<p>well, 1700 or 600 rounds per minute is a very interesting discussion, but my point remains - if the kid somehow managed to shoot himself he could have very easily sprayed the area with bullets and injured or killed several other people.</p>
<p>[Police</a> chief is charged in boy’s death - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/12/05/police_chief_is_charged_in_death/?page=full]Police”>http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/12/05/police_chief_is_charged_in_death/?page=full)</p>
<p>He deserves what he gets. What a bozo.</p>
<p>"[Edward] Fleury, Pelham’s police chief of 22 years, was singled out as the central force behind the expo. He organized it through a business he ran, COP Firearms & Training, and marketed it in advertisements that said that the $5 entry fee was waived for children under age 16 and that there was “no age limit or licenses required to shoot machine guns.”
“It’s all legal & fun,” the online advertisement read. "You will be accompanied to the firing line with a Certified Instructor to guide you. But You Are In Control - ‘FULL AUTO ROCK & ROLL.’ "</p>
<p>“Bennett said Fleury took a portion of the proceeds from the event. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. Fleury was also charged with four counts of furnishing a machine gun to a person under 18, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.”</p>
<p>I.W.I., the manufacturer lists they rate of fire for the Micro Uzi as 1200 rounds per minute. I’m assuming that is the cyclic rate (maximum rate of mechanical function). Actually firing that is likely impossible, as you would need a 1200 round mag, and not manage to melt the firearm…</p>
<p>It sounds like Fleury may not have been informed about the law, since he is being charged with a crime he said didn’t exist! I’m honestly not too surprised. There are 22,000+ gun laws in the US. I’m sure a couple thousand are present in that jurisdiction. I’m going to guess there is something in the NFA, GCA, or FOPA laws about this (but I haven’t read them all).</p>
<p>
This is a crock. There is no objective data relevant to this question which doesn’t contradict those claims - which are based on based on proof-free anecdotal surveys. Firearms are used in effective self defense in some instances, but there’s no way to know how many times people have been (a) actually confronted with a criminal threat; (b) resisted that threat with the use of a firearm, and (c) would have been unsuccessful in resisting that threat by other means, i.e., without a firearm.</p>
<p>But the 2+ million claim is a thoroughly exposed, outrageous hoax, perpetrated by the dishonest on the gullible.</p>
<p>^Yeah I gotta call b.s. on that. Thoroughly exposed outrageous hoax, rofl. Lets see, bring some facts in maybe?</p>
<p>-“Targeting Guns”, Dr. Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State University, 1997
-National Crime Victimization Survey, 2000, Bureau of Justice Statistics, BATF estimates on handgun supply
-Fall 1995, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
-National Crime Victimization Survey, 1979-1985
-U.S. Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, Rape Victimization in 26 American Cities, 1979-
-Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey</p>
<p>Here is your statistics guru Arthur Kellerman’s own words</p>
<p>“If you’ve got to resist, you’re chances of being hurt are less the more lethal your weapon. If that were my wife, would I want her to have a .38 Special in her hand? Yeah.”</p>
<p>Arthur Kellerman is not “my guru” - I’ve never even heard of him. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most straightforward explanation of how and why the exaggerated claims of the gun nuts regarding the number of "DGU’s (defensive gun uses) are obviously wrong is found in this DOJ report at pages 8 - 10: <a href=“http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/165476.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/165476.pdf</a> Leaving aside such obvious howlers as the claim that more rapes are prevented with firearms than are reported to have been attempted (!) there’s the simple fact that if anywhere near the millions of DGU’s claimed actually occurred - we’d all know about it. That is, each of us would have first or at worst second hand knowledge of such an event within the past ten years, happening to us or a close friend or relative. But in fact, few people do.</p>
<p>Bottom line: the NCVS has the only even marginally reliable data, and their numbers (around 100,000 per year) include instances where the victim using a gun is a police officer. <a href=“http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/hvfsdaft.txt[/url]”>http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/hvfsdaft.txt</a> Bottom line: the claim of millions of DGU’s per year is an outrageous hoax. The actual number of bona fide DGU’s by non-police is a small fraction of that. The only serious question how small of a fraction.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, are there any DGU estimates you can cite as being accurate? After reviewing your link, I agree that there is a high likelyhood of the 2-2.5 million DGU estimates being inflated, especially concerning false positives’ effects on low-percentage events. The major problems I see are accurately reporting DGUs and attaining a representative sample for a low-rate occurance. Stats on crimes that don’t happen are pretty hard to create! Are there any studies other than “proof-free anecdotal surveys,” which account for events not reported to the police?</p>
<p>Raimius - probably not. You see, if you’re going to try to count the number of times a crime didn’t happen because the would-be victim had a gun, you need to ascertain a bunch of facts that are unverifiable:
- That a given person actually was intending to commit a crime, with another person as the victim;
- The victim correctly perceived this scenario unfolding, and used (or displayed) a gun in a manner that the would-be criminal perceived it and altered his conduct in response to it; and
- The events would have unfolded differently is no gun had been available.</p>
<p>Each of those is generally going to be unverifiable, and there will be many false positives. Example: Years ago a burglar stuck his arm in the back window of my bedroom. I sat up and said “I’ve got a gun!” He pulled his arm back and fled. Crime prevented by use of a gun? Yes, right? Except, it didn’t actually happen that way (could have, but didn’t.) What actually happened was that my girlfriend sat up and said “You’d better get out of here!” Same result. If scenario 1 had happened, it would go down as a crime prevented by gun display; but in fact, the mere presence of a resisting person was what prevented the crime. There are other variables as well, but the bottom line is that while some crimes are no doubt prevented by armed victims, there’s probably no reliable way to know - or even estimate - the number. (And the political overlay of the issue just makes it harder.)</p>
<p>If gun laws were more relaxed (as per the CONSTITUTIONAL amendment) then the kid would probably be more experienced with guns, and this whole thing wouldn’t have happened.</p>
<p>Yeah, right, an 8-year old would be “more experienced” with an uzi. Please.</p>
<p>The kid was reported to be fairly experienced with rifles and pistols of the non-NFA variety. The NFA and FOPA artificially limit the supply of full-auto firearms, so it would be somewhat reasonable to assume they would be more popular if they were not heavily restricted and if post '86 machine guns were not illegal for civilian ownership (minus dealer samples and manufacturer’s R&D work). However, saying this wouldn’t have happened if such a situation exists is pure speculation, and completely unsupportable by any facts.</p>
<p>Kluge, I’m thinking there is no good way to measure DGUs by “average” civilians. If we only use confirmed and verifiable cases, that will lead to underreporting, but if we use unverified cases, we get the problems you mention and the probability of gross overreporting. So, we get some number between 100,000ish and 2.5million as our estimate, but can’t really know where the real number lies (and that range is too great to be of practical value, other than to say, DGUs happen sometimes).</p>
<p>Thanks for keeping me accountable to reason.</p>