[Vision2020] Firearms - Dangerous or Useful?

[Joe Campbell]

Mike,

With all due respect, this sort of pseudo-scientific analysis bugs the heck out of me.

For one thing, in order to establish that guns are not dangerous you only consider gun DEATHS. There are no statistics cited in your 'analysis' about people who were harmed by guns in other ways.

On the other hand, you count as useful instances of gun use not merely cases in which someone kills a potential assailant but cases in which merely "displaying a gun" thwarts a crime. As if one COULD document such a vague category as this. In addition, most of the support for the usefulness of guns comes from a website entitled "gunowners.org." (On a side note, you should be ashamed of yourself, Dan, for chiding me about using data from Wikipedia to making the case about Bush's drug use yet giving a big thumbs up to Mike for the data collected from "gunowners.org." Give me a break!)

I don't want to say that guns are clearly more dangerous than useful but I will say that you've done nothing to disprove the claim. The question is, Is having a gun in your home more likely to protect folks from harm or more likely to cause harm? Unfortunately, for all your hard work, Mike, we still don't know, for the simple reason that you've failed to note the number of instances in which guns have led to harms other than death. There is not enough data here to make a reasoned judgment either way.

Now maybe your own views about guns are something more than mere religious beliefs; maybe they are based on facts rather than emotion. But there is nothing in your post alone to indicate this.

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Joe Campbell