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Most uses of firearms in the US are not self-defense. But funnily enough, if there were fewer guns... there'd be fewer need for those few self-defense cases.
Offensive uses and suicides to defensive uses: 50 to 1.
Citation: Needed.
According to Gun Violence Archive in 2023 so far there have been 888 deaths due to defensive use of firearms, out of a total of 31,900 deaths from firearms from all causes. That's 2.78%, which is about a 36:1 ratio.
So yeah- most firearm-caused deaths in the US are not from self-defense, and it's not even close either.
That's a nice figure you have there. Would be a shame if somebody thought about the context of those numbers....
Like how many defensive gun uses occur where nobody is killed because the attacker was deterred without the necessity of violence. You don't have numbers for that because they only count deaths.
Why, when I said
while linking to the stats to show deaths from firearms in the US, would I say anything about non-lethal defensive uses of firearms? The point was to show the ratio of self-defensive lethal uses of firearms compared to all lethal uses of firearms.
Except you didn't. You said "uses of firearms" which also includes sport and hunting as well as self defense. What you actually said is completely false and then you just lied and pretended you said something completely different. You also posted a ridiculously biased and incomplete propaganda site as a valid source of fact, probably because any remotely academic source would give the exact opposite. Even the CDC found that defensive uses far outnumber offensive uses before gun control groups forced them to delete the peer reviewed data for political reasons.
What I said: Self-defense is a minority of gun usage in the US (a fact you and I both agree on).
The first commenter said that offensive and suicides outnumber self-defense (which eliminates sport from the discussion).
What I said next: If you count deaths, then self-defense makes up a minority of firearm-related deaths (and yes, I did use deaths because that's an easier to track statistic than "people who used a gun in an assault/defense but nobody was hurt." However, even if tracking that is possible, it'd be unreasonable to assume it'd change the ratio in any meaningful way.)
Furthermore, GVA's lists their methodology here. Of course an organization devoted to stopping gun violence would be biased towards stopping gun violence, but that doesn't make them wrong. Feel free to point out where their methodology is flawed.
You got a source for that claim from a reputable news organization? Cause all I'm seeing is "CDC allegedly removed report" headlines from various far-right sites.
No, you said "Most uses of firearms in the US are not self-defense. But funnily enough, if there were fewer guns… there’d be fewer need for those few self-defense cases."
This isn't a matter of debate or opinion. It is an absolute fact that you did not say "Self-defense is a minority of gun usage in the US."
The first time you claimed something different from your actual, blatantly available statement it could have been chalked up to misspeaking or intending to say one thing but phrasing it a different way. By now that benefit of the doubt is gone and you are straight up lying, which is par for the course for gun grabbers. Gun control is based on lies and ignorance; people lie to force ignorance on the masses to get support.
If the statement is on "uses" of firearms, it is not true. You also just casually dispelled one of the core tenants of gun control that they are machines designed specifically for killing. Yet an overwhelming, extreme and exponential majority of gun uses in the US are not directed at any living thing whatsoever, let alone at a human. Out of any use actually directed at another living human, yet again offensive and criminal uses are vastly outnumbered by defensive uses. So if your original (incorrect) statement was the crux of your argument it is utterly shattered because it is 100% false.
If your statement is firearm deaths, that opens a whole can of worms regarding your personal views on morality. If an attacker pulls a knife and attempts to stab someone, which outcome do you believe to be the most favorable? A: The attacker stabs and injures/kills the victim. B. The victim uses a gun to shoot and kill the attacker. C. The victim pulls a gun and the attacker runs away or is captured. By your assessment that only deaths matter, it would seem that you think C is a less desirable outcome than B which is a less desirable outcome than A. Is your primary moral goal to prevent crime, deaths or gun deaths of any sort? Some of us care about human lives more than we hate guns.
The way that statistics have always been tracked and studied is with representational samples. Surveys, with careful wording and peer reviewed methodology are the primary way this is done. Discounting them completely simply because they don't get the result you personally want just shows how much you're grasping at straws to force your opinion through as fact. GVA on the other hand has shown their methodology time and time again; they are purely a propaganda mechanism for a biased organization with partisan goals. Actively searching for events based on criteria that are designed and adjusted to maximize events meeting their personal goals while minimizing and ignoring anything that doesn't fit the desired narrative isn't science or fact, it is dishonest propaganda. Once they got caught google and the others made sure to memory hole it but some of us still remember when they first started the project and were documenting "school shootings." One of the very first events they catalogued (can't remember if it was top 3 or 5 on the first page) was literally a man in his 30s that committed suicide in his car at 2 or 3 AM on a Sunday in the parking lot of a building that used to be a school but was closed down and long since abandoned. Yup, school shooting. There was also an event where a few kids were playing with an airsoft gun and shooting at each other (as airsoft guns are designed to be used) in their neighborhood outside of school hours but they happened to go past the spot on the street where the bus stopped. Well a "bb gun" is a gun and a bus stop is related to school so they labeled this as a "school shooting." Searching news articles has some value for identifying events, but it is far more valid for statistically rare and news worthy events, such as actual random mass public shootings, not any time a constantly shrinking number of people are hurt by any means when a gun is involved such as is used by gun control organizations to inflate the number. For day to day crime and day to day defensive uses, many are ignored by the news and even more are ignored by the biased criteria used to search by organizations that have blatant agendas.
The CDC study is extremely easy to find even after they removed the data from their website. It is still a published and peer reviewed study that has not been academically refuted, it was merely delisted by the CDC who commissioned it. Additionally, you complain about biased sources yet you ignore things like the NY state representative that is literally the first google result for "cdc defensive gun use." Additionally, even if you dislike the article accompanying it, the actual emails between the gun control organizations and CDC that led to the removal are widely available thanks to a FOIA request. Is your argument that official publicly released records of CDC activities don't count because the person that asked for them doesn't match your politics? If so that is an interesting take to have while attempting to claim the upper hand in an argument. The bottom line is that claiming the only facts that are valid are the ones that come from my personal echo chamber is basically how dictatorships rule the media. When I was discounting the GVA I explained why their methodology was flawed, gave examples of how they have wildly abused it in the past and explained the academically accepted standard that they are shirking; discounting direct CDC emails where they openly discuss their activities and reasoning are invalid simply because I dislike the person that asked for the public records.
Lmao. You didn't say deaths chief.
Yeah you can go on about the semantics, but what I said was still relevant to the overall picture of the situation. Ideally the numbers of deaths from all sources would be low, but in reality they won't ever be. When self defense can save lives, it's worth noting its value.
Comparing defense and offensive deaths is apples and oranges. The goal in a defense use of a gun isn't to kill.
In reality in every other civilized country they are now. So.....
Bro just stop already. You like guns, it's a neat little hobby, and you're getting angry because people want to end it. I get that. My hobby is retro video games/consoles, and if it turned out that they were a threat to society and people wanted to take them away, I probably wouldn't do the sane/rational/adult thing and accept it. I'd fight to defend my god given right to own a Wii, and I'd get into angry bad faith arguments on the internet in a desperate attempt to protect my cherished pastime.
...but I'd be wrong, I'd be an asshole, and I probably wouldn't realize it. I like to think that I'd have the self-awareness to not fall into that trap, since I generally consider myself to be self-aware, but also I really love this hobby and it's a big part of my life, so it could go either way.
Nope, I will never stop. It's not about "a hobby" it's about the rights of all Americans.
If any of you had any fucking perspective, you'd realize that our rights are something that millions have died to obtain and it's absolutely moronic to give any of them up.
I would definitely say something very similar if the guberment went after ma 'tendos.
Your perspective is based on lies though.
NO U
We'll see I went to law school and was a law review editor and passed a couple bar exams and practiced for years and years.
You read a blog post and watched some YouTube videos made by other people with no relevant education or experience.
Find me one usage of the phrase "bear arms" prior to 1776 outside of a clearly military context, that refers instead of an individual right, and I'll drop it right now and forever.
There's plenty of historical context to support the citizen's right to bear arms in the Federalist Papers from the 1780s, but that doesn't meet your arbitrary criteria of the year of Independence.
You make a lot of assumptions about the knowledge of others. That's usually not wise.
This is lame and a waste of my time, so I will conclude by saying the Supreme Court has spoken on this matter and their opinions outrank everyone else's. Nothing you can do about your dumb opinion that our Rights are based on "lies" but continue to be mad about their existence I reckon.
Maybe I'll argue the appeal of the one that gets the Court to throw out Heller and Bruen, or some other case to hold you numbnutses responsible.
I agree the date I chose is arbitrary. However, it is the date from which all originalism and textualism springs, as far as substantive constitutional rights. It is the originalists and textualists that read an individual right into a sentence that does not clearly have one.
You're the delusional moron from yesterday.