Bob Herbert: How Many Deaths Are Enough?

[Babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/opinio...ef=opinion

How Many Deaths Are Enough?
By BOB HERBERT
Published: January 17, 2011


snip//

Can we get a grip?

The contention of those who would like college kids and just about everybody else to be armed to the teeth is that the good guys can shoot back whenever the bad guys show up to do harm. An important study published in 2009 by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine estimated that people in possession of a gun at the time of an assault were 4.5 times more likely to be shot during the assault than someone in a comparable situation without a gun.

“On average,” the researchers said, “guns did not seem to protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. Although successful defensive gun uses can and do occur, the findings of this study do not support the perception that such successes are likely.”

Approximately 100,000 shootings occur in the United States every year. The number of people killed by guns should be enough to make our knees go weak. Monday was a national holiday celebrating the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. While the gun crazies are telling us that ever more Americans need to be walking around armed, we should keep in mind that more than a million people have died from gun violence — in murders, accidents and suicides — since Dr. King was shot to death in 1968.

We need fewer homicides, fewer accidental deaths and fewer suicides. That means fewer guns. That means stricter licensing and registration, more vigorous background checks and a ban on assault weapons. Start with that. Don’t tell me it’s too hard to achieve. Just get started.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on January 18, 2011, on page A25 of the New York edition.

[Hekate]

Those who think ordinary Americans should be armed to the teeth at all times tried to say that IF ONLY someone at Gabrielle Gifford's event had been armed then it would have ended differently. Perhaps Gifford herself was supposed to have been armed, as some wingnut congresscritters are vowing to do.

She was shot in the back of the head and never even saw her assailant.

My Congresswoman, Lois Capps, was interviewed by one of our local papers. Of course she knows Ms Gifford personally, and it had to have been a gut-wrenching shock. But one phrase stood out: Lois said, "I will not be packing heat."

What a crazy country.

[There Is No Spoon]

(01-19-2011 01:29 AM)Hekate Wrote:  Those who think ordinary Americans should be armed to the teeth at all times tried to say that IF ONLY someone at Gabrielle Gifford's event had been armed then it would have ended differently. Perhaps Gifford herself was supposed to have been armed, as some wingnut congresscritters are vowing to do.
...

Someone at the scene did have a gun and he 1) didn't get there fast enough to stop the shootings and 2) almost shot a good guy who was holding the assailants gun after it was taken from said shooter.

[TheWraith]

Quote:An important study published in 2009 by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine estimated that people in possession of a gun at the time of an assault were 4.5 times more likely to be shot during the assault than someone in a comparable situation without a gun.

This study has been debunked repeatedly. They studied Philadelphia, where it's nearly impossible for anyone to carry a gun legally--therefore most of the people whose data they were looking at were, in fact, criminals, primarily gang members. The fact that gang members are more likely to be shot in an assault is a perfect example of correlation not being the same thing as causation.

For studying defensive gun use, I highly recommend the material of FSU researcher (also liberal Democrat and ACLU member) Gary Kleck. He's probably done more studies on it than anyone else in the country, and he's admitted that even he's sometimes been surprised by the results.

Quote:We need fewer homicides, fewer accidental deaths and fewer suicides. That means fewer guns. That means stricter licensing and registration, more vigorous background checks and a ban on assault weapons. Start with that. Don’t tell me it’s too hard to achieve. Just get started.

Violent crime in the US has been dropping steadily, down by a third since 1993, while at the same time the number of guns owned in the US has gone up by more than a hundred million. The claim that more guns equals more crimes is simply false. If it were true, Switzerland would be a war zone--one of the most heavily armed countries on Earth, where roughly 660,000 Swiss citizens store fully automatic machine guns right in their homes. That's almost 3 times the number of legal machine guns in the entire United States, on top of the millions of other firearms owned by the Swiss.

[pappy]

self delete

[Velleity]

(01-19-2011 02:01 AM)TheWraith Wrote:  Violent crime in the US has been dropping steadily, down by a third since 1993, while at the same time the number of guns owned in the US has gone up by more than a hundred million.

My guess is that this has more to do with the availability of legal and safe abortions than with the proliferation of guns. Also, how do you define "violent crime"? I would tend to believe the statistic given in the opening post, that having a gun is probably not going to help people in general and the relevant statistic would be more specific than just "violent crime."

I would think, too, that if proliferation of guns was the answer to violent crime we would have a better answer by now.

I have not seen gun statistics but I have seen some good studies on knives. A knife is much more accurate and deadly than a gun within 20 feet. For one thing you never see the knife until you have been cut, so the gun is generally useless in such instances.

I am not saying that you are wrong here. I honestly don't know. However your answer is curiously incomplete. It might help here if you showed where the study cited in the opening post was debunked.

[There Is No Spoon]

(01-19-2011 02:01 AM)TheWraith Wrote:  Violent crime in the US has been dropping steadily, down by a third since 1993, while at the same time the number of guns owned in the US has gone up by more than a hundred million.

Please show the correlation between the two facts in your statement using the following statistical data: