You want guns at any cost, where Canadians prefer lives saved over gun ownership.

There are many other options, things like a cross bow, a spear gun, a flare gun and others.  dont take this lightly, be prepared and have an action plan that you have rehearsed (Many times) in place.

I live in sunny South Africa, and owning a firearm here is a bit of a story, as all firearms must be registered and there is a real tough rig-maroll to get a legal gun license. The fact that you may have a gun is a sure threat to many intruders, and many attacks take place specifically to aquire a fire arm, so that these may be used to commit murder.

The murder rate in sunny South Africa is quite high, but that has nothing to do with the right to own a fire arm. It has much to do with the value of life as seen in the eyes of the people on the ground. the debate should not be around whether fire arms are dangerous or not, but around the value of life and how to evaluate whether people will use this knowingly or ignore the value of your life and kill you anyway.  just for the pleasure in watching you die…

So it’s just the USA that needs armed guards in schools. USA #1.

Here are their unstated assumptions:
1) You are equally likely to be carrying a gun in a situation when you are assaulted, as when you are not.
2) You are equally likely to be assaulted wherever you are.

Here are my counter-assumptions:
1) You are considerably MORE likely to be carrying a gun if you feel that you are in a situation where you are likely to get shot. It feels like an obvious truism.
2) You are considerably MORE likely to suffer an assault involving a firearm when travelling alone and on foot; you’re unlikely to get assaulted in your own home, or at work, or while sleeping, or while in a restaurant, or a cinema or while commuting in your car. In fact, high risk times account for a tiny fraction of most people’s days.

The study has thus found a weak 4.5 times correlation between high risk times, and carrying a gun. This should not be news to pretty much anybody.

You are certainly more likely to be carrying a gun when you feel yourself to be in danger.

This type of blatantly obvious truism is not a factor with drinking and car crashes: you can’t say “you are certainly more likely to be drinking in areas where you are likely to crash”. Nor can you say “you are obviously more likely to want to smoke if you are developing lung cancer”. So, even though the methodology may have been impeccable, the assumption that you could use the same methodology for shootings is arguably invalid.

Equally, it made no effort to study the other half of the coin: how many people were assaulted at gunpoint and were NOT shot, while having guns, compared to those that did have guns? Without that information, we can’t tell whether their correlation between dangerous areas and gun ownership is really 4.5 times, or whether the guns work as an astonishingly effective deterrent and it’s really 450 times. Or maybe, however unlikely, there really is no correlation, and gun owners just are 4.5 times more likely to get their fool asses shot? How can we tell?

This study in particular, then, so obviously flawed by its assumptions, is the perfect illustration of the article’s original point. By simply adding one more assumption (people are at least ten times more likely to carry a gun if they are in a situation where they feel they might need it), I can show that the exact same study shows we are half as likely to get shot in an assault if we carry a gun.

Do you see now what the original article was saying about assumptions?

No one “ghettos” the poor. I choose to live where I want. 

There is NOTHING EASY ABOUT SELLING DRUGS. It’s hard work, and dangerous work. What it is, is easily understood. We “poor” have all the options as anyone else. We can make a decision to go to a library and read and learn, or hang on the streets selling drugs. People make decisions. Do not speak of what you do not understand. It is YOU who are ghettoizing us in YOUR MIND.

Concerning General and President Washington,  as a descendent of slaves, I seriously beg to differ. One of the first things that freed slaves did was to arm themselves, in order to remain free. One of the first things former slave owners did is pass gun control laws preventing freed slaves from owning guns, in order to keep them UNDER CONTROL. History is replete with narratives of the powerful disarming the powerless to make them more so. Ignoring this factor in the debate is at best naive and simple minded. 

Gun control proponents are some of the most disingenuous people in the political spectrum. If their concern was about lives, there are causes to pursue in which loss of life dwarfs gun violence statistics. Yet they are all but silent on those and certainly don’t pursue them with the same vitriolic passion. It is my observation that the anti-gun lobby doesn’t really care about lives. Their position stems from their pure unadulterated hatred of anything they relate to conservatism coupled with the elitist, condescending, and parental belief that they are superior and correct in all matters, including their predilection for surrendering the freedom and liberties of others to the government at whim. 

In other words, it is not about guns for the gun hater.  It is the typical blame and ban what we deem as inappropriate for everyone mindset. I don’t like you, I don’t like what you have, so I’m going to slander, vilify, stigmatize, and ultimately suppress you through the use of force, aka the power of the government, and I know I’m right because I’m progressive.

This article talks about science attempting to predict the outcome of owning weapons. Nothing could be more silly. It would be a massive exercise in chaos theory, with enough dynamic variables to humble the most powerful supercomputers. The article completely ignores the fact that notwithstanding all the possible outcomes, I as an individual prefer to be armed at least as well as anyone who chooses to assault me, and that my choice, my freedom to do so is constitutionally guaranteed.

1. It was only in Philadelphia
2. They only asked people who had been shot.
3. Let me say that again, it’s important – they only asked people who had already been shot. What about all the people who weren’t shot yesterday? Maybe all the people who weren’t shot weren’t shot becaus they had a gun? I don’t believe that statement to be true, but I do believe that statement to be just as scientifically valid as the study.

(I’m not knocking the study you cite as it can provide good information about how best to keep a gun in the home, or how changing other factors (like living alone) can help reduce the risk of accidental gun injuries.)

 Or put another way, why should we limit our inquiries about guns and safety to just guns?  Isn’t limiting ourselves to the question about gun safety a flawed premise, if say, everyone decides guns are too dangerous as a result of these statistics and instead buys tazers, or pepper spray or flame throwers?  One of those weapons is probably more dangerous to use in the home than a gun, but the others might be completely ineffective and far more dangerous than one supposes.  Baseball bats, golf clubs, knives, dogs, what else?

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full#ref-30

The interesting fact to me, is that out of something like 31,000 gun related deaths in the US in 2010, approx 19,000 were suicides almost 2/3rds.  If one is going to commit suicide and you have a gun in the home, one is much more likely to use it.  It reminds me of the statistic quoted in one of Malcolm Gladwells books on the incidence of suicide dropping when the UK switched to a non-toxic gas for home cooking. 

While I agree with much of what you said, it’s only part of the problem.

Studies can determine if laws requiring the safe storage of firearms and ammo can prevent deaths, just for one small example. They can pinpoint time, place, if alcohol is involved.

The real question is why doesn’t the NRA want these studies done? If they are correct, that good guys with guns help, then the science should show that. But if the NRA is lying, then I would think they wouldn’t want any real science to be done on the subject. Just rehash all the old nonsense talking points they love so well.

I found the piece to be poorly researched, especially when it mentions a study by one John Lott that supports gun ownership, yet failed to show the huge amount of evidence showing Lott to be less then ethical, had problems with his survey, problems with this study, problems with his data. Lott also pretended to be other people so he could praise his own book on Amazon, support himself on online forums, and say what a great teacher he was to all who would listen, all the while pretending to be a woman.

http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/12/17/who-is-gun-advocate-john-lott/191885
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lott
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2003/10/double-barreled-double-standards

I find it very disturbing that know nothing writers constantly refer to Lott, yet never bother to dig deep enough to find out all the dubious things he has done, especially when the information is easily available online. Do a Google search with “John Lott” and “fraud” or “pseudonym” or “ethics” and you will get an eyeful of information that puts him in a very different light.

On the other hand, one could go to various sources of gun homicide statistics online, and it will show a strong correlation between high gun ownership rate and high gun homicide rate. That a bunch of nuts say’s it ain’t so, doesn’t change the facts. The vast majority of countries in the world don’t require armed guards for their elementary schools. One is the USA, the other is Israel. When you have to compare your country to Israel, a country surrounded by enemies and attacked constantly by terrorists, you have a severe problem.

When are you going to admit it?

http://www.haciendapublishing.com/articles/gun-research-2013-%E2%80%94-interview-dr-miguel-faria-rebecca-trager-research-europe

He has also published an article in a peer review journal that has not received enough publicity. He blames the mediaand the mental health system:

http://www.haciendapublishing.com/articles/shooting-rampages-mental-health-and-sensationalization-violence

I do agree with Maggie that the politicians decide base on which way the wind blows!

If you think you need any physical item to be free, then you’re not really free at all. I’m much freer knowing I don’t need a gun, whether I have the right to own one or not.

The primary reason for gang existence is drugs? I think ghettoing the poor has something to do with it. Selling drugs seems to them like an easy way to make money in a community with little other options.

48% of all US violent crime, including gun violence, is gang related according to the FBI. 
http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/2011-national-gang-threat-assessment

The primary reason for existence of gangs and cartels is the $400 billion /year US drugs black market. Other activities are secondary/opportunistic. 

To put out a fire, you remove fuel and/or oxygen. 
Legalize, regulate, tax, educate. 

Continue to interdict foreign shipments and crack down on gangs. Their money dries up, they can’t attract new members or support their operations. Use proceeds from taxes on same and former drug war spending to implement single payer healthcare with addiction treatment on demand.

No more wasting Billions per year – one Trillion so far – creating a black market for psychopaths to exploit. No more wasting billions per year ruining the lives of people that have harmed no one. No more wasting billions per year militarizing our police forces, eroding our own rights, and creating for profit prisons. No more overwhelmingly disproportionate victimization of minorities. No more incarcerating casual users and small time dealers with hardened criminals in gang run prisons, creating criminal universities in every state and hardened criminals where there were none.

Good data on costs: 
http://thedea.org/itsresults.html

This chart directly correlates overall and gun deaths (which mostly track each other) to peaks in the Drug War. 
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4KGszM_HiU8/T0EqeoECYpI/AAAAAAAAH24/eP8RqAB5NOE/s1600/gun+violence+down+-+chart.gif

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/419864_473654732689941_163550975_n.jpg

I would call this a “no true scotsman” logical fallacy – we don’t have the best possible study so all information must be discarded until we do.  We don’t have randomised controlled trial on the use of adrenaline (epinephrine for the US crowd) in anaphylaxis but we still use it.  Would he prefer a randomised controlled trial of chernobyl like strontium exposure or would a longitudinal study of the single chernobyl event be adequate? 

ps why on earth is  USA medical adrenaline is called epinephrine?  Do you talk about the rush of epinephrine sports?  Even in texts refer to adrenergic receptors not epinephric why why why?

who might compose this subgroup of people who are ludicrously more likely to be shot when they have a gun

Gang members.