View Single Post
Old 01-30-2006, 01:28 PM   #31 (permalink)
The_Dunedan
Junkie
 
The problem is that more than 75% of all DGUs end without the gun ever having been fired. This distorts the DGU/accident/suicide data because while any accidental gun death or suicide obviously ends in a dead body, less than 25% of DGUs do. To obtain a meaningful comparison, you would need to compare ALL DGUs ( firing and non-firing ) to accidents and suicides across-the-board. The CDC figures only take into account those incidents in which a corpse hit the floor; they "ignore" the 75%+ of 2,000,000 DGUs ( yearly ) in which the defender's weapon is not fired. Once these non-firing DGUs are taken into account, the numbers of accidents and suicides ( particularly among children ) seem paltry in comparison.

Your data supports the conclusion that a gun in the home is, perhaps ( and this is a BIG perhaps ), more likely to -kill- a resident than an intruder. It is not, however, more likely to be -used against- a resident than an intruder.

It should also be noted that the Brady Bunch and HCI count any person under the age of 25 as a "child" and list their death as a "gun violence death" no matter the manner in which it occurred. Their numbers include 20-year-old gangbangers shot in self defense, criminals shot by the cops, and at least one instance of a 22-year-old soldier killed in Iraq. Reduce the "child" threshold to something more reasonable, like 15 years, and the total nationwide figure hovers at less than 1,000 deaths per annum.
The_Dunedan is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360