Xpost: The One Question I Want All Gun Nuts to Answer
Last edited Mon Jul 25, 2016, 12:05 PM - Edit history (2)
Copied from the other forum because I can't post there:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/126211167
My answer: I don't own guns for self defense or to make me safer. I own guns for recreation. I think many gun owners feel the same way I do - the vast majority of us live in safe areas where gun violence is rare.
If more guns = more gun violence, why has our murder and manslaughter rates been cut in half over the past 20 years? Does that mean that gun ownership has actually been declining? So confused.
= new reply since forum marked as read
And they say we are scared, 
It must be hard to be that scared of any open dialog. How did you break the SOP?
but the percentage of "gun ownership" that's important.
Meanwhile they conveniently and completely ignore the huge increase in pistol permits over the last few years with millions of new purchasers). They prefer not to even discuss it...that huge #s of the 23 million new guns each year are handguns (and likely semi-auto rifles and defense shotguns).... those most likely targeted for *gasp* bans and increased control.
Of course the basic facts don't change. Just the excuses.
For the last 20 or so years, the number of guns has gone/goes (way) up, while levels of all gun-related violence goes down.
The implicit argument made by conservative media is that there is a causal link between reports of booming gun sales in recent years and the overall decline of gun homicide over the past 20 years. But this claim misunderstands how gun ownership has changed during this time period. According to the General Social Survey, household firearm ownership has fallen from 43 percent in the 1990s to 35 percent in the 2000s. Overall household ownership is down from 50 percent in the 1970s. As Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, explained to The New York Times, "There are all these claims that gun ownership is going through the roof. But I suspect the increase in gun sales has been limited mostly to current gun owners. The most reputable surveys show a decline over time in the share of households with guns."
Significantly, numerous studies have proven that gun availability is linked to gun violence. According to a review conducted by David Hemenway of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, ...{DH - 'Nuff said - he was the one who put out that interesting "study" saying more cops get killed in high gun owner states, but left out 3 of 4 states on each control group}
Conservatives who trumpet the BJS study are also ignoring that it indicated a decline in gun homicides {Or NOT*}, not that the problem of gun violence has been solved. In fact, the level of gun violence in the United States remains at epidemic levels. According to an analysis of data by PolitiFact, around 86,000 people are shot -- including both fatally or nonfatally -- each year due to crime or gun-related accidents. Approximately 18,000 more Americans die in gun suicides. Overall, firearm-related deaths are rising and set to outpace motor vehicle fatalities by 2015.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/08/conservative-media-misread-data-to-declare-gun/193961
...
*
"The rate of nonfatal gun victimizations declined in a similar way to the gun death rate, with a large drop in the 1990s – 63% between 1993 and 2000. The decline since then has been more uneven. In 2014, there were 174.8 nonfatal violent gun victimizations per 100,000 people ages 12 and older."
...
"while the gun suicide rate has declined overall since 1993, in recent years it has risen, from 6.3 per 100,000 people in 2010 to 6.7 in 2014."
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/21/gun-homicides-steady-after-decline-in-90s-suicide-rate-edges-up/
...that is that 'guns cause death'. There are about 300,000,000 guns in the US and in 2014 there were 33,599 gun deaths including murders, suicides, accidents, police shootings, self-defense...
There were 81,034 injuries via shooting criminal assaults, police shootings, accidents, self-defense...
Here's my math 33,599 + 81,034 = 114,633
114,633/300,000,000 = about 0.00038211 deaths and injuries per gun. The reciprocal of that number should tell us how many guns have to act together to cause an injury or death. (Technically we should remove the police shooting and justifiable homicides, or at least the ones the control folks agree with.) The number is 2,618 rounding up.
I assert that individuals should be allowed to own 2,617 guns, no more without an FFL. 