The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #100875 Message #2030214
Posted By: Big Mick
19-Apr-07 - 02:39 PM
Thread Name: Gun Ownership - are you really safe?
Subject: RE: Gun Ownership - are you really safe?
Bill, I do know you, I value you as a friend,and I have no doubt that you are not typically a demogogue. But it seems to me that you are employing a demogogic debating tactic on this one. In this debate, it seems to me, you are relying on individual stories that suit your bias. I understand this. You know me as well. I am a progressive, and work in many liberal, progressive causes. Over the years, in my involvement with the Democratic Party at the highest levels, and in causes espoused by my progressive friends, I have felt conflicted over my use and enjoyment of firearms. Remember the Kayla Rollings shooting? That was the one where the kindergarten girl was shot by a classmate with a gun left laying around? That next weekend I was in Flint with the Second Lady. And I was challenged for my views. I said then what I say now. These are horrible tragedies. But they have little to do with the overwhelming majority of gun owners in the USA who simply have and use weapons in a legal and responsible way. Any law that takes those weapons will not reduce violent crime. In fact the statistics seem to show it will increase it.
As to the cite I gave on the number of times guns are used by law abiding citizens, here is the cite:
Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun," 86 The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, 1 (Fall 1995):164. Dr. Kleck is a professor in the school of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He has researched extensively and published several essays on the gun control issue. His book, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, has become a widely cited source in the gun control debate. In fact, this book earned Dr. Kleck the prestigious American Society of Criminology Michael J. Hindelang award for 1993. This award is given for the book published in the past two to three years that makes the most outstanding contribution to criminology. Even those who don't like the conclusions Dr. Kleck reaches, cannot argue with his impeccable research and methodology. In "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed," Marvin E. Wolfgang writes that, "What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator. . . . I have to admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and this research. Can it be true that about two million instances occur each year in which a gun was used as a defensive measure against crime? It is hard to believe. Yet, it is hard to challenge the data collected. We do not have contrary evidence." Wolfgang, "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed," The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, at 188. Wolfgang says there is no "contrary evidence." Indeed, there are more than a dozen national polls—one of which was conducted by The Los Angeles Times—that have found figures comparable to the Kleck-Gertz study. Even the Clinton Justice Department (through the National Institute of Justice) found there were as many as 1.5 million defensive users of firearms every year. See National Institute of Justice, "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," Research in Brief (May 1997).