There are two causal factors for gun violence -- access to guns, and desire to cause destruction.
With knives, your arms quite literally will tire out. Still not a GOOD outcome, but is the best to be expected when only one causal factor is blocked.
Blocking the other is probably beyond the scope of policy generally, but decreasing it may be possibly impacted by social policies encouraging people's proclivity towards violence.
Not if you are one of the hundred million people who have guns for defense it’s not. There is no better equalizer for the physically small or weak or elderly or disabled than a firearm.
>There are two causal factors for gun violence -- access to guns, and desire to cause destruction
Yes, where tool is available, people use it as intended and not. Firearms are used almost exclusively for legal defense, as frustrating as that may be to people who think the tool is the problem, and just banning the idol will abate the evil spirits.
> With knives, your arms quite literally will tire out.
This is not written by someone with edged weapons training. An actual fact of knife use from someone does is if you use a knife, you can EXPECT to be cut yourself.
> encouraging people's proclivity towards violence.
That’s interesting. If we look at the statistics of gun violence, would you be helpful and make more generalizations on who these people who have a “proclivity towards violence” are?
Speaking as someone on the weak spectrum approaching elderly status, I’m convinced having a gun is more likely to end up leading to me being shot.
The presence of guns invites escalation. I’ll take my chances without.
This is just as inaccurate as the "no training required". Actually, the presence of guns is CALMING factor.
Also, come on, gents, both blade and glock are tools, one have to learn to use first.
A gun is useless to some, especially those who are afraid to pick it up. A knife is useless to me - unless the attacker is a truckload of Amazon boxes.
The rest of society asks that you not make personal defense decisions for us.
Thank you for inferring something I didn’t say and reprimanding me for it.
I believe they are used far more often in offense rather than defense. I’d be interested to see a valid statistic for your claim.
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.htm...
If it isn’t true, I wonder why you believe it is?
> We find that the claim of many millions of annual self-defense gun uses by American citizens is invalid.
> Criminal court judges who read the self-reported accounts of the purported self-defense gun use rated a majority as being illegal
> Most purported self-defense gun uses are gun uses in escalating arguments, and are both socially undesirable and illegal
> We found that firearms are used far more often to frighten and intimidate than they are used in self-defense.
> We found that guns in the home are used more often to frighten intimates than to thwart crime
> most of the reported self-defense gun uses were hostile interactions between armed adolescents
> We found that one in four of these detainees had been wounded, in events that appear unrelated to their incarceration. Most were shot when they were victims of robberies, assaults and crossfires. Virtually none report being wounded by a “law-abiding citizen.”
> little evidence that self-defense gun use is uniquely beneficial in reducing the likelihood of injury or property loss
Overall, it seems that:
* Many publicized statistics about self-defense usage are inaccurate (millions of self-defensive usages appears to be completely impossible, for example).
* Even legal guns are used more often illegally than for self-defense, generally for intimidation or during escalating arguments.
* When used for legal self-defense, guns do not appear to be any more effective than other defensive alternatives for protecting either you or your property.
These are high-profile peer-reviewed studies from a variety of research organizations, backed by varied selection of sources, and they come to consistent conclusions. I'd be interested to see any similar analysis that points towards any other conclusion.
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/cdc-study-use-firearms-...
The study of the two phone surveys that were reviewed by judges piqued my interest. I was intrigued to see what these judges were reviewing (I thought maybe cases or police reports). Then it got interesting from a design point of view.
The Harvard School Of Public Health is without any exaggeration a paid-for propaganda wing. No one actually takes them seriously.
You clearly don’t know gun control history, but see how many references are by Hemenway, David? He is probably the #1 junk science producer in the field.
You know how the CDC was banned from studying gun control? (They weren’t actually, they or banned from recommending policy, which meant that suddenly no one wanted them to study gun control anymore) Well, it was Bill Clinton in 90 to the direct to the CDC to fund a bunch of junk science in order to drum up support for his assault weapons ban and 93/94.
Millions of dollars went to Hemenway, Who produced garbage studies, small sample size, never released the data, everything he published has been fully discredited.
This guy’s “work” was the reason the Dickey amendment passed. Absolute garbage from the 90s.
Still alive and kicking today. they posted up on their site, it says Harvard, here you are happy to post it. Same plan they had in 1992.
EDIT: To add on to the other user’s correct comments about the junk science. Hemenway is “famous” for his bad methodology, like the phone surveys, and looking at incidents where a gun was used in the home but not who the gun owner was, meaning every drug shooting was counted, hardly representative of most people’s lives.
EDIT2: I asked for evidence of these fantastic claims, and you posted classic trade-A nonsense that everyone who knows anything on the topic has seen for 20 some years. Probably the first search result you found. Do you really consider yourself to know anything on this topic? Why is it you think you do?
Seriously, I don't have a dog in this fight, I'm interested in the reality. In your previous comment, you asked for evidence - I've provided a selection of studies supporting the previous poster's position. If you disagree, please produce peer-reviewed studies refuting these points.
Currently you're listing unsupported ad-hominems against both the various researchers involved and Harvard (and honestly, I think saying that nobody takes Harvard seriously is a bit of a stretch). Regardless of the individuals: the linked studies were all reviewed in depth and accepted by a wide assortment of respected academic journals from across the field of public health.
If you think there are specific flaws in the methodology then please, be specific, but rejecting evidence you disagree with as 'junk science' out of hand is not helpful.
The 'small sample size' and 'unreleased data' you reference is specifically tenuous, since much of the referenced research is based entirely on public data & official statistics, such as the National Crime Victimization Survey (https://bjs.ojp.gov/data-collection/ncvs) produced and released annually by the US Justice Department.
On age: the sibling reply here was wrong and the most recent study listed in that Harvard analysis is actually 2015, but still, age has little bearing here unless you think there's been a very significant change in gun usage in recent years that would invalidate the past conclusions. If so, do please explain why that is.
In the meantime, take a look at https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl... as one more example: a 2020 research paper published by a peer-reviewed medical journal, which doesn't involve David Hemenway or Harvard, but supports similar claims backed by public fatality statistics from 2011-2018, and specifically showing that gun self-defense statistics today continue to match patterns from past research in the 80s.
I understand that you don't agree with this research. If you want to convince anybody else, find some concrete reviewed research or hard statistics that directly support your claims (specifically, research that shows "Firearms are used almost exclusively for legal defense", as you claimed above).
I see that you are just posting more studies that support your own view. Do you have anything that refutes the CDC's findings posted earlier?
I also stated two different concerns with studies from your Harvard links. Would you care to address those, or continue ignoring valid conversation?
You ask why old data should be called into question. It is well known that violent crime rates have been falling for decades. This could drastically affect the number of people being threatened and the number of people using a gun defensively. Also, a number of prior restrictions on the carrying of firearms have been reduced in many states. If you have more people with the ability/access to use a firearm, that could also affect both sides of the equation. Yes, I do see one study in that list from 2015. I wonder why that one conflicts with the CDC's finding.
I believe there have been peer reviewed and published studies by Kleck and Lott that you can look up if you are truly interested. I'm sure these can be questioned along the same lines as the other comments concerning the author of those other studies and Bloomberg money. American Homicide is supposed to be a good read too.
The main issue with just regurgitating studies like this is that studies can be misinterpreted and misapplied. The way the study is designed can make it a valid study, but at the same time it can limit the scope. Then we end up comparing defensive gun use to justifiable homicide, which are not the same thing.
I wouldn't be surprised at all, if we only look at legal firearms.