How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?

[Pinky]

<snip>

Now I’m sure a ban on hand guns would be met with huge opposition. So why do I include it on the list? The same reason sawed off shotguns are already illegal. Concealment. And Pinky I just read your post so maybe you can answer this question for me. Why do you need to conceal your weapon if it’s for defense?

Because the law requires me to.  If Florida was an open carry state I'd carry openly.  I'd prefer that actually; SOB (small of the back) and Ankle rigs aren't as comfortable or accessible as a hip or shoulder holster.

[Ocklawaha]

Ok but do we really need to walk around armed all the time waiting for this to happen? In the event that this occurs, THEN we can start handing out the guns and forming militias.

The flip side of this is to have the criminals sign an appointment sheet so you'd know when their coming in and thus making sure your carrying. So yes, if you are carrying for self defense, you carry all of the time. Secondly, if we suddenly find ourselves in a shooting war especially one with another power such as China or Russia or even the combined militaries of the Islamic world, it is far too late to 'start handing out the guns and forming militias.'

Remember the anti-military crowd in 1936-40 were fond of telling us that all Japanese were 'bucktooth', 'nearsighted,' as well as 'physically and mentally' deficient. We had absolutely nothing to fear from the Empire of Japan... except that along with their friends, they very nearly kicked our asses.

[Bewler]

The flip side of this is to have the criminals sign an appointment sheet so you'd know when their coming in and thus making sure your carrying. So yes, if you are carrying for self defense, you carry all of the time. Secondly, if we suddenly find ourselves in a shooting war especially one with another power such as China or Russia or even the combined militaries of the Islamic world, it is far too late to 'start handing out the guns and forming militias.'

Remember the anti-military crowd in 1936-40 were fond of telling us that all Japanese were 'bucktooth', 'nearsighted,' as well as 'physically and mentally' deficient. We had absolutely nothing to fear from the Empire of Japan... except that along with their friends, they very nearly kicked our asses.

Why would it be far too late? We could easily anticipate an actual ground invasion well in advance of it happening. There's no way any one could secretly mobilize a large scale amphibious assault on US shores.  Not to mention all of our current gun owners would already be prepared because as I said, I don't think we should completely ban firearms entirely. So then it would just be a matter of training everyone else.

[BridgeTroll]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-gun-crimes-pew-report-20130507,0,3022693.story

Gun crime has plunged, but Americans think it's up, says study

By Emily Alpert
May 7, 2013, 12:46 p.m.

Gun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s, including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show.

Yet few Americans are aware of the dramatic drop, and more than half believe gun crime has risen, according to a newly released survey by the Pew Research Center.

In less than two decades, the gun murder rate has been nearly cut in half. Other gun crimes fell even more sharply, paralleling a broader drop in violent crimes committed with or without guns. Violent crime dropped steeply during the 1990s and has fallen less dramatically since the turn of the millennium.

The number of gun killings dropped 39% between 1993 and 2011, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in a separate report released Tuesday. Gun crimes that weren’t fatal fell by 69%. However, guns still remain the most common murder weapon in the United States, the report noted. Between 1993 and 2011, more than two out of three murders in the U.S. were carried out with guns, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found.

The bureau also looked into non-fatal violent crimes. Few victims of such crimes -- less than 1% -- reported using a firearm to defend themselves.

Despite the remarkable drop in gun crime, only 12% of Americans surveyed said gun crime had declined compared with two decades ago, according to Pew, which surveyed  more than 900 adults this spring. Twenty-six percent said it had stayed the same, and 56% thought it had increased.

It’s unclear whether media coverage is driving the misconception that such violence is up. The mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., were among the news stories most closely watched by Americans last year, Pew found. Crime has also been a growing focus for national newscasts and morning network shows in the past five years but has become less common on local television news.

“It’s hard to know what’s going on there,” said D’Vera Cohn, senior writer at the Pew Research Center. Women, people of color and the elderly were more likely to believe that gun crime was up than men, younger adults or white people. The center plans to examine crime issues more closely later this year.

Though violence has dropped, the United States still has a higher murder rate than most other developed countries, though not the highest in the world, the Pew study noted. A Swiss research group, the Small Arms Survey, says that the U.S. has more guns per capita than any other country.

Experts debate why overall crime has fallen, attributing the drop to all manner of causes, such as the withering of the crack cocaine market and surging incarceration rates.

Some researchers have even linked dropping crime to reduced lead in gasoline, pointing out that lead can cause increased aggression and impulsive behavior in exposed children.

The victims of gun killings are overwhelmingly male and disproportionately black, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Compared with other parts of the country, the South had the highest rates of gun violence, including both murders and other violent gun crimes.

[For the record, 5:13 p.m. May 7: The original version of this post stated that the Bureau of Justice Statistics report was released Wednesday. It was released Tuesday.]

[NotNow]

BT tell this study to the families that have someone killed by a Gun? I bet they wouldn't give a darn about this study.

Perhaps those families blame whoever shot their relative.  You are demonizing the tool and trying to place emotion on an inanimate object.  Homocide, by any means, is a human behavior problem just like drunk driving and burglary.  The firearm, which is a tool, has saved many more lives than it has taken in our modern American society IMHO.

[NotNow]

BT tell this study to the families that have someone killed by a Gun? I bet they wouldn't give a darn about this study.

Perhaps those families blame whoever shot their relative.  You are demonizing the tool and trying to place emotion on an inanimate object.  Homocide, by any means, is a human behavior problem just like drunk driving and burglary.  The firearm, which is a tool, has saved many more lives than it has taken in our modern American society IMHO.

This is such a bizarre statement that I really don't know how to respond.

Then don't.

[NotNow]

https://www.gunowners.org/sk0802htm.htm

http://www.cato.org/guns-and-self-defense

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-27/how-often-do-we-use-guns-in-self-defense





1 Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun," 86 The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, 1 (Fall 1995):164.
Dr. Kleck is a professor in the school of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He has researched extensively and published several essays on the gun control issue. His book, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, has become a widely cited source in the gun control debate. In fact, this book earned Dr. Kleck the prestigious American Society of Criminology Michael J. Hindelang award for 1993. This award is given for the book published in the past two to three years that makes the most outstanding contribution to criminology.
Even those who don't like the conclusions Dr. Kleck reaches, cannot argue with his impeccable research and methodology. In "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed," Marvin E. Wolfgang writes that, "What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator.... I have to admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and this research. Can it be true that about two million instances occur each year in which a gun was used as a defensive measure against crime? It is hard to believe. Yet, it is hard to challenge the data collected. We do not have contrary evidence." Wolfgang, "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed," The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, at 188.
Wolfgang says there is no "contrary evidence." Indeed, there are more than a dozen national polls -- one of which was conducted by The Los Angeles Times -- that have found figures comparable to the Kleck-Gertz study. Even the Clinton Justice Department (through the National Institute of Justice) found there were as many as 1.5 million defensive users of firearms every year. See National Institute of Justice, "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," Research in Brief (May 1997).
As for Dr. Kleck, readers of his materials may be interested to know that he is a member of the ACLU, Amnesty International USA, and Common Cause. He is not and has never been a member of or contributor to any advocacy group on either side of the gun control debate.
2 According to the National Safety Council, the total number of gun deaths (by accidents, suicides and homicides) account for less than 30,000 deaths per year. See Injury Facts, published yearly by the National Safety Council, Itasca, Illinois.
3Kleck and Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime," at 173, 185.
4Kleck and Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime," at 185.
5 Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," NIJ Research in Brief (May 1997); available at http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/165476.txt on the internet. The finding of 1.5 million yearly self-defense cases did not sit well with the anti-gun bias of the study's authors, who attempted to explain why there could not possibly be one and a half million cases of self-defense every year. Nevertheless, the 1.5 million figure is consistent with a mountain of independent surveys showing similar figures. The sponsors of these studies -- nearly a dozen -- are quite varied, and include anti-gun organizations, news media organizations, governments and commercial polling firms. See also Kleck and Gertz, supra note 1, pp. 182-183.
6Kleck, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, (1991):111-116, 148.

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Be sure to read the Business Week article.  It is a very reasonable examination of the facts written for the public.  The other two are aimed at a more involved audience.

[spuwho]

Can I guess the next response?

-Discredit the sources as unreliable
-Discredit the poster as unable to acquire quality information
-Put it in political terms so as to make the information seem immaterial
-Use some reference to how some other past political entity did it worse than the other

Maybe I should start a poll?

[JayBird]

Say this on the news feed this morning, and to me it was scary. I remember watching a movie that had something like this, trying to assassinate the president and he shot this guys arm off and then it was almost sci-fi ... now it is here. My concern is, can it be hacked? Can someone with a wifi connection over ride it? Can it track and shoot anything that moves?

Let me say, I feel every one has the constitutional American right to bear arms. However, I also think there should be a limit to the type of firepower they carry. I know, straddling the fence, but just personal feeling.

My co-worker's first response was, well with that price no one can afford it. But let us remember, flat screen TV's were over $10k when I first heard of them.

$27,500 Gun Hits Targets at 1,000 Yards
By Aaron Smith | CNNMoney.com â€" Tue, Jun 11, 2013 2:07 PM EDT

AUSTIN, Texas â€" A new company in Texas is selling a precision rifle with a unique technology that allows even an inexperienced shooter to hit a target 10 football fields away. The price tag is a staggering $27,500.

Tracking Point describes the weapon as a smartgun, with a trigger wired to the scope so that the gun won't fire until it's locked on the target that's been tagged.

"There are a number of people who say the gun shoots itself," said Chief Executive Officer Jason Schauble, a former Marine captain who was wounded in Iraq. "It doesn't. The shooter is always in the loop."

The TrackingPoint rifles, which are Wi-Fi enabled and have a color display so users can post videos of their shots on Facebook or YouTube, started shipping in May. Schauble said his company is on track to sell as many as 500 of them this year, to clients that he describes as "high net worth hunters" who want to kill big game at long range.

TrackingPoint claims that the gun took down a South African wildebeest at 1,103 yards, a company record.

The company also has a deal to sell about 1,000 of the guns to Remington, which is Schauble's former employer. But the Remington model will be less expensive, running about $5,000 each. TrackingPoint's total sales for the year are expected to be about $10 million.
Schauble is well aware of the damage that guns can do. His right hand is partially paralyzed after he was shot with an AK-47 during combat in Iraq. He wears black "kill bracelets" commemorating dead friends. He admitted that TrackingPoint's technology is "controversial."

Government agencies contacted the company last year for a demonstration of the weapon at a shooting range at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia. But Schauble says that the Department of Homeland Security didn't express any concerns that TrackingPoint's weapon is more of a threat than existing firearm systems.

The FBI, Homeland Security and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives all declined to comment to CNNMoney.

But the weapon has some "scary implications from a security perspective," said Rommel Dionisio, a gun industry analyst for Wedbush Securities.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/-27-500-gun-hits-targets-at-1-000-yards-180751722.html