A Little Hard Data to PO the Anti-Gun Crowd
Some “gentle souls” out there think all guns should be banned. They are indeed ignorant and misguided fools.
They’re probably beyond education on this point. But I’ll try to enlighten them anyway.
There are many reasons the 2nd Amendment recognizes an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. Some are related to liberty. But one even more near and dear to all of us is personal protection.
Here is a short, “quick and dirty” list of average police response times to emergency calls (generally defined as violent crimes in progress requiring an immediate police response) in major cities in the US. In smaller towns and rural areas, the response time can be expected to be longer.
- Minneapolis – around 8 minutes
- NYC – a bit over 9 minutes
- Denver – from 14 to 17 minutes
- Chicago – between 3 and 4 minutes (allegedly)
- DC – between 7 and 9 min (old data)
- Atlanta – 11+ minutes
- Phoenix – between 4 and 6 minutes
- Dallas – about 6 minutes
- Houston – about 5 minutes
- Seattle – about 6.3 minutes
- Detroit –24+minutes!
- LA – 5.7 miutes
Nationwide Averages: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus/previous/cvus107.pdf
I’ve read somewhere that the average violent crime takes on the order of 1-2 minutes. That’s eminently believable; I damn well know someone with a knife can carve another person up like a steak to the point they won’t survive in a minute or less. A baseball bat can do the trick even quicker. So that means in only a small fraction of the cases (far less than 10%) would the police even be able to arrive during the crime – much less in time to prevent it, or to prevent injury of the innocent.
There’s a good reason for the old saying “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.” It happens to be true.
Anti-gun fools, I don’t much care if you want to help criminals and make yourselves easy targets incapable of defending yourself against an armed attacker. But I take exception to you making it impossible for me to defend myself and my family.
And so does the US Constitution.
Category: Gun Grabbing Fascists, Guns
@49. Actually, I skipped BBs with my son when he was 4 and he went straight to a short .22. He’s a helluva shot and, I might add, as safe a weapons’ handler as they come. So, yeah, that’s a good idea, Joey.
35,
The framers saw hundreds of their countrymen murdered by a tyrant, with thousands more to come if they had ceded their means of defense to said tyrant.
What does it say about your empathy when you stand on the bodies of innocent children and adults alike, and use them as a bully pulpit from which to demonize and defame law-abiding people who had nothing to do with a despicable act of evil. You’re a ghoul, plain and simple.
@35 They had seen entire families destroyed by an oppressive regime Joe, they felt the importance of owning a firearm to protect yourself from crime and the government was a fundamental right of every citizen.
More law doesn’t stop this kind of crime, the only shot (maybe) was if this kid’s mom had taken his illness as seriously as it apparently was and we had a system for dealing with this level of mental illness effectively and proactively. I don’t believe our current system does that however, so I don’t see this crime being prevented. Had this boy no access to firearms he could just as easily walked into the school and detonated himself and a classroom full of children or an auditorium full.
Knee jerk responses make for compelling television and radio soundbites, but typically make p1ss poor policy.
Maybe ghoul was a bit harsh, sorry about that. You’re more like a vulture.
They never saw one wacko with a Bushmaster take out twenty 1st graders in the space of a couple of minutes, I guarantee you that. The 2nd is an anachronism we are beter off without, or at least in a heavily amended state.
55: Joe – are you serious? Cannonball explosions? What happens if that sick had used a propane tank? Would you be outlawing them?
Joe,
They also never saw someone like you instantaneously transmit sheer idiocy to a worldwide audience at the click of a mouse, or the push of a touch screen either. If we follow Joe logic (a contradiction in terms if there ever was one), the world is better off if you limit your exercises of the 1st Amendment to shouting on street corners and writing with feather pens on parchment.
Apparently those families, including children, were less “dead” because the shooter didn’t kill them quite fast enough.
@55. Okay, Joe, it’s true that George Washington didn’t fire a Bushmaster. He never used a cell phone or a computer either. I’m guessing he never flew in a plane or drove a car, let alone a tank. Chances are George never drove a submarine or a helicopter or even a speed boat. Shall I go on?
What’s it say Power Ranger? It says that myself, and about 300 million Americans, and the rest of the civilized world are sick of apologists who are in favor of allowing 8500 people a year to be slaughtered by guns. That’s what it says.
Air-Cav,
You make a good argument for the constitution as a living, evolving document. Thanks
@60
Your estimation of 300 million Americans is obscenely off.
Joe: what, you don’t like freedom? Then as I’ve also told you before: just freaking move to Europe if you don’t like the US. After you’ve (1) proven you’ve moved, and (2) provided verifiable proof you’ve renounced your US citizenship, I’ll send you some $$$ to help defray the cost of your one-way ticket. It will be money well-spent.
That’s if you can find any Euroweenie country that will have you, of course. Most of them have standards, even if they no longer have balls.
And for the record, since you seem dense enough to need it spelled out for you: no one here is interested in ” little children on (any) 2nd amendment altar”. We just are adults who realize that (1) evil exists, (2) insanity exists, and (3) some things cannot always be prevented without a cure that is worse than the disease. Such massacres by demented jerks don’t happen in absolute dictatorships like North Korea. Such things – and worse – happen at the hands of the government.
You want perfect security? Then kiss freedom goodbye. You want freedom? Then forget perfect security. In the real world, it’s an either/or choice.
If you’d rather be a secure slave than a free citizen, please do so in another nation. We have too many like that already.
I don’t buy into your concept of “freedom”. Yours is a phony, commercially generated version courtesy of Smith & Wesson.
@61. No, Joe, I made no such argument. In point of fact, I made no argument at all. I never even mentioned the Constitution. Nor did I allude to it. I know you are desperate for a confederate, Joe, but do try to maintain some semblance of honesty.
@60 Cars kill more people- lets ban cars.. Abortion certainly kill more kids in two days then guns do all year. Want to go on a ban of things that kill people Joe?
Nik: indeed he is. Latest polls I saw showed the US population favored less gun control – not more.
But cut Joe some slack. He’s been a bit irrational and edgy ever since the 7th Circuit Court of appeals told Illinois to go pound sand, held that the 2nd Amendment means what it actually says about the right to “keep and bear arms” – and gave them 6 months to fix it. Ever since, he’s been acting like a spoiled child who can’t find his “blankie” at nappy-time.
2-17, you made a great argument for the constitution as a living, breathing, evolving document, you’re just not aware you did.
@64 Then you don’t buy into the concept of the freedom that this country was founded on. Read Federalist papers number 46 where Madison talks about the difference between the armed citizenry in America and the poor unarmed citizenry of Europe.
I find it funny that you Joe come on here and clammer for “gay rights” and “gay marriage” neither which appears in the Constitution, but you don’t buy into the concept of the ACTUAL FREEDOMS written in the Bill of Rights.
Screw it. Let’s just ban people. No more murder..no more need for home and personal defense…
Oh…wait…
That’s what some folks don’t get. As long as there are people, there is going to be murder. As long as there are people, some of those people are going to be crazy. And as long as some of those people are crazy, there are going to be senseless acts like Newtown. They’ll use whatever means are available to do it, be it guns, explosives, or a kitchen knife (Osaka, Japan – 2001).
So, let’s ban people.
Joe, you really need to read up on US and world history. I understand that you would cash it all in for a warm blanket and a binky. I get that. You are frightened. I get that. We are not and, thankfully, neither were those who settled this land, founded our government, expanded our territory, or preserved our freedom.
Joe, in Washington’s time period, the favored method of mass slaughter was to herd the offenders into a church or barn, and then set it on fire. Anybody that attempted to run was bayonetted. Mass killing isn’t a new thing; the weapons used to perpetrate it are.
Hey Joe –
2-17 Air Cav: I think Joe was talking to me vice you re: “freedom”.
As Joe freely admits, he also doesn’t agree with the concept of freedom that the Constitution itself defines. Why? Because he very obviously disagrees with what the Constitution itself says in plain and unambiguous language.
Oh, and Joe? Last time I checked, the Constitution predates Smith & Wesson, Colt, Remington, and virtually all other US firearms manufacturers currently in existence – by decades.
Sheesh – I’m damned glad you do IT support vice teach in Durango. You’re clearly not qualified or bright enough to teach anything useful.
No, Joe, I am quite lucid and sane. If I made the argument, I would certainly know it. What you did was coopt my words and apply them in a twisted fashion to something altogether different. In other words, your presumption is rebutted. I am quite aware of your penchant for silliness and stupidity. You and Insipid are two peas in a pod. You are both hysterics and the very notion that I would engage in a serious discussion regarding the Constitution with either of you is beyond the pail.
PintoNag,
..and (minor point), the effectiveness of those weapons.
I suppose, Joe, that you’re hiding a bunch of those “300 million” Americans in your coat pocket and the ones actually living in all the states are just NRA impostors thwarting our only chance at utopia?
If we take your 8500 number, even give you a numerical edge by assuming that each death occurred with a separate firearm, and apply it to ~80 million privately owned firearms in the US, that doesn’t even come close to 1% of those weapons that are used in negligent or criminal actions. Maybe you should go look at similar numbers for swimming pools, cars, power tools or high rooftops.
You won’t do that though, because it’s much easier to come here and blow hard about something you know nothing about.
OK 2-17, If the founders had no inkling of a Bushmaster, cellphone, computer, plane, car or tank, how could they have any opinion on them? They wanted to leave some wiggle room for things they could ot foresee. We have a name for things that never change, are inalterable – dinosaurs, and we know how well they did.
Joe: ever heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory? Read up on that – or have someone find and read the material to you – and then tell me how less effective fire is as a means of mass killing than a firearm.
78,
That “wiggle room” is the Constitution and the Amendments process. If you really believe what you say about this, be honest about what you want and push for repealing the Amendments you think are too icky for your delicate sensibilities.
It’s kind of funny how Joe just blissfully goes on ignoring those facts that directly contradict what he says.
OK, so the lives of twenty kids are obviously not enough to make you budge one inch on your stance that you, and anyone at all without a felony, anyone, should be able to own as many powerful guns as they want, social consequences be damned. Thought experiment – how many kids being killed by guns at one sitting might make you think we’ve reached the break even point? Is there any number of young lives that would make you take a second look at the second?
How many inanimate objects will you ban in your quest to find “safety”? According to the FBI baseball bats kill more people, but you just want to ban guns…
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Ah, here’s the second predictable rhetorical device: a rigged strawman situation – sort of like asking a person if they’ve stopped beating their spouse. People without a good argument are SO predictable!
C’mon, Joey-boy – that one is beneath even your abysmally low standards of argument.
One innocent child is obviously too many in a perfect world. Unfortunately, the world isn’t perfect. And it is not possible to provide perfect security, particularly when a demented attacker is willing to kill themselves also.
The OKC bombing killed 19 children under the age of 6, and 168 persons overall; 600+ others were injured. Why aren’t you arguing for a ban on rental trucks, fertilizer, and diesel fuel?
Ah Joey-boy. You go right on ahead, making up your own facts and dodging the ones that you find to be inconvenient.
Here’s a little thought experiment for you, Joey: in Durango, the average police response time is (if you believe the figures) between 3 and 4 minutes.
Three guys just broke into your house, surprising you and your wife at 2AM. Two have baseball bats; one has a knife. They’re standing in your hallway – about 15 feet away – and looking at you through the open door. They’re nicely backlit by the night light.
The one with the knife says they’re going to castrate you, tie you up, rape your wife while you watch – then kill you both, rob the place, and split. Then they start walking towards you.
Which makes more sense: for you to lie there pissing your pants in fear because you don’t have any way to defend yourselves and know you’re both going to die – or to pick up the pistol on your bedside table and to let 3 low-life bastards begin their eternal dirtnaps?
When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
82 Joe,
Your premise is garbage and full of fallacy; as such I reject it outright.
Like every other hysterical non-thinker on this issue, you place complete blame on the tool and give no responsibility to the person wielding the tool. The “social consequences”, as you put it, of the guns we own lawfully and responsibly, mean that there are roughly 80 million guns owned by free citizens in this country with a tiny fraction of a percentage point owned or used irresponsibly and/or unlawfully.
There are two big “break even” points reached here. One is the fact that the prison system can’t and shouldn’t be the only means by which ticking mental timebombs can be addressed and dealt with. The second is that a sign declaring “gun free” zones might as well say “HELPLESS VICTIMS HERE” in bright neon to the sort of twisted malignant narcissist who wants to make himself famous via mass murder.
Anyone who insists, in the face of all facts to the contrary, that criminalizing non-involved people who played no part in these atrocities and curtailing their rights of protection against those who will commit them, is not interested in a serious conversation.
Remember this discussion next time you want to call someone else a religious zealot of some kind, and then go look in a mirror.
@ Hondo: You said, “And as I’ve told you elsewhere, Joe: had one member of the staff been armed that day, there’s a pretty good chance that those 20 children would still be alive.”
I agree that had someone been armed there’s a CHANCE for less of a loss of life, but I disagree with it being a ‘pretty good’ chance. Role-play it out – not knowing what is going on, being an administrator or teacher, and hearing shots fired. Where do you go? How do you sweep through the school? If you find a bunch of kids, do you escort them to safety or press on to find the perpetrator? How do you alert LEOs to your (allied) presence?
A lot of the answers to how likely a difference it would have made depend on the time-line of when the shots were fired. If, and I don’t currently have this information, all the deaths occurred in a 5-minute window, that’s vastly different than a 30-minute window.
Would an armed defender have made a difference? Entirely possible. Is there a ‘pretty good chance’ that it would have saved 20 kids? Damn unlikely, in my opinion. I’m willing to hear counter-arguments, obviously, but my point being that I think the merits of armed defense is lost in the debate when the benefits are exaggerated.
Anonymous: I’m not going to quibble over a choice of words such as “pretty good”, “good”, or “fair”. All denote a reasonably good chance – much higher than the 0% chance we saw.
The first shots were fired in the principal’s office. Sounds of them were broadcast over the entire school by the PA system. The children were killed some time afterwards. Anyone armed on-site would have been tipped that there was a shooter and had time to get ready.
If the armed individual had been the teacher in classroom where the first group of students were killed and kept his/her wits about them, very likely zero of the children would have died – the gunman would have bought it as he forced his way in through the door. Ditto had the principal been the one armed and had the option of dropping the shooter vice trying to tackle them barehanded (hands against either a pistol or rifle doesn’t generally work too well).
Other scenarios might have seen some – but less – loss of life.
88,
Nothing is guaranteed or taken for granted in such a horrible scenario. No one can say for absolute certainty what would have happened had circumstances been different and an armed defender were able to try and stop this fucker.
The certainty we do have, and did in this awful case, was that a killer had free reign to commit mass murder unanswered until outside help could be notified and mount a response.
Given those two scenarios, I’d rather go with the odds of someone willing, able and ready (as much as possible under the circumstances) to put a stop to the madness of a twisted psycho.
@88
“I agree that had someone been armed there’s a CHANCE for less of a loss of life, but I disagree with it being a ‘pretty good’ chance”
Even if it was only 50%…even if it was only 25%, that’s a hell of a lot better than 0%.
@89 & 90: I agree in principle that an armed defender would have resulted in a chance that this ended less badly for the kids, I just put it at the ‘low’ chance of it having made a difference. Still better than none, but because I view it as low, and because I feel that arming school staff runs the risk of other problems, I feel it’s not a compelling argument. You do, I don’t – no problem, we simply disagree.
The other part of that argument is what I mention above – I think, and you might not, that arming teachers runs the risk of other problems such as accidental deaths. I’m traveling right now and don’t have the statistics in front of me, but I’ll try to pop on later and give some actual numbers. Chances are we’ll disagree, but again, neither you nor I are politicians to my knowledge, so this is about learning, not policy.
92,
I’m not advocating for blanket and arbitrary arming of anyone that isn’t trained and ready to act accordingly. If the school districts want to have personnel, government or otherwise, specifically for this purpose I’m open to suggestions for what would work.
@82: In the case of Castle Rock vs. Gonzales, the SCOTUS said that the police do NOT have a Constitutional obligation to protect you. So; who are you going to turn to for your protection? Please enlighten us on your plans for my security and the security and protection of my children and grandchild. When it comes to them, I would rather my grandson go to elementary school where the teachers and staff are properly trained and armed, rather than waiting on the police to arrive. Since you are fixated on the 20 kids as your benchmark; would more of them be alive today had the staff and teachers of that school been trained and armed? We know that an armed citizen in the mall in Oregon saved countless lives by closing on the shooter with his weapon drawn and once the shooter saw it, stopped his attack and took himself out. Same thing happened in CT. The shooter took himself out once he saw a LEO pointing his weapon at him. In the mall shooting, the shooter took himself out before police even entered the mall.
I understand that the truth interferes with your utopian narrative, but sometimes you have to stop acting emotionally and start thinking with logic, reason, and common sense. The facts and statistics are against you, so you use the only thing you have; the memory of 20 innocent children to attempt to deflect. That’s makes you lower than snail shit.
@91: In a vacuum, yes, any chance is greater than no chance. The reality is that armed teachers might introduce other issues, though, such as accidental deaths, or even just poor gun safety mechanisms that results in easier access to firearms.
If you think that can’t happen, I’ll tell you some stories about kids hacking computers that are ‘secured’, or entering locked offices that they don’t have access to, etc.
Drunk drivers kill! We’ve been told that for years. But when it comes to guns, the guns kill. You figure it out. I can’t.
JOE – here’s a history lesson for you:
Since you’re a scholar on the 2d Amendment and still hung up on the “well regulated militia” thing, clearly you DO need a history lesson. The founding fathers never intended (or even envisioned) that 20 kids would get killed one day. So, here’s a little American history lesson since you asked for it:
First of all, the crime of the day back then was relative to the time. There were no “semi-automatic” weapons back then, but they still had their share of crime – and mass murder, too. Specifically, in an article found in the New Bern North Carolina Gazette, a story from July 7, 1775 reported that “‘a Demoniac’ shot three people and wounded a fourth with a sword, before being shot by others.” Back in those days, organized law enforcement didn’t exist (not as such as we have today), so who was responsible for maintaing good order and discipline? Yes, it was anyone considered part of a militia (able bodied men, ages 17 to 46). They were the law abiding citizens, who had guns handy and killed the lunatic so he wouldn’t rack up a greater body count.
Now go away and let the grown ups have a discussion.
Hey, Joey, deaths in the hospital, or related to a hospital stay have averaged about 170K to 190K since 2000. Where’s the angst and rending of garments for those victims?
There are far more victims that die from drunk driving, stoned driving, and medical malpractice than die from firearms, yet your panties remain unwadded over them.
CDC reports indicate cars are more dangerous than guns. When the left gives up their care, I will consider selling my guns.
http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/child_passenger_safety/cps-factsheet.html
Motor vehicle injuries are the leading cause of death among children in the United States.1 But many of these deaths can be prevented. Placing children in age- and size-appropriate car seats and booster seats reduces serious and fatal injuries by more than half.2
How big is the problem?
In the United States during 2009, 1,314 children ages 14 years and younger died as occupants in motor vehicle crashes, and approximately 179,000 were injured.2
One CDC study found that, in one year, more than 618,000 children ages 0-12 rode in vehicles without the use of a child safety seat or booster seat or a seat belt at least some of the time.3
@98. Jonn said it last evening in his response to that idiot Cole. The murderous rampage at the school makes the libs FEEL SAD AND BAD. They want not to feel sad and bad, so they want to ban guns to make themselves feel better, even though it accomplishes nada. Car accidents caused by drunk drivers just don’t impact the libs’ FEELINGS with the same force.