Deltoid

Wright & Rossi's survey of criminals showed that the main reason why criminals carry guns is self-defence, so a large number of the 500,000 gun assaults may be illegal self-defence uses.

Rick Bressler said:

I have a problem with confusing an assault with a defense. The two are mutually exclusive. At least under US law, an assault is a crime, a defense is not....

There are two meanings to the term "self-defence" in my dictionary: 1. the act of defending one's own person, reputation, etc 2. (Law) the use of reasonable force against an attacker, constituting a defence in criminal law and tort.

You seem to want to use meaning 2. Under meaning 1, illegal self-defence is perfectly possible. Consider, for example, a burglar using a gun to ward off an angry victim. We both agree that the burglar is guilty of assault, but he is also acting to protect himself.

Which meaning (1 or 2) is intended we have to work out from the context. Kleck's estimate of defensive uses is based on a question asking people if they had used a handgun for self-protection (i.e. meaning 1). Kleck makes the error of interpreting this as the narrower legal meaning (meaning 2).

The key assumption in this estimate is that the death rate from police uses is the same as that from legal civilian defensive uses. It seems unlikely that it would be. Indeed, the death rate from police

Why? Are you admitting that civilians tend to be that much better of a shot than the police? If they are 10 times better at killing in self defense than police, it would be a pretty good argument for getting rid of the police! Or are you saying that civilian firearms are somehow more deadly than police firearms? Or are you saying that civilians tend to use them in less justified circumstances than police?

No to all of all your questions. The objective of gun self-defence is not to shoot or kill the attacker, but to stop the attack. So if one group kills more than the other, it doesn't mean that that group is better at self-defence.

I would think that the big differences between police uses and civilian uses were that the police are given more latitude to use their weapons, and that their uses are much more often in defence of others.

Because police have more latitude, the typical civilian use is likely to be in a much more dangerous situation, and hence more likely to involve actually shooting someone. Uses in defence of others are also less likely to involve shooting, since the attacker is less likely to force the issue in the face of two opponents.

In many of the cases where police can handle the situation with less deadly force, a citizen has little choice but to shoot.

Which is another reason why civilian uses are more likely to be fatal.

It may be that private citizens don't kill at a significantly higher rate than police, in which case legal defensive uses may be as high as 2000/.001=2,000,000 per year, quite a bit higher than any other estimate I've seen. Even if for reasons mentioned above, citizens are forced to kill at 10 times the rate, that is still 200,000 legal uses per year. The truth probably lies somewhere in between the two extremes. In fact Kleck's number is almost right in the middle.....

These calculations are based on guesses for the fatality rate for civilian uses. I think it is better to use a real estimate -- 13,000 uses of guns to defend against robbery, 25% of civilian legal homicides associated with robberies, so the fatality rate is (500/13,000) = 4%. (Numbers from Kleck's paper.) For assaults we get (1300/55,000) = 2%.

800,000 crimes and 11,000 homicides. A policy that reduced criminal use, even if it did also reduce honest use, could well be a net plus.

Ah, but this brings us back to the old question: How do you remove firearms from the criminals? Disarming the honest citizens isn't going to do it! It will however worsen the ratio of defensive uses vs assault,criminal uses.

You are making an assumption that simply reducing the number of legally owned guns will reduce the number of illegally owned guns. I have seen no indication that this is the case.

Firstly, a significant number of crimes are committed with legally owned weapons. (I understand that in the US, about 50% of homicides are committed by people without prior convictions.) A general reduction in legal guns would have a direct effect on these crimes.

Secondly, there are three ways that reducing the number of legal guns would affect illegal guns.

1. Reducing the main source of supply (stealing legal guns and illegal sales.)

2. According to Wright and Rossi's study, the main reason criminals acquire guns is "self-defence". They would have less reason to acquire guns if there were fewer legal guns to defend against.

3. An important factor distinguishing W&R's gun criminals from non-gun criminals was exposure to firearms while young. (Please note that I am not saying that this causes criminal behaviour --- I would imagine that it has no effect.) Fewer legal guns would mean that fewer criminals would be comfortable using them.

Furthermore, it is not necessary to reduce the numbers of all legally held guns. Targeting certain groups is more likely to be cost-effective. An example is in the new NSW gun laws. In NSW, guns are used in 20% of stranger homicides, and 50% of domestic homicides. In country areas, with twice the level of gun ownership as in the city, the gun homicide rate and the domestic homicide rate is twice as high as in the city.

While 80-90% of stranger killers have criminal records, the majority of domestic killers do not. What is present in the majority of cases is a history of domestic violence (reports, not convictions). Hence, the new laws require police to remove any guns from a house where a domestic dispute involving violence has occurred, and to confiscate the weapons of someone subject to an Apprehended Violence Order.

There is no denying that there are in fact honest people alive now in our (and probably even in OZ) society, that are alive only because of firearms. How many of these innocent people do you feel should have been sentenced to death? Can you weigh the individual against the whole of the population and make such a judgment? These are very hairy philosophical questions that have been debated for thousands of years. Does the end justify the .... Seems like nobody is really interested in debating the philosophical issues.

Maybe they don't want to be involved in a thread that will continue for thousands of years.

Can we adopt a policy that will save lives overall, but causes some people to lose their lives? Well, it happens all the time, so it is not as if guns are being singled out for special treatment.