Trayvon in Tulsa?

[DanTex]

42. Umm... not quite.

The evidence you cite, flawed as it is, only claims to show that if you are a victim of a crime, and if you are able to use your gun to defend yourself, then you are statistically better off than someone who either has a gun on them but doesn't manage to use it, or someone who does something besides DGU.

And, actually, based on the data shown, the outcome of DGU wasn't markedly different than the outcome for people who defended themselves with another weapon -- in fact, for burglaries, for example, using a non-gun weapon turns out better than using a gun. Not to mention the fact that NCVS, being a survey, can't possibly try to determine whether a gun helps prevent people from getting killed.

And then, of course, there are the causality issues. The data can't tell whether people who DGU are actually making the outcome better, or whether it is the other way around: that people are able to use their gun because they are not facing as lethal a threat. For example, if a criminal surprises you, knocks you down, takes your money, and runs off before you pull your gun, that wouldn't show up as a "failed attempt to DGU", but rather as "no self-protective measure".


The other big problem is that comparing the outcomes of crime victimization events doesn't and cannot address the question of whether the overall effect of the gun is a net increase in safety. It only tries to argue that you are better off at the very moment that you are being attacked. As you quote, "there does not appear to be any increase in injury risk due to defensive gun use"

But it doesn't take into account the increased injury risk that could occur at other times (e.g. just ordinary gun accidents). And it also doesn't take into account the possibility that a gun could increase your risk of being a crime victim in the first place, say because your domestic partner decides to use the gun against you, or maybe because the gun gives you the added bravado to escalate an argument to the point where it results in an assault, rather than just walking away. Etc.