Gun owners not likely to use firearms for self-defense, study claims

[DanTex]

64. Thank you. Exactly as I said. Although the NRA would be proud of your selected excerpting.

The CDC quotes some rough estimates of DGUs and doesn't address any of the points that I made. I already agreed that "survey estimates indicate" that DGUs are as common as criminal uses. The point I was making is that DGU estimates from survey estimates are mostly useless: these are simply people telling pollsters they used a gun in self-defense, with absolutely no hard verification whatsoever. They don't verify whether the DGUs actually happened, or whether they were actually "defensive" (see George Zimmerman). Here is one of the studies that does just that, finding that large numbers survey-reported DGUs are both illegal and harmful acts:
http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/6/4/263.full

To the second point I made, whether the supposed benefit from DGUs is great enough to balance out the harm from gun violence, the CDC also says nothing. Gun homicides result in someone being killed. DGUs rarely if ever end up saving a life. In fact, as shown in the paragraph from the CDC that you conveniently decided to omit, there isn't even evidence that if you add up all the benefits and harms to gun owners themselves, you get a net benefit. In other words, we know that guns harm the public at large: 10,000 gun homicides a year, and far more non-lethal shootings, ravaging neighborhoods, etc. And in the other column, the "benefits", we can't even determine if there's a plus or a minus sign. And, yes, that's according to the CDC.

The third point I made was also 100% accurate. The CDC did not find that owning or carrying a gun makes a person safer. It cited studies (and the evidence on this is mixed, the CDC for some reason only cited the Kleck studies that the majority of the firearms research community rejects) that said that people who resist with a gun are less likely to be injured. But, regardless, since studies have also found that carrying or owning a gun makes a person more likely to end up being shot in the first place (often by the very gun they own), the net effect of carrying or owning a gun is a best neutral, and most likely negative. In fact, hilariously, the very paragraph after the one you quote makes this very point.

Even when defensive use of guns is effective in averting death or injury for the gun user in cases of crime, it is still possible that keeping a gun in the home or carrying a gun in public—concealed or open carry—may have a different net effect on the rate of injury. For example, if gun ownership raises the risk of suicide, homicide, or the use of weapons by those who invade the homes of gun owners, this could cancel or outweigh the beneficial effects of defensive gun use (Kellermann et al., 1992, 1993, 1995). Although some early studies were published that relate to this issue, they were not conclusive, and this is a sufficiently important question that it merits additional, careful exploration.

So, another mark in my column. There is no evidence that owning or carrying a gun is a net benefit. How did the NRA convince you not to read this paragraph? It's right there after the other ones you cited! Is their mind control really that powerful?


The CDC wrote a total of three paragraphs on DGUs, so it is logical that they didn't cover the entire gamut of research. I don't blame them for this, it is a tiny and inconsequential part of the overall gun debate. But there is a lot more literature out there than those three paragraphs, and I encourage you to look into it, starting with that Harvard Public Health link I posted.