Two couples, two guns, three deaths

[gollygee]

http://www.mlive.com/opinion/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2013/06/julie_mack_two_couples_two_gun.html#incart_hbx#incart_best-of

On Monday, Kovach got into an argument in the evening with her husband, John, a spat over boiled hot dogs that apparently escalated into a screaming match.

Meanwhile, Pell had an argument with her boyfriend, Rob Pratt, a fight that started during an afternoon outing at Pine Lake and continued after the two returned to Pell's house.

Many of us have been there. Couples argue. Petty irritations can explode into ugly, hurtful confrontations. People can get irrational.

[enough]

1. Some stats from the article.

snip>

Consider these statistics from the Center for Gun Research and Policy at Johns Hopkins University:

Women are more than twice as likely to be killed by an intimate partner than by a stranger.

For women in an abusive relationship, the risk of homicide increases fivefold if the abuser owns a gun.

Women who live in a home with a gun are three times more likely to be murdered in their home than those with no guns.

Intuitively, it makes sense. For all the talk about the value of guns for protection, how often does a life get saved because a homeowner had a gun? It happens, but it's very rare; just ask local law enforcement officials.

The fact is, numerous studies show guns in the home are much more likely to be used to "intimidate intimates than to thwart crime,"according to the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.

end snip>

[pipoman]

6. Of coarse there are the numbers from the CDC...

showing that .008% of gun owners kill anyone for any reason in a given year...some of those are justifiable, some are police shootings, some are accidents, and by far the most are committed by people who are unlawfully in possession of a firearm because of felony convictions, or domestic abuse cases/restraining orders... .008% based on 125 million gun owners and exclude suicides..

http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html

No, if domestic abusers wish to kill their domestic partners, they kill their domestic partners and that doesn't require a gun.

Then there's these stats..which seem to be contrary to your claims about frequency of use for self defense..

* Roughly 16,272 murders were committed in the United States during 2008. Of these, about 10,886 or 67% were committed with firearms.[11]

* A 1993 nationwide survey of 4,977 households found that over the previous five years, at least 0.5% of households had members who had used a gun for defense during a situation in which they thought someone "almost certainly would have been killed" if they "had not used a gun for protection." Applied to the U.S. population, this amounts to 162,000 such incidents per year. This figure excludes all "military service, police work, or work as a security guard."[12]

* Based on survey data from the U.S. Department of Justice, roughly 5,340,000 violent crimes were committed in the United States during 2008. These include simple/aggravated assaults, robberies, sexual assaults, rapes, and murders.[13] [14] [15] Of these, about 436,000 or 8% were committed by offenders visibly armed with a gun.[16]

* Based on survey data from a 2000 study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology,[17] U.S. civilians use guns to defend themselves and others from crime at least 989,883 times per year.[18]

* A 1993 nationwide survey of 4,977 households found that over the previous five years, at least 3.5% of households had members who had used a gun "for self-protection or for the protection of property at home, work, or elsewhere." Applied to the U.S. population, this amounts to 1,029,615 such incidents per year. This figure excludes all "military service, police work, or work as a security guard."[19]

* A 1994 survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Americans use guns to frighten away intruders who are breaking into their homes about 498,000 times per year.[20]

* A 1982 survey of male felons in 11 state prisons dispersed across the U.S. found:[21]

• 34% had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"

• 40% had decided not to commit a crime because they "knew or believed that the victim was carrying a gun"

• 69% personally knew other criminals who had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"[22]

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

[Duckhunter935]

2. yep got to ban

all firearms and knives, even for law enforcement. If we can just save one life.

[gollygee]

3. Nice strawman, bro

[bluedigger]

5. Like shooting ducks in a barrel.

[SammyWinstonJack]

4. ...

[Jenoch]

7. On the other hand,

my parents were married just three weeks shy of 50 years and there were guns in the house during their entire marriage. Nobody was hurt or injured by those inanimate objects.

[rdharma]

8. I know of tales of people who smoked their entire lives and never got cancer too! nt

[Jenoch]

9. You do have a point,

however, cigarettes really have no endearing qualities.

[rdharma]

10. "cigarettes really have no endearing qualities"

Oh, the IRONY of that statement!

[Jenoch]

11. Explain it to me.

[pipoman]

12. yep, along with around 125 million other homes..

statistics...actual stats, not the 'x is 5 times more likely' quasi stats given to justify dodging actual stats..