Biden's Gun Control Law Will Radically Change U.S. Gun Ownership

well I dispute that because most cases of guns being used to stop a robbery or break in, are never reported. the two cases where I used a firearm-even the one where the intruder was arrested (turned out he was really high or drunk and was charged with DC and public intoxication and pled out to both), there was no report of a gun being used by the potential victim. You also ignore that your statistics are far more likely to apply to ignorant, untrained, substance abusing, or domestic partner abusing individuals, while most of the people who are going to be disputing your positions are competent to professional level (me for example and several others on this board) shooters or law enforcement/military veterans.

 

when I see these arguments, my first thought is what really motivates them.

 

I'd take each regulation for its own merits or lack thereof, but in general yes "banning" guns is not the right approach to improve the problem.

 

It's not so different from drug control. People on the left see guns similarly to how many people see illegal drugs. They're bad and they kill people. Problem is, putting users in jail or banning drugs doesn't really help with the problem. The same is true for guns. Both can also be used responsibly, not without risk, but responsibly.

 

I oppose most of the war on drugs.

 

Okay. Of 2.1 million burglaries between 2003 and 2007, 0.004% resulted in murder. 15-1498-1.pdf (supremecourt.gov)

This is 86 deaths per year, like 0.5% of murders. Weigh that against: Doubling your risk of homicide living with a gun owner (Homicide Deaths Among Adult Cohabitants of Handgun Owners in California, 2004 to 2016: A Cohort Study: Annals of Internal Medicine: Vol 175, No 6 (acpjournals.org)). Over half of suicides are by firearm, so that's around 26k deaths per year. Firearms make suicide more likely to succeed. About 500 unintentional firearm deaths per year (but unsure what proportion are at home).

 

How do you know if your home invasion will be one of them?

You offer correlation - a gun in the house correlates to a greater change to be murdered.
Can you prove causation?

 

But you offered "kill an intruder" compared to "kill a family member" as your metric.
Is it far more likely to be used to kill a family member alone than to drive off a home invader?
What's the ratio?

 

If you're trying to increase safety, you look to odds. Sure, you consider things that make your odds different from an average person, but the default is to look to the odds.

It was a cohort study. It's really pretty convincing that living with the person who legally owns a gun doesn't make your safer. It's not that you're likely to get murdered - double a small number is still a small number - but living with a legal gun owner did not accomplish the goal of making you safer from murder in the home.

 

Read the study on post 81 (2nd link). It is far more likely to be used to kill a family member than to stop a home invader from killing a family member. "drive off" a home invader isn't really the right question, as most of the time they aren't there to kill anybody.

 

It sounds like you're saying that I'm going to kill a member of my family. I don't think that's going to happen.

 

I don't think most who do thought they would. For an average person, the risks outweigh the benefits. For a perfect person such as yourself, the benefits are negligible. The main exception to the advice of not having a gun at home for safety, would be somebody who is in the position of knowing somebody is trying to kill them, but the police don't have enough on that person to get them.

 

I guess the same would go for knives, hatchets, axes, hammers, machetes, Drano, and so forth?

 

Long story short: You can't show causation.

 

Those things have other uses, and it's actually not as easy to kill yourself or others with them. I mean, a 2 year old with a gun could kill the strongest person in the world with it.

And sure, a gun has other uses too. If you want to use it for those uses, though, keep it locked up and unloaded at home for safety.

 

By your standards, one never could. It's very strong evidence.

 

The fact you moved the goalpost aside...
-Another- invalid metric.

 

No moving goalposts, just phrased it poorly before. I don't see how it's invalid at all. The goal is to not be killed.

 

Correlation never proves causation by any rational standard; all you have is correlation.

 

Sure most guns should be unloaded and secured. Except for the defensive gun, which needs to be loaded and on person.

 

All you ever have is correlation with issues like this. Nobody could ever prove anything. Or, you could look at the evidence and evaluate it instead of lazily dismissing it.

 

LOL

Of course you don't
How much more likely is it be used to kill a family member than to stop a home invader?
Stopping the home invader is the goal.

 

And thus, you cannot actually prove the cause of the relationships you claim.

 

No avoiding being murdered is the goal. It's nice to avoid property loss, but not at the cost of increasing odds of your own death. I guess some people would rather die than lose their computer, but it's not rational.

 

To the extent anything can be proven with science, you can with a series of well-designed studies that control for confounders and come at it from different angles. This study addressed some of the limitations of prior studies which showed the exact same thing. It's not coincidence. Confounders were controlled for.