Injury Control And Risk Survey: Fill & Download for Free

Japan has strict gun control and because of that they have close to no mass shootings. Why do Americans keep defending their right to own guns?Why do the gun controllers keep bringing up mass shootings? In 36 years, mass shootings have killed between 800–1000 people:US mass shootings, 1982-2018: Data from Mother Jones’ investigation(I got distracted while counting up the number of deaths and lost track)Are the lives lost in mass shootings somehow more important than the lives of those lost in non-mass shootings? Or are the gun-control folk trying to be emotionally manipulative here? Tsk tsk.Ahem, so why do Americans keep defending their right to own guns? That is a good question, Januar.Americans defend their right to own gunsfor many reasons.Some use the argument of “Guns are needed for the civilian population to defend itself should the government ever become tyrannical”. I don’t like that argument, but some do.Most often, Americans such as myself defend firearm ownership because the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States goes like this:A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringedI am not going to get into the meaning of each individual phrase above, you can do your own research if you wish.Americans also like to defend their guns because firearms can be used for self-defense, and often are.Depending on which study you find most credible, there are between tens of thousands and 2.5 million defensive uses of guns each year. Of those, simply brandishing the gun, without shooting, scares the perp away almost every time. In any case, the amount of DGUs is higher than the number of murders.The document also suggests that guns reduce the risk of injury or loss when one is subjected to a crime.5 The Use of Firearms to Defend Against CriminalsMeasuring Civilian Defensive Firearm Use: A Methodological Experimenthttps://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/91da/afbf92d021f06426764e800a4e639a1c1116.pdfU.S. homicide: number of murders | StatistaCDC, in Surveys It Never Bothered Making Public, Provides More Evidence That Plenty of Americans Innocently Defend Themselves with GunsAmericans also defend their guns because they believe that guns can be used to deter crime before any attempt is even made. Apparently, some studies also support that. Since some people love to bring up other countries when championing gun control, then let me bring up the fact that some studies say that the percentage of burglaries in the UK that are committed when the occupant is home is between 40% and 50%, while the number in the US is around 13%.http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdgbur.htmlThe Kleck Hot Burglary study is also referenced inAn Englishman's home is his dungeonAnd also from Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their ControlA few surveys also suggest that criminals are worried about being confronted with guns inThe Armed Criminal in America: A Survey of Incarcerated Felons,”Another survey is called “Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms”I don’t have those texts right now, so I sadly cannot provide screenshots. You can ignore that if you want, the point still stands.And that is why Americans defend their right to own guns.See ya later, alligator.

Note: for the TL;DR version skip to the summary.Many other shooters have addressed the issue of common minor injuries such as sunburn or a powder burn; so my answer will not address those. Additionally, this is a refutation of Lee Hunter's answer to How common are gun injuries for regular gun users? He believes that because in 2010 it was the third leading cause of death (after manipulating the data), there were 73,505 injuries and that since a small minority (22%) of the population owns firearms that gun casualties are not only common but “EXTREMELY common”. This assessment is based on raw data and not placed within any context therefore he is jumping to a conclusion without even establishing a baseline of what counts as “common”. I will establish such a baseline of commonplace in terms of accidents. I also argue that the presence of a firearm is not the causal factor in homicides and suicides; therefore addressing guns is not addressing the underlying, respective diseases.Incidence of Gun Related Injuries and Deaths by PhenomenonYou have to break your question down into three parts and analyze gun injuries in three separate contexts: accidents, homicides and suicides. To lump them altogether distorts the danger in terms of deciding if gun ownership and shooting is an inherently dangerous activity. In the case of accidents you are looking at strictly the risk of being involved with their ownership and recreational activity. In the other two instances there are intervening variables and risk factors that are more causal in the resultant casualty (be it injury or death) than the presence of the firearm. The only reason to lump them in as one phenomenon is to commit the analytical sin of cherry picking your data. They each are their own phenomenon and therefore must be looked at differently.Accidents: 22% of the 321 million Americans own at least one firearm which comes out to a population of about 70 million. In 2014 (latest data available by the CDC) there were 15,928 non-fatal, unintentional (ie: accidental) gun injuries and 489 unintentional deaths. (WISQARS Nonfatal Injury Reports and WISQARS Leading Causes of Death Reports) Compare this to an estimated 66.5 million cyclists. In 2015 there were 45,000 cyclist injuries and 818 deaths. (Pedestrian & Bicycle Information Center)Homicides: In 2014 there were 65,106 firearm injuries that resulted from violent crime. There were 12,979 homicides, which if you combine with suicides makes firearms the 4th leading cause of injury death after poisoning, cars and falls. (CDC Sources listed above.) However, there are other risk factors for being the victim of homicide other than the presence of a firearm and studies cannot determine whether or not the presence of a firearm is causal. Interestingly, they do find that crimes like armed robbery produce less injuries as the deadliness of the weapon increases; however the seriousness of these more rare injuries will be greater. In the end community level factors (concentration of an urban underclass, social mobility, family disruption, high population density of impoverished people and criminal opportunity structures) interact with social organization interact to determine involvement in violent crime. This is why while the US has a higher amount of gun homicide than other developed nations; it is about where one would expect a country like ours to be. (Violent Victimization and Offending: Individual-Situational-, and Community-Level Risk Factors) Additionally, if you want to reduce your chance of being the victim of homicide you can do this by analyzing who you associate with. (Study: Odds Of Being Murdered Closely Tied To Social Networks)Suicides: Using the same CDC sources for the year 2014, there were 3,320 self-harm firearm injuries and 22,018 firearm suicides. This is the strongest connection between firearm and outcome that favors the argument that Lee makes. In the other two phenomenon deaths are outnumbered by injuries: 32.57 unintentional injuries per accidental death and 5.02 violence related injuries per homicide. With suicide there were 6.63 injuries per suicide. In another firearms post, he linked to a study that found that suicide attempts that were made with a firearm were 31.1x more likely to result in death than other methods. (Guns in the Home and Risk of a Violent Death in the Home: Findings from a National Study | American Journal of Epidemiology | Oxford Academic) Of completed suicides, firearms are EXTREMELY common. I do not have the number for 2014, but according to Emory University the average yearly rate is 34,598. This means that 64% of completed suicides are the result of a firearm. The number of attempted suicides is 864,950. (Suicide Statistics) Now, is this clear cut data that indicates we should implement immediate, restrictive gun control legislation? No. The reality is the research is unclear. I have read some studies that claim that substitution effects will result in roughly the same number of completed suicides partly because the majority of the 864k attempts are cries for help. I have read other studies that show evidence that it will save lives. This will no doubt piss off the people I am otherwise in agreement in regards to gun rights; but I do think that a 3–5 day universal waiting period on handgun purchases would be a reasonable regulation of firearms purchases.Defining Commonplace: Risk Analysis and ContextLee’s answer lacks context and does not establish what we should consider as a commonplace occurrence. We read headlines that state we are 48x more likely to injury/kill ourselves than use a firearm in self-defense. Additionally, his American Journal of Epidemiology source finds that the presence of a firearm makes one 1.9x more likely to be a homicide victim and 31.1x more likely to die from a suicide attempt. But what do those numbers mean in the real world? He assumes that they mean the same thing regardless of the casualty being the result of an accident, homicide or suicide. When in reality they are quite different.First I’ll address accidents. The reason I chose cycling accidents as a comparison is that the number of cyclists matches the extreme lowest estimate of how many shooters there are. Lee cited an article that reported that only 22% of Americans indicated that they owned at least one firearm (Just three percent of adults own half of America’s guns). This yields 70 million gun owners on the low side (there are several reasons to believe the number of people who shoot recreationally is actually significantly higher than gun owners). Assuming that these 70 million shoot their gun(s) at least once a year that is 191,780 people shooting everyday. In 2014 this resulted in 43.64 non-fatal, unintentional trips to the doctor and 1.34 deaths per day. Compare this to the dangers of cycling using the same assumption that if you are a cyclist you ride your bike at least once a year there are 182,191 cyclists riding around per day. In 2015 there were 123.29 cycling related injuries seen by medical personnel and 2.24 cycling related deaths per day.As for homicide and the question of self-defense; gun availability is not the casual risk factor for crime (violent or otherwise). Other protective actions can more significantly reduce your chances to become the victim of violent crime than removing a firearm from your home. Additionally, there are some studies that show legal firearm possession reduces crime. However, these are hotly debated and most discussions between the two camps quickly devolve into emotional entanglements. However, what I think can be compared in a risk-reward analysis is the number of violent crime and the number of Defensive Gun Use (DGU). According to Lee’s own source there were 259 justifiable homicides in 2012 and the average annual number from 2008–2012 was 221.6 which is significantly lower than the number and average number of homicides for the same year (11,622) and 5 year period (11,488). (http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable15.pdf)The same source also looks at DGUs that were non-fatal and uses the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is a survey administered by the Census Bureau on behalf of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. It claims that from 2007–2011 the average yearly DGU where no one was killed was 67,740. The VPC claims that the NCVS is “the most accurate survey of self-defense gun use”. One of two problems here is that the VPC is a gun control advocacy group and therefore about as unbiased a source as the NRA. The second problem is the VPC trots out Dr. David Hemenway the same way the NRA trots out Dr. Gary Kleck. Both men have been at odds over the survey data for over 20 years now and are so entrenched in their methodological positions that their objectivity should be questioned.After surveying the data I think the NCVS is an outlier and grossly underreports the incidence of DGUs. While it is highly regarded and very methodologically sound for most crime, this does not mean that it is the gold standard for ALL crime surveys. For example, it is also the subject of methodological controversy for its estimation of the prevalence of rape. (2. Measuring Crime and Crime Victimization: Methodological Issues) There is reason to adjust these numbers up as pointed out by Tom Smith in his call for a truce in the DGU war. His suggested error correction for the NCVS puts the number of DGUs at 256,500 to 373,000. Likewise, his correction for Kleck style surveys would be 1.21 million. (http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6938...jclc) As someone who has watched the scholarly literature on this topic for the past 20–25 years I think the actual number is more around 750,000. Unfortunately, this debate remains unsettled and it would be foolish to assume/believe/accept as faith that either side’s dogma is gospel and the other’s absurd. (Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence)Therefore the risk analysis is pretty clear: 65,000 violent crime injuries and 11,000 to 12,000 homicides compared to 256,000 to 1.21 million non-fatal DGUs and 200–300 justifiable homicides per year. Yes the odds ratio is you are 1.9x more at risk for being the victim of a homicide with a gun in the home; but this is for about 80% of the homicides if you demonstrate other risk factors which are also within your control. One example is the NPR link from earlier; those researchers found that if a person lives in a high crime area, and is even a member of a gang, they can reduce their chances of becoming a murder statistic 57x by not associating directly with their neighbors and fellow gang members who are involved with violent crime. Therefore, unless you are already involved in violent crime, the odds of being the victim of homicide or violent crime is not significant.As for suicide, I do not think there is much to add to what I have already said. I think there are strong indications that waiting periods would have a positive effect on suicide rates. But at the end of the day the presence of a gun is not a causative factor of suicide. Mental illness is and I think de-stigmatizing it would be far more effective at reducing it than blaming guns and putting our resources to work limiting them further than a waiting period.SummaryTo look at the statistics regarding firearm injuries and death as one, monolithic phenomenon is (intentional or not) intellectual dishonesty. The headlines of “You are 1138x more likely to get injured or die from your own gun!” or “2.2 gabazillion potentially violent crimes are prevented each year by good guys with guns!” speak to our Klingon selves, not our Vulcan ones. Each of these grab our attention and confirm not only our own preconceptions about our beliefs and ourselves, but that scary other be they the Libtard who has never read the Federalist Papers or the dumb redneck clinging to his guns and thinks they know better than a president with a JD in Constitutional Law from Harvard.In the comments section of his answer, Lee and I had a conversation and he stated that he found the data compelling. After all, guns is the third leading cause of injury death in the US; but this is only after you manipulate the data by treating all gun injuries as if they were the same thing. Which the CDC does not; they break their data out by unintentional (accidental), suicide and homicide. Of all injury deaths firearm suicide is #4, firearm homicide is #5 and accidental deaths do not rank in the top 20 causes. Therefore my risk analysis conforms to the way the CDC accounts for categories of injuries and deaths.The danger of having a gun in your home for recreational purposes is similar to, and even a little less, than being a cyclist.The population of home homicide victims that has a gun in their home is 1.9x that of non-gun owners; however this relationship is more than likely spurious. There are far more significant/causal risk factors than owning a firearm that renders this odds ratio less significant than it many would believe.Suicides are the area that the arguments of pro-gun control proponents are most strong. It cannot be argued that using a firearm in a suicide attempt produces a higher rate of death than injury, making the presence of a firearm in the home of an at-risk individual inherently dangerous. However, the firearm is not the cause of the risk factor in the suicide and removing firearms from the populace will not solve the problem. Look at Japan. The question of how effective substitute methods would be is something that remains controversial and somewhat unclear.Therefore, not only are gun injuries not “EXTREMELY common”…they are a rare and thus uncommon event.NOTESIn my comparison between guns and cycling I used two different years. In a more academic setting this would be a sin; however for an audience like Quora it is appropriate. This is the data that is available from credible sources and is easily accessible. Furthermore, the dates were picked for me because I tried to match the most recent CDC data (without knowing what it was first) with the most recent cycling data.Trying to find quality, recent estimates of DGUs is surprisingly difficult. Most of the data appears to be rooted in one or the other methodology of Kleck or Hemenway. We need more Tom Smiths and until we get them, we are stuck in an impasse and 1997.EDITSSuicides and waiting periods: waiting periods would only be effective in prevention when a person does not already own firearms. So any policy that enacts a ‘cool down’ period should include an exemption for people with a CCW, FFL or other such credential.

Why do so many people think keeping a gun in the home makes them safer, when the facts prove the opposite?Does owning a gun make you safer? – LA TimesMost likely because guns actually do make us safer and the methodology of studies that state otherwise are deeply flawed.The largest issue with the linked article is that is comes directly out of the 1990’s CDC playbook,All too often, they witnessed that “assumptions are presented as fact:”… that there is a causal association between gun ownership and risk of violence, that this association is consistent across all demographic categories, and that additional legislation will reduce the prevalence of firearms and consequently reduce the incidence of violence.” They concluded that “…incestuous and selective literature citations may be acceptable for political tracts, but they introduce a bias into scientific publications…Stating as fact associations which may be demonstrably false is not just unscientific, it is unprincipled.” Why The Centers For Disease Control Should Not Receive Gun Research FundingWhy we can't trust the CDC with gun researchWhy Congress Cut The CDC’s Gun Research Budget.The writer of this opinion piece only uses studies he had direct control over, which means he knows all the strengths and weaknesses of each study in terms of his bias. The studies themselves use carefully selected data with methodologies that make little sense if you want a clear and correct picture. Most of the conclusions rely on simple correlation assumed to be causation without even considering other factors. There’s a huge problem with jumping to a conclusion with these two-factor models. Following the methodology of the article it is appropriate and correct to assert stars make the sky dark at night, spoons make people fat, and growing bananas makes climates hot. We know none of these are true, but asserting correlation as causation without considering other factors makes it appropriate to argue. To come to the reality of the matter more variables have to be considered.For example,In terms of deterrence, a recent study found that states with higher levels of household gun ownership have higher levels of firearm crime and do not have lower levels of other types of crime.There’s a serious issue with the undefined “gun ownership”. There is no distinction between legally owned guns and illegal guns. Other studies have found gang members are 7 to 12 times more likely to have a gun than the average person, as well as being far more likely to be killed with a gun, injured with a gun, and commit crimes with a gun. Those guns, often illegally held due to age and past offenses, are considered “ownership” and are considered to be equivalent to legal ownership. This creates an incredibly skewed figure that leads to the misleading and incorrect conclusion that owning a gun puts you in danger. A correct conclusion would be, “being involved in organized crime puts you in danger”, which anyone could tell you. Guns in this context are only tangentially connected, but are assumed and asserted to be the primary factor.There is also the issue of repeat offenders. We know illegal guns are used in crime and that the same offenders commit multiple crimes with these guns. The misleading conclusion above relies on an evenly distributed risk that is not realistic, that is that each gun individually has an equal risk of being used in crime. Again, this misleading logic is right out of the CDC playbook. We know from other studies that crime guns are used repeatedly, and often for many years (the average gun recovered in Chicago is 11 years old), which also skews the data for this conclusion. It is feasible for a minority of guns to commit the majority of crimes, and considering there are approximately 330,000,000 guns in circulation if the assertions in this article were true nearly everyone in the US would already be dead.Here is a good resource with some of the stats used: Global Perspectives on Youth Gang Behavior, Violence, and Weapons UseThen there is the argument that higher legal gun ownership is a response to higher illegal gun use. It would only make sense that people that feel they are in danger seek out practical ways to protect themselves. Many European countries have seen gun permit requests skyrocket as a response to rising crime, often attributed to a mass of refugees.There is also real-world evidence that would not agree with the conclusion that guns necessarily make one less safe. This is one example of legal gun ownership increasing in response to guns being used illegally. Detroit Police Chief James Craig gave an honest statement in 2014 and told residents the police simply could not protect everyone and that individuals that were willing should look into getting their concealed carry licenses and defend themselves. The results were a drop in crime and homicides in the city of Detroit.Detroit police chief to citizens: Arm yourselvesDetroit Police Chief: Crime Going Down Amid Spike in Legal Gun OwnershipWhat’s more interesting about Detroit Police Chief James Craig is the way he changed his views on gun control. While in LA he staunchly believed fewer guns in private hands the better, while he learned in Maine how important legal gun ownership could be in an overall strategy to reduce crime. He used his new understanding in Detroit and made a positive impact on Detroit communities.Using the National Crime Victimization Survey is problematic as well. This is a voluntary survey and other researchers have found a very low participation level when it comes to individuals that used a firearm in self-defense for fear of legal action, embarrassment, or other emotional reasons. Because there is low participation there is a small sample size. 135,000 is a small sample size, even if every call resulted in a response, when there are 126,000,000 households. Realistically there are around 10,000 to 14,000 responses, 1/10th of the already small sample size. Extrapolation to that degree, especially when victims are less likely to respond honestly, is very problematic.There are also many issues the NCVS acknowledges but cannot address. For example, individuals that move more often are more likely to be victimized, but it is difficult to contact this group of people multiple times. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/addington.pdfIn the US we have around 30,000 gun deaths in a year. That is a number that is thrown around all the time in the media, so it should be pretty well-known. When you break down gun deaths by category you find two-thirds are suicides that do not fit the definition of interpersonal violence. There isn’t any hard evidence that removing one method of suicide would avoid the suicide, even if it were possible to do so in an timely manner. The CDC tallies 80% of homicides as being gang-related, which covers gang members with illegal guns killing other gang members that have illegal guns, justified homicides by the police, and any homicide involving or committed by someone affiliated with organized crime. The relatively random risk of gun violence sits around 0.00006% in a year. You can exchange the “6” in that with a different number depending on your area and other factors, but it doesn’t change much realistically. That’s a really low risk of gun violence for society as a whole.The other side of this equation is self-defense. In 1997 the Department of Justice estimated at least 55,000 cases of legal self-defense with a gun. Legal self-defense with a gun can only be used to avoid death, rape, and grave bodily harm, each of which has the reasonable expectation of death under the law. This number stood as the standard on the topic until 2013 when the CDC conducted additional research on guns. The CDC found there are between 500,000 and 3,000,000 cases of legal self-defense with a gun in a year. If you still hold fast to the DOJ number and count all gun deaths that comes out to guns being used to save a life almost twice as much than to take a life. Using more updated numbers and focusing on homicides you find guns save between 50 and 300 times more lives than they take in interpersonal violence. If you want to take that random risk of gun violence that applies to most people and updated numbers it rises to around 250–1500 times more positive effects for society. Even if you combine all gun deaths and all injuries (around 70,000 injuries) guns, using the updated numbers, still come out at between 5 and 30 times more positive cases.“What about the FBI’s records on self-defense?” asks the Violence Policy Center. They assert the FBI only tallied 259 justified homicides in their slick presentation, therefore guns are hardly used in self-defense. It’s simple really, in the vast majority of cases criminals flee without a shot being fired, simply presenting the firearm is enough to end the encounter. In many cases the police are not even called or the fact a legal firearm was involved is not reported because A.) fear of legal ramifications and B.) there is no recording requirement to document a firearm used when there are no injuries or fatalities. Using common sense, if we followed the VPC’s logic and we wanted people to be safe we would have to endure 500,000–3,000,000 more justified homicides in order for the VPC to be satisfied they occur. I would prefer people do not subscribe to this model of vigilante justice out of the fantasy wild west created for the gun debate and would rather people remain safe and allow the police to do their job.On the one hand an individual that quotes only his own studies writes an opinion piece that guns are not used in self-defense and are actually dangerous by virtue of simply existing. On the other hand, the DOJ, FBI, CDC, and countless researchers paint the picture that everyday citizens benefit from private gun ownership and career criminals face far higher risks. “Common sense” is thrown around quite a bit when it come to the gun debate; it is only common sense that career criminals would face more danger in relation to guns than the average law-abiding citizen. The only way to make the conclusions in this article are to equate a suburban mother with a hardened gang member in terms of risk. This is wholly misleading and nonsensical. Refusing to investigate the data beyond simple correlation before coming to conclusions can only be considered intellectually dishonest and deeply biased.