Please help, I need some gun stats....stat!

[DustyVermonter]

Here's the details, I was at my mother's house walking through the woods with my machete looking for my mother's cat as it has been missing for days and when I returned my 2 year old niece came up to me and grabbed at my machete, my sister got a lil uptight about it and my cousin, which by the way knows everything, told her not to worry, machete's are not very sharp and I jokingly said "yeah, you're just hoplophobic" and my sister asked what it meant, so I replied "it means you think all weapons have an evil will of their own, etc...." and she said "yeah, well you're just paranoid" so I replied "what do I have to be paranoid about, I carry a pistol everywhere"?

So at this point my know-it-all cousin steps in and says "your guns don't make you as safe as you'd like to believe, statistics show that a greater percentage of people who own guns for self defense/home defense end up having their gun taken from them and used on them". And I told her that I had never heard such a stupid remark in my life and that whoever she got those stats from were full of crap, but she very adamantly disagreed and said that multiple studies would prove otherwise, and then I could see that things were about to get heated so I left.

Now I know this is a complete load of crap, but I didn't have any solid facts or stats to back up my argument, but I know for an absolute fact that she is dead wrong and would like to hear what you guys have to say about it. I would love nothing more than to throw her words back in her face, as she is a very pompous, self proclaimed intellectual, know it all, who could stand to be taken down a peg or two from her ignorant, paranoid, redneck, gun-toting cousin.

Help me out here guys, I know some of you have probably had similar experiences with anti-relatives, and may have some of these facts fresh in your minds. Thanks

 

[jcwit]

She made the statement, she has to back it up with the facts. Not for you to have to worry about digging around disproving her assine statement.

Till she can prove it, which she can't, she has nothing to stand on, but BS.

 

[nyrifleman]

Here ya go:
http://www.gunfacts.info/

Download the e-book and find the appropriate chapter

 

[pv18463]

Sounds like it's one of those "true" statements that anti's love to use. If you don't own a gun then you have a 0% chance of YOUR gun being taken away and used against you. Therefore, if even one gun owner gets their gun taken away and used against them, it makes this a "true" statement.

 

[bwdilli]

My eyes, my eyes. Wall of text. My aching eyes!

Okay, now that that's out of the way we'll get down to what she said.

statistics show that a greater percentage of people who own guns for self defense/home defense end up having their gun taken from them and used on them

Basically what she said is if you have a gun it is more likely to be taken from you then if you don't have a gun. I'd have to agree with that. How are they going to take something from you that you don't have?

See how it works? They set up the question so that they get the results that they want.

 

[MTMilitiaman]

Tell her if it is so easy to steal a gun from someone intent on using it, then you'll just steal it back...

 

[benzuncle]

You can't argue with someone that's always right; they'll never even hear your side.

 

[rscalzo]

walking through the woods with my machete looking for my mother's cat

You wonder why the cat ran...

Stats can reflect whatever the author wishes them to say.

 

[preachnhunt]

Go w/what nyrifleman said. Gunfacts is good stuff.

 

[mhphoto]

Here ya go:
http://www.gunfacts.info/

Download the e-book and find the appropriate chapter

My favorite source. If you can't find some artillery against idiots in that book then you're out of luck.

 

[MikeNice]

Just tell her that according to the CDC you are more likely to be killed by poisioning than a gun.

You can look up all kinds of death stats to use in these types of arguments. The CDC keeps tabs on the ways that people die and how many people die of each cause.

http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html

 

[jonmerritt]

That stat is pure BS. If you are trying to take my gun from me with the intent of using it on me. (You is meaning the Bad guy) I will shoot you (the bad guy) with it. I can not know (not a mind reader) your intent, but if you are committing a crime, and trying to take my gun, BANG. You are not going to take it and use it on me. I give a floopy what some BS made up stat says.
New stat, people that refuse to defend themselves, are just begging to get assaulted.
Your are more likely to be killed by your doctor than a gun!

 

[majorbeef]

Sorry to break it to you, she is not dead wrong. She is 100% correct, but what she is arguing really has nothing to do with whether someone should or should not own guns.

People like your cousin who quote so called "studies" and "statistics" lack the intellectual curiosity/capacity for critical thinking, so they parrot some statistics and rely on someone else's agenda driven interpretation on those statistics.

If you don't own a gun, you would have 0% chance of having your own gun turned on you. If you do own a gun, there is a non-zero probability of having your own gun turned on you. Basically, she cited a statistic that must be true, but has no application in real life decision-making.

A valid study on gun ownership needs to be a cost-benefit analysis, a complicated one with many variables. For example:

What are the odds that an average American will be attacked with a deadly weapon? Define deadly weapon. Odds for rural Americans? Urban Americans? Suburban Americans? Odds for different races? Odds for people in different socioeconomic strata? Odds for people in different states with different gun control laws?

If you don't own a gun, what are the chances that you or your family will be hurt or killed by an assailant? What is the economic impact on you and your family if you or your family members are hurt or are killed? What is the economic impact on society if you and or your family are hurt or killed?

If you do own a gun, what are the chances that you will be hurt or killed by an assailant? What is the economic impact on you and your family if you or your family members are hurt or are killed? What is the economic impact on society if you and or your family are hurt or killed? What are the odds that you can defend yourself successfully with your own weapon? What are the odds that you will fail? What are the home repair, medical, counseling and legal costs incurred to you associated with a successful or failed attempt to defend yourself or your family with a firearm? What are the legal or correctional system savings associated with a successful attempt to defend yourself or your family with a firearm?

Does a deterrent effect exist in community-wide gun ownership? How big is the deterrent effect? What are the savings from the deterrent effect? What are the risks of improper ownership, theft, improper use, accidental discharge, unsupervised use by children, use under influence of drugs or alcohol? Likelihood of criminals using legally purchased firearms? What are the costs associated with these risks?

The questions go on and on. To borrow a cliche, owning a firearm is like buying insurance. Not just because it's intuitively so, but also because you can create an actuarial science out of studying effects of gun ownership on individuals and on society. Gun control advocates like to cite incomplete, misleading studies and statistics wrapped up in half baked interpretations.

People who come up with these studies and people who buy into them have already made their minds. No need to get too worked up about it. Just ask her for a cost-benefit meta-analysis consisting of an adequate sample size, controlling for confounding factors and differences such as socioeconomic status/race/gender/degree of urbanization, that shows a statistically significant difference in favor of increased gun control.

 

[killchain]

The fun one I like to point people to is the VPC's "Concealed Carry Killers."

This is straight out of the horse's mouth... if the horse was an anti-gun website.

http://www.vpc.org/ccwkillers.htm

If you do basic math, the percentage of unjustified violence versus the amount of permit holders in the United States is staggeringly low.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_carry_in_the_United_States

If you just use Florida as an example from this Wikipedia page, just one state, the percentage of permit holders to "gun crimes" reported by the VPC is 1.81%. This is just one state applied to their entire reported "concealed carry killers" tally.

And a note for the end: I find it kind of funny that the VPC's counters will only go up four digits. They must not expect a massacre.

 

[DustyVermonter]

Thanks for the link, that's pretty much what I was looking for, although it may not do any good, at least ill have some 'fire power' so to speak.

 

[yardism]

"...statistics show that a greater percentage of people who own guns for self defense/home defense end up having their gun taken from them and used on them"

This isn't even a complete sentence, much less a real statistic. Greater than what?

 

[DustyVermonter]

MajorBeef, she is dead wrong 100%. She implied that more often than not, the person who is trying to defend themselves gets their gun taken and used on them, I'm not sure if I was clear on that in the OP, but that was her implication.

 

[DustyVermonter]

OK, just to clarify, the implication was: Most people who go to use a gun a SD situation get their gun taken from them and killed by their own gun. I'm surprised that some people didn't get that

 

[Sport45]

Sounds like you need to sharpen the machete. They work better that way.

Sorry, but that was about as far as I was able to read into the OP before I gave up.

 

[rondog]

"Never try to teach a pig to sing. You'll only waste your time and annoy the pig."

I believe this applies here.

 

[JellyJar]

Stats can reflect whatever the author wishes them to say

That is not true. Valid statistics won't support your views unless your are right. The problem is that it is very easy to create invalid statistics and very hard to tell the difference between what is valid and what is not.

 

[mustang_steve]

The majority of scenarios that taking the gun to use on the wielder is even possible would be the scenario where someone uses the gun as a display instead of simply firing it at the threat.

In other words, they were threatening use of force instead of actual use of force. Violent people rarely respond well to threats, they'll just get more violent...it's their nature. Mess with scorpions, expect to get stung....those familiar with scorpions know to not mess with it, to simply deal with it.

Same thing here....if someone has put you in mortal danger, don't mess with it, stop the threat at the first opportunity, now...no delays, no threatening the threat, end it.

Most of these stats are the results of improper self-defense and weapons training....two of the three things I think everyone should learn, as they very well may save your hide. third thing isn't high road related...it's driving related.

 

[Patriotme]

www.guncite.com has a lot of great info and facts.

Ok, your cousin is partially right. There have been a couple of studies that say that gun owners are more likely to die by their own gun then they are to use it on a criminal. I believe that one study was done in King County, Washington and another was in Georgia (might be wrong about the location).
Here's what the researchers do. They cherry pick a county out of about 2000 in the USA that just happens to have the examples they need to help prove their theory. They then massage the numbers to get the results that they want. One county becomes an example for the rest of the nation even though most of America may not have the crime stats of the Midwest's meth capital.
I'll give you an example of what the anti gun researchers do.
Let's pretend that King County had 1000 firearm related deaths in homes during a 10 year period. We'll break them down like this.
700 were suicides.
100 were accidents
100 were murders
100 were criminals being shot while breaking into homes
You can see from these (made up) numbers that yes, most of the gun deaths in this county were gun owners killed with their own firearms in the home. Of course the researchers never mention that the gun deaths are overwhelmingly suicides or how to prevent them. They also never mention that Japan has a higher suicide rate than the US despite their strict gun control.
The anti's are however correct. Most of the gun deaths happened to the home/gun owner in this example and a fraction of the deaths happened to the criminal.
Numbers don't lie. They can be used to mislead though.
The anti gun researchers don't tell you a few things about their research.
They only track the deaths. If a criminal (or a thousand) was wounded while kicking in a door then it never made the statistics. If a criminal was breaking into a home but was deterred by the sound of a shotgun chambering a shell then it never made the stats. If a criminal was driven off by a home owner shooting at him then it never made it into the research. If a wife stopped an abusive ex from beating her to death but the guy lived then this also never made the statistics that were used.
The numbers that the anti gunners used are true. They are however very misleading.
How many crimes are deterred by merely showing a gun or chambering a round? Does a crime have to end in death to be counted? Are crimes that are prevented only relevent when they end in death?
Your cousin needs to think a little more deeply on the topics in which she preaches about.
I'd like to give one more example of some anti gun statistics. A study came out that stated that you are more likely to be killed on the streets if you are carrying a gun. I don't remember all of the information in regards to this but it basically boiled down to a researcher gathered all of his information in a high crime area. The criminals were mostly killing each other and suprise...they were all armed. The dead criminals had guns on them so it became a new "Fact" that guns don't save your life and you run a greater risk of dying from gunfire if you are armed.
Aren't "Facts" great?
Sooo......these junk science studies get funded by the usual suspects, quoted and posted by the Brady Campaign, VPC and other groups. Some dimwit politician with an agenda quote the studies and it's repeated over and over again by the media.
These studies move on from simply being bad science to being accepted as a fact.

 

[Sunray]

Think paragraphs. Why would you have a machete to look for a cat?

 

[chaplain tom]

statistics show that a greater percentage of people who own guns for self defense/home defense end up having their gun taken from them and used on them".

A greater percentage than who? People who only own guns for defense, or for hunting or people who don't own guns at all? She uses a stat that "fits" HER argument but doesn't even define exactly who she's talking about. I don't want to offend any liberals here, but this is exactly the
senseless rhetoric used by the far left liberals who just want to push their agenda on people without regard for the "civil rights" they claim to hold so dear. With these people it's one red herring after another and the truth be damned. Nyrifleman gave you all the info you'll need to "gently" correct her...If you choose to that is. Personally, I'd just leave her ignorant.