New study by the Cato Institute on DGU

[C0untZer0]

Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance from Citizens

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=14031

Audio interview:

http://www.cato.org/multimedia/daily...e-use-firearms

I don't think this is a definitive study, but as the author Clayton Cramer points out, there are problems getting to the data. But I do think the Cato Institute is respected and this study could be used to counter-act some of the skewed statistics that are commonly used by politicians during gun debates. I think it can and should be used to counter quotes and claims from LCAV.

[USAFNoDak]

There are many data points to show how anti gunners are "dead" wrong.

1. The assault weapons ban was allowed to sunset in 2004. Violent crime has continued to drop as it was already doing since about 1991. The anti's told us that violent crime would rise dramatically if the AWB was not reinstated. They were wrong.

2. The DoJ conducted a study while the AWB was in force, from 94 to 2004. They found that there was no evidence that the AWB had any effect whatsoever on reducing violent crimes. It couldn't, because so called assault weapons were used in less than 2% of all violent crimes where a gun was used. This is why the there was a 10 year sunset clause put into that law. It was to allow studies to be done to see if the AWB would have any effect on violent crimes, and it didn't. The antis were wrong.

3. The antis told us that allowing law abiding citizens to carry handguns in public, whether concealed or open, would result in all sorts of carnage in the streets. As violent crime has continued to drop, they were proven wrong again.

4. After Obama was elected to office, gun sales soared in the US as people were worried that Obama would try to enact more gun control laws. Despite rapid increases in gun sales, violent crime is at the lowest it's been in decades. The anti's always tell us, more guns equals more crime. That equation has been proven false, again.

I'm not saying that more guns equals less crime, because I really don't have to. What we have is the proof that the antis have been wrong about their "more guns equal more crime" propaganda. Why should we enact stricter gun controls when crime is decreasing. It would "appear" that more guns in the hands of law abiding citizens is resulting in less crime. That's 180 deg. out of phase with what the anti's have been saying.

[ltc444]

Unfortunately, reason is of no use to us. We instead, to paraphase one of the Founding Fathers, in dumband silence we, like lambs are to be led to the slaughter.

The anti gun crowd like most libs are totally immune to logic and reason. They have a model. If the facts do not support the model, they simply change the facts. After all the model cannot be wrong.

[C0untZer0]

I don't believe for one second that it would convince a gun control activist or gun control politician. Just as falsehoods and anti-gun hysteria was used succesfully in the past to sway enough people to enact gun-control laws, this type of information can be used to combat the lies and hopefully to sway enough people to overturn gun control laws in the remaining areas where they are still in force.

[USAFNoDak]

ITC444:

Unfortunately, reason is of no use to us.

Reason probably won't help with the die hard anti gun folks. However, they are far from the majority. There are many folks out there who don't really understand guns and gun rights, but have a vein of libertarian running through them. We can use reasoning with those folks to demonstrate how gun control is a joke with respect to crime control, and is really targeted at people control. Those people are typically willing to listen to that message. We need to ensure they don't end up in the anti gun camp believing that gun control will have any significant effect on crime reduction.

[Patriot86]

Looking at this map leads me to believe three things: One: The media in gun hostile states such as Illinois may be under-reporting DGU incidents or report them with a "lower profile"; there are several high profile recent incidents from my home state of Illinois that I do not see on the map. Look at other gun hostile areas that have a large population and they seem to be under represented. Two: The media in more gun friendly states, mainly in the South East and West report DGU's more often and in a higher profile manner. And/Or Three: DGU's are under reported in general.

[Aguila Blanca]

Originally Posted by C0untZer0

New study by the Cato Institute on DGU

"DGU"?

What the heck is DGU?

[Sparks1957]

Defensive Gun Use, I think... but I'm just using my imagination and the context of the acronym

[Tom Servo]

Unfortunately, reason is of no use to us.

Not true. On the smaller scale, when dealing with individuals, it can and has worked.

As far as the original article, I'm not sure of its value. Newspaper accounts and anecdotal evidence can be cherry-picked far too easily for the end result to be considered authoritative. Our opponents do it all the time.

"Oh yeah? Well how about John P. Woolybacher, concealed carry permit holder, who was convicted of a felony? Well, yeah, it was for passing a bad check, but it still refutes the idea that concealed carry permit holders are more law-abiding than the general public!"

It's an interesting piece, but it really just preaches to the choir.

[maestro pistolero]

"Oh yeah? Well how about John P. Woolybacher, concealed carry permit holder, who was convicted of a felony? Well, yeah, it was for passing a bad check, but it still refutes the idea that concealed carry permit holders are more law-abiding than the general public!"

Exactly. An example of a typical use of an atypical story in an attempt to disprove a well established, opposite truth.

[C0untZer0]

I have read where reporters have quoted from "Legal Community Against Violence" and they make it sound like their claims are true and authoritative. Things like:

Using a gun in self-defense is no more likely to reduce the chance of being injured during a crime than various other forms of protective action.

and:

A study reviewing surveys of gun use in the U.S. determined that most self-reported self-defense gun uses may well be illegal and against the interests of society.

LCAV took that first statement from David Hemenway's book - "Private Guns, Public Health." Hemenway tries to pass this book off as a scientifc study when actually its completely non-scientific publication in which he merely cherry-picks other flawed studies which support his disdain for guns.

The second quote? Again from another Hemenway book titled "Gun Use in the United States: Results from Two National Surveys" Basically commending and highlighting previous "studies" which were rather flawed.

BTW - when Chicago was enacting it's gun ban, "experts" from LCAV gave public testimony.

I do think there are people out there that when they hear "A study done by so and so.." they tend to give the statement credibility. The Cato institute is a well-known think tank, so I believe this study gives us something to counter the propaganda that we encounter from the other side.

[Armorer-at-Law]

Unfortunately, reason is of no use to us. * * *
The anti gun crowd like most libs are totally immune to logic and reason.

Remember, most of the time we will never change the mind with whom we are arguing. Usually, we are more effective in changing the minds of those who are simply observing the argument.

[USAFNoDak]

Remember, most of the time we will never change the mind with whom we are arguing. Usually, we are more effective in changing the minds of those who are simply observing the argument.

Correct. Political debates aren't designed to change the minds of any of the debators themselves, they are designed to try and influence voters in certain directions. Debating gun control is no different with the exception that the anti gun side is typically "unarmed".

[TexasFats]

Let's be very clear on one thing. Some (most) people who favor more gun control have been propagandized on the subject and propagandized to believe only main-stream media. Mention the NRA, and they will immediately assume that it is a lie. Mention the Brady Center, and they will believe it because they have been told that "Brady Center GOOD--NRA BAD".

At the end of the day, gun control is pushed first and foremost for the same reason that Japan instituted "sword control" in 1600 and the Medieval nobility had all sorts of restrictions on what weapons that peasants could own. Disarming the general populace is normally about giving a small elite the ability to control a large peasantry for the fun and profit of the elite. Forget the talk about crime; that is propaganda.

For those reasons, the Cato study won't have a lot of impact. Share it with most people and the response will be "Cato who?"

[mes227]

3. The antis told us that allowing law abiding citizens to carry handguns in public, whether concealed or open, would result in all sorts of carnage in the streets. As violent crime has continued to drop, they were proven wrong again.

I was pulling stats a couple of months ago for an OpEd piece I wrote for a local newspaper and I found something interesting. I was comparing state-by-state statistics on violent crime over the past 20 years with gun control laws. I ranked states informally - Calif high control, Nevada low, etc. I found NO correlation between how strict a state controls guns and either it's total violent crime rate or it's change over the last 2 decades. States with favorable gun laws are not safer and those with strict controls are more dangerous, as I had hopped to discover. But the reverse is also true.

That doesn't mean gun laws have no affect - logic dictates that they must, one way or the other - but it seems to mean that the other factors are far more important.

[MTT TL]

States with favorable gun laws are not safer and those with strict controls are more dangerous, as I had hopped to discover. But the reverse is also true.

There is no correlation there. You are looking at the wrong statistic.

[lefteye]

I found NO correlation between how strict a state controls guns and either it's total violent crime rate or it's change over the last 2 decades.

Correlation does not automatically equal causation - a fundamental fact taught in the first statistics course.

Read and STUDY Dr. Lott's writings.

[silentargus]

Evidence is great when the person you're talking to depends mainly on external sources to make their decisions, or if they're a very open minded person who's able to admit to being wrong when they come face to face with irrefutable proof of it. Not everybody is capable of that sort of intellectual honesty, and not everybody trusts evidence that they haven't gathered through their own research.

If you're talking to someone who relies mostly on their own judgment (which doesn't mean they're unreasonable), then all the evidence in the world won't get you anywhere until you get in their head and figure out which buttons to press so they'll come around to the same conclusions on their own. Sometimes nuggets of raw logic in the vein of the old "when seconds count..." line get better results than scientific research does.

Any right worth keeping is worth talking about and gathering evidence for even when it doesn't seem to be having any effect. You never know who might be listening, and nobody ever changes their mind on major issues overnight. Even if you're butting heads with someone who you know would never change if they started crapping pennies, there just might be someone within earshot who's got the smarts to recognize who's making better sense.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Well known that if folks have a belief, they only listen to evidence supporting it. Also, if a study contradicts a belief, they attack the methodology has not being up to snuff.

Clearly, if Kleck or Lott found that guns were producers of crimes and / or the DGU was usually not succesful, they would be cursed by some.

That's different from arguing that the right is such and so important that the data wouldn't cause it to take it away.

However, current social sciences are usually not positive to results that indicate benefits from firearms. Kleck did win an award for his book and that's a surprise. There is a quite a debate about Lott's work with some progun folks having trouble with his results (they have to be honest scientists).

[2damnold4this]

I think the National Academies Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review did quite a bit to enlighten open minded folks that might have otherwise taken studies by Kellerman and others at face value. On political message boards such as YAP, many left leaning people have come to see firearm ownership in a positive light when they have access to more information. It also doesn't hurt that the crime rates are down.

It seems common that various press releases from gun control advocates are published without any review. It will be interesting to see if this study gets much coverage.

[MTT TL]

If you want a causation simply look at the demographics and level of urbanization. 90% of high crime states have many things in common.

[Frank Ettin]

Originally Posted by MTT TL

If you want a causation simply look at the demographics and level of urbanization. 90% of high crime states have many things in common.

I'm sorry, but that's really not enough. We need much better data and analysis. And some of our cherished notions may be unsupportable.

In NYC, beginning in 1990, the crime rate dropped precipitously. Murders were reduced by two-third, felonies fell by 50%; and by 2000, felonies on the subways had declined 75% (The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, Back Bay Books, 2002, pg. 137). The RKBA and liberalized right to carry laws certainly had nothing to do with that.

I suspect that liberalized gun carry laws and an increased willingness for people to take responsibility for their own safety are factors in the Nationwide declining crime rate. But it's still only, at best, two factors, and it's very tough to prove.

On the other hand it seems pretty clear that right to carry laws have not led to the bloodbaths that the anti-gun crowd had predicted.

But we have to be careful about making claims that we can't substantiate. Claims which can be shown to be suspect will hurt us. It's vital to our interests that we establish and maintain the highest levels of credibility.

What we can substantiate by collecting data on successful defensive gun use, especially published accounts, is that there are many ordinary people who have been able to avoid becoming victims of violent crime because they did have guns.

[C0untZer0]

Has the Brady Campaign suffered credibility problems?

[Frank Ettin]

Originally Posted by C0untZer0

Has the Brady Campaign suffered credibility problems?

So what's your point? If the Brady Bunch has gotten away with using bogus information, we should use it too?

[MTT TL]

I'm sorry, but that's really not enough. We need much better data and analysis. And some of our cherished notions may be unsupportable.

True, but nearly every state with a large older population and small youth population also has a low crime rate. The only exceptions are the States with a large population that is not properly censused. Age of the population plays a huge role in crime rates and the US has been getting steadily older.

Here is a link to a number of studies:

http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/content/69/2/351.abstract