Answer to "more likely to be killed with own gun" argument..

L

lp

New member
In talking to antis, one common reason they give to not wanting to own a gun (or not wanting _me_ to own a gun!) is the belief that you are more likely to be shot with your own gun then to use it defending your life.

I don't know where they get this statistic or if it is true (I doubt it) but that doesn't really matter. What matters is they believe it.

I guess my questiom is: is there data that proves the statement to be false? Preferably it would be data from some neutral source (these antis would never believe data that came from the NRA, for example).

I think we need to have good, solid answers to these types of remarks if we are to make any converts. People, in general (especially in California), don't give a rat's ass about any freedom that doesn't directly affect them. The 2nd amendment "well armed militia" argument does nothing but scare them.

IMO, the only way to help these people who are ready and willing to burn the constitution for what they think will bring them safety is to make them feel more comfortable around guns - ideally getting them interested in them as well.
 
lp,

Unfortunately there is no real argument against the statement. It is based on statistical data. The data is based on the number of times a gun is used by a citizen to kill a criminal vs the number of times a citizen kills himself or gets killed by someone using their gun. Since there are more suicides and domestic violence murders than bona fide instances where persons legally kill in self defense, the statement can't be disproved.

The problem with statistical data is the publics willingness to accept it as proof of a cause and effect relationship - a dangerous practice. For instance, if 78% of all crime is committed with a gun, then elimination of guns would cut crime by 78% - right? WRONG!

The gun didn't "cause" the crime so no cause and effect relationship exists. If statistics could prove cause and effect then we would be in a world of hurt. What do you think the anti's would do if they knew that 87% of violent criminals wear Levi's, 77% of all murderers have brown hair, 8 out of 10 mass murderers drank diet soda...

Numbers are numbers - the Brady law has halted the purchase of over 300,000 guns by convicted felons according to Bill and Janet. How many of the felons were prosecuted for the felony they committed when they attempted the purchase? So far Bill and Janet haven't been forthcoming with that number...hmmm.

The crime rate is the lowest it's been in 30 years - obviously Bill's Presidency is responsible for the drop - right? But wait, during the same time the number of States with CCW provisions went from 9 to 41 - perhaps THAT could be the reason. By the way, that's a 455% increase in the number of people legally allowed to carry guns for defense while, at the same time, the murder rates AND accidental shooting rates FELL to their lowest numbers in 30 years! Try that number out on them.

Mikey
 
The gun bigots have used that argument for decades and have failed to provide some important details. You are more likely to be killed with your own weapon if, and I stress if, you are an alcoholic,are addictied to amphetamines, have a problem with heroin, have an inability to deal with anger, are prone to violence, are a black male living in an urban area and have spent time in prison for a violent crime. Would it surprice anybody that people with these problems are more likely to die violently?
 
If it's statistics they want, compare the number of gun owners and guns and then compare that to the ratio of guns invovled in deliberate homicides. That ratio should be very low. Indeed, so low that I think you'll find the statistics of owning a vehicle and being killed or injured in a vehicular accident higher.

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Vigilantibus et non dormientibus jura subveniunt
 
I'd say the only way my gun will be used against me is if they beat me to death with it cause you can bet I'm not going to quit shooting until they stop coming.
 
Tell them to go to the FBI annual crime reports, and the Dept. of Jusic annual reports on crime and related matters. That should put an end to this stupod statement.
 
That, "43 times more likely to kill self or family member than criminal," figure was simply fabricated. The anti-defense researcher who compiled that statistic created a set of criterium that would exclude as many defenses as possible while including as many family members as possible.

Some examples I've read say that in order to successfully have defended yourself, you must KILL an intruder INSIDE the house. If you chase him away, doesn't count. If you shoot him and he lives, doesn't count. Remember, the statement says, "kill" not defend. If you shoot him and he gets outside the house before expiring, doesn't count. By contrast, all suicides were counted as family deaths. A cousin or estranged husband bent on mayhem who was shot while breaking in was counted as a family member.

If I remember correctly, the CDC was using this figure for a few years and even they came to suspect there was something fishy about it. Now the only people who parrot this bogus figure are HCI types and the totally uninformed (which, unforturnately, is a lot).

Just tell them that that statistic is completely false.
 
John Lott addresses this issue in More Guns Less Crime. The problem with this statistic is that it includes all gun users, including LEO's. There is a big difference in the way and LEO uses his gun when dealing with a BG, and the way a citizen uses his gun when dealing with a BG. A LEO must, in order to do his job, come close enough to the BG to make physical contact. This puts his gun within reach of the BG. A citizen uses the gun to put distance between himself and the BG, hopefully putting the gun out of reach of the BG. The people who have their guns taken from them are primarily LEO's. This skews the statistic.

But it does make a good point. If you ever pull your gun on a BG, you must be willing to shoot! Otherwise you do run the risk of losing your gun to the BG and getting yourself shot. Anyone who would not shoot a BG, if the situation called for it, should not use a gun for self defense.
 
It was Arthur Kellerman (I believe he is from Emory University, which as a Georgian, I am ashamed to say)who came up with the bogus figure about being "43 times more likely to kill yourself or a family member". His methodology has been shown to be seriously flawed (as others here have pointed out). Another flaw in his study comes from the fact that he used only cases where someone in a household was actually shot to decide that the gun is more likely to hurt someone in that household; he ignored the rest of the gun owning population in his calculations. The anti's conveniently forget that his study also found that those households where a shooting occurred were very highly likely to be places where one member was an alcoholic or drug abuser or somehow involved with crime.

The facts are always inconvenient to the anti's.

Jack
 
the crusierman recommended web site www.gunsite.com/ ------is good--but---
they seem to require 150,000 words to make
a single point and have 10 points to make.I should finish reading about it sometime in the summer of 2001 if I start right now.
I dont think so.I got better things to do.
What I was able to filter out in 10 minutes is :

1. the 43 times more likely to be shot with your own gun is a fatally flawed study
and complete B.S.

2. If you must compare b.s. to b.s.
just tell them that you are 99 times more likely to die if you are defenseless.This is
also flawed, but I dont care enough to punish myself so much as to read the rest of that web page.

3. YOU MUST BE WILLING TO SHOOT THE BAD GUY---OTHERWISE, THE BAD GUY WILL TAKE
YOUR GUN AWAY AND SHOT YOU WITH IT.

4. I will shoot first ONLY when conered & left with no other choice(you must try to disengage before opening fire;imminanite deadly force about to be used upon your person) and then execute survivors. Leave no witnesses or survivors to sue you.

5. I have carried for 15 years and have never needed to either draw or fire yet. I had to disengage and run once without drawing my weapon as it seemed I was about to be attacked with a baseball bat & a knife.
I disengaged sucessfully and was not attacked and the purbitrater was caught and recieved 3 years in jail,6 months served and a 2.5 year suspended sentence.He also had to make 20,000.oo restiution for 15 cars he damaged with the baseball bat. My cars would have been # 16 and 17. He scared me into running but I scared him into leaving and not trashing both my cars. Like I said, he never knew I was armed with a 38 spl snob... er snub nose as I never drew but ran instead.
!:^) Jokes...On the lighter side!
definition...38 special snobnose
A high society bimbo.
definition: 38 special snub nose. A 5 shot, J frame, double action revolver with a 2 inch barrel.
 
Kellerman's heart is in the right place, I believe, but he's so full of shiite he squeaks going into a turn.

As for the "killed with your own gun" argument, ask them to name one non-cop. When they stutter, tell them about Sammie Foust.

Names are incredibly powerful weapons for making a point. Not "there was this one lady...", but "Sammie Foust, a middle-aged divorcee in Florida, was attacked in her home..."

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"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it."
-- John Hay, 1872
 
It was the Kellerman report that got published in 1993 without peer review. It was funded by HCI so what would you expect the outcome to be. I think Don Kates did a rebuttal of it, but the best was by Dr. Schaffer (sp?), a Ph.D. in statistics. He showed how Kellerman intentionally corrupted the data to get the 'right' answer' by 1) using the incorrect statistical model, 2) including 'high risk' individuals to offset the results from 'low risk' individuals, 3) showed no proof of causal effect, 4) used only deaths as the determining factor not gun use, 5) reported that a firearm in the home of a 'low risk' individual actually had a beneficial effect.
 
Professional non-biased statistical studies show that as many as 2.5 million times a year a citzen uses a gun to stop a crime. Even conserative numbers are over 1 million. Due to the problems with taking surveys and applying them, there is a wide margin of error that maybe as few as 1.5 million people a year, to as many as 2.5 million people a year, defend themselves from criminals with guns every year. Whatever the number, even the low number, 1.5 million, is a huge amount of good people stopping crime with guns.

Think about it logically: If people are so likely to be shot with their own guns and million(s) of people are using guns to defend themselves....then where are all the dead bodies?

A LOT of the numbers the anti's use in their arguments show serious flaws when you start looking for all the bodies!

If you "are 43 times more likely to be KILLED with your own gun" than to use it to kill in order to defend yourself, and there are at least, say, 12,000 felons killed every year by good guys defending themselves, then that means that somewhere out there there should be about...half a million bodies (500,000 bodies!!!) of dead innocent people every year killed by their own guns.
Where are the bodies!?

These contrived stats are just very very bogus.

If you are dealing with an intelligent person, that is all that should need to be said.
Then fire back with some stats of your own, such as: citizens kill 6 times more felons every year than the Police do. Combined with the fact that from 1.5 to 2.5 million times a year (according to Kleck) a citizen uses a gun do stop a crime in progresss, that kinda shoots a hole in the theory that armed citizens only end up getting shot with their own guns. Obviously, armed citizens prove to be very efficient at stopping criminals.

There are many more stats, and I am sure that someone somewhere has a FAQ somewhere, like: a woman who defends herself from a rapist by using a gun is 6 times more likely to survive unharmed. There are a bunch more numbers like that from the FBI, but basically, once again that blows away the myth that armed people just end up getting hurt when they defend themselves. A %600 higher chance of surviving a rape is not just a little, that is a HUGE difference in a woman's odds of getting out a rape attack unharmed.

Most pro-gun numbers can easily be found in the FBI stats or even CDC stats. Both these organizations are blamed sometimes for being anti-gun, but even they cannot hide the factual truth. Anti-gun numbers are usually contrived by bending statistics, not just using hard factual numbers like the proven FACT that crime drops whenever people are allowed to carry concealed weapons and even the people that do NOT carry a gun benefit from lower crime rates, because the criminal does not know who is packin'.

Anyway, a simple counter to the argument you asked about is: Where are all the bodies of these vast amounts of people who are supposedly killed with their own guns when trying to defend themselves?
 
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