Reply #34: I wonder if what you say is true... [View All]

[primavera]

... that guns are used defensively millions of times each year with the most common result being that the "aggressor" runs away with no harm done to anyone. If that were in fact the case, I don't know that it would change my mind entirely on guns, but I would certainly grant that it was a point worth taking into consideration. The problem is, I don't know that to be the case. How does one measure such things? For instance, if I come up to you and ask you for directions to the 7-11 and you mistake my intentions and pull out your gun and I appropriately run away from you, is that one of your instances of a successful "defensive" use of a firearm? If I approach you to ask for a light and you simply shoot me on sight, how am I, now a corpse, going to refute your one-sided account of the incident as one in which you were appropriately defending yourself? Personally, I wouldn't characterize those incidents as "defensive" uses of guns, but how can anyone know what really happened, or what someone's true intentions were? Who decides how these incidents will be characterized and whether they'll be added to the column of appropriate, defensive uses of a firearm? Who tabulates these things, what kind of methodology are they using? As far as I can tell, the "studies" done which quote these sorts of figures mostly seem to come from the NRA and, quite frankly, they're about as reliable and impartial a source as the shrub: if they say it, I know immediately that it's got to be full of shit.