Carrying a Gun Increases Your Risk of Getting Shot and Killed

Started by Capt.Obvious, January 22, 2013, 02:55:14 AM

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Capt.Obvious

Especially if you find yourself in a position to shoot back. It's statistically true and I've seen it first hand.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17922-carrying-a-gun-increases-risk-of-getting-shot-and-killed.html

Packing heat may backfire. People who carry guns are far likelier to get shot – and killed – than those who are unarmed, a study of shooting victims in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has found.

It would be impractical – not to say unethical – to randomly assign volunteers to carry a gun or not and see what happens. So Charles Branas's team at the University of Pennsylvania analysed 677 shootings over two-and-a-half years to discover whether victims were carrying at the time, and compared them to other Philly residents of similar age, sex and ethnicity. The team also accounted for other potentially confounding differences, such as the socioeconomic status of their neighbourhood.

Overall, Branas's study found that people who carried guns were 4.5 times as likely to be shot and 4.2 times as likely to get killed compared with unarmed citizens. When the team looked at shootings in which victims had a chance to defend themselves, their odds of getting shot were even higher.

Turks


Capt.Obvious

Quote from: Turks on January 22, 2013, 03:09:13 AM
"We don't have an answer as to whether guns are protective or perilous," Branas says. "This study is a beginning."


http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17922-carrying-a-gun-increases-risk-of-getting-shot-and-killed.html

That's a typo, he clearly meant it's a conclusive study.

Capt.Obvious

The only armed citizen to return fire at the Tacoma Mall mass casualty shooting got shot and is now quadriplegic.   He's a good guy but probably wished he hid or fled like the other survivors.


kramarat

From the article:

While it may be that the type of people who carry firearms are simply more likely to get shot, it may be that guns give a sense of empowerment that causes carriers to overreact in tense situations, or encourages them to visit neighbourhoods they probably shouldn't

The study is flawed. One has to assume that they wouldn't have been shot if they didn't have a gun, which is impossible to assume. Secondly, if people are walking into dangerous neighborhoods, just because they have a gun, the study would be a reflection of a tiny sampling of gun owners that are really stupid. I'd guess that around 99% of people with concealed carry, don't intentionally put themselves in dangerous situations. The ones that walk into dangerous neighborhoods are looking for trouble; so yeah, there's a higher chance of getting shot. Duh!

Turks


Reality

...but did the study delve into the background of those who carried weapons that got killed.  Were these ordinary citizens who just happened to carry a weapon or were they a part of the criminal element that did the killing.  Were they a "target" that was going to die one way or another anyway?

From the article.

"While it may be that the type of people who carry firearms are simply more likely to get shot,...."

From Wiki.

In September 2006, New Scientist was criticised by science fiction writer Greg Egan, who wrote that "a sensationalist bent and a lack of basic knowledge by its writers" was making the magazine's coverage sufficiently unreliable,...."

I'll take my chances by having the capability to fight back rather than do nothing and be killed or watch someone else get killed.

mdgiles

Is this like those studies that tell us how many "children" are killed by firearms - and then we find out that the study considers 19 year old gang bangers, "children"/sarc.  :rolleyes:
"LIBERALS: their willful ignorance is rivaled only by their catastrophic stupidity"!

JustKari

This study is flawed.

1.  No random sample, no study can even begin to claim accuracy without it.

2.  Matching people of relatively the same age, etc.destroys the validity, if your sample is large enough (and I dare say there are enough gun owners/carriers to make the sample large) you don't have to match, you can take two large samples and compare them.

3. Goes with 2, you need a very large sample to make any assessment with more depth than a causal link.

Shooterman

Quote from: Reality on January 22, 2013, 04:10:49 AM
...but did the study delve into the background of those who carried weapons that got killed.  Were these ordinary citizens who just happened to carry a weapon or were they a part of the criminal element that did the killing.  Were they a "target" that was going to die one way or another anyway?

From the article.

"While it may be that the type of people who carry firearms are simply more likely to get shot,...."

From Wiki.

In September 2006, New Scientist was criticised by science fiction writer Greg Egan, who wrote that "a sensationalist bent and a lack of basic knowledge by its writers" was making the magazine's coverage sufficiently unreliable,...."

I'll take my chances by having the capability to fight back rather than do nothing and be killed or watch someone else get killed.

It is somewhat hard, unless you have a liberal bent, to get very concerned about gang bangers shooting and killing gang bangers. Then to try to prove it applies to everyday normal law abiding citizens is a fools game.
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Solar

Quote from: mdgiles on January 22, 2013, 05:52:51 AM
Is this like those studies that tell us how many "children" are killed by firearms - and then we find out that the study considers 19 year old gang bangers, "children"/sarc.  :rolleyes:
That's just it, was it a study done on strictly legal gun owners, or punks a drug dealers as well?
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Solar

Quote from: JustKari on January 22, 2013, 06:00:37 AM
This study is flawed.

1.  No random sample, no study can even begin to claim accuracy without it.

2.  Matching people of relatively the same age, etc.destroys the validity, if your sample is large enough (and I dare say there are enough gun owners/carriers to make the sample large) you don't have to match, you can take two large samples and compare them.

3. Goes with 2, you need a very large sample to make any assessment with more depth than a causal link.
Yep, and like all lib studies, it's only subject to elite groups.
Think Global Warming and the very group charged with finding results, is the very same group established to verify so called findings.
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raptor5618

To get funding for studies in a publish or perish world, you make damn sure your results confirm the bias of the organizations or agencies funding them.  Funding to prove global warming is a hoax or that some common food or chemical will cure some type of cancer is never going to get a dime. 

The majority of killings are the result of gang fights, drug wars and disagreements between criminal elements.  The study was done in Philadelphia.  My father was a mason instructor for Job Corp and they did a job in Philadelphia.  They had a police escort to the job and police were there during the job as well.  Some of these kids came from Philadelphia so they had to be sure that old enemies did not decide to exact revenge on them. 

With that one exception, I think all the people killed in those mass murder sites were unarmed.  That school principle tried to get the killer the way the libs would (unarmed) and well she is not just paralyzed.

The whole premise does not take much thought to realize how flawed it is.  If you are to suppose that someone would act the same way with a gun as without and then compare the consequence well I would much prefer to run at a shooter while I was armed than unarmed.  Or as was stated maybe that person should have run away.  Talk about compassion for your fellow man.   A shooter in a mall full of people who are unarmed and you have the potential to stop the shooter since you have a gun and probably have a decent level of skill using that gun.  Now running away is the safest thing to do on a personal level but for humanity we expect a whole host of people to run toward situations where the safest route is to run away. 

Maybe they should have done the same study in New York on 9/11.  Might find out that you are more likely to be killed by a building if you were a cop or fireman.  Now that seat belts are mandatory you can say that you are more likely to be in a car crash if you have a seat belt on than not on.  One fact does not confer the other outcome.  Lets do the same study in Colorado during elk season.  Compare the number of gun deaths to the number of people who have a gun in their possession.   Deer season in PA there are nearly a million people walking around with a gun in their hands.  Not sure how many gun deaths there are during that time but I suspect that it is far less than 4.5 million.   

Maybe we need a study to see if people who die with a needle stuck in their arm with a burnt spoon in their lap are more likely to have died of a drug overdose. 

There just was a survey of people who do research and the majority of them admit to playing with the data to come to the correct conclusion. 
"An armed man will kill an unarmed man with monotonous regularity."

JustKari

Quote from: raptor5618 on January 22, 2013, 08:41:05 AM
To get funding for studies in a publish or perish world, you make damn sure your results confirm the bias of the organizations or agencies funding them.  Funding to prove global warming is a hoax or that some common food or chemical will cure some type of cancer is never going to get a dime. 

The majority of killings are the result of gang fights, drug wars and disagreements between criminal elements.  The study was done in Philadelphia.  My father was a mason instructor for Job Corp and they did a job in Philadelphia.  They had a police escort to the job and police were there during the job as well.  Some of these kids came from Philadelphia so they had to be sure that old enemies did not decide to exact revenge on them. 

With that one exception, I think all the people killed in those mass murder sites were unarmed.  That school principle tried to get the killer the way the libs would (unarmed) and well she is not just paralyzed.

The whole premise does not take much thought to realize how flawed it is.  If you are to suppose that someone would act the same way with a gun as without and then compare the consequence well I would much prefer to run at a shooter while I was armed than unarmed.  Or as was stated maybe that person should have run away.  Talk about compassion for your fellow man.   A shooter in a mall full of people who are unarmed and you have the potential to stop the shooter since you have a gun and probably have a decent level of skill using that gun.  Now running away is the safest thing to do on a personal level but for humanity we expect a whole host of people to run toward situations where the safest route is to run away. 

Maybe they should have done the same study in New York on 9/11.  Might find out that you are more likely to be killed by a building if you were a cop or fireman.  Now that seat belts are mandatory you can say that you are more likely to be in a car crash if you have a seat belt on than not on.  One fact does not confer the other outcome.  Lets do the same study in Colorado during elk season.  Compare the number of gun deaths to the number of people who have a gun in their possession.   Deer season in PA there are nearly a million people walking around with a gun in their hands.  Not sure how many gun deaths there are during that time but I suspect that it is far less than 4.5 million.   

Maybe we need a study to see if people who die with a needle stuck in their arm with a burnt spoon in their lap are more likely to have died of a drug overdose. 

There just was a survey of people who do research and the majority of them admit to playing with the data to come to the correct conclusion.

This is true, some study participants will try to figure out what you are studying and give you the "right" answer.