Help with refuting.

[bakerjw]

I'm on another forum that is a nanny forum. In a thread on gun control, someone posted this link. I'd not seen it before. Anyone else?

http://www.vpc.org/fact_sht/ccwprivatecitizens.pdf

[Bendersquint]

I'm on another forum that is a nanny forum. In a thread on gun control, someone posted this link. I'd not seen it before. Anyone else?

http://www.vpc.org/fact_sht/ccwprivatecitizens.pdf

I saw something like this during the Obama re-election campaign.

I just picked 15 at random and looked into them and they are all documented out there.

Hard to refute a collection of facts.

Would be interesting to see what the total of deaths are compared to how many people are CCW'd.

That document does nothing but criminalize the hundreds of millions of other guns that haven't posed a threat to anyone but Bambi, Donald Duck and some seriously deranged paper targets on sticks.

[este]

I want an infographic of guns vs murders.... Just more infographic a everywhere really... Easy to refute facts if you don't read them. Very hard to avoid pretty graphics!

[poikilotrm]

This right here is all you need to refute them. They use "Pending" cases in their argument, and a lot of them are BS. The fact that they have to reach should illustrate the weakness of their position. CCWs simply don't present as a significant percentage of criminals.

Concealed Handgun Permit Holder: George Zimmerman
Pending
Date: February 26, 2012
People Killed: 1

Circumstances: On February 26, 2012, concealed handgun permit holder George
Zimmerman, 28, shot and killed Trayvon Martin, 17, with a 9mm handgun as Martin was
returning from a nearby 7-11 convenience store where he had purchased an ice tea and a
package of Skittles. Martin was visiting the home of his father's girlfriend, located in the
gated community of The Retreat at Twin Lakes. At 7:17 PM, Zimmerman, the
neighborhood watch captain, called 911 to report Martin as a suspicious person.
Zimmerman, driving around the neighborhood in his car, called to report what he called
“a real suspicious guy.” Said Zimmerman, “This guy looks like he's up to no good, or
he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about.”
Zimmerman added, “These assholes, they always get away.” Despite being told by the
911 operator not to follow him, Zimmerman followed Martin. Just two minutes after
Zimmerman had called the police, six neighbors dialed 911 to report a fight between the
two and then a gunshot. In shooting the unarmed teen, Zimmerman claimed self-defense.
Local police did not arrest Zimmerman in connection with the shooting because of
Florida's Stand Your Ground law, which allows private citizens to use lethal force if they
believe their safety or life is in danger. Public outcry following the shooting gained
national attention and focused on issues of race (Martin was black), the NRA-drafted
‘Shoot First’ law, and the state's lax concealed weapons laws. On March 19, the U.S.
Justice Department announced that it would investigate the case. The next day, the state
attorney for Seminole County announced that a grand jury would be convened to look
into the case.
Source: “Trayvon Martin Killing: Why George Zimmerman Could Still Totally Get Away With It,”
Broward-Palm Beach New Times (blog), March 21, 2012; “Neighbor comes to defense of Trayvon Martin’s
shooter,” msnbc.com, March 21, 2012; “Trayvon Martin case to go to grand jury, Fla. state attorney
announces,” msnbc.com, March 20, 2012; “Parents seek justice for unarmed son’s killing,” CBSnews.com,
March 8, 2012.

[silencertalk]

Also they talk about semi autos being traced by the ATF and the traces went down after the 1994 ban.

That is only because gun traces are not actually used in crimes - they are just guns that were traced.

Second - they are not including post bans as Assault Weapons, but they count them other times when it suits them.

[poikilotrm]

Gotta concur with silencertalk. Just on a 30 second perusal on my part I found some big holes morally, factually, and statistically, and he dredged up more with, I bet, not much effort. They have a paper that doesn't rise to the level of specious in content and is sadly disparate in scope.

[rogerme]

What I would like to see is a list such as this covering EVERY death involving a firearm.

[silencertalk]

I wonder what to make of this. What if it is true? What if most of the defensive uses of a gun that we cite all of the time turned out to be illegitimate claims of defense?

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/24/opinion/f ... ?hpt=hp_t3

There's solid research to show that most so-called defensive gun uses are not really defensive at all.
In the late 1990s, teams of researchers at the Harvard school of public health interviewed dozens of people who had wielded a gun for self-defense. (In many cases, the guns were not fired, but were simply brandished.) The researchers pressed for the fullest description of exactly what happened. They then presented the descriptions to five criminal court judges from three states.
"The judges were told to assume that the respondent had a permit to own and carry the gun and had described the event honestly from his/her own perspective. The judges were then asked to give their best guess whether, based on the respondent's description of the incident, the respondent's use of the gun was very likely legal, likely legal, as likely as not legal, unlikely legal, or very unlikely legal."
Even on those two highly favorable (and not very realistic) assumptions, the judges rated the majority of the self-defensive gun uses as falling into one of the two illegal categories.
The researchers concluded:
"Guns are used to threaten and intimidate far more often than they are used in self-defense. Most self-reported self-defense gun uses may well be illegal and against the interests of society."
That certainly describes the Keats shooting. With a little Google searching, you can pull up dozens of similar incidents.

[2manygunz]

Most laws are not written in the interest of "society" but rather in the interest of one faction or another within society. Being "illegal" therefore is not a very good test of what is or is not self defense.

Clearly, I haven't reviewed the cases or research, however I would argue on face value that using a gun for "intimidation" is, itself, a form of self-defense. How, for example, would these judges have rated a peacock who spread his feathers to ward off a perceived threat? Self-defense or intimidation? Are they not two sides of the same coin?

I've taken people to a range to introduce them to firearms and the responses are at times amazing. One person who claimed to have grown up hunting cried -- yes cried -- when I fired a pistol. He said he was overwhelmed with fear simply seeing a handgun in operation. This person was clearly intimidated, but not by me. He had a visceral reaction to an inanimate object segments of our society train people to fear intensely.

[silencertalk]

Not really. I would not draw a gun unless I was very close to needing to shoot in self defense of a life. So if the cases that we gun owners cite as using a gun in self defense do not meet that standard, then maybe we are also guilty of using BS statistics.

I actually don't think statistics should be a factor and that we have a right to a gun regardless of if they are good or bad for society as a whole, but I still like having meaningful statistics just for information purposes.

[2manygunz]

I won't speak for the rightness or wrongness of brandishing, however I can say I've heard and read more than one self-defense instructor who has advocated revealing in advance of a perceived bad situation to avoid a conflict. The logic goes like this: someone who is threatening you is not the sort to file a brandishing complaint with the local PD and you'd rather have them just walk away than be a shooting victim. I'm not advocating this approach, merely reporting. Escalation can also invite response. With respect to the thread, however, I just wouldn't rely on statistics that attempt to record the volume of brandishing that has or has not gone on. They are very likely woefully incorrect.

[silencertalk]

What about this - would pro-gun people include this in the list of "successful self-defense use of a firearm?"

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafe ... ce/1266589

I bet they would, and it seems like instead it should be an example to use for the anti-gun side.

[johndoe3]

What about this - would pro-gun people include this in the list of "successful self-defense use of a firearm?"

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafe ... ce/1266589

No, and the police didn't buy it either which is why the shooter was arrested. The shooter was a customer who butted into a conversation between another customer and the pizza workers. Why would having a concealed carry permit make you "superman--able to settle all arguments between others in a single bound"?

So...the shooter initiated the confrontation and it was not self-defense but further escalation by the shooter (at least enough evidence for probable cause, although the shooter can certainly try to persuade a jury that even though no one else had a weapon and no one hit him, that he had cause to gun down another person, and claims self defense because he thought he might get hit with a fist). From the facts in the article, my personal opinion is that the shooter's lawyer isn't likely to win this case--maybe go for a plea bargain on reduced charges.