Where can I find stats for a rebuttal?

[edsel6502]

A friend passed this along to me

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/guns_murders_dc

Where can I find stats for a rebuttal?. Engineers don't respond to anything but stats. :)

In particular stats that shows the number of lives saved by gun ownership.

[whomper]

I think there are some good stats here:
http://www.gunowners.org/sk0802.htm

[Mute]

Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms (http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/165476.txt). A study by the the NIJ during the Clinton Administration (which means this report is heavily slanted towards the anti-gun side) showed no less than 108,000 defensive gun uses annually. I personally think the report tried to underestimate the number as much as possible and still came up with this high a number. That number clearly outstrip the number of criminal gun use if they want a pure cost/benefit analysis.

[Paul]

http://www.guninformation.org/

GunTruths was my favorite but it's only available via archive now:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://guntruths.com

[slingshot]

A friend passed this along to me

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/guns_murders_dc

Where can I find stats for a rebuttal?. Engineers don't respond to anything but stats. :)

In particular stats that shows the number of lives saved by gun ownership.

So even if it is true that more guns equal more murders, that doesn't show a cause and effect relationship. Its entirely possible that there are more guns because there are more murders, and not the opposite. On the other hand, maybe there are more guns because there are more murderers who want the guns to murder with. Most people don't understand the concept of cause and effect and just assume that any correlation proves a cause and effect relationship. You can use this argument with your engineering buddy.

To prove cause and effect, you would have to control for all other factors and demonstrate that increasing the number of guns increases the number of murders. In practice, this is very rarely possible in social science experiments--but it sometimes happens.

I'll give you an example. Lets say I do a study and find that there is a very high correlation between people who speed and driving a Porsche. Thus, I outlaw the Porsche because I conclude that the cars cause people to speed. In fact, the reality is that people who like to speed like to buy a nice sports car. If I outlawed the Porsche, all that would happen is they would buy Mercedes and speed in that. If I outlaw all sports cars, they will just drive their Toyota fast.

You can replace Porsche with gun and Mercedes with knife and Toyota with an axe and speeding with murder if you like.

The other problem is that you can't find good stats on how many lives guns save because nobody records that. We only record the number of people who get shot. Who is really to say if a gun saves a life? But if you show up in a body bag in the morgue with a gunshot hole in your chest, there is no question that you got shot with a gun.

If we outlaw guns because of unnecessary deaths, we should first outlaw smoking, fattening foods, sports cars, small cars, rock climbing, private planes, football, mountain climbing, freeways, alcohol, etc, etc, etc ad nauseum... And yes, alcohol causes a lot more collateral damage. The point is, maybe in this country we prefer to accept the risks and responsibilities of freedom than to live in a police state "utopia"? In fact, the USSR had one of the lowest crime rates in the world. Is your friend so risk adverse and terrified of crime that he would prefer the comforting Iron Fist of the USSR to the very tiny risk of getting shot while living in freedom?

[anothergunnut]

Cause and effect: since most murderers ate bread within two days of committing their murder, we should ban bread.

[M. Sage]

So even if it is true that more guns equal more murders, that doesn't show a cause and effect relationship. Its entirely possible that there are more guns because there are more murders, and not the opposite. On the other hand, maybe there are more guns because there are more murderers who want the guns to murder with. Most people don't understand the concept of cause and effect and just assume that any correlation proves a cause and effect relationship. You can use this argument with your engineering buddy.

Someone enjoyed "Freakonomics." :D

I looked up this guy's address, seems I used to live a couple blocks away from him a couple years ago:

http://www.gunfacts.info/

Very good, really covers a lot of ground.