Alphecca: No Slippery Slope For Guns in the US?

December 26, 2005

No Slippery Slope For Guns in the US?

I don't like to see anyone murdered (without cause) but I hate it even more when that death is used as an excuse to abridge our Bill of Rights. Jenny Price is a writer and also the brother of David Price, who was killed by his fiance with a handgun. While that is a tragic thing, his sister is using this as an excuse to call for the prohibition of all handgun ownership. Say Uncle has written about this pair in years past but the other day in the Washington Post she wrote this:

Of the 12,000 guns used to kill people every year, 160 are used in legitimate self-defense. Guns in the home are used seven times more often for murder than for self-defense. I cannot say whether the woman who shot my brother was vicious or insane: I myself no longer understand the exact difference. But we all know that rage, vengefulness and deep alienation are hardly unusual in our society, and a handgun makes it horrifyingly easy for people to express them, on purpose or on impulse, by killing people.

[...]

Wouldn't it make more sense to define the ultimate battle as one for a national ban on handguns -- the sole gun-control measure that promises to save tens of thousands of lives? With an endgame that can actually achieve the ultimate goal, perhaps we'd acquire the logical and moral authority to win more of the smaller battles.

Really? Handguns are only used 160 times in self defense each year? Countless studies that show that -- at very conservative estimates -- handguns, well, all guns, are used almost a million times a year in America to protect people from the fucking mutants such as her late brother's fiance, to protect themselves. It's hard to believe that the trigger is only pulled 160 times -- leading to the death of the mutants. None the less, that's actually good news! It means that just the possession of and "showing" of guns by law-abiding citizens is stopping hundreds of thousands of crimes with little loss of life.

Rather than working to ban all handguns, anti-gun activists such as Price should be encouraging people to own and carry them.

Note: I've rewritten this post about a dozen times. Just having trouble wrapping my thoughts around it but I think I'm right now: her supposed statistic is actually an argument FOR an armed populace.

Posted by Jeff Soyer at December 26, 2005 12:56 PM

Comments

Now, I know the stat she's citing is bullshit, but where is she getting it? It has to come from somewhere.

Is 160 the actual number of justified fatal shootings in the US? Is it also based on someone's research?

Posted by: Scott Ganz at December 26, 2005 07:40 PM

I've seen stats like that before; instead of counting how many times a firearm is used in self-defense, they count how many times someone is *killed* in self-defense by a firearm.
As most of us know, self-defense with a firearm usually ends in no shots fired, or someone being merely wounded.

Posted by: Robert Garrard at December 27, 2005 11:49 AM

She says, wrongly in either case, that guns are only used 160 times each year for self defense. Not that they only are used in self defense to kill 160 people in a year.

Minor nit. Jeeny says it was the mother of her fiance that did the shooting.

I also commented on her editorial here.

Posted by: Joe Huffman at December 30, 2005 06:21 PM

Sorry. I was at least partially wrong. She says those 160 guns were used to kill. That doesn't mean that resulted in 160 deaths. It could be twice or half that many deaths (more than one gun could be used in one killing or one gun could be used to kill more than one person). She then says those 160 guns were used in self defense. That doesn't mean the events were related to the killings but it is certainly implied. Basically she is so focused on guns that she can't write unabigously. With such ambiguity she can claim the numbers are correct and you could have a very difficult time proving her wrong simply because you have no idea what she really said. What she implies is certainly complete rubbish and her entire article should be treated as such.

Posted by: Joe Huffman at December 30, 2005 06:33 PM

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December 26, 2005

No Slippery Slope For Guns in the US?

By Golly, you're reading an archived post. Click Here to head to the main page and read current stuff...

Check it out:

My group sci-fi blog novel:

Colony: Alchibah