(Fabrication, Fiction)
The never-ending discussion regarding DGU’s is again the subject of a recent article in POLITICAL MAGAZINE. Over time most has been said before but I thought this a good read and summary of the subject.
The Myth Behind Defensive Gun Ownership. Guns are more likely to do harm than good. By EVAN DEFILIPPIS and DEVIN HUGHES January 14, 2015
“Despite having nearly no academic support in public health literature, this myth is the single largest motivation behind gun ownership. It traces its origin to a two-decade-old series of surveys that, despite being thoroughly repudiated at the time, persists in influencing personal safety decisions and public policy throughout the United States….. The spurious conclusions in these surveys don’t just distort the pro-gun community’s perception of defensive gun use. For example, the claim that millions every year shoot their guns in self-defense has led some to posit that there are more defensive gun uses than criminal uses. This assertion is inexplicable—not backed by any substantive evidence…… You might hear gun advocates substantiate this claim by comparing inflated survey numbers like Kleck’s with NCVS crime numbers. But defensive gun use surveys and the NCVS use different methodologies. To compare those two data sets is to break one of the most important laws of statistical analysis: You must always compare likes to likes. And indeed, comparing NCVS results to NCVS results yields a very different picture—that more than 9 times as many people are victimized by guns than protected by them. Respondents in two Harvard surveys had more than 3 times as many offensive gun uses against them as defensive gun uses.”
More at site.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/defensive-gun-ownership-myth-114262_Page2.html#ixzz3UIJNLyYT
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/defensive-gun-ownership-myth-114262.html?ml=m_b7_1#.VQMzA2d0zsZ
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