Empirical Evidence: Irrelevant to the NRA and the Gun Fetish Cult
By One myth missing is that we need guns to overthrow the tyrannical government, because I like my chances with an AR-15 against an M1A2 or five, but the ten listed cover considerable territory. Of course, most of us who read LGM already know this, aside from the mediocre right wing trolls we seem to attract like flies (if anything, please send us smarter wingers!).
While allowing that a couple of the inferences are tenuous (e.g. I suspect that the 4.5x greater likelihood that the armed get shot than the unarmed is a partial result of the armed possessing an attitude that creates the situation where they’re more likely to get shot in the first place), according to the Dave Gilson article linked, it turns out that:
1. They’re not coming for your guns. Seriously. Get over it.
2. Guns do kill people: “People with more guns tend to kill more people—with guns.”
3. An armed society turns out to be a less polite society.
4. Good guys with guns don’t stop “rampaging” bad guys with guns. However, “In 23% of shootings within the (ER), the weapon was a security officer’s gun taken by the perpetrator.” While good guys with guns might not stop bad guys with guns, they do accidentally provide the weapon used in a significant number of ER shootings.
5. An armed home is not a safer home: “For every time a gun is used in self-defense in the home, there are 7 assaults or murders, 11 suicide attempts, and 4 accidents involving guns in or around a home.” That’s a ratio of 1:22.
6. You are not magically safer because you’re armed. Indeed, it turns out that an assault victim is 4.5 times more likely to be shot if they’re armed.
7. Likewise, guns do not make women safer. However, the data presented to support this point seem indirect, but what isn’t at all surprising is that women are six times more likely to be shot by a husband, boyfriend, or ex partner than a stranger.
8. Video games do not deserve more blame for a violent society.
9. Gun ownership as a proportion of the population is not increasing. Rather, a shrinking percentage of the population are buying more guns.
10. We do need more gun laws, rather than merely enforce the gun laws we already have. More accurately, we need better gun laws, not those designed with the significant influence of the NRA. I’m considering changing the example used in my lecture on the iron triangle from Boeing to the NRA.
At least we can still cling to the myth that the 35% of American who do own guns, specifically the subset of those who own 7.9 guns per person (the connection in the article is ambiguous), can protect us by overthrowing the tyrannical government when the time comes.
