http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/165476.txt
This is an brief from the National Institute of Justice citing 1.5 million uses of a gun for defense. This was also done by the very anti-gun Clinton Administration.
-- Actually this report suggest there were only 108,000 uses of a gun for defense. It cites the previous reference you supplied yesterday (Kleck et al) for the 1.5 million and suggests that that result is erroneous.
Now there were some interesting statistics in this report.
It would seem that gun ownership is not a widespread American virtue. 'Only' 44 million Americans owned guns. That's only 15 per cent. A significant minority.
And what's more those 15% own an average of four guns each. If ones for self defence, what are the second, third and fourth for?
It appears that the "right to bear arms" story is breaking down.
Note my distortion of the statistics here. I used the entire population of the USA to determine the percentage of gun owners, not the population of adults. It should be 25% of Americans own guns - still a minority.
Here's some more gems from the report:
o Gun ownership was highest among middle-aged, college- educated people of rural small-town America.
-- no surprise there :-)
o Slightly more than half of all privately owned firearms were stored unlocked;
o 16 percent of firearms were stored unlocked and loaded.
-- shame. And when their four year old child dies of a gun shot, what then?
o Evidence suggests that this survey and others like it overestimate the frequency with which firearms were used by private citizens to defend against criminal attack.
-- This is not unexpected. If you own a gun and carry a gun, there would be some unconscious need to justify that position. Suddenly every passerby looks like a mugger and every sly glance implies a potential rapist. They cite the example of one woman reporting 52 defensive gun uses during the year! Simply amazing.
o In 1994, about two-thirds of gunless adults were actively opposed to having guns in their homes because they viewed guns as dangerous, "immoral," or otherwise objectionable.
-- Perhaps there is hope?
o This report also casts significant doubt on the 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year claimed by Kleck et al and suggest the much more conservative number of 108,000 defensive gun uses per year.
o Regardless of which estimates one believes, only a small fraction of adults have used guns defensively in 1994. The only question is whether that fraction is 1 in 1,800 (as one would conclude from the NCVS) or 1 in 100 (as indicated by the NSPOF estimate based on Kleck and Gertz's criteria).
-- Again this flys in the face of the argument that "we tote guns to protect ourselves." You [that is Americans] don't.
Thanks for this reference Travis. Very illuminating. Victor.
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