Firearm Report from Centers for Disease Control Now In (Interesting Results)

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NickEllis

NickEllis

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Interesting results from the study Obama ordered on gun violence.

http://www.slate.com/articles/healt..._deaths_and_self_defense_findings_from_a.html

http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2013/Pri...e-the-Threat-of-Firearm-Related-Violence.aspx

Some highlights:


Handguns vs. Longguns: Despite being outnumbered by long guns, “Handguns are used in more than 87 percent of violent crimes,” the report notes. In 2011, “handguns comprised 72.5 percent of the firearms used in murder and non-negligent manslaughter incidents.” Why do criminals prefer handguns? One reason, according to surveys of felons, is that they’re “easily concealable.”

Mass shootings aren’t the problem: “The number of public mass shootings of the type that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School accounted for a very small fraction of all firearm-related deaths,” says the report. “Since 1983 there have been 78 events in which 4 or more individuals were killed by a single perpetrator in 1 day in the United States, resulting in 547 victims and 476 injured persons.” Compare that with the 335,000 gun deaths between 2000 and 2010 alone.

Gun suicide is a bigger killer than gun homicide. From 2000 to 2010, “firearm-related suicides significantly outnumbered homicides for all age groups, annually accounting for 61 percent of the more than 335,600 people who died from firearm-related violence in the United States,” says the report.

Guns are used for self-defense often and effectively. “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year … in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008,” says the report. The three million figure is probably high, “based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys.” But a much lower estimate of 108,000 also seems fishy, “because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.” Furthermore, “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was 'used' by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”


The vast majority of gun owners say that having a gun makes them feel safer. And far more today than in 1999 cite protection—rather than hunting or other activities—as the major reason for why they own guns.
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Read the entire report, as there are a number of points to discuss and debate.
 
Interesting that they keyed in on the self-defense aspect of handgun usage and its frequency.

This study appears much more nonbiased and objective than I thought it would be.
 
We're going to have to fight to continue to maintain the distinction between 'firearm homicides' and 'homicides' when compared with other countries. This report doesn't do a great job of that.
 
yep, we should spread this around because it is important for people on the fence to see this and understand.


i think some will continue to think that 1 death is 1 death too many, and others (incl myself) will continue to think that 1 defensive gun use is enough to justify the RKBA. But this clearly shows two things that most people are probably not aware of:

1. guns protect more innocent civilians than they harm (by as much as an order of magnitude)

2. victims using a firearm have lower injury rates than victims without (which is opposite the Handgun Control/Brady talking points that claim you idiots are more likely to shoot yourself than a mugger, and that if you just acquiesce to the criminal's demands you'll be fine)

i like the way they said it: Guns are used for self-defense often and effectively.
 
Interesting. The problem with any of these studies is that people (in this case it'll be the controllists) pick and choose what they want to use to prove their point. They take things out of context or just use 1/2 of a statement in their speeches. Then, that is used as a sound bite on NBC and Bill Maher over and over again until people believe it to be a full fact.
 
1. guns protect more innocent civilians than they harm (by as much as an order of magnitude)

2. victims using a firearm have lower injury rates than victims without (which is opposite the Handgun Control/Brady talking points that claim you idiots are more likely to shoot yourself than a mugger, and that if you just acquiesce to the criminal's demands you'll be fine)
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These are the two results I found most contra-expectational from a govt. funded study. And most helpful from a political perspective.
 
I recommend the entire thing be read since it isn't cut and dried vindication for our side.
 
The public health field focuses on problems that are associated with significant levels of morbidity and mortality. The complexity and frequency of firearm-related violence combined with its impact on the health and safety of the nation’s residents make it a topic of considerable public health importance and suggest that a public health approach should be incorporated into the strategies used to prevent future harm and injuries. A public health approach involves three elements: a focus on prevention, a focus on scientific methodology to identify risk and pro- tective factors, and multidisciplinary collaboration to address the issue. Public health strategies are designed to interrupt the connection between three essential elements: the “agent” (the source of injury [weapon or perpetrator]), the “host” (the injured person), and the “environment” (the conditions under which the injury occurred). This public health approach has produced successes in reduction of tobacco use, unintentional poisoning, and motor vehicle fatalities.
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This paragraph highlights the essential error in approach.

Guns are not an 'agent' nor are they a source of injury, except in the extremely rare instance of a manufacturing defect or unrecognized wear or damage that causes a gun to malfunction and discharge unexpectedly.

At the community level, a range of factors appears to be related to high levels of gun use. These include high rates of poverty illicit drug trafficking, and substance use. For example, increased firearm violence has been associated with drug markets. A number of situational-level factors are also associated with increased risk of violence in general and firearm violence in particular. For example, the presence of drugs or alcohol increases the risk of firearm violence. Moreover, criminals often engage in violence as a means to acquire money, goods or other rewards.

A number of individual behaviors and susceptibilities are associated with firearm violence and injury. Impulsivity, low educational attainment, substance use, and prior history of aggression and abuse are considered risk factors for violence (for both perpetrators and victims). Suicide is often associated with mental and physical health problems, financial strain, veteran status, and relationship problems. Some studies have tried to provide accurate estimates of the proportions of the general population and subpopulations with access to firearms. Less is known about the types of weapons obtained, the means of acquisition, the frequency of gun carrying in public, community-level risk and protective factors (such as the role of social norms), and degree of knowledge about and skill in firearm operation and safety, and how these risk and protective factors are affected by the social environment and neighbor- hood/community context.
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The bolded text, above, has no necessary connection to firearms. 'Improvements' to the listed risk factors might be an overall societal good, but placing those in a firearms context is a mistake.
 
This paragraph highlights the essential error in approach.

Guns are not an 'agent' nor are they a source of injury, except in the extremely rare instance of a manufacturing defect or unrecognized wear or damage that causes a gun to malfunction and discharge unexpectedly.
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No, it doesn't. You are just playing semantics. "Agent", in this context, is the means in which the injury was inflicted. This is blatantly obvious. Repeating the mantra "guns don't kill, people do" is a completely ineffective way to contest the methodology, if that is what you wish to do.
 
I'm with the others who say this report is an unexpected surprise in the inclusion of findings such as the DGUs frequency and the the 'less injury with gun defense' findings.

Over the long run, the issues will be the distortions that the MSM and the antigun forces in the 'scientific community' produce in either highlighting their studies or new ones that will follow.

It will be the "Public Health" studies that will be the source of most of them.

Jim H.
 
taliv, quoteworthy:

i think some will continue to think that 1 death is 1 death too many, and others (incl myself) will continue to think that 1 defensive gun use is enough to justify the RKBA. But this clearly shows two things that most people are probably not aware of:

1. guns protect more innocent civilians than they harm (by as much as an order of magnitude)

2. victims using a firearm have lower injury rates than victims without (which is opposite the Handgun Control/Brady talking points that claim you idiots are more likely to shoot yourself than a mugger, and that if you just acquiesce to the criminal's demands you'll be fine)

i like the way they said it: Guns are used for self-defense often and effectively.
Click to expand...

I nearly jumped out of my seat when I read:

Gun suicide is a bigger killer than gun homicide. From 2000 to 2010, “firearm-related suicides significantly outnumbered homicides for all age groups, annually accounting for 61 percent of the more than 335,600 people who died from firearm-related violence in the United States,” says the report.
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ETA Note that " I shifted the decimal point " means I divided by ten.

Then I shifted the decimal point, but it still looks too high. I wish there was a way to filter out criminal-on-criminal homicides the way they filter out suicides.

hso:

I recommend the entire thing be read since it isn't cut and dried vindication for our side.
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Probably not, given it was comissioned by a known "anti" organization, but if "they" can take out "study bytes," why can't we? :D

Izzat a new phrase? "Study bytes?"

Terry
 
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Gun suicide is a bigger killer than gun homicide.
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Yea but Japan has almost no guns yet per capita more suicides than the US.

So are the Japanese all using the same gun or do they just find another method than a gun?

Deaf
 
Yea but Japan has almost no guns yet per capita more suicides than the US.

So are the Japanese all using the same gun or do they just find another method than a gun?

Deaf
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My understanding is that they prefer hanging but it really just shows it comes down to culture. I've seen studies that suicide rates in UK went down after the total bans and never got back to the initial rates. It is very possible, likely even, that completely removing firearm access from americans would lower suicide rates. That is far too high a price to pay to protect a few thousand people from themselves.
 
As I recall, US suicides by shooting have an 80% success rate; hangings a 70% success rate; and sucessful suicides often include prior attempts.

Suicide by poison or cutting have such low success rates, however, that I suspect they are the preferred method for suicidal gestures (with the exception of ritual seppuku).

I still suspect some of the medical researchers are guilty of confusing a result or a correlation with cause.


I can't find in the 124 page PDF mention of O'Carroll or Christoffel, which may be a sign of an attempt at neutral research.
1990s Patrick O'Carroll, Acting Section Head of the Division of Injury Control, Centers for Disease Control:
We’re going to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes deaths. We’re doing the most we can do, given the political realities.
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Katherine Christoffel, M.D.:
Guns are a virus that must be eradicated.... Get rid of the guns, get rid of the bullets, and you get rid of the deaths.
in Janice Somerville, "Gun Control as Immunization," American Medical News, January 3, 1994, p. 9.
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That's the kind of stuff that got CDC barred from using research funds to generate research to lobby Congress for gun control (Additional Requirement 13).
 
From 2000 to 2010 .... annually accounting for 61 percent of the more than 335,600 people who died from firearm-related violence
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That is a decade's worth, not an annual count.

I wish there was a way to filter out criminal-on-criminal homicides the way they filter out suicides.
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There isn't, but 91% of homicide victims in Baltimore MD had criminal records. (75% Philadelphia PA, 77% Milwaukee WI, 85% Newark NJ).

There are unkept statistics: in particular homicides adjudicated as justifiable at the coroner, medical examiner, prosecutor, grand jury, trial judge, trial jury or appellate court level are not kept nationally. What we do have is "shooting of a felon in commission of a felony by a citizen" as adjudicated in police report to FBI UCR. Well, any given year fifteen or twenty states simply don't let police reports adjudicate homicides as justifiable or not. I know in my area when there is a police shooting, there is always a presentation by the state bureau of investigation to a grand jury panel for adjudication.
 
No, it doesn't. You are just playing semantics. "Agent", in this context, is the means in which the injury was inflicted. This is blatantly obvious. Repeating the mantra "guns don't kill, people do" is a completely ineffective way to contest the methodology, if that is what you wish to do.
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I strongly disagree with that interpretation.

Kates et al, 1994 - http://www.guncite.com/journals/tennmed.html
In sum, health leaders see violence as a public health crisis and the firearm as something akin to an infectious disease. For example, one author characterized guns as "a virus that must be eradicated."[33] Their views receive wide exposure because, unlike criminology and other social scientific journals, medical and (p.524)health periodicals announce the appearance of their articles on firearms with press releases describing their anti-gun conclusions. This follows the health advocate sages' avowed intention to promote the idea that firearm ownership is an evil and that its elimination is a desirable and efficacious means of reducing violence.[34]
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The public health approach is simply wrong.

The references to Kellerman and Hemenway as research exemplars seem to me to be strong indications of the direction preferred.
 
:) now lets see some anti-gunners pop up on cnn and start ranting about facts and then ignore these :banghead: they always do. Is there any pro gun media that debates with anti-gun folks?
 
MErl said:
My understanding is that they prefer hanging but it really just shows it comes down to culture. I've seen studies that suicide rates in UK went down after the total bans and never got back to the initial rates. It is very possible, likely even, that completely removing firearm access from americans would lower suicide rates. That is far too high a price to pay to protect a few thousand people from themselves.
Click to expand...
But we always wonder of some of these 'one car collisions' were in fact suicides to.

I suspect over time people migrate to what becomes culturally acceptable. In America, there are suicides by firearms, pills, jumping off bridges, slit wrist with razor blades, carbon monoxide poisoning (usually cars that are left running in an enclosed place), self-asphyxiation (many methods), self-immolation, suicide by cop, etc....

And that is why we will see no benefit of any kind of gun control. But even if we did, like you said, it does not cover how many were saved by guns nor does it cover for a loss of freedom and ability to tell our government 'no' if need be.

Kind of like the NSA spying thing... even if it helps some it erodes to many of our rights.

Deaf
 
US suicides by shooting have an 80% success rate; hangings a 70% success rate
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I wonder what might be the rate of success for jumping off bridges. Given how successful and widespread suicide was in the Roman Empire, if someone's gonna off themselves, the lack of pistols aren't going to stop them.
 
I'm surprised that the results weren't more skewed towards anti gun agenda.
 
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