On the other side of the equation, successfully preventing harm with a firearm is comparatively more rare. In other words, owning guns causes more harm than it prevents.
Super quick DDG search, I haven’t vetted these links but in general it’s understood that firearms are used defensively far more than they are used for harm - but the exact numbers are extremely difficult to measure. There’s an issue of reporting and recording the incidents, as well as the obvious conflicting motivations from each side citing their own numbers.
If you read your linked articles and surveys you will see, that they’re even arguing against your argument.
Just to quote some stuff:
David Hemenway, who led the Harvard research, argues that the risks of owning a gun outweigh the benefits of having one in the rare case where you might need to defend yourself.
“The average person … has basically no chance in their lifetime ever to use a gun in self-defense,” he tells Here & Now’s Robin Young. “But … every day, they have a chance to use the gun inappropriately. They have a chance, they get angry. They get scared.”
“If we don’t even have a minimum standard, not for training, but for performance validation for our law enforcement,” he says, “how in God’s name is anybody going to say, ‘Well, just because you have a gun in your pocket, you know how to use it in self-defense?’ You don’t.”
End quote
And some of the other stuff seems very biased:
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.
The online survey, which was conducted by Centiment in February and March of 2021, was based on a representative sample of about 54,000 adults, 16,708 of whom were gun owners. Georgetown University political economist William English, who commissioned the survey as part of a book project, presents its major findings in a recent paper available on the Social Science Research Network.
End quote
I mean, a survey for owners of guns… Of course if you own a weapon like that, you will tell everyone that you use it for self defense. And probably enough people who say they did that, just lie…
I haven’t clicked his links, but assuming he’s linking you to the Harvard study, that study in an effort to debunk Kleck and Lott’s figures used by the CDC estimated “a more realistic DGU/yr at 100,000.” Well, being that there are 60,000 total gun deaths/yr in this country including suicide, I’m inclined to believe that based on the raw numbers they do in fact get used more for defense than to kill oneself or others, as 100k>60k.
This is a naive comparison, as you are not counting the many cases where people use guns to harm others without killing them. There are on the order of 500,000 fatal and nonfatal violent crimes involving a firearm committed every year in The United States.
Like I stated, I didn’t vet any of the links - they were the first results on DDG for “defensive gun use statistics.” My point was that you can’t make a statement like “owning guns causes more harm than it prevents” unless you can back it up with more than just a gut feeling. I also acknowledged the difficulty in getting exact numbers partially because of “conflicting motivations from each side citing their own numbers.”
If we’re going to make factual declarations based solely on feelings then obviously the real problems with guns are caused by evil spirits corrupting our souls because we’ve strayed from God’s path.
Super quick DDG search, I haven’t vetted these links but in general it’s understood that firearms are used defensively far more than they are used for harm - but the exact numbers are extremely difficult to measure. There’s an issue of reporting and recording the incidents, as well as the obvious conflicting motivations from each side citing their own numbers.
I don’t think you can definitively make the statement that they cause more harm than they prevent.
If you read your linked articles and surveys you will see, that they’re even arguing against your argument.
Just to quote some stuff:
David Hemenway, who led the Harvard research, argues that the risks of owning a gun outweigh the benefits of having one in the rare case where you might need to defend yourself.
“The average person … has basically no chance in their lifetime ever to use a gun in self-defense,” he tells Here & Now’s Robin Young. “But … every day, they have a chance to use the gun inappropriately. They have a chance, they get angry. They get scared.”
“If we don’t even have a minimum standard, not for training, but for performance validation for our law enforcement,” he says, “how in God’s name is anybody going to say, ‘Well, just because you have a gun in your pocket, you know how to use it in self-defense?’ You don’t.”
End quote
And some of the other stuff seems very biased:
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.
The online survey, which was conducted by Centiment in February and March of 2021, was based on a representative sample of about 54,000 adults, 16,708 of whom were gun owners. Georgetown University political economist William English, who commissioned the survey as part of a book project, presents its major findings in a recent paper available on the Social Science Research Network.
End quote
I mean, a survey for owners of guns… Of course if you own a weapon like that, you will tell everyone that you use it for self defense. And probably enough people who say they did that, just lie…
I haven’t clicked his links, but assuming he’s linking you to the Harvard study, that study in an effort to debunk Kleck and Lott’s figures used by the CDC estimated “a more realistic DGU/yr at 100,000.” Well, being that there are 60,000 total gun deaths/yr in this country including suicide, I’m inclined to believe that based on the raw numbers they do in fact get used more for defense than to kill oneself or others, as 100k>60k.
This is a naive comparison, as you are not counting the many cases where people use guns to harm others without killing them. There are on the order of 500,000 fatal and nonfatal violent crimes involving a firearm committed every year in The United States.
Like I stated, I didn’t vet any of the links - they were the first results on DDG for “defensive gun use statistics.” My point was that you can’t make a statement like “owning guns causes more harm than it prevents” unless you can back it up with more than just a gut feeling. I also acknowledged the difficulty in getting exact numbers partially because of “conflicting motivations from each side citing their own numbers.”
More related reading from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States#Defensive_Gun_Violence
If we’re going to make factual declarations based solely on feelings then obviously the real problems with guns are caused by evil spirits corrupting our souls because we’ve strayed from God’s path.