lbrande

Who would have thought this?

The largest and most comprehensive survey of American gun owners ever conducted suggests that they use firearms in self-defense about 1.7 million times a year. It also confirms that AR-15-style rifles and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, frequent targets of gun control legislation, are in common use for lawful purposes, which the Supreme Court has said is the test for arms covered by the Second Amendment. …

Thirty-one percent of the gun owners said they had used a firearm to defend themselves or their property, often on multiple occasions. As in previous research, the vast majority of such incidents (82 percent) did not involve firing a gun, let alone injuring or killing an attacker. In more than four-fifths of the cases, respondents reported that brandishing or mentioning a firearm was enough to eliminate the threat.

That reality helps explain the wide divergence in estimates of defensive gun uses. The self-reports of gun owners may not be entirely reliable, since they could be exaggerated, mistaken, or dishonest. But limiting the analysis to cases in which an attacker was wounded or killed, or to incidents that were covered by newspapers or reported to the police, is bound to overlook much more common encounters with less dramatic outcomes.


About half of the defensive gun uses identified by the survey involved more than one assailant. Four-fifths occurred inside the gun owner’s home or on his property, while 9 percent happened in a public place and 3 percent happened at work. The most commonly used firearms were handguns (66 percent), followed by shotguns (21 percent) and rifles (13 percent).

Based on the number of incidents that gun owners reported, [Georgetown University political economist William] English estimates that “guns are used defensively by firearms owners in approximately 1.67 million incidents per year.” That number does not include cases where people defended themselves with guns owned by others, which could help explain why English’s figure is lower than a previous estimate by Florida State University criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. Based on a 1993 telephone survey with a substantially smaller sample, Kleck and Gertz put the annual number at more than 2 million.

Although less than one in 10 of the defensive gun uses identified by English’s survey happened in public places, most of the respondents (56 percent) said they had carried handguns for self-defense. More than a third (35 percent) said they did so “sometimes,” “often,” or “always or almost always.” About the same percentage reported that they had wanted to carry handguns in circumstances where local rules prohibited it.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4109494

https://reason.com/2022/09/09/the-largest-ever-survey-of-american-gun-owners-finds-that-defensive-use-of-firearms-is-common/

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

Interesting that other civilized countries manage to not have guns and still have much lower crime rates than the US. Clearly the US is barely civilized.

JRiepe Loc: Southern Illinois

Not the only reason but one of the reasons why crime is so high in this country is because felons get a slap on the wrist for serious crimes. There seems to be more empathy by the prosecutors and judges for the criminal than the victim. I can't explain why so many criminals have no morals believing the only important person is themselves and only what happens to them matters. It's a huge problem.

WNYShooter Loc: WNY

Well in many of those other countries, criminals face harsh penalties when they break the law. Here in the US, "progressive" liberal DA's & Judges would rather focus their work on political opposition than violent criminals in hopes of influencing them to vote for Dems.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

I personally believe it has to do with the lack of social safety net and winner-take-all competitive attitude of the culture. The US has the highest rate of incarceration of any country on earth, so more or stricter punishment does not seem to be the answer...

sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

Is it real science? Hard to tell. Several years back legislation passed that blocked the CDC from doing any legitimate research on gun violence in America. That was a shame, because any research they did would be submitted for peer review. That is when a team of experts reviews the methods, the results, and the interpretation of the results, to make sure that the scientific principles followed were appropriate. This was unfortunate (regardless of what you might think of the CDC), because otherwise, we see weak "science". "Research" published in non-peer-reviewed publications should be met with some skepticism, and any published in paid publications should be even more questioned.

This "research" is a case in point. While I do not necessarily disbelieve their results, I have no way of knowing how valid their results are. An "online survey" can mean many things. The published article has no discussion of how the survey was conducted. Surveys are prone to large amounts of bias, and online surveys more so than in-person surveys. For example, in "sample bias", those selected for the survey - or those who self-select to respond to the survey - skew the results. A famous example of this is when Ann Landers asked her readers to answer the question: Are you happy or unhappy that you ever had children"? Something like 80% of the responses were "unhappy'. But in real life, 80% of parents are not unhappy that they ever had children - but those who are unhappy, who feel that they are the outliers - were more likely to answer this question. There is also "response bias" - do people answering the survey select an answer because that answer is expected of them?

So any discussion of a survey needs to go into great detail about how the participants were chosen, what questions were asked, and what steps were taken to eliminate bias and make sure that the survey was a random sampling.

In addition, the "journal" that this report was published in is apparently not peer-reviewed. From their website:

*****
Does SSRN have an existing subject-specific network that aligns closely with your institution’s mission, goals, and objectives that you’d like to “own” within SSRN’s platform? Or, can we create together a brand-new network that draws upon your institution’s research as well as the deep content resources we have already at SSRN?

Assembling, branding, and disseminating research via a sponsored e-journal or a sponsored network – and helping you understand the users who are downloading and socializing your research – has never been easier.
*****

So - do I believe the results of this survey - well, no, but I don't disbelieve the results either. It just makes me wish it was a legitimate source of information.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

And guns just being present and not reported have saved lives and prevented crimes.

lbrande

The only issue I see with the data is that it does not indicate the number of times (uses) the person just had shown the gun and the criminal just ran away. That is why there is such a variance of numbers. No one will admit to showing the firearm as it may be considered brandishing, which is generally a crime.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Not in self defense.
But in democrat controlled ares it would be illegal, in fact defending yourself in any manner is illegal to the democrats.
And that is what I was saying, a gun need not be discharged to prevent a crime.
It has happened to me in Phoenix AZ.

SteveR Loc: Michigan

There could be many reasons for that.

However, I will say that guns are brought out too often. The people next door to us get upset over the smallest thing. It's hot here in Texas so you stay indoors during the day during summer. Just before school, some kids were out at 1 a.m. bouncing a basketball. It disturbed the neighbor because he has a motion sensor that alerts him every time somebody walks across his sidewalk. If you're on the sidewalk you can hear it, too. So, he came out and yelled at the kids for disturbing him and his wife. The kids took off but came back. One of them bounced the ball against his garage door. He came out with his gun and waved it at them. He'd also called the police. As they ran off, he started chasing them with his truck. Here's a guy who can't wait a few minutes for kids to pass by his house and ended up taking his gun out on a bunch of kids just enjoying the cool of the night. That's how people get killed.

cwp3420

Clearly the U.S. has too many leftist judges and prosecutors willing to lock up criminals.it’s not much of a deterrence now. Someone kills someone else and walks the next day. I’m sure you considered that but didn’t write it because it doesn’t fit your loony-toon political leanings.

cwp3420

Sounds like he has some serious issues.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

The one exception out of millions of legal gun owners in the USA.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Wyantry Loc: SW Colorado

Also interesting that there are some other supposedly civilized countries with higher gun-death and crime rates. Clearly it all depends on what “civilized” is perceived to be.

It is possible, if adjusted for population (i.e. crime rates of individual crimes per 100,000), the U.S might be regarded more favorably.

Another measurement metric that might be considered would be the religious make-up of various countries in relation to crime rates.