Counterproductive self-defence
 

The American Journal of Public Health has added another argument to the discussion on whether or not carrying firearms adds self-defensive protection against being shot in assault, or not.

The site is payware and so only the summary ("Abstract") of the study could been accessed as long as you do not pay for the fully text. I read two German summaries of the study. These just said in principle what the link is saying, too.

http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abst...urcetype=HWCIT

For social psychology, this is no big surprise, corresponding statements and findings are not new in it's fields, i remember from university times. Carrying weapons in self-defense must not necessarily have a deterring effect - it also can trigger easier use of violent force by the attacker in an attempt to overcome the surprising or to be expected resistance of the intended victim.

Everything has to sides - something that some people often ignore.

Does this mean you should rule out self-defence in general? No. but you better rule out that owning a gun frees you from any risks and gives you the freedom to no longer correctly assess situations and being prepared for unwelcomed surprises - which is a 24/7 job. that is a burden that the ordinary normal guy cannot properly care for, even more so if not being sued to training like you get it in certain proessions. In many cases, you are better off to let go your material possessions instead of defending them with a weapon.

In other words: owning a gun has its own risks, and owning a gun is no replacement for brains, and we do not even talk about the need for proper gun training and training the psychological readiness to use ponetially lethal force against somebody else (a problem known to any self defence trainer). In many situations and places you are simply better off not to be armed. That may hurt your ego, but a hurt ego does not kill you.

" We enrolled 677 case participants that had been shot in an assault and 684 population-based control participants within Philadelphia, PA, from 2003 to 2006. We adjusted odds ratios for confounding variables.

Results. After adjustment, individuals...."

Without knowing what adjustments and what the confounding variables, it is difficult to determine the accuracy of the results.

I agree.

I strongly believe that citizens have the right to own firearms to protect themselves or for sport. As long as they are properly trained, responsible adults, no criminal history or psychological problems, then they should own guns if they so desire. On the same note, I see no good reason for average Joe to own a fully automatic AK-47 or Uzi either. Hunting and defense are one thing, military grade weapons are something else.

I also believe the concealed permit should not be tied to the serial number of the weapon, or that you should have to register every weapon you own. I shudder at the thought of the government having a list of who owns what.

I searched around a bit but couldn't find the one story I was looking for. An armed robber started killing people in a restaurant and a couple customers pulled out their concealed weapons and killed the robber. They saved many lives and prevented a potential massacre. (Bennigans or Ruby's in Houston 10 years ago?) Numerous cases of shop owners defending themselves, home invasions stopped, the list goes on. I doubt any of them were included in this study. I'm sure there's been more cases where having a concealed weapon prevented tragedy and went unreported.

I think the reason the stats show some people are more prone to being injured when they have a weapon is because they get the direct attention of the bad guy. If you're a robber or assailant, who are you going to attack first; the guy lying on the floor crying or the one pointing his gun at you?

People who have had weapons taken from them and used against them shouldn't have had a gun in the first place. They are the ones who point a gun at someone and flinch, take a breath, blink, pause..... They didn't have the proper training or the balls to use it.

The survivors are the ones who know when you've gotten to the point when you have to draw down to your to defend your life; pulling it out, aiming it, then firing it are one continuous motion. Don't ever pull it out unless you've already decided to pull the trigger. That's how you save your life.

"Some people more prone to getting injured" you said, Mothball. This study says the probabilty of armed people getting shot is found to be more than four times as big than for unarmed people. Note that the comparing case groups are almost the same size, between 650 and 700, but the "armed" group has had almost five times as many people shot down.

They reasons you gave for that, greater attraction by the attacker, may be right, and if they meet resisrtance in a situation where they did not expect it, it may also lead to short circuits in their behavior and - bamm, there you go. But these reasons do not change anything. They have been dealt with in social psychology for quite some time (when is aggressive behavior by a defender successful, and when is it provoking even more aggressiveness by the attacker). But the basic problem remains.

If that study is robust, it says that you run greater risks of getting shot when you own a weapon, and indeed, the author recommend at the end that people should reconsider the possession of firearms as a self-defensive means. according to this statistical finding, it is absolutely counterproductive.

The probability of the bad guy getting shot by an armed citizen goes up 100% verses an unarmed victim.

Well put. I would very much like to know the circumstances under which these tests were performed, and the scenarios involved, as well as many other variables. Too bad it costs $ or I'd take a look at them.

Sky does bring up a good point in suggesting (as per the study) that armed victims are more likely to be shot in some situations; if an assailant with a firearm has the drop on you and you stupidly try to out-draw him....well, the results will be fairly predictable. As Sky points out, discretion is sometimes the better part of valor, whether you are armed or not. Techniques exsist that allow one to suddenly and advantageously reverse such situations, but they are risky and difficult for anyone without a very vested effort in self-defense education to execute.

That said, the suggestion that simply posessing a weapon makes you more prone to becoming a casualty is questionable. In many cases, possessing a firearm will make you much less prone to becoming a casualty; for instance, if someone is intent upon killing or wounding you with an inferior weapon, a firearm would be a decided advantage under most circumstances. Similarly, if one were to find oneself in the area of a mass shooting, use of a firearm is a much better recourse than simply panicking and running/hiding, counting upon others to take bullets for you. That is, assuming you care anything for the lives of others.

In fact, in the situation described above, one would stand an excellent chance of successfully wounding or killing the attacker because they would have the element of surprise.

True, if a bit nebulous. Carrying weapons, especially concealed weapons, may indeed not have any deterrant effect at all. Statistically speaking, I could walk into just about any venue in the US, start shooting, and reasonably expect not to be shot at until I had done a considerable amount of damage. It is also probable that I could rob a given merchant or person without fear of armed reprisal.

Nonetheless, if private weapon ownership and responsible usage were to be encouraged, the deterrant effect would manifest itself much more effectively, imo. I realize the critics often point to the comparitively high ratio of guns to citizens in the US as evidence against that point, but those statistics are quite misleading. Most gun owners own more than one firearm. I myself own six, but I'm not indicative of the US population as a whole. Nonetheless, all my registered weapons count towards the ratios calculated by the ATF. Once you factor in the number of obsolete or collector firearms, which must also be registered, the ratio of guns to citizens in the US is quite low, though still above average for most nations. Admittedly, I imagine that the ratio would be raised quite a bit by the presence of illegal firearms, if there was any reliable way of tabulating their numbers.


What you say is quite true Sky. Quite true. If more gun owners shared this aspect of your views I'm sure that private gun ownership and regulation would not be such an issue. Unfortunately, most people in the US don't share your cognizance. Stances on gun usage range from those held by the reckless to those held by the insufferably paranoid.

Personally, I'd love to see the second amendment revisited, provided that the spirit of it remains the same. As citizens, it is our duty and our right to arm and defend ourselves against aggressors and the state, should circumstances warrant it. The fear of an armed populace is a deterrant to criminals of any kind, including criminal states, if weapon ownership is pervasive enough. That much I hold true.

However, I would like to see a proper Constitutional stance on modern firearms; one that protects and encourages proper usage and training. For all their wisdom, the founding fathers could not have predicted the advances in small-arms technology, and this is one of the few areas in which I am willing to compromise on Constitutional principles, assuming that it is done in the proper spirit and fashion.

As individuals, it is our right to defend ourselves, our families, and our possessions against both lawlessness and totalitarianism; to surrender it is to put ourselves at the mercy of the powerful and the immoral. With that right comes the responsibility to excercise it properly, that we might not become tyrants or criminals ourselves. Firearms are the modern weapons of choice when it comes to individual defense. Firearms are force incarnate, force to good or ill. As a free society, we have the responsibility to ensure that these weapons are freely available to the law-abiding citzenry, so long as responsibility and proper training can be demonstrated. How we decide to go about establishing what constitutes proof is something else again, but I feel that the idea is sound.

Something that must be kept in mind is statistics can be molded and shaped to ones point of view. Without being familiar with the AJPH, I can't say what their motives are for this "study" and how accurate the results are. But I will agree that a gun does not replace your brain. It's just an extra tool that may or may not help you in a potentially violent scenario.

Maybe I should explain what they did, people not familiar with academic slang may not get the right picture form the short summary that is available to us.

What they did is they took the crime cases of a given area (Philadelphia) in a given period of time (2003-2006), separated them in two groups (attacker vs unarmed and attackervs armed victims), and looked in what group more people got shot at. Well, that is not precisely what they did, but their approach acchieves an effect that could be described like this. They found that in the group with the armed people, 4.4 times as many of these armed people got shot at and got wounded/killed, than in the other group (again, I try to "translate" what they actually did into what was the inention for doing it). The summary also indicates that the finding is statistically significant (means it is not caused by random chance, but there is a real significant difference between the two different rresults for both groups. That is no surprise, becasue in established scientific magazaine you do not get conclusions or results published if they fail the significance criterion as long as there is no infomrational value to be gained from understanding that a given hypothesis could not have been supported in a given experimental setup. but usually publication of data in established science magazine depends on that a significant difference between two or more groups is being found instead of being rejected.

They did no experiments. They ran no observation setups in "wild life out there".

They did a statistical analysis of data from the official crime records.

I aSSUME THEY GOT THE MATERIAL DIRECTLY FROM EITHER THE POlice or the city administration.

What was it that Neal said recently about the curse of CAPS LOCK?

Further to what Sky just posted, We adjusted odds ratios for confounding variables should also be explained...

Confound variables are pretty much things which affected the results and offer an alternate explanation other then the proposed one. All forms of psychology research use various methods to avoid or at least limit confound variables as much as possible.

In this case I would imagine that they made sure that the ratios of crime types (mugging, rape, home invasions) was balanced between the two groups to avoid skewing the results. This would be done as certain types of crime are probably more likely to incite violent behavior then others.

Statistical analysis is also usually a pretty solid research method provided everything was done on the up and up by the research team. Statistics themselves cannot be molded provided they were gathered and calculated properly, but you can mold how they are presented to the public, as they do not understand statistics.

As for the results I am not surprised by the results. Firearms will always escalate the probability of violent action, not suppress it.

I'm sorry but that statement is incorrect. The probability of someone getting shot goes up dramatically if both parties are armed sure. But chances are the bad guy will be the one who does the shooting first.

Thanks, NeonSamurai, I wanted to explain confounding variables too, but forgot to do so while writing the above post.

Having guns around the house also increases the likelyhood of gun-related accidents etc.

I've also heard cops say that they are afraid when they go to a crime scene where everyone is armed. How are they supposed to know who the criminals are?

No surprise.
If your the type of person who is badass enough to be packing; your the
kind of person Joe Mugger will be sure to shoot before he gets shot
himself.

Criminals don't feel the need to shoot old ladys in the same way they
might feel safer if they shoot the guy in the NRA t-shirt.
That is common sense and the study shows it.

However, in defense of the pro-gun lobby, the study does not detect if you
are less likely to be assaulted in the first place if you have a gun.

Whilst having a gun may be counterproductive during a mugging, it may help
prevent you being a mugging target at all.
Thats is an important point.

Of course, all these points and in the micro and it is in the macro that guns are
arguably the most counter productive.

Never advertise the fact a firearm is present. And don't draw the weapon unless it is going to be fired within 2 seconds.

Never use the firearm as a threat and it cannot be used against you.

QFT. And in a city like Philly, how much of those numbers are gang related?

My thought process on this is simple: if you trust people to own, say, a handgun, an efficient tool for killing, why not trust them to own something more powerful to be more efficient at killing, when the only killing they can legally do is self-defense?

The argument that we'd be "allowed" to have a tool, but not that good of one, for defense makes little sense to me. You'd think that, if the people making that argument REALLY cared about people's ability to defend themselves, they'd be proponents of said people choosing whatever tool they feel suits them best.

Okay, so that's just a bit of mental exercising there.

In reality, I do think you're right - there's not much reason for an average Joe to own fully automatic firearms. On the other hand, I have no problem with semi-auto carbines and high-cap magazines.