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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

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yummyfajitas

Clearly a 5'1", 105lb woman has no need of a gun when a 6'4", 240lb man breaks into her home.

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Strange then, that the people who most agitate for and carry guns are not short women.

I am a 5'10", 120lbs woman, and I feel more safe knowing that no one has a gun.

How is that clear? Where is the data that backs up your claim?

The studies cited in http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/having-a... certainly point the other direction.

The article you cite discusses intimate partner violence and seems to suggest that abusive households which have a gun present may result in the gun being used against the woman. If you read my comment, I was discussing attacks by strangers.

Here is an article, for example, that suggests violent resistance (ideally with a gun) is the best way to avoid property loss and injury when attacked. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2004....

Are you seriously asserting that a small female under attack by a large male is better off unarmed?

Of course it is possible to imagine situations in which a gun makes you safer. The point is that in the real world, you are more likely to end up in a situation where it makes you less safe. More specifically, women are far more likely to be killed by their abusive partners than they are to face a life-threatening home invasion.

So don't buy a gun if you have an abusive intimate partner, and do buy one if you are single or have a non-abusive partner. Pretty simple.

Also, upon rereading, your article doesn't even really support your claim that a gun makes women less safe. Note the comparisons made: "More than twice as many women are killed with a gun used by their husbands or intimate acquaintances than are murdered by strangers..." "A very small percentage of these women (7%) had used a gun successfully in self-defense..."

Note the comparisons NOT made: the percentage of women in households without a gun who successfully defended themselves, or P(murder|abusive husband && gun) vs P(murder|abusive husband && !gun).

It's not "my" article.

> the percentage of women in households without a gun who successfully defended themselves

Irrelevant, since the whole point is that lethal home invasions are very rare. In other words, even if having a gun provided 100% protection against a murderous home invader, and even if lacking a gun made it 100% certain that he would kill you, owning the gun would still have a negligible effect on you overall safety.

> P(murder|abusive husband && gun) vs P(murder|abusive husband && !gun)

You can't have it both ways. Either guns make it easier to kill people or they don't. If they don't, then they're no good for self defense. If they do, then you're more likely to be killed by your partner if he has access to a gun than if he doesn't.

Irrelevant, since the whole point is that lethal home invasions are very rare.

If women defend themselves successfully 7% of the time when a gun is in the home but 3% when it's not (the relevant comparison), then guns are effective in preventing domestic violence. The article doesn't even discuss this statistic, which is the only important one.

Either guns make it easier to kill people or they don't.

They do - no one disputes this. No one disputes that an armed man vs an unarmed woman has a better shot than an unarmed man vs an unarmed woman. So what?

Having a gun in the home makes it easier for each partner to kill the other. Thus, I don't see how it could possibly make one partner safer than they would otherwise be. It would appear to make both of them less safe. (And the real solution to this problem is to GTFO of an abusive relationship, not to buy a gun because then maybe there's a tiny chance that you can kill the guy before he kills you. That's just nuts.)

I'm not sure why you keep harping on statistics, since neither of us has any direct statistical information regarding whether a woman owning a gun makes her less likely to be killed by her partner. There are no statistics supporting your position either.

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