This post is for Ubu52, who in my last post commented
One thing about the gun owner community is that we tend to be more law abiding and more level headed than the general populace. Well, not if you include all of those criminals with guns. (They are also gun owners too, you know.) "People who own guns" would be a subset of the "general population," and if you only look at "People who own guns" and believe a higher percentage of them are "law abiding and more level-headed," the numbers just don't work out.
One thing about the gun owner community is that we tend to be more law abiding and more level headed than the general populace.
Well, not if you include all of those criminals with guns. (They are also gun owners too, you know.) "People who own guns" would be a subset of the "general population," and if you only look at "People who own guns" and believe a higher percentage of them are "law abiding and more level-headed," the numbers just don't work out.
Sorry sweetie, I know math and research is hard so I'll help you out.
First, pull out your old Texas Instruments calculator so you can double check my work.
Two, go read the Bureau Of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey Criminal Victimization for 2008, specifically page 6, tables 3 and 7.
First off, as a tangent, let's look at how firearm related incidents have been trending. From 1999 to 2008, the number of incidents dropped from 457,150 to 303,880. Crime, in general, has been dropping at the same rate.
Now, you might say "SEE!! Three Hundred Thousand violent crimes with guns!!! OMG!". Before you pat yourself too hard on the back, let's look at violent crime in general.
There were 4,581,260 violent crimes in 2008, 3,375,090 of which used NO weapon at all. There were 905,100 weapon related incidents. Knives and other make up the lions share.
However, Ubu52 has a point – Those 303,880 incidents mean the person was a gun owner. Now, that doesn't mean all 303,880 incidents were unique and in fact many of them come from multiple attacks by the same person. But hell, I'm feeling generous so I'll just count them as individuals.
There are approximately 80,000,000 gun owners in the US. It's hard to get a count because it's not something you generally just walk up and ask, but considering there's a rough estimate of 270,000,000 guns in civilian hands, we can err on the low side and still be ok.
Now, including criminals with guns, you get the following
303,880 / 80,000,000 * 100 = 0.37985%
So yes, even if I include the thugs, it's clear that gun ownership has very, very little to do with crime.
Ubu52, your move. What FACTS do you have at your disposal that indicate gun owners and ownership is a problem?
and I can back this up with prison conviction rates
You guys repeat this [CCW holders being less likely to commit crime] all the time but I've never seen anything statistical to prove that it is true.
One study found that in Florida CCW holders were 300 times less likely than the general population to commit a crime. ... A Texas study found that CCW holders in that state were "5.7 times less likely to commit a violent crime, and 14 times less likely to commit a non-violent offense."
The fact is, "law-abiding" and "level-headed" are very loose terms.
The fact is, "law-abiding" and "level-headed" are very loose terms. The second one may be. The first is a Boolean, and thus about as not-loose as you can get.
"Gun owners" which is a much larger number of people and would include both legal and illegal gun possessors.
I'm bending my mind into a pretzel here to try and see what you seem to be seeing.