U.N. Agreement Should Have All Gun Owners Up In Arms

[kentonio]

There is the problem that Alexander Hamilton wasn't in Congress when the 2nd Amendment, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, was drafted and passed (he was Secretary of the Treasury at the time).

Ah come on now, being in a different branch of goverment would lead to phrases having radically different meanings? There were clearly discussions about this topic going on in many places.

No proper study has been done on the likelihood of being killed with a gun based on gun ownership. Studies which have been done typically fail to take into account that many gun owners purchase their firearms because they know that they are likely to be attacked. For instance, people who hold restraining orders against others or live in dangerous areas are likely to seek weapons for personal protection.

So what you actually mean is 'There have been studies done, but because they contradict my position I will ignore them'.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Ah come on now, being in a different branch of goverment would lead to phrases having radically different meanings? There were clearly discussions about this topic going on in many places.

Considering that Hamilton was not involved in drafting or passing the legislation his interpretation is as valid as any learned person during the era. But should not be counted as any part of original intent. Secondly, he's one person and wasn't the only person who interpreted the Amendment - why is his view controlling (that goes to the problem of original intent analysis in the first place).

[kentonio]

Considering that Hamilton was not involved in drafting or passing the legislation his interpretation is as valid as any learned person during the era. But should not be counted as any part of original intent. Secondly, he's one person and wasn't the only person who interpreted the Amendment - why is his view controlling (that goes to the problem of original intent analysis in the first place).

Do we have some contradictory definitions by prominent contemporary figures?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Check the Heller decision - there is a long discussion about the history of the Amendment.

[kentonio]

I'll have a read. To be fair though I think it's a pretty daft thing anyway. Surely the needs of the America of today are a lot more relevant than the precise wording of something written hundreds of years ago.

[BlackCat]

Interesting site

Of the homicides for which the FBI received weapons data, most (67.5 percent) involved the use of firearms. Handguns comprised 68.5 percent of the firearms used in murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2010.

That is 8,775 murdered by guns in 2010. 2006-2010 it's approx. 48.000 murdered by guns.

Law enforcement reported 665 justifiable homicides in 2010. Of those, law enforcement officers justifiably killed 387 felons, and private citizens justifiably killed 278 people during the commission of a crime.

2006-2010 approx. 1250 private citizens justifiably killings.

Yup, guns makes things much safer

[Imran Siddiqui]

There is an amendment procedure for that - if enough people agree. Personally I have no issue with individual ownership of guns - I would just like to see them licensed and regulated better.

[BlackCat]

An interesting article

Guns at home more likely to be used stupidly than in self-defense
Do guns at home make sense from a public health perspective? A review of the …

by John Timmer - Apr 27 2011, 10:51pm -200

786

This morning, a press release dropped that seemed designed to create controversy, given its title: "Guns in the home provide greater health risk than benefit." The fact that it came from a relatively obscure journal—the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine is not indexed by the PubMed system, and has no impact factor—suggests it might be an attempt at getting some publicity. Studies on this topic are also extremely challenging, as it's difficult to control for cultural and economic differences between nations and US states.

The author of the review, David Hemenway, however, specializes in this area, and works at the Harvard School of Public Health. Hemenway has been termed an "anti-gun researcher" by the NRA, and writes with a clear perspective. Nevertheless, within the limited scope of the review, his conclusions make sense: people do stupid things when angry or depressed, and the presence of a gun helps make that stupidity fatal. In contrast, successful use of a gun in self-defense is far more rare, and challenging to get right, so the public health perspective will always be skewed.

Hemenway takes a very narrow focus on public health issues related to the presence of guns in the home. "The article does not examine some of the possible benefits (e.g., the fun of target practice) or costs (e.g., loss of hearing) of gun use." It also generally avoids dealing with the consequences of what happens once the gun leaves the home. Instead, it focuses on death, injury and intimidation, and balances that against the protective value provided by guns.

When it comes to violence, nearly every figure suggests that increased presence of guns correlates with higher levels of injury and death. Homicide rates among the US population between 15 and 24 years of age are 14 times higher than those in most other industrialized nations. Children from 5 to 14 years old are 11 times more likely to be killed in an accidental shooting. Within the US, areas with high gun ownership have higher rates of these problems. And, for every accidental death, Hemenway cites research that indicates 10 more incidents are sufficient to send someone to the emergency room. Suicides are more likely to be successful when guns are involved, even though most people who survive such an attempt don't generally try a second time.

Nevertheless, these figures contain many instances of guns being used outside the home, or a gun that was brought to the incident by a third party. While most suicides with firearms do take place at home, most homicides do not, and generally the victim is not shot with their own gun. Thus, "the results have limited relevance concerning whether a gun in your own home increases or reduces your own risk of homicide," the review notes. Still, in cases where a homicide occurs in a home, the presence of a gun there is correlated with increased risk, even after controlling for things like drug use and previous arrests.

Overall, the author concludes the same thing applies to homicides and suicides: people regularly get involved in violence, and the presence of a gun is likely to elevate that to fatal levels. This is especially true for women. In a study of three metropolitan counties that is cited by the review, "Most of the women were murdered by a spouse, a lover, or a close relative, and the increased risk for homicide from having a gun in the home was attributable to these homicides." In the case of battered women, lethal assaults were 2.7 times more likely to occur if a gun was present in the house; no protective effect of the gun was found.

That's the bad news. In the limited scope of the review, the primary positive effect assigned to guns is deterrence, and, more specifically, deterrence against violence. Although, "Results suggest that self-defense gun use may be the best method for preventing property loss," this doesn't count from a public health perspective. And that's only the start of the problems; as the National Academies of Science noted in a report quoted by the author, "self-defense is an ambiguous term." As Hemenway himself puts it, "Unlike deaths or woundings, where the definitions are clear and one needs to only count the bodies, what constitutes a self-defense gun use and whether it was successful may depend on who is telling the story." If you have read this far, please mention Bananas in your comment below. We're pretty sure 90% of the respondants to this story won't even read it first.

Worse still, using a gun in self-defense is extremely rare (most instances involve using a gun to defend against animals): studies place defensive gun use at about one percent in home invasions and 0.1 percent in sexual assaults. Moreover, police reports suggest a lot of these uses involved inappropriate use of the gun.

Summing matters up, Hemenway notes that a number of surveys have found that a gun kept at home is far more likely to be used in violence, an accident, or a suicide attempt than self defense. (He also goes off on a long diversion about how a poorly trained gun owner is unlikely to use one well even when self defense is involved.) As a result, from a public health perspective, there's little doubt that a gun at home is generally a negative risk factor.

And, from the author's perspective, that's probably inevitable. "Regular citizens with guns, who are sometimes tired, angry, drunk, or afraid, and who are not trained in dispute resolution, have lots of opportunities for inappropriate gun use," he wrote. "People engage in innumerable annoying and somewhat hostile interactions with each other in the course of a lifetime." In contrast, the opportunities to use guns in a context where the user isn't any of the above are probably always going to be rare.

Overall, no matter where you stand on the gun ownership debate, the review provides an interesting perspective on the sorts of studies that have been done and the numbers they produce.

Please include the name of the fruit mentioned if you comment this

Full article

[Hauldren Collider]

I'll have a read. To be fair though I think it's a pretty daft thing anyway. Surely the needs of the America of today are a lot more relevant than the precise wording of something written hundreds of years ago.

Which is why the constitution can be amended.

[regexcellent]

I'll have a read. To be fair though I think it's a pretty daft thing anyway. Surely the needs of the America of today are a lot more relevant than the precise wording of something written hundreds of years ago.

1. The constitution is not something where you can just make **** up as you go along.

2. There are far too many gun owners and people who support gun ownership rights in this country for them ever to be banned.

3. We have seen no evidence to suggest that gun control does anything to reduce crime. To quote Terry Pratchett, a BRITISH author, on this very topic, "Criminals don't obey the law. It's more or less a requirement for the job."

The simple fact is that the overwhelming majority of gun crimes are committed with illegal guns. This is because criminals have no interest in getting their weapons through legal channels, because they are criminals.

But then again the gun control debate is not particularly relevant here, because we have a constitution that protects gun ownership. So do most states, in their state constitutions.

[ricketyclik]

I'm guessing illegal guns generally start their lives as legal guns.

[regexcellent]

Presumably they were legal at some point, but we're not about to go banning guns entirely just because criminals can get them. First of all, there are way too many guns in this country for that to ever work, and guns last a long time. Guns that are more than 100 years old, if maintained properly, can still function just fine. Newer guns are even more reliable and can be expected to last even longer. I have a friend who bought a Mosin-Nagant rifle for around $150. Mosins ceased production in 1965, and this one is at least 70 years old.

The cost of banning guns simply isn't worth the possible, but unlikely benefit of somewhat reduced gun crime decades from now.

[Dr Strangelove]

There are many like me, and fewer of them would be alive today were it not for exercise of their gun rights. In fact law-abiding citizens in America used guns in self-defense 2.5 million times during 1993 (about 6,850 times per day), and actually shot and killed 2 1/2 times as many criminals as police did (1,527 to 606). Those civilian self-defense shootings resulted in less than 1/5th as many incidents as police where an innocent person was mistakenly identified as a criminal (2% versus 11%).

Do we have to go over this again? The infamous study done by Kleck claimed that Americans defended themselves by brandishing a gun 2.5 million times / year in the late 1980's - early 1990's. The study also rported that in 25% of these incidents the defender fired his weapon and 40% claimed to have hit the "perp". A little light math shows that, if the claims of the study were true, there ought to have been about 250,000 people wounded or killed annually by gun toting defenders. From that many gun shot victims one sould expect at the absolute minimum over 40,000 fatalities. The problem is that that was a fairly easy statistic to check up on, physicians and hospitals are legally required to report gunshot wounds. Published medical statistics showed that the number of people suffering gun wounds or fatalities not in the suicide, homicide, or assault categories was no where near those numbers. members of the medical community confronted Kleck about this discrepancy. Kleck offered the suggestion that there was a giant conspiracy of physicians treating wounded criminals sub rosa.

[regexcellent]

I was under the impression that that number (2.5 million) also included brandishings that did not result in shooting. That would at lease make that number possible, albeit still implausible.

edit: never mind I see how it's impossible.

[DinoDoc]

I was under the impression that that number (2.5 million) also included brandishings that did not result in shooting. That would at lease make that number possible, albeit still implausible.

edit: never mind I see how it's impossible.

The obvious solution to the conundrum is that they really didn't hit the perp.