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Helpful-Substance685 t1_j9aupgj wrote

Reply to comment by HappilyhiketheHump in Union City neighbor shoots man he witnessed stabbing woman by B1Baker

Definitely a nice change of pace hearing a US citizen used a gun in the service of saving lives.

We still need common sense gun control but I'm glad this guy was able to help.

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[deleted] t1_j9b20jq wrote

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2014justin t1_j9c4q48 wrote

Between 300,000 and 1.5 million a year, and in 80% of DGU situations, no one is shot.

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WanderingPickles t1_j9aux3p wrote

Happens about a million times a year per the FBI.

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fourfourzero t1_j9awk3k wrote

source required

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WanderingPickles t1_j9b1npp wrote

You can google it. Here is a wiki entry that covers the spread of studies and results. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use

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fourfourzero t1_j9be8a0 wrote

that's not a source. you sir, are full of shit.

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No___ImRight t1_j9bf4x5 wrote

You know that Wikipedia has a "References" section with all the sources

This person provided you with appr 49 sources.

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WanderingPickles t1_j9bfyk8 wrote

I sure did. I even provided a sort of disclaimer, noted that it includes a wide range of sources too.

It’s almost like some folks never moved beyond needing to be spoon fed by mommy and daddy.

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Benedictus84 t1_j9bi45b wrote

The only time the FBI is mentioned is in a statistic that per every defensive homicide there are 35 criminal homicides.

I wont say Wikipedia is not a source. But this source does not support your claim and is overal quite terrible.

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Hawklet98 t1_j9bk7c8 wrote

35,000,000 criminal homicides every year? That sounds about right. What, you don’t think 10% of Americans are murdered every year? You must not watch Fox News.

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Benedictus84 t1_j9ble4w wrote

To be fair, they didn't say there were a million defensive homicides per year. Just a million instances of defensive gun use.

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WanderingPickles t1_j9bj03b wrote

Look up the other sources. Additionally, look deeper; the overwhelming majority of defensive incidents do not result in someone’s death.

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Benedictus84 t1_j9bkyie wrote

Your claim is not supported by your source. That's all i am saying. There is no other mentioning about the FBI in your source. I understand that the majority of defensive incidents do not result in someone's death. I am not debating that.

Why do i have to spoon feed you all of this?

You can pick any of the sources cited by the Wikipedia article and i would bet none of them state it happens about a million times every year per the FBI.

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[deleted] t1_j9axjjm wrote

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AggressiveSkywriting t1_j9bccmt wrote

It's also based on self reporting.

Lot of the DGU encounters neglect to mention that they, uh, got in a fight (or were doing a crime against someone). They sure love that "dead men tell no tales" bit.

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[deleted] t1_j9bejf2 wrote

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hedgetank t1_j9c225x wrote

It's difficult to track because unless shots are fired or something actually happens, the police aren't called. If the police are called, it's after the event and the report won't really reflect much.

So, the only way to track these kinds of incidents is either going to be self-reporting, or some means of requiring a police report and requiring the report to reflect that the victim drew a firearm in preparation for self defense, but didn't require firing it.

You can imagine just how difficult it would be to get cops to do all that paperwork, considering how loathe they are to do it already.

This means that people who don't want to believe that it's even possible for whatever reason can blow off the statistic, because, like a lot of other things, if it's not reported, it obviously didn't happen, right?

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[deleted] t1_j9cq5mc wrote

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hedgetank t1_j9czdh0 wrote

I mean that if someone threatened me with a weapon for whatever reason, I drew my firearm in preparation to defend myself because I had no other choice, she the attacker decided to cut and run instead of risking it, why would I call the cops and invite all the hassle that dealing with American cops brings?

There's no suspect, there's little evidence, no shots fired, presumably no harm to me, and my choices are to call 911, try to convince them that something happened and to send cops, spend hours going over details, and end up nowhere; or I could simply collect my wits and get the hell out of there.

Hell, after I was attacked and nearly killed, the cops and the DA both said to me face that since there were no witnesses, and the area was rough, there was basically fuck-all they could do and zero chance they'd ever find the guy, and my home town is relatively small.

Studies and data from the FBI generally show, too, that many encounters of various kinds like I described above go unreported because people don't want to deal with the cops. More so if they're a minority.

So tell me again, how do you propose to track incidents where someone draws a gun in self defense, but things never get to a point where shots are fired and police aren't involved?

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lynx_and_nutmeg t1_j9eyaza wrote

Pretty sure that road rage guy who shot another guy's daughter in the car would totally claim he was "protecting himself"*

*from having to suffer an emotional reaction of boredom while sitting in the traffic

Yeah, self-report doesn't mean shit.

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hedgetank t1_j9c3jd0 wrote

the thing about that is, with regards to someone "getting into a fight", there's so much gray area to it that the blanket statement of "they got in a fight" doesn't disqualify their right to use force in self defense. There are numerous scenarios in which a person may have gotten into a fight, or even started a fight, and still be within their rights to escalate/use greater force to defend themselves.

It's just not automatic/clear cut.

And in the case of "were doing a crime against someone", legally speaking, they would not be entitled to a claim of self defense if they were committing a crime, outside of very specific circumstances. To wit, if I were in the middle of burglarizing your home and I found you busy stabbing your wife to death, technically I would be within my rights to use force to stop you, despite my being in the middle of committing a crime, as I'm technically acting in defense of another.

So just throwing those out there like they somehow automatically disqualify either the entire survey or even the particular claims is deeply misleading and erroneous without all of the facts available to review.

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AggressiveSkywriting t1_j9cer3l wrote

>So just throwing those out there like they somehow automatically disqualify either the entire survey or even the particular claims is deeply misleading and erroneous without all of the facts available to review.

I mean, these variables DO throw the entire survey into doubt though. It cannot be used as some ironclad "truth" like many try to use, because it's problematic in its nature. That's just how stats work, often.

People using this old survey without any context or all the facts is "equally" misleading and erroneous, perhaps moreso (as a survey that admits its potential biases is more honest than one that omits/obscures them).

https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6936&context=jclc

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hedgetank t1_j9d0ggr wrote

And yet there are other studies that come to similar conclusions. The fact is that we can't say for sure because there's no way to accurately track the events objectively, and that means the situation can be skewed to make it look like the events are extremely rare (which gun control orgs do), or extremely common (which gun rights groups do).

The raw statistical probability just based on population, prevalence of guns, and general crime rates alone would put the figure somewhere in the middle, much higher than the low estimates used to suggest defensive use of firearms is extremely rare.

Until there's an objective way to measure a subjective event like this, the best we can do is to use self reported data, news reports (e.g. /r/dgu), and statistical analysis to come up with a rough estimate range of possible rates.

It neither proves nor disprove the study in question, but it does get more accurate than biased oversimplifications.

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GoAwayStupidAI t1_j9b5mje wrote

I want to note the person you asked replied with a Wikipedia page. This is interesting cause: pedantically this is not a source of that statistic - the source is the study the Wikipedia page references.

Which - there is no study from the FBI. (Afaict) The intended stat appears to be from a 1990s study which predicts differently than observed. With some particularly damning data from 2015.

Additionally, there are two interesting notes

A "survey about firearms and suicide completed by 150 firearms researchers found that only 8% of firearm researchers agreed that 'In the United States, guns are used in self-defense far more often than they are used in crime'."

"the FBI reported that guns were used in 35 criminal homicides for every defensive ("justifiable") homicide."

Which seems like important context for the usual discussions that stat comes up in.

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Aldervale t1_j9axlaf wrote

Ok sure but guns kill 2 million people a year. So that math just doesn't check out.

See how easy it is to just make shit up?

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WanderingPickles t1_j9bh1cr wrote

2 million people are shot to death every year?

In 2019 ~250k died via gunshot in the entire world. Of those, 71% (globally) are intentional homicides. 21% are suicides and 8% are accidental.

In the US the mix is a little different. The US yearly figure is around 40k deaths by gunshot. Of those, ~59% are suicide.

The suicide bit is really fascinating/worrisome. Combined it with other forms of suicide and “deaths of despair” and it becomes quite clear that we have a problem in the US. Vast numbers of people have no hope, are suffering some sort of disorder where suicide is the only way out in the midst of a crisis.

It is deeply disturbing.

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Modsblogoats t1_j9b1bh9 wrote

Fox news manages to make shit up 24/7 without breaking a sweat. Burn before reading.

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