Most people who are victims of horrible crime live in what was described up to that point as 'quiet little neighborhoods'
You talked about
aside from that one experience I've been raised to believe that owning a gun can only cause trouble
I'd like to address taht concern breifly, because probably your friends and family will express concern due to similar misconceptions
There is a stat floating out there that a gun in the home is 22 times more likely to kill someone you know than an intruder. That study has been throughly debunked. But even if it hadn't the basic premise is flawed.
See, the most common use of guns in self defense simply involves pointing them at the attacker, who then promptly runs away. The federal government did a study that reported 2 MILLION yes MILLION uses of a gun to defend onself when the gun was simply 'brandished' or show to the attacker/buglar etc and he then ran off.
The second falicy is 'Someone you know' Guns are possessed by criminals, and when one criminal shoots another criminal, there are often guns in the house, this gets counted too as the drug dealers 'knew eachother' etc, but the antigun folk like to pretend that their stats about gunviolence in the home is about a kid sneeking out to a party and the scared father shooting wildly because he thinks he hears a burglar. Remember, 70-90% of rape victims are raped by "someone they know".
Gun violence, where a gun is actually used to harm an honest to goodness loved one/family member (not just 'someone you know') it is unfortunatey often an abusive husband using his gun to kill his wife. This is a real problem of course. If you ahve a history of beating your wife, you probably shouldnt' own a gun. Of course, it is already illegal for you to beat your wife, and if you get charged for domestic violence, it is also illegal for you to own a gun, so I don't understand why antigunners want to take guns away from everyone just to prevent killing in situatuions with a long history of domestic violence. Eventually, in situations of domestic violence, the woman will be killed unless she leaves. You aren't any less dead if your husband takes a tire-iron to you than if he takes a gun to you.
Gun accidents are also extremely rare. Doctors accidentally kill more people each year than guns. Yet we keep them around because they do much more good than they do harm. For children under 5, mop buckets are more likely to kill them than guns. For children under 12, privately owned swimmingpools kill more than guns.
Finally, the FBI used to keep crime stats by 'ethnic group' and a throwback to World War 2 days, there was a catagory for 'Japanese Americans'
Between 1976 and 1978, 21 of 48,695 arrests for murder and non-negligent manslaughter were Japanese-Americans. That translates to an annual murder rate of 1 per 100,000 of the Japanese-American population
Then there is this wonderful statistic
Based on 1998 murder rates, approximately one in every 12 black 15-year-old males who live in Washington, D.C., can expect to be murdered before reaching age 45.
Now, Washington DC has one of the most restricive gun laws in the land. However, it is quite possible for people to legally buy guns one state over and then sell them illegally in DC.
Still, What is going on? Obviously, access to guns is not the issue, as the japanese americans have just as much legal access to buy guns as black americans. No one is claiming that the japanese american population couldn't find a gunstore that would sell to them.
Unfortunately, areas of extreme poverty also have extreme crime. Unfortunately many areas of extreme poverty are also areas that are predominately black, but it is poverty, not race, religion, or acess to guns, that most closely corelates with gun violence. Second is previous criminal violence, third is multiple calls to 911 for issues of domestic violence.
Finally, renters are 3 times more likely to be involved in gunviolence than non-renters. Why is this? Are rental agreements bullet magnets. No, unfortunately it is again a factor of poverty. Not all renters are poor, but most poor are renters.
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