David Hemenway: guns don’t make you safer
This fellow, David Hemenway, a Harvard professor, writes in the LA Times about how statistically guns don’t make you safer in your home. He drags out the old canard that households with guns are more likely to have a suicide committed by someone with a gun and that households with guns keep the criminals supplied with firearms.
He claims that women aren’t necessarily safer with a gun because he could only find one woman who defended herself from an attacker with a gun out of 1100 cases he looked at…more than five years ago.
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.
Another study, in 2003, found that counties with higher levels of household gun ownership have higher rates of household burglary, not lower. Burglars like to steal not only cash and jewelry but also guns. A homeowner with a collection of firearms may not want to advertise that fact.
As for thwarting crime, gun advocates claim that guns are commonly used in self-defense, and that without a firearm, one is essentially at the mercy of a criminal. Yet, again, that is not what the data show.
Yeah, well, I troll through the news everyday looking for articles for our “feel good stories”. These stories are getting fewer and further between. But you know what hasn’t changed? Stories about families being tortured, tied up, and murdered because they don’t have a gun to protect themselves. Don’t believe me? Google “home invasion” and look at the “news” in the last 24 hours. There are more than 80 local stories about 93-year-olds knocked from their wheel chairs and beaten with a cane. Women who were tied up and raped in their own homes. A father shot in the head in front of his children. These stories come from across the country, but you don’t read about them, unless you’re looking for them.
We’ve been running these “feel good stories” about legal gun owners who successfully defended themselves and their families from criminals for more than three years, we’ve had at least one story everyday. That’s about 1100 stories, and probably 1099 more stories than David Hemenway read.
Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.
Category: Gun Grabbing Fascists
And since he’s at Harvard, he “should” have read this paper from Harvard:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf
But, what do I know, I’m just a dumb gun owner who might shoot myself, according to this genius…
The irony!! The introduction alone is enough to confound Hemenway’s assertion.
Is this anything like the statistical probability that homes without bathtubs have fewer accidental drownings in bathtubs than do those homes with bathtubs?
Presumably Professor Harvey is only considering legal firearms ownership – since that’s the only type for which reliable data is available.
I guess that must be why Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, Oakland, and DC have essentially no firearms crime. Because due to past or current legal restrictions, all three have an very low rate of legal firearms ownership.
Ditto with Mexico, right? According to liberal moonbats, crime disappears as soon as guns are outlawed, just look at say, Camden or Newark, NJ or LA as other fine examples! 😀
On the flip side, one could interpret household gun ownership as being the reason for firearm crime increasing due to the fact homeowners are blowing away intruders, rapists, protective order breakers, etc.,
Just a thought.
And what party has been responsible for running those fine crime free cities you mention over the last twenty years?
Perhaps the good professor can pull his head out of his ass and take a peek around at why cities with zero or severely limited legal handgun ownership run by democratic leaders for a couple of decades all magically appear on the lists of places no one in their right fucking mind would ever want to live in with their family.
No one has been statistically injured in my home due to my firearms, nor will they be unless they are attempting to enter said home without permission in the dead of night…before I met her my wife killed a man attempting to beat her and her mother with her firearm…I’d say statistically she was very much safer in her own home with that firearm than without it…
Funny enough, this reminded me of when the Clintons were the President in the 90s and were talking about legalizing marijuana.
“Well we’re considering it because if we legalize marijuana use, crime statistics will decrease!”
One day I hope to see laws that actually make politicians get held accountable for selling their vote to the highest bidder. (Well, its not “illegal” for my campaign to take money from lobbyists, so I do to get reelected.)
Hondo, if you are going to post remarks like this, PLEASE add a spew alert. I almost took that seriously.
Jeebus. I have a S&W .38+p five shot snubbie in a pocket holster in my pants as I type this.
That thing could kill the entire neighborhood!
Mom told me to keep it in my pants.
Ed, sounds like you’re saying:
“That’s what she said”
Liberals think that people shouldn’t have guns to repel criminals because that’s what Police Departments are for. Well then why don’t they scream to outlaw the private possession of fire extinguishers because that’s what Fire Departments are for! I guess our little tinfoil-headed creampuff of a Perfesser ignored the big violent crime rate drop in Kennessaw, GA after they passed their famous local ordinance! Snotty, smug little milquetoast liberals like him screeched and screamed about how Concealed Carry Laws were going to result in bloody gunfights all over the place like in the Wild West, but that never happened either, big drops in per capita violent crime rates followed, but since when have liberal moonbats paid any attention to things like facts, logic, and common sense?
Anyone care to bet that this guy probably also supports end of life choice (aka assisted suicide)? just as long as it’s like in Soylent Green and not with a firearm. As for supplying criminals with weapons, I though that was the DOJ’s job.
Liberals like Perfesser Tinfoil-head will screech and rally against the Death Penalty and do all they can to spare the lives of condemned murderers while supporting the wanton murder of unborn children, referring to it as a “right”. Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, and liberals prove it every day with their deeds and words.
As long as he’s the first one to make that choice, fine with me. The rest of us will choose something more appropriate.
What a maroon. Those studies were done by a choad named Kellerman and were revealed to be fake. Kellerman made up his data and got fired for it.
I am safer with a gun in my home. End of discussion. The good professor is probably one of those “all hail the collective” guys.
That tinfoil-headed professor sounds like some smug ponytailed Birkenstock-wearing freeze-dried hippie with pictures of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Guevara on his office walls.
Hold on a minute. Lay off the Birkenstocks.
Well, having a gun makes me FEEL safer, and for a soft headed liberal, that should be enough. I’m sorry if my gun makes him fell unsafe, I would never presume to tell him how to feel, but I would tell him to get off my yard.
Here’s all that you really need to know about the two researchers, Hemenway and Sonick, who are responsible for this junk: Four years ago, the two teamed up “[t]o investigate the association of carbonated non-diet soft drink consumption and violence perpetration in a sample of Boston adolescents.” That’s from the abstract of their study.
And here’s their conclusion, verbatim: “There was a significant and strong association between soft drinks and violence. There may be a direct cause-and-effect relationship, perhaps due to the sugar or caffeine content of soft drinks, or there may be other factors, unaccounted for in our analyses, that cause both high soft drink consumption and aggression.”
Quackery.
That’s like saying the can of AriZona Iced Tea and bag of Skittles made that kid go berserk on Zimmerman to where he got shot!
That’ll make Bloomberg feel better about his super-size soda pop ban when he was mayor. He didn’t by any chance fund this “research” did he?
Actually, I didn’t look into that but I would not be at all surprised to learn that the funding grant came though him. It’s not as if these “researchers” whose lives depend on grants don’t know who is behind them and can’t guess what the, um, preferred conclusion would be.
If that study doesn’t provide the springboard for jokes, nothing ever will.
That is simply hilarious – or would be if it weren’t true. Thanks for posting that.
It’s strange, isn’t it? that all those years before that study, kids who drank soda and ate popcorn didn’t go out and commit heinous crimes after wards?
Don’t you think that’s strange? I think it’s incredibly strange? But it doesn’t explain the Rape of Nanking, does it now? Or Pol Pot’s embracing the Khmer Rouge and their rampage through Cambodia. Or Joe Stalin’s endorsement of the gulags. Or, for that matter, Napoleon Bonaparte.
If there was any bit of reality in that study, then kids in the 50s and 60s would have been going on rampages and murder sprees after indulging at their local Malt Shop.
Then what does that say about milk? Seems that EVERYONE, including ALL CRIMINALS, have drunk milk in their lifetimes.
Thanks SOOOOOO much for that, AC. That study certainly would explain why I have never killed anyone – with a knife, a shovel, a car, a tank, or any other tool which can be used or abused. You see, carbonated beverages are not consumed in this household. We just don’t like them, and see no value in consuming them.
Yes, I FEEL much better now. It was a bit uncomfortable thinking that we have avoided killing anyone because we are mature adults who have high degrees of situational awareness, strong survival instincts, and the good fortune to have never accidentally been somewhere that we needed to defend ourselves by killing someone else.
Phew – what a relief to NOT have to take personal responsibility for our safety!
OWB: beer is a carbonated beverage. (smile)
But does that include the part about how starch makes you feel depressed (if you have gluten allergy/celiac disease)?
He can “statistic” that article right up his ass and shut his cock holster up! He should spend his time walking mean streets and confronting violent criminals with statistics that THEY should refrain from being criminals, instead of telling other law abiding citizens what they are doing wrong. See how that works for you professor. Let us all know.
From Hemenway: ‘Another study, in 2003,’
I am trying to absorb the idea that a study done 12 years ago is even vaguely relevant to the past 6 months, or what the relevance might be. There is a serious disconnect between now and Hemenway’s source, which he does not reference specifically. We are not, after all, discussing financial cycles or the price of sheep during the Medieval Warm Period. Are we? No. We’re not.
If Hemenway wishes to be considered to be not much more than a weak williepete in a windstorm, that’s his problem. Inflicting his fears on me and on other people, about whom he knows literally NOTHING, but about whom he feels entitled to make false assumptions, is pandering to sensationalism.
Besides, I think I could beat him at just about anything, including arm wrestling and Blackjack.
He’s doing what professors at the upity schools do – publish.
Most of what they publish is trash (reference this tool’s crap), but it supposedly makes them BMOC among their peers when they can say they “published” X amount of articles in X amount of publications. Most of the crap is ignored by normal people, just like this one will be.
“He’s doing what professors at the upity schools do – publish”. And the maroons who send their kids to those schools spend $500-$1000 per credit hour, or more, so that little Freddie or Alice can take a course taught by a non-tenured teaching assistant, who was a student last term or semester.
Then they wonder why Freddie or Alice move back in with them when they can’t find a job after they graduate with an Art History or Womyn’s Studies degree.
That or something like “Gender Studies” or they get say, a PhD in Chinese politics and move back in with their boyfriend bawling about how they can’t find a job with their degree!
PI, their boyfriend/girlfriend/cis-friend, who has a degree in Fryer Temperature Settings, can’t find a job either, after demanding $15.00/hour, McDs terminated their employment. They’re all getting evicted next week, and mom and dad won’t let their menagerie move back home with them.
Meanwhile, the smart kids are in the STEM programs, and getting recruited by companies like Apple and GE and Samsung at starting salaries that make your eyes literally pop. Computer engineering is producing the next generation of hard drives after the petabyte, which I think is the zottabyte, or some such exotic name. Bionic engineering is not just experimenting with bionic limbs, but making them and testing them on disabled people like combat vets. The exoskeleton will make a paralyzed vet walk and run again.
Chinese politics? Pfffftttt!!!
This is all horse shit!!!! If I am to believe the statement made in the first paragraph of this story, the good preefesser claiming gun ownership will keep felons supplied with guns….When will this idiot ALSO claim the other side of the coin. That, OBVIOUSLY being: If households are occupied by women, this will create more rapes in the world.
Send him and his irrational rhetoric down Shit Creek without a paddle!
“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.”
Ummmmm, why does he presume that private firearms ownership is fueling the violence and crime? Maybe the citizens have reacted to the violence and crime by becoming firearms owners. Wouldn’t people in high-crime areas react to the reality of their environment by taking defensive measures, like purchasing firearms? What proof does he have that he hasn’t put the cart before the horse?
As for the old saw about a firearm in the home being more likely to kill or injure a family member, let’s presume that’s true. Now how many of these situations are defensive uses of firearms against violent attacks perpetrated by one family member against another? If there are guns in these households, maybe it’s because one family member feels threatened by another.
Your post is just making too much sense for the professor to come up with another persuasive argument beyond…….”If there were not humans, especially family members, within a house……the likelihood of family arguments leading to shootings might just never occur.”
Just thinkin’, my neighbor KILLED three squirrels two weeks ago (they were wreaking havoc on his garden), I wonder if poodle crap-brained tinfoil-heads like this creampuff milquetoast prof would automatically consider those squirrels as “family members” just to drum up more fake data?
Curious, does the illustrious Doctor Hemenway read USDoJ stats on the subject? Because they disprove his claims.
Hemenway is a NOTORIOUSLY biased anti-gun “researcher” from Harvard. He and his monkeys, including his butt buddy Miller, have been around forever, trying to find causation between guns and all sorts of horrible mayhem.
He’s been debunked several times.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/defensive-gun-ownership-gary-kleck-response-115082.html?ml=po#.VR606fnF-Sr
I predict this will become the gun version of global warming.