Gun Stats
Measuring armed self-defense
Gun control advocates emphasize the easy-to-count number of crimes committed with firearms. But what about crimes that are prevented by guns?
As historian Clayton E. Cramer and activist David Burnett explain in a new Cato Institute study, attempts to estimate how often Americans use guns for self-defense have generated a wide range of estimates, from tens of thousands to 2 million per year. Cramer and Burnett's paper, "Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance From Citizens," does not settle the issue, but it attempts to balance our understanding of firearms in America by presenting information derived from a 5,000-case sample of defensive gun uses reported in newspapers from 2003 through 2011.
Government opposition to expanding gun rights "is typically based on assumptions that the average citizen is incapable of successfully employing a gun in self-defense," they write. But the authors find that "such cases represent an exceedingly small minority of gun uses by otherwise law-abiding citizens and that a great number of tragedies—murders, rapes, assaults, robberies—have been thwarted by self-defense gun uses."
The newspaper method likely undercounts the incidents, since most defensive gun uses—especially ones that don't result in the gun being fired—never make the papers. The case studies and the conclusions the authors draw provide a wide picture of the varied human circumstances in which gun possession is a clear benefit.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
abundant Post.. i will try in the focus of see this, this would really help..
http://games151144.info