In cities, hand guns are used primarily to commit crimes and kill people in anger.

Status
Not open for further replies.
R

Regen

Member
Joined
Mar 15, 2007
Messages
310
Location
Virginia
Help me refute the statement " In cities, hand guns are used primarily to commit crimes and kill people in anger."

I've been having a discussion with a friend of mine (who happens to be running for Congress and claims to be Pro 2A) about gun rights. He made the above statement. Please help me put together statistics related to refuting this.
 
Let us know his name so people know not to vote for him :neener:

His statement implies that more guns are used to shoot people than the amount of guns that are used for target shooting. ie 51%+ of all handguns are used to commit crimes/harm others, while the minority just sit in a safe somewhere, or are used for hunting and target shooting, IDPA, whatever. Simply take the amount of guns in the united states and divide it in half. According to your friends "logic" something like half the population of the United States disappears each year due to gun violence.
 
Depends on the city. In many cities where handguns are almost impossible to obtain legally, he is correct. In other cities where handguns are easy to procure legally, he is incorrect.

So he would have to narrow his statement to "illegal/stolen guns" or "legally owned guns" in order for you to refute or support his claim in a more precise manner.
 
Fortunately, most times when guns are used in self-defense, they are not fired, so it may be darn near impossible to get any real stats that support your treatise.

The biggest problem in the 'cities' is not the guns, but the illegal drug trade, which then brings the guns. Legalization of certain drugs would probably cut down on crime and thus reduce the number of killings, whether in anger or drug trafficking.
 
I would avoid statistics. It's not really possible to define or collect the appropriate numbers. The big problem with the statement is the word "use." What does it mean to "use" a handgun? When an LEO tots a sidearm around and it never leaves the holster, has he used it, or has he not? If a pistol lies untouched for year in the night stand, has it been used or not?

Lots of people do take guns to ranges for recreational shooting. I suppose they can be counted. Lots of other people take guns to ranges for practice and proficiency. Are they using their guns, or not?

The type of gun most suited to crime, the semi-auto pistol, is also the kind of gun that most citizens want for self-defense. It's a problem for drafting useful legislation.

IIRC, there are something over 2000 crimes in CT each year involving guns. I would be interested to know how many there are involving legal guns.
 
The post above basically makes sense about looking at the raw numbers. The problem of course is having one see the wider picture of gun owners who are not violent criminals intent on harming others. A criminal will take any expedient tool and abuse it, but the vast majority gun owners, noted by the large number of guns safely owned by regular Joe citizens, don't. To me it's kind of like looking at all the accidental drownings in pools and then saying pools are bad without looking at large numbers of people who have swam in them without incident.
 
" In cities, hand guns are used primarily to commit crimes and kill people in anger."
Click to expand...

Primarily is the word you need to defend against. I would imagine most shooting ranges have more handguns used there in a week than a city has gun related homicides in a year.
 
Go here. Run a report for the following selections
1. Violence related
2. Firearm
3. US, 2005, All Races
Select output groups as 'states' for the first, others blank.

Look at DC. The report will tell you that in 2005 153 people suffered a violent death in DC from a gun, including suicide and justified homocide (self-defense, police shootings, etc). That is a rate of 26 people per 100,000.

Then ask him if he seriously believes that, even in DC, less than 153 DC residents went hunting or target shooting in all of 2005. Also, point out that DC is one of the cities most likely to validate his point, with it's high murder rate.
 
eye5600 nailed it.

I've lived in several cities. Privately held guns were used every day, to protect homes, to improve the owner's shooting skills at the range, to put down dangerous animals, to hunt certain game, occasionally to defend against attack, rarely to commit suicide, and sometimes to commit a crime of robbery or homicide. But "used primarily to commit crimes" is blatantly incorrect and a false statement, not a matter of opinion -- except, as noted above, in a few cities where handguns remain strictly controlled.
 
MikePGS makes a good point.

There are close to 300,000,000 guns in the US. More than 1/3 of those are handguns. That would mean there are no less than 50,000,000 million crimes committed with hand guns. Now, is that daily? Weekly? Monthly? Yearly? I doubt there have been that many crimes commited with hand guns IN THE LAST 50 YEARS!

In a Time study in 2000, there were 88,570 guns recovered from crime scenes in 46 cities. Of the approimate 90,000,000 hand guns around in 2000, that's only about .1% of of those guns used in crime, and some of those guns were long guns, so the percentage of handguns used in crime is less than .1%. That's less than one tenth of a percent, or less than one gun in a thousand. I doubt that the handguns owned by city dwellers are 500 times more likely to be used in a crime.

Woody
 
He's just wrong... other posts have pointed out why.

Hand guns are used MORE OFTEN in cities to commit crimes than they are in rural areas, but there are waaay more factors than just the presence of said handguns. The primary factor being cultural differences. (not economic differences, as libs would try to point out... I spent summers in middle-of-nowhere arkansas where the average income is less than 20k and everyone owns guns... there was never any violent crime... heck there wasn't any crime at all unless you count teenagers growing weed.)
 
Technically this is correct if the term "used" means fired.

I don't know of ANY large city where it is legal to discharge a firearm outside because of the risk of hitting someone. Therefore any discharge other than a justifies self defense shooting in a city would be a crime.

Figures don't lie but there is nothing to stop liars from figuring.


.
 
Refer him to the DOJ and academic reports on firearm use to stop crime. The DOJ numbers estimate over 1.5 million times a year firearms are used to stop a crime while the Kleck & Gertz study indicated 2.5 million times a year.
 
It's because so many cities baN HAndguns for law abiding citizens, so you are left with criminals with guns only.
 
Help me refute the statement " In cities, hand guns are used primarily to commit crimes and kill people in anger."
Click to expand...

I guess all mine are defective. Of course I am a pretty mellow guy and do not get angry easily, and my guns obey me--they only do what I make them do.
 
In prison, home made knives are used primarily to commit crimes and kill people in anger.
 
You might refer him to the landmark study by Dr. John R. Lott entitled "More Guns Less Crime" (updated 2000) in which Dr. Lott conducted the most exhaustive study yet regarding the impact on crime rates due to the proliferation of citizen-carried weapons.

In this exhaustive study of crime statistics nationwide between 1977 and 1994, Dr. Lott found that in big cities, violent crime declined by 1.2%, murder declined by 2.7%, rape by 1.5%, violent robbery by 1.0%, and aggrivated assault declined by 0.6% as a DIRECT RESULT of the proliferation of non-discretionary concealed-carry statutes (presumably resulting in more guns in the hands of City residents) see Table 9.4, p. 192.

If your friend proposes to be well-informed on the RKBA issue with regard to cities, he absolutely must be familiar with Dr. Lott's research.
 
Much like "urban youths", "in cities" is code for "by African-Americans."

It's important to understand the language being spoken, if you want to have a discussion that doesn't leave you dumbfounded.

I live in a city. I don't think too many people here, particularly those who support gun ownership in general, believe that statement -- because they'd take "in cities" literally. Your friend does not mean it literally.
 
Ask him 'number of guns US wide' then 'percentage of firearms that are handguns' and once you have that figure, multiply it by 0.51 to get how many you need for 'most'

then say what is the nationwide rate of handgun crimes.

The total number of handguns will so dwarf the number of handgun crimes as to make it truely laughable.

The say 'in a city where handguns were totally banned until recently...DC...yes, your statement is probably true AND THAT IS BECAUSE CRIMINALS DON'T OBEY THE LAW...but for an average city that respects a person's right to own a handgun, the answer is absolutely not.'
 
Help me refute the statement " In cities, hand guns are used primarily to commit crimes and kill people in anger."
Click to expand...

Find out how he comes up with that statement and then come back here and let us know what he's thinking.

May I ask, what information do you have that leads you to believe that in cities handguns are used primarily to commit crimes and kill people in anger?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

O
  • Locked
FBI Crime Stats on long guns used in crime.
2
Replies
29
Views
2K
barnbwt
barnbwt
9
  • Locked
"Gun Control Equals Crime Control"
2
Replies
45
Views
2K
happygeek
H
C
  • Locked
Views on Guns Changing in Philly?
2
Replies
33
Views
1K
230RN
230RN
U
  • Locked
People always say it's 'guns' or 'mental health' but no one simply says 'Anger'....
2 3
Replies
64
Views
4K
cdk8
C
X
  • Locked
UK Ministers 'covered up' gun crime
Replies
24
Views
1K
ConfuseUs
C
Back
Top