Do lax gun laws escalate domestic violence?

[SecularMotion]

George Zimmerman, the man acquitted in July in the killing of Trayvon Martin, just can’t seem to stay out of trouble. Yesterday, police were summoned to the house of his soon to be ex-father-in-law after Zimmerman’s estranged wife, Shellie, told a 911 dispatcher that Zimmerman punched her father and threatened both of them with a gun.

Hours later, Shellie recanted her story and neither she nor her father pressed charges, though investigators are still looking at surveillance tapes. Charges against Zimmerman could still be filed, even without victim cooperation.

But there was a story that made far fewer headlines yesterday and yet was perhaps equally important. It was the case of a Louisiana man named Rene O’Quin, killed by a bullet that came through the wall from his neighbor’s bedroom. The bullet was the result of a fight between the neighbor, Pierre Camese, and his girlfriend. After allegedly beating her, Camese feared retaliation from her relatives and so borrowed a gun that he claimed -- like Zimmerman, like so many with firearms -- was for self-protection.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/10/the-easiest-solutionofall.html

[SecularMotion]

1. Kick

[rrneck]

2. Do lax laws against domestic violence escelate domestic violence?

Do lax workers rights laws escalate domestic violence?
Do lax insider trading laws escalate domestic violence?
Do lax laws against fiduciary irresponsibility escalate domestic violence?
Do lax tax laws escalate domestic violence?
Do lax banking laws escalate domestic violence?

Does over emphasis on a single cause result in tunnel vision, confirmation bias, fundamental attribution error, and a whole host of other logical fallacies?

The answer to all of the above questions, including the title of the OP, is yes.

[ileus]

5. but....but....gun are bad.

AND they kill people.

[Orrex]

8. Your claim does not contradict the claim in the OP

The OP's assertion is that lax gun laws can lead to escalation of violence in individual cases of domestic violence. I think that this is a reasonable claim, if it can be shown that an abuser is statistically more likely to inflict greater violence if he or she is able to make use of a gun that he or she could not have obtained under more strict laws.


Your counter-assertion is that a range of other lax laws has led to an increase in overall incidence of domestic violence. This is also an entirely reasonable claim, and it addresses the society-wide factors that increase the likelihood that domestic violence will occur because of stress, hardship, and compromised mental health resulting from these factors.



IMO it would be a mistake to dismiss the real probability that easy access to guns can lead to an increased level of violence (and increased probability of death) in cases of domestic violence, just as it's a mistake to ignore the fact that gun ownership leads to a measurable increases the lethality of first-time suicide attempts, for instance.

That doesn't mean that your argument should be ignored--far from it. But your post is addressing something very different from that OP's point.

[rrneck]

10. No contradiction was intended.

Like I said, the answer is yes.

The most important question to ask is "how much".

[Orrex]

11. Ah--I see.

I was misreading your post as sort of a rebuttal to the OP rather than as a complement.

The most important question to ask is "how much".

Yes indeed!

[rl6214]

3. No

[ileus]

4. No...

Simple.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

6. Possibly.

I saw (actually heard) it firsthand a couple of months ago in my own office building.

[Eleanors38]

7. I KNEW Zimmy would (along with someone in La) single-handedly prove some point!

[1awake]

9. No. n/t