Wife had a set back--need help

[Striker543]

Take a statistics course and you'll learn that statistics can be manipulated to give almost any result you want. Anti-Gun folks know this and conduct their surveys in a way which will give them the most favorable (to them) statistic.

In my experience, NRA.org is a great source of reliable statistics and many of them come directly from FBI surveys, which, while I'm sure are still biased, are probably about as close to reality as you're going to get.

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[Guardian]

Find as many articles as you can that show her women being saved by their guns. That's the only way to refute what she read in one article is to read more that say differently.

[chiefjason]

That sounds like a twist on a recent "study" in Pennsylvania.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sourc...V8JqfHDRS8KbVg


Interesting info here.

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdgaga.html

John Lott on a similar study by Kellermann.

Alexandria, Va.: All of those medical studies, the ones that say you're 43 times more likely to be shot to death than to kill a burglar, or you're three times more likely to be murdered if you keep a gun in your house ... aren't those statistics based on groups of extremely "at-risk" individuals, with long histories of drug abuse, domestic violence, criminality and alcohol abuse? What do those studies say about the hazards of owning a gun for the average person, who has a clean criminal record and no history of drug or alcohol abuse or domestic violence?

John R. Lott: The studies that you refer to are by Kellermann at Emory University and his co-authors. There are many problems with Kellermann et al's paper that undercut the misleading impression that victims were killed by the gun in the home. For example, they fail to that in only 8 of these 444 homicide cases could it be established that the "gun involved had been kept in the home." More importantly, the question posed by the authors cannot be tested properly using their chosen methodology. Another problem is with causality.

To see this, suppose that this same statistical method - with a matching control group - was used to do an analogous study on the efficacy of hospital care. Assume that we collected data in the same way these authors did, that is, we get a list of all the individuals who died in a particular county over the period of a year and we asked their relatives whether they had been admitted to a hospital during the previous year. We would also put together a control sample with people of similar ages, sex, race, and neighborhoods, and ask these men and women whether they had been in a hospital during the past year. My bet is that we would find a very strong positive relationship between those who spent time in hospitals and those who died, quite probably a stronger relationship than in Kellermann's study on homicides and gun ownership. If so, would we take that as evidence that hospitals kill people? Hopefully not. We would understand that despite controlling for age, sex, race, and neighborhood, the people who had visited a hospital during the past year and the people in the "control" sample who did not visit a hospital were really not the same types of people. The difference is pretty obvious: those hospitalized were undoubtedly sick and thus it should come as no surprise that they would face a higher probability of dying.

The relationship between homicides and gun ownership is no different. The finding that those who are more likely to own guns suffer a higher homicide rate makes us ask: why were they more likely to own guns? Could it be that they were at greater risk of being attacked? Is it possible that this difference arose because of a higher rate of illegal activities by those in the case study group than in the control group? Owning a gun could lower the probability of attack but still leave it higher than the probability faced by those who never felt the need to buy a gun to begin with. The fact that all or virtually all the homicide victims died from a weapon brought into their home by an intruder makes this all the more plausible.

Unfortunately, the case studies method was not designed to study these types of social issues.



More Q & A with John Lott here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...042001760.html
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[MP45Man]

I don't know why this didn't post before. However, here is an update. Our family was in the back yard last night and we were discussing this article. http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/ind...ruggle_fo.html The murder happened in an adjoining township where we still own a home. It was two blocks away from there First murder of the year in the township. "Good" section of the township. Well, anyway. While we were sitting there, my wife asks if it is safe to be sitting outside. I said I was prepared to defend the family. Previously, I did not carry when we were gathering in the back yard. I do now. I didn't ask my wife anything about the "Living by the sword..." comment. I'll just keep on letting the press work on her for me.

[greenLED]

She flat-out said, "I could not shoot someone. I just couldn't do it. I don't hold anything against anyone who could but I would hesitate and more than likely have the gun taken away from me and probably used on me. I should not be someone who is carrying a gun. I would be much better off with pepper spray or something along those lines."

Great post, as usual, Lima.

I think it's awesome that your mom knows where she stands and why.

Trouble with some people who share your mom's position (and I'm not saying she's one of them), is that they try to force that fear due to incompetence (in the sense of not knowing how to operate a gun or act around one) onto people like us, who have a different mindset, train, etc. Thos people scare me.

[RKM]

I don't know why this didn't post before. However, here is an update. Our family was in the back yard last night and we were discussing this article. http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/ind...ruggle_fo.html The murder happened in an adjoining township where we still own a home. It was two blocks away from there First murder of the year in the township. "Good" section of the township. Well, anyway. While we were sitting there, my wife asks if it is safe to be sitting outside. I said I was prepared to defend the family. Previously, I did not carry when we were gathering in the back yard. I do now. I didn't ask my wife anything about the "Living by the sword..." comment. I'll just keep on letting the press work on her for me.

I live very close to the range and have driven past numerous times, but have never actually been there. This story has been all over the local news. They have captured two suspects.

As for the "live by the gun die by the gun" statement...yikes. It's honestly something I've given a lot of thought to. But these are the people that think their guns give them super human powers. The gun get's them in trouble. They may try to threaten the wrong people with their gun and be killed by somebody else.

I'm actually MORE leery now that I do carry, because I've realized just how dangerous the world is. It makes me avoid anything dangerous if I can. And if I am somehwere that has an increased threat, I'm always careful. I do what I must and get out of there. Before I carried, I used to careless where I was and just didn't think it could happen to me . Now that I do carry, I avoid certain places and I'm now extra careful to make sure I DON'T need to use my gun.

As far as people who own guns being killed by their own guns, ND's and suicide, IMO, doesn't count. These (suicidal) people shouldn't even have guns. But it happens. The only statistics that should count are people who have their guns taken from them in an SD and HD situation and used against them. This happens, and propably always will unless people learn handgun retention and have other training (something I've been needing to do!) I'm no statistical expert, but I'm willing to bet people having their guns used against them happens far less the a good ol' justifiable SD shooting.

Many shootings happen all the time. It's usually the negative ones that make the news.