<p>Gottalove, I didn’t know the Supreme Court had the power to convict people for genocide. I have to point out something. You condemn Bush and Cheney and then you link a video to Sean Penn. Did you miss how Penn goes around the world praising people like Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? I certainly don’t condone the actions of the President and Vice President and Ron Paul is the only “Republican” in the race that I would vote for, but they’re superior to the leaders that Sean Penn pals around with. I don’t disagree with him on the war but he’s a can of worms and, in my opinion, a hypocrite.</p>
<p>From the DOJ Firearms Use by Offenders report, 22.3% of people convicted of a crime involving a gun were first time offenders. 9.5% of people convicted of gun related crime at the federal level were first time offenders. That means 77.7% of state and 91.5% of federal crime convicts who used a gun were repeat offenders. I know we’d all like to have no homicides but we should focus on what can do the most good within the law. </p>
<p>To get back to Kluge’s original focus of this thread, the merits of having a gun for personal protection, the United States averaged 223.2 justifiable homicides by private citizens from 2001-2005. The term is used to refer to the killing of a criminal during the commission of a felony. Approximately 80% of thos homicides were using guns. Over the same period, police averaged 360 justifiable homicides. It’s important to note that this is not a good measure of total DGUs because it does not count non-shooting incidents, shots that only wounded, or totally missed offenders. Those statistics are from tables 13 and 14 of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. For the year 2001, the CDC reported that there were 802 unintentional deaths caused by firearms (report from 2004).</p>
<p>I said the Supreme Court AND Congresss had to get rid of him. Supreme Court would have to strike a lot of his ‘terror’ inititiatives as uncons. and then the House would have to impeach and let the Senate remove the Imperial President. </p>
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<p>When Hugo Chavez or Ahmadinejad invade another country and create the conditions for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and create more than 2 million refugees THEN make the call for superiority.</p>
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<p>70,000 to 2.5 million. Quite a large range. Makes you think some of those studies are full of bilge. I’ll bet the ones that claim around 2.5 million are the BS ones.</p>
<p>That would get them out of power, Gottaloveucla, but that wouldn’t, as Penn put it, put them in…jail. I don’t want to get into this discussion out of respect for the topic and OP but I would much rather live in America led by Bush than Venezuela or Iran. After all, Iran executes homosexuals and Chavez wanted near-dictatorial powers. Perhaps Penn would get behind Mao’s famous quote about guns.</p>
<p>Even the lowest DGU estimate, the NCVS estimate of 108,000 (1993), shows a significant number of defensive gun uses among private citizens. The link below shows a summation of different DGU studies. Any thoughts on whether these numbers justify gun ownership on a practical, self-defense level (not Constitutional, economic, etc)?
[GunCite:</a> Frequency of Defensive Gun Use in Previous Surveys](<a href=“http://www.guncite.com/kleckandgertztable1.html]GunCite:”>GunCite: Frequency of Defensive Gun Use in Previous Surveys)</p>
<p>The other factoids are equally dubious. DGU statistics based on surveys are essentially hopeless, due to the impact of false positives from wannabes exaggerating, fabricating, or “borrowing” stories of gun-enabled heroism.</p>
<p>The problem with a lot of these arguments (on both sides) is that we simply do not have good enough data to tell what’s going on. It’s one thing to say that DGU doesn’t do anything or does something, it’s something entirely different to actually run the stats through a regression to figure out what’s going on.</p>
<p>I thought about doing work on gun laws for a research project, but just threw out the idea when I saw the data. It’s really not good enough for serious time series analysis.</p>
<p>I think you missed a key word or two–that list is for time sentenced. In many states time served can actually be half that of the total sentence. Double-check that clumsy analysis.;-0</p>
<p>An even better opportunity to see how it’s possible to mislead with “accurate” data (from the website you inked to):
So the statement that “the average length of imprisonment for murder is 10 years” actually means “The average length of imprisonment for manslaughter and the least serious cases of murder – those for which the defendant did not receive either a death sentence or life imprisonment, and therefore was eventually released from prison, was 10.5 years.” </p>
<p>P2N: I recognize your kind of “facts.” Kind of reminds me of the ones you use to support your second amendment analysis. :)</p>
<p>What’s the equivalent of “gun nut” for an abuser of the language? How did you go from intentional manslaughter plus murder to your bizarre construction? How about: “Murder was defined as murder or non-negligent manslaughter.” Oh, wait, that’s how the Website worded it originally. I don’t see any redefinition of “murder” as “least serious cases of murder” except in your fanciful declaration.</p>
<p>The same report linked above shows that the average sentence for murder (using the same definition of murder) is about 20 years, and the time served (using the same definition of murder) is about 10 years. I don’t know how to make it any simpler.</p>
<p>EDITED: The discussion of a definition of murder is because the source document was comparing crime statistics in the UK and the US. This is the section referred to in the report:
<p>Washdad, in both set of numbers the most serious cases of murder are excluded from the calculation of the “average” term of imprisonment because only sentences which resulted in the defendant being released from prison were included. All death penalty cases and all life imprisonment cases were excluded from the “average” sentence. Further, manslaughter is a less-serious form of homicide than murder, a conviction for which can result from an auto accident, among other things. So a statement that “the average length of imprisonment for murder is 10 years” is only “accurate” if you interpret its words to mean something that few, if any people reading the bald statement would think they mean. In fact, the average amount of time a person convicted of murder - that’s actual murder, not manslaughter - in the United States is imprisoned is measured in decades, generally ending in his death in prison.</p>
<p>My “nuttiness” consists of thinking that you shouldn’t mislead people as to the significance of your statements by presenting them in a way that is calculated to lead to their forming a false impression of the facts you are reporting.</p>
The statistical analysis I heard was the phone-survey by the DOJ tended to underestimate DGUs due to the underreporing of crimes that were prevented. I know of several people who ended threats against them by moving their suit jacket enough for the other party to see their gun. Many instances of this kind are never reported. I admit that there are too many inconsistencies and the statistical variations are too great to say that one survey is very accurate. I would argue that DGUs do occur with some frequency. They warrant further study.</p>
<p>Raimius, please don’t take this the wrong way, but this statement:
is almost certainly untrue. As to
I’ve seen than “analysis” and it relys on tin-foil hat conspiracy level analysis of human behavior to support its premise. </p>
<p>As to the “several people you know” - were you there? No. What were the circumstances where these people were "threatened’ and “ended” the threat? This is a stock scenario on TV and in the movies. Real life? No. If people told you this happened, they were “overreporting” - describing an incident they had heard about, “borrowing” it and reporting it as fact. If you’ve heard multiple reports they probably all trickle back to the same source - and that source is probably a movie or TV show. If you went back and dug into the stories you’ve heard (it would be rude, so you won’t do this) in the great majority of cases that’s what you’d find out.</p>
<p>It is true that is second-hand knowledge. However, usually the people reporting it were asking what they could have done better and commenting over how nervous they were at the time, rather than how “heroic,” “tough,” or smart they had been (as one would often find in fictionalized accounts). Also, the settings and opposite parties were extremely varied in each I account I have heard. Basically, only the underlying themes are similar. One person (carrying a pistol) is threatened by one or more people and shows his gun. The other side decides not to pursue further confrontation and leaves. (Usually the person with the gun decides to leave as well.) I cannot easily verify these events, but to dismiss them outright as hollywood style fiction isn’t fair or scientific.</p>
<p>That analysis relies on “tin-foil hat conspiracy” about as much as the analysis that claims massive overreporting. If an event like I described happened 10 months before a survey, it is possible that it would not be reported as a DGU (due to omission, DGU definitions, and question wording). It is reasonable to believe that DGUs are underreported by some and overreported by others. I won’t claim to know the proportions of each, as I have not done an in depth statistical and social analysis of each survey.</p>
Actually, the quiet, self-doubting, unassuming hero is the movie-screen norm for 'real life" heroes - not the wisecracking action hero who is recognized as being a “comic book” fiction. Again - how is it that you know multiple guys who carry concealed weapons and find themselves in circumstances where they are “threatened” by multiple people who slink away when he reveals his gun? Seriously - I’ve never known a single person in forty years who has encountered such a situation - and you know more than one to whom it’s happened in the last couple of years? Where do you meet these guys?</p>
<p>First clue: you’re talking to guys who (apparently) carry a concealed handgun on their person all the time. That’s rare to begin with. I’m going to assume that they have a greater than average affinity for, and fascination with guns. And we should assume that they’ve thought through the exact scenario you described; it happens all the time on screen - they have to be aware of it. It’s a shorter step than you might think from thinking about a scenario like that and reporting that it actually happened - you just insert the event into a real life experience where it could have happened - the parking lot of a rowdy bar where a group of loudmouth drunks passed by - they didn’t engage the gun-toter, but they could have - and boom - you’ve got a story that makes you the center of attention when you tell it. Of course, the story is told with the same degree of self effacement as it would have been told if it had really happened - in a sense, it sort of did happen, in the gun-guy’s mind. And it reinforces his justification for carrying that gun, with which he has a more-than-average fascination. Win-win.</p>
<p>Years ago, Ronald Reagan, while president, told a gripping story of how men in combat had behaved in a situation during WWII, as a real event he knew about. Turns out, he’d seen it in a movie. Happens more often than you’d think.</p>
<p>What doesn’t happen is people actually getting involved in real life crime prevention and then “forgetting” about it, or being ashamed or “embarrassed” to report it, which is the gist of the “under-reporting” theory.</p>
<p>Here’s a real life incident where a gun stopped a crime-in-progress. I can verify it because I was the victim. It doesn’t directly apply to your premise because the guy with the gun was a cop, but it certainly could have happened the same way if the gun-toter was a civilian. I was kidnapped at knifepoint in a car. When a cop pulled his gun on the perpetrator, he immediately dropped his knife and set me free. Maybe because I’ve been through this incident, I don’t see the reported DGU statistics as not credible.</p>
<p>Bay, your experience tells us nothing about the DGU numbers (which exclude police actions.) “Could’ves” and “would’ves” abound. “Actually did happens” seem to be thin on the ground.</p>
<p>…especially when you dismiss what evidence you have.</p>
<p>Look, I’m not saying that I know these particular stories to be true. I am saying that this kind of stuff does happen with some frequency, and that most people don’t acknowledge (or know of) it. Even if half of these stories are added to or even faked, there are still a substantial number of truthful ones.</p>
<p>If someone told you how they had narrowly avoided a serious car accident on their way to work, would you believe them? Would you believe a person who told you that they had almost been mugged the previous evening?</p>
You’re going to upset our more liberal friends.</p>