Yet another licensed and legal weapon.
Even were guns nationally banned, that she decided to proceed with mass murder - showing enough signs of danger far enough in advance that she was reported to & interviewed by police - there were a multitude of ways of carrying out the attack, including by buying contraband weapons. Other products are completely illegal in this country, with enormous suppression activity, yet are widely available; no reason to believe a ban would somehow render guns unobtainable via a few hundred dollars discretely exchanged in the wrong side of town.
What's pity is the victims were[0] specifically denied a right to armed self-defense, under threat of harm. She was the rare one who snapped, and in doing so violated a plethora of "reasonable restrictions" to cause grave harm; nobody seems to notice the enormous numbers likewise armed yet never harm anyone - a few happening to stop such attacks early.
[0] - summarizing, details beyond a mere comment.
In a Philadelphia-based study, "individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession" and that grew to 5.45 times more likely if the assault victim had a chance to resist. [1]
Successful defensive gun use happens, but it's the exception to the rule: guns escalate conflict, especially when both parties have them.
Reliable studies show defensive gun use in 100k-1 million incidents per year in the US.
https://fee.org/articles/defensive-gun-use-is-more-than-shoo...
That's not "exception to the rule".
These are not hard stats, they’re self reports from people who had occasions where they felt safer carrying. Peak confirmation bias. Of course we can find 100k people whose guns made them feel safer once.
But that’s not the question we are trying to answer. We want to know if you are actually protected by owning a firearm. The evidence suggests it has quite the opposite effect.
Your quote is referring to the study where - "used a gun for defense during a situation in which they thought someone “almost certainly would have been killed""
In context the sentence you have quoted simply means the researchers could not be certain that the participants would have died if not for the gun defence.
It is in no way suggesting that they were not legitimate uses of self defence with a firearm.
Remember: "defensive use" includes simply raising doubt that an attacker will survive, deterring even the consideration of assault. Home invasions just don't happen in my area, because assailants are likely shot and their demise celebrated on the news (further deterrence).
https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1
“Defensive uses of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed. Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”
It was also discovered that when guns are used in self-defense the victims consistently have lower injury rates than those who are unarmed, even compared with those who used other forms of self-defense.
I finally had the time to read the study and it's got plenty of problems. Painting it as more legitimate than the dozens of studies showing hundreds of thousands of defensive firearm usages is inane.
For example the differences between the case and control groups:
"compared with control participants, shooting case participants were":
- "more frequently working in high-risk occupations"
- "had a greater frequency of prior arrest."
- "significantly more often involved with alcohol and drugs"
- "more likely to be located in areas with less income and more illicit drug trafficking"
Gun owners and their families are so much more likely to be harmed by a gun they own than be protected by it that it’s apaling. How can you possibly justify promoting that, knowing the balance of risks you are advocating people expose themselves and their families to?
See my above comment.
Of course the flaw in your argument is that the only significant reason people need to have guns to protect themselves, is because other people have guns. Take away everyone’s guns, and the absurdity of your argument dissolves itself. And yes, it is possible to remove most weapons in criminal hands. Many countries successfully do this. The high levels of access to guns by criminals is only enabled by a pervasive gun culture.
We all do something dangerous and fairly antisocial. But only one of those things tends to be demonized.
Smoking? Skateboarding outside of private or dedicated places? Heck, even drinkers, from your list, are often demonized.
So, no, your “only one” is not accurate.
Also, if you find shooting guns entertaining, you can keep doing that even in the countries with the strictest gun control laws. I lived in Australia post-1996 and still shot guns on a number of occasions.
In addition, if this truly was a mental health problem, Congress could increase funding for mental health treatment by the end of the week, Trump could sign it by the middle of next week, and we could see an increase in people getting treatment by the end of next month. The fact that we're not seeing that leads me to believe that most know this isn't as much of a mental health problem as people think.
Other countries prescribe anti-depressant medication in similar quantities to the US, and those countries don't have the same problems of violence that the US does.
I know the YouTube incident, specifically, was not a mass-shooting incident (4+ casualties, not including the shooter) but the comment you replied to specifically mentioned mass-shooting.
That males are overrepresented seems fairly self-evident, but is there a noted link between DV, TBI, and addiction(s) with mass-shootings? I've never heard that angle.
The damage truly depends on the type of ammunition used (as well as caliber). FMJ (Full Metal Jacket) ammunition, what seems to be described in the article you referenced, is a non-expanding type of ammunition, typically causing less destruction than expanding types such as HP (Hallow Point), which flatten and expand on impact.
Muzzle velocities from a rifle are significantly higher than handguns, which does translate into more kinetic energy. The additional energies in a rifle cartridge will cause more shock damage to organs, as described in the article, however.
HP ammunition (not commonly used in rifles) is designed to be devastatingly lethal - specifically designed to leave very large wounds in the target, which have little hope of closing/repairing the wound.
In the spectrum from full rights to all weapons, to absolute gun control, allowing access to these handguns (where most wounds are survivable, there is less range, and lower magazine capacity) but restricting assault rifles (high muzzle velocities create injuries that are nearly impossible to survive, high magazine count, sometimes higher discharge rate) seems like a reasonable point to draw the line, and also complies with existing case law around the second amendment.
This would have been much, much worse with an AR15 type weapon, with likely far more deaths.