

Huh....WE have more guns yet the suicide rate is higher elsewhere ;)

.

 

[follower of Christ]

.

Guns and suicide: possible effects of some specific legislation

Article Abstract:

A large number of suicides, particularly by men, are accomplished with guns. The use of guns by both men and women, especially in the younger age groups, to commit suicide has increased over the past decades. One goal of gun legislation was to reverse this increase. In 1978 Canadian law made it harder for citizens to own guns, especially handguns, which were virtually forbidden. More restrictions applied to people with psychiatric histories or criminal convictions because of a presumed inclination toward violence. There was also a nationwide attempt to teach how to safely use and store guns, and all unregistered guns were required to be turned in. Changes in suicide rates five years after this enactment were assessed in two Canadian cities. Since California also has a limited gun control law, which focuses on people with particular psychiatric histories, suicide methods used in San Diego between 1981 and 1983 were also studied. The average number of suicides and the methods used for the five years before and after the passage of the 1978 Canadian law were determined. There were no significant changes in the total suicide rates for Toronto or Ontario in the two five-year periods. The number of suicides by shooting in Toronto fell significantly after 1978, with a significant increase in suicide by leaping during this same time period. These findings suggest the substitution hypothesis, that people who are determined to commit suicide will do so with whatever method is available to them. The authors therefore suggest that a productive approach to the problem of suicide lies in identifying suicidal people and effectively treating their underlying psychiatric problems. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)

Read more: http://www.faqs.org/abstracts/Psycholog ... z0cLEmbCKZ

 

[follower of Christ]

.

Myth 3: The proliferation of guns is responsible for an increase in suicides.

The availability of guns is often presumed to increase the suicide rate. In fact, our suicide rates are higher than our homicide rates. Nonetheless, between 1974-1994, while the civilian gun stock increased 75 percent, the total suicide rate in this country fluctuated very little and amounted to 12 deaths per 100,000 persons in 1974 and 1994. Evidently, the remarkable increase in the number of guns in this country has not increased the rate of suicide.

If gun availability does influence suicide, one would have to explain why countries with strict gun control laws, such as West Germany, France, Austria, Finland, Belgium, Denmark, Hungary, Luxembourg, Norway and Canada, have higher suicide rates than the U.S. If we group the suicides and homicides together as an indicator of handgun availability, the U.S. falls below the international median in this statistic. The view that gun availability has a direct effect on total suicide rates, here and abroad, is not supported by any empirical evidence or technically sound studies.

It is worth noting, however, that the rate of suicides committed with guns, or the gun suicide rate, increased slightly from 6.7 to 7.2 deaths per 100,000 persons in the last twenty years. Similarly, the percentage of suicides committed with guns increased slightly from 55.4 percent in 1974 to 60.3 percent in 1994. The slight increase in the rate and percentage of gun suicides demonstrates that increased gun availability does correlate with an increase in the number of suicides committed with guns. Additionally, nine of thirteen studies conducted between 1984 and 1993 also found a positive association between gun levels and the gun suicide rate. However, only one of the studies found a direct correlation between gun levels and the total suicide rate, and there is reason to believe that this study is flawed technically, having used an invalid method to measure gun availability. A study of state level data in 1990 also found a direct correlation between gun levels and gun suicides but not total suicides.

It should be reemphasized that the increases in the number of suicides committed with guns and the gun suicide rate represent firearms being chosen more often in suicides, and not an increase in total suicides. So, while people in this country are more frequently choosing firearms as the means of self-destruction, the number of total suicides remains relatively unchanged.

Sources: Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, (New York: Walter de Gruyter, Inc., 1997). Don B. Kates Jr. and Gary Kleck, The Great American Gun Debate: Essays on Firearms and Violence, (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1997).

http://www.dsgl.org/Articles/oteromyths.htm

 

[follower of Christ]

Myth 6: Few people actually use guns for self-defense.

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) predicted in 1987 that 83 percent of people in this country would be a victim of violent crime during their lifetime. Considering the violent crime rate has not changed significantly, about 80 percent of the citizenry, in possession of over 230 million guns, with nearly half the households having a gun, are going to come face to face with a violent criminal one day. This situation makes one think that there would be many instances of defensive gun use in this country. In fact, thirteen studies conducted between 1976 and 1994 estimated that there were between 770,00 and 3.6 million civilian defensive gun uses per year.

The National Self-Defense Survey (NSDS), conducted by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz in 1993, has yielded the most accurate estimate of defensive gun use to date. While designing this landmark study, the authors corrected many flaws found in several previous surveys. In doing so, the authors constructed the first survey ever specifically designed to tally the number of defensive gun uses in this country.

The survey revealed that between 1988-1993 civilians used guns in self-defense 2.2-2.5 million times per year, saving between 240,000- 400,000 lives each year. Based on their results, Kleck and Gertz estimated that the number of defensive gun uses is three to four times that of illegal gun uses.


Sources: Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, (New York: Walter de Gruyter, Inc., 1997). Don B. Kates Jr., and Gary Kleck, The Great American Gun Debate: Essays on Firearms and Violence, (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1997). Michael R. Rand, "Guns and Crime: Handgun Victimization, Firearm Self-Defense, and Firearm Theft," U.S. Department of Justice, 1994

http://www.dsgl.org/Articles/oteromyths.htm

 

[follower of Christ]

.

Myth 8: You, and your family and friends, are 43 times more likely to be shot by a gun kept in the home than is a criminal intruder.

The infamous study that yielded this illogical statistic is just one of many that litter the public health and medical literature.
Serious shortcomings in rationale and methodology plague the study. Nevertheless, the 43:1 ratio is arguably the gun control advocate’s most cited statistic.

The study’s authors start from the presumption that the effectiveness of gun ownership for self-defense can only be ascertained by contrasting dead intruders with dead innocents. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Similar to police forces and other household security measures, the real benefits of gun ownership, demonstrated in the NSDS, are to be counted not in corpses but in lives saved and crimes deterred. In no way do the authors address this. In fact, the study only counted homes in which a homicide or suicide took place, ignoring gun-containing households that may have successfully defended themselves from criminal victimization with a firearm or had no incidents occur at all.

In an attempt to conjure up a risk factor due to having a gun in the home, the authors tallied the gun related deaths in the homes studied. In doing so, the authors included suicides. Of the 43 gun related deaths included in the study, 37 were suicides. The inclusion of suicides as gun related deaths would be reasonable if gun availability affected suicide rates. But, as explained in disputing Myth #3, gun availability does not influence suicide rates. The suicides would almost certainly have occurred by some other means in the absence of a gun. Additionally, the authors excluded many cases of lawful self-defense homicide. So, in deriving their risk factor of gun related deaths vs. self-defense homicides, the authors used an inflated numerator and an under-representative denominator.

Moreover, the Seattle-based homes investigated were not the average American households. The study group was teeming with high-risk households that contained a disproportionate number of people with histories of arrests, drug abuse and domestic violence. By studying these high-risk homes, one cannot make sweeping generalizations regarding the rest of this country.

Sources: Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, (New York: Walter de Gruyter, Inc., 1997). David B. Kopel, "The 43:1 Fallacy." Independence Feature Syndicate Opinion-Editorial. 1998. Available: <http://www.i2i.org/SuptDocs/Crime/43_to_1_fallacy.htm> (31 July 1998).

http://www.dsgl.org/Articles/oteromyths.htm

 

[follower of Christ]

To recap a bit....since Im now making most of this part of my own website for future debates


Suicide and Guns

1.0
Japan
Japans Gun FREE Society and is horrible SUICIDE rates prove that suicide ISNT slowed by removing guns...

Gun control in Japan is the most stringent in the democratic world.
The weapons law begins by stating 'No-one shall possess a fire-arm or fire-arms or a sword or swords', and very few exceptions are allowed.[3] Gun ownership is minuscule, and so is gun crime. As gun crime in other nations increases, many advocates of gun control urge that Japan's gun control policy be imitated.[4]

http://www.davekopel.com/2a/lawrev/japa ... ontrol.htm

And yet Japan has a higher suicide rate than the USA...

Why So Many Suicides in Japan?It's the economy, stupid. And the health-care system. And the religious beliefs. And the …
By Christopher BeamPosted Thursday, May 31, 2007, at 6:39 PM ET


Japan's agriculture minister hanged himself Monday amid allegations of bid-rigging and padding government expenses. The following day, an executive allegedly linked to one of the scams leapt to his death. In 2005, 32,552 people killed themselves in Japan—one of the highest suicide rates among industrialized nations. Why are there so many suicides in Japan?

There's no single factor, but experts point to a combination of economic woes, poor mental-health resources, lack of religious prohibition, and cultural acceptance of the practice.* The economic recession that hit in the late 1990s seemed to increase the number of suicides, which jumped by 35 percent in 1998. Japan's high-interest loan system and historically strict bankruptcy laws may have contributed to this effect. But the Japanese suicide rate remains elevated, even though the economy has since recovered. Even before the recession, the rate was already a third higher than that of the United States. (Not that Japan is setting any records: Hungary, Estonia, and Latvia, among others, have more suicides per capita than Japan.)

Japan has a very strict gun control law, and only 0.3% of suicide victims use guns (24). Of those, most are police officers, soldiers, and criminals. In Japan, however, we see a recent example of a different suicide means restriction, involving paraquat. Between 1984 and 1985, the number of deaths in Japan that resulted from drinking the poisonous paraquat increased dramatically from 594 to 1021. Among the 1021 deaths in 1985, 96.5% were suicides (25). One possible reason for this sharp increase is that paraquat was used in a series of indiscriminate killings wherein victims received contaminated soft drinks from vending machines: in 1985, 17 innocent people were killed. The mass media reported these criminal acts sensationally, and it became widely known that paraquat was extremely lethal. This may have made it attractive as a means of suicide. ...



...Since hanging has always been available as a means of suicide, increased access cannot account for the changes. Nevertheless, it is now the leading method of suicide in young people, accounting for 36.1% and 36.8% of young male and female suicides respectively in Australia in 1994 (27).



http://ww1.cpa-apc.org:8080/publication ... eview4.asp

Canada

As for the death rate from firearms accidents, Canada continued to enjoy a decline that had begun in 1971.

Suicides involving firearms fell noticeably after 1978, reversing the previous trend. The overall suicide rate, however, did not drop, which leads to the inference that the availability of particular weapons has no impact on a nation's suicide rate. America's suicide rate, already slighter lower than Canada's, declined some more. In short, the evidence indicates that Canada's handgun crackdown/long gun licensing had little effect on crime or suicide.

http://www.davekopel.com/2a/Mags/The-Fa ... ontrol.htm

2.0

Controversy has also swirled around Dr. Kellerman's claim that gun availability increases the risk of suicide. Dr. Faria says "the overwhelming available evidence compiled from the psychiatric literature is that untreated or poorly managed depression is the real culprit behind high rates of suicide."

Backing this up is the observation that countries with strict gun control laws and low rates of firearm availability -- such as Japan, Germany and the Scandinavian countries -- have suicide rates that are 2 time to 3 times higher than for the U.S. In these countries, people simply substitute for guns other suicide methods such as Hara-Kiri, carbon monoxide suffocation, hanging, or chemical poisoning.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,7217,00.html

2.1

Guns and suicide: possible effects of some specific legislation

CL Rich, JG Young, RC Fowler, J Wagner and NA Black
Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego.

The authors describe suicide rates in Toronto and Ontario and methods used for suicide in Toronto for 5 years before and after enactment of Canadian gun control legislation in 1978. They also present data from San Diego, Calif., where state laws attempt to limit access to guns by certain psychiatric patients. Both sets of data indicate that gun control legislation may have led to decreased use of guns by suicidal men, but the difference was apparently offset by an increase in suicide by leaping. In the case of men using guns for suicide, these data support a hypothesis of substitution of suicide method.

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/con ... /147/3/342

2.2

"While gun-related suicides were reduced by Canada's gun control legislation of 1978, the overall suicide rate did not go down at all: the gun-related suicides were replaced 100% by an increase in other types of suicide -- mostly jumping off bridges"

"The authors describe suicide rates in Toronto and Ontario and methods used for suicide in Toronto for 5 years before and after enactment of Canadian gun control legislation in 1978. They also present data from San Diego, Calif., where state laws attempt to limit access to guns by certain psychiatric patients. Both sets of data indicate that gun control legislation may have led to decreased use of guns by suicidal men, but the difference was apparently offset by an increase in suicide by leaping.
In the case of men using guns for suicide, these data support a hypothesis of substitution of suicide method."

http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/suicide.html

 

[Slyvena]

... ... By the time your on your fourth thread... I give up, I'm not getting involved in this, drew is doing a good enough job of refuting the evidence so I'm gone, it would only lead to personal insult which I have seen in your previous threads.

 

[Solo]

... ... By the time your on your fourth thread... I give up, I'm not getting involved in this, drew is doing a good enough job of refuting the evidence so I'm gone, it would only lead to personal insult which I have seen in your previous threads.

What a terrible insulting thing to say about a fellow member of this Christian forum whose country gives each citizen the right to own a gun according to its Constitution, specifically the 2nd Amendment. And those who are Canadians and Australians have the audacity to speak their liberal garbage after America has saved their butts time and time again!

 

[follower of Christ]

... ... By the time your on your fourth thread... I give up, I'm not getting involved in this

Wise choice.
Since youre not involving yourself theres no need for you to post here again.

drew is doing a good enough job of refuting the evidence so I'm gone, it would only lead to personal insult which I have seen in your previous threads.

Post something relevant to the topic or stay out of my thread, please.

 

[Drew]

... ... By the time your on your fourth thread... I give up, I'm not getting involved in this, drew is doing a good enough job of refuting the evidence so I'm gone, it would only lead to personal insult which I have seen in your previous threads.

What a terrible insulting thing to say about a fellow member of this Christian forum whose country gives each citizen the right to own a gun according to its Constitution, specifically the 2nd Amendment. And those who are Canadians and Australians have the audacity to speak their liberal garbage after America has saved their butts time and time again!

You, of all people, are in no position to lecture anyone on fair and equitable treatment of others.

And please, save us the flag-waving and chest-thumping. The United States is a powerful nation and its decisions, both bad and good, will affect "Australians and Canadians". So while, yes, some decisions of the American government have been constructive and helped, some have been hurtful and place us at increased risk.

 

[follower of Christ]

[youtube:26fq2etp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q65KZIqay4E[/youtube:26fq2etp]

 

[Solo]

... ... By the time your on your fourth thread... I give up, I'm not getting involved in this, drew is doing a good enough job of refuting the evidence so I'm gone, it would only lead to personal insult which I have seen in your previous threads.

What a terrible insulting thing to say about a fellow member of this Christian forum whose country gives each citizen the right to own a gun according to its Constitution, specifically the 2nd Amendment. And those who are Canadians and Australians have the audacity to speak their liberal garbage after America has saved their butts time and time again!

You, of all people, are in no position to lecture anyone on fair and equitable treatment of others.

And please, save us the flag-waving and chest-thumping. The United States is a powerful nation and its decisions, both bad and good, will affect "Australians and Canadians". So while, yes, some decisions of the American government have been constructive and helped, some have been hurtful and place us at increased risk.

America does not need your opinion.

 

[follower of Christ]

America does not need your opinion.

Amen and Amen.
It couldnt have been said any better, Solo.
We dont NEED the worlds opinions....WE are a sovereign nation !

.

 

[Drew]

We would also have to take into account the fact that nearly all people who commit suicide using a gun would simply commit suicide in some other way if guns were not available (proven fact) and that many people who are murdered with a gun would simply be murdered in another way if guns were not available. That is, the current gun murders and gun suicides would not "go away" if guns went away, they would just convert to some other kinds of murder and suicide.

http://www.gunsandcrime.org/sbcoalin.html

If you go the reference, there is no evidence at all given to support the assertion that it is a "proven fact" that "people who are murdered with a gun would be murdered in another way if guns were not availalbe".

 

[Drew]

America does not need your opinion.

Amen and Amen.
It couldnt have been said any better, Solo.
We dont NEED the worlds opinions....WE are a sovereign nation !

.

I can certainly understand why your position would be better served if challenges to it were to be muted.

 

[follower of Christ]

.

Fact Sheet: Guns Save Lives

A. Guns save more lives than they take; prevent more injuries than they inflict

* Guns used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year -- or about 6,850 times a day.1 This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.2

* Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker.3

* As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual abuse.4

* Even anti-gun Clinton researchers concede that guns are used 1.5 million times annually for self-defense. According to the Clinton Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of self-defense every year. The National Institute of Justice published this figure in 1997 as part of "Guns in America" -- a study which was authored by noted anti-gun criminologists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig.5

* Armed citizens kill more crooks than do the police. Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527 to 606).6 And readers of Newsweek learned that "only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The 'error rate' for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high."7

* Handguns are the weapon of choice for self-defense. Citizens use handguns to protect themselves over 1.9 million times a year.8 Many of these self-defense handguns could be labeled as "Saturday Night Specials."

B. Concealed carry laws help reduce crime

* Nationwide: one-half million self-defense uses. Every year, as many as one-half million citizens defend themselves with a firearm away from home.9

* Concealed carry laws are dropping crime rates across the country. A comprehensive national study determined in 1996 that violent crime fell after states made it legal to carry concealed firearms. The results of the study showed:

* States which passed concealed carry laws reduced their murder rate by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3%;10 and

* If those states not having concealed carry laws had adopted such laws in 1992, then approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and over 11,000 robberies would have been avoided yearly.11

* Vermont: one of the safest five states in the country. In Vermont, citizens can carry a firearm without getting permission... without paying a fee... or without going through any kind of government-imposed waiting period. And yet for ten years in a row, Vermont has remained one of the top-five, safest states in the union -- having three times received the "Safest State Award."12

* Florida: concealed carry helps slash the murder rates in the state. In the fifteen years following the passage of Florida's concealed carry law in 1987, over 800,000 permits to carry firearms were issued to people in the state.13 FBI reports show that the homicide rate in Florida, which in 1987 was much higher than the national average, fell 52% during that 15-year period -- thus putting the Florida rate below the national average. 14

* Do firearms carry laws result in chaos? No. Consider the case of Florida. A citizen in the Sunshine State is far more likely to be attacked by an alligator than to be assaulted by a concealed carry holder.

1. During the first fifteen years that the Florida law was in effect, alligator attacks outpaced the number of crimes committed by carry holders by a 229 to 155 margin.

2. And even the 155 "crimes" committed by concealed carry permit holders are somewhat misleading as most of these infractions resulted from Floridians who accidentally carried their firearms into restricted areas, such as an airport.15

C. Criminals avoid armed citizens

* Kennesaw, GA. In 1982, this suburb of Atlanta passed a law requiring heads of households to keep at least one firearm in the house. The residential burglary rate subsequently dropped 89% in Kennesaw, compared to the modest 10.4% drop in Georgia as a whole.16

* Ten years later (1991), the residential burglary rate in Kennesaw was still 72% lower than it had been in 1981, before the law was passed.17

* Nationwide. Statistical comparisons with other countries show that burglars in the United States are far less apt to enter an occupied home than their foreign counterparts who live in countries where fewer civilians own firearms. Consider the following rates showing how often a homeowner is present when a burglar strikes:

* Homeowner occupancy rate in the gun control countries of Great Britain, Canada and Netherlands: 45% (average of the three countries); and,

* Homeowner occupancy rate in the United States: 12.7%.18

Rapes averted when women carry or use firearms for protection

* Orlando, FL. In 1966-67, the media highly publicized a safety course which taught Orlando women how to use guns. The result: Orlando's rape rate dropped 88% in 1967, whereas the rape rate remained constant in the rest of Florida and the nation.19

* Nationwide. In 1979, the Carter Justice Department found that of more than 32,000 attempted rapes, 32% were actually committed. But when a woman was armed with a gun or knife, only 3% of the attempted rapes were actually successful.20

Justice Department study:

* 3/5 of felons polled agreed that "a criminal is not going to mess around with a victim he knows is armed with a gun."21

* 74% of felons polled agreed that "one reason burglars avoid houses when people are at home is that they fear being shot during the crime."22

* 57% of felons polled agreed that "criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police."23

1 Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun," 86 The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, 1 (Fall 1995):164.
Dr. Kleck is a professor in the school of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He has researched extensively and published several essays on the gun control issue. His book, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, has become a widely cited source in the gun control debate. In fact, this book earned Dr. Kleck the prestigious American Society of Criminology Michael J. Hindelang award for 1993. This award is given for the book published in the past two to three years that makes the most outstanding contribution to criminology.
Even those who don't like the conclusions Dr. Kleck reaches, cannot argue with his impeccable research and methodology. In "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed," Marvin E. Wolfgang writes that, "What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator.... I have to admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and this research. Can it be true that about two million instances occur each year in which a gun was used as a defensive measure against crime? It is hard to believe. Yet, it is hard to challenge the data collected. We do not have contrary evidence." Wolfgang, "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed," The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, at 188.
Wolfgang says there is no "contrary evidence." Indeed, there are more than a dozen national polls -- one of which was conducted by The Los Angeles Times -- that have found figures comparable to the Kleck-Gertz study. Even the Clinton Justice Department (through the National Institute of Justice) found there were as many as 1.5 million defensive users of firearms every year. See National Institute of Justice, "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," Research in Brief (May 1997).
As for Dr. Kleck, readers of his materials may be interested to know that he is a member of the ACLU, Amnesty International USA, and Common Cause. He is not and has never been a member of or contributor to any advocacy group on either side of the gun control debate.
2 According to the National Safety Council, the total number of gun deaths (by accidents, suicides and homicides) account for less than 30,000 deaths per year. See Injury Facts, published yearly by the National Safety Council, Itasca, Illinois.
3Kleck and Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime," at 173, 185.
4Kleck and Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime," at 185.
5 Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," NIJ Research in Brief (May 1997); available at http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/165476.txt on the internet. The finding of 1.5 million yearly self-defense cases did not sit well with the anti-gun bias of the study's authors, who attempted to explain why there could not possibly be one and a half million cases of self-defense every year. Nevertheless, the 1.5 million figure is consistent with a mountain of independent surveys showing similar figures. The sponsors of these studies -- nearly a dozen -- are quite varied, and include anti-gun organizations, news media organizations, governments and commercial polling firms. See also Kleck and Gertz, supra note 1, pp. 182-183.
6Kleck, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, (1991):111-116, 148.
7George F. Will, "Are We 'a Nation of Cowards'?," Newsweek (15 November 1993):93.
8Id. at 164, 185.
9Dr. Gary Kleck, interview with J. Neil Schulman, "Q and A: Guns, crime and self-defense," The Orange County Register (19 September 1993). In the interview with Schulman, Dr. Kleck reports on findings from a national survey which he and Dr. Marc Gertz conducted in Spring, 1993 -- a survey which findings were reported in Kleck and Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime." br>10 One of the authors of the University of Chicago study reported on the study's findings in John R. Lott, Jr., "More Guns, Less Violent Crime," The Wall Street Journal (28 August 1996). See also John R. Lott, Jr. and David B. Mustard, "Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns," University of Chicago (15 August 1996); and Lott, More Guns, Less Crime (1998, 2000).
11Lott and Mustard, "Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns."
12Kathleen O'Leary Morgan, Scott Morgan and Neal Quitno, "Rankings of States in Most Dangerous/Safest State Awards 1994 to 2003," Morgan Quitno Press (2004) at http://www.statestats.com/dang9403.htm. Morgan Quitno Press is an independent private research and publishing company which was founded in 1989. The company specializes in reference books and monthly reports that compare states and cities in several different subject areas. In the first 10 years in which they published their Safest State Award, Vermont has consistently remained one of the top five safest states.
13Memo by Jim Smith, Secretary of State, Florida Department of State, Division of Licensing, Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report (October 1, 2002).
14Florida's murder rate was 11.4 per 100,000 in 1987, but only 5.5 in 2002. Compare Federal Bureau of Investigation, "Crime in the United States," Uniform Crime Reports, (1988): 7, 53; and FBI, (2003):19, 79.
15 John R. Lott, Jr., "Right to carry would disprove horror stories," Kansas City Star, (July 12, 2003).
16Gary Kleck, "Crime Control Through the Private Use of Armed Force," Social Problems 35 (February 1988):15.
17Compare Kleck, "Crime Control," at 15, and Chief Dwaine L. Wilson, City of Kennesaw Police Department, "Month to Month Statistics: 1991." (Residential burglary rates from 1981-1991 are based on statistics for the months of March - October.)
18Kleck, Point Blank, at 140.
19Kleck, "Crime Control," at 13.
20U.S. Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, Rape Victimization in 26 American Cities (1979), p. 31.
21U.S., Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, "The Armed Criminal in America: A Survey of Incarcerated Felons," Research Report (July 1985): 27.
22Id.
23Id.

 

[Drew]

.

Fact Sheet: Guns Save Lives

A. Guns save more lives than they take; prevent more injuries than they inflict

* Guns used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year -- or about 6,850 times a day.1 This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.2

You do not tell us where this ratio of 80 is taken from. I assume that when you divide 2.5 million by 80, you get about 30,000 which is, I guess, is the number of people who die by guns each year in the US? That seems a little high, even for the US.

In any event, the ratio of 80 is deeply misleading. When it is claimed that guns are used to defend against criminals, and this ratio of 80 is used, the reader need to understand that he is being led to believe that 80 people would have died in crimes had they not had their guns to defend themselves for every "innocent" person who dies by gunfire.

Am I the only one who sees the obvious problem with this?

Clearly, it is an exceedingly dubious assumption that each of these people would have been killed if they did not have a gun. For all the reader knows, many of these "criminals" confronted by gun-owners are punks trespassing on property who are scared off by the owner with a gun. In such cases, we have no reason to believe there was any real threat to the gun-owner in the first place.

So we need a lot more information which, of course, we are not given.