An AR15 is a suitable option for home defence and hunting

I protest; I do not feel that I have changed any definitions. Furthermore, I am rather sceptical as to how carefully you make these claims considering that the incompatibility of my statement, "A 'suitable option' is not one which is perfect", and your criticism, "since when does something have to be "perfect" in order to be suitable for a task?". Your criticism regarding my choice to attack 'all guns' instead of the AR15 specifically is fairly ridiculous. To my knowledge, the civilian AR15 is a fairly typical civilian firearm, and therefore it is reasonable to think that studies and statements concerning civilian firearms are applicable to the AR15. One may as well argue that all of the studies that show excessive drinking is harmful do not apply to Saffron's Silent Night porter, because no one has ever studied or made statements concerning excessive consumption of Saffron's beer. For all we know, there might be hepatoprotective compounds in this particular porter... If you wish to argue this, I think it is reasonable to suggest that you should provide some reason for thinking that studies and statements regarding 'all guns' should not apply to the AR15. "You cite that guns are more often used in crime than in self defense, but how exactly does this automaticlly make it ill-suited to be used for the task at hand?" [sic] In general, it does. If a drug was developed that provided mild pain relief for 50% of test subjects, but caused excruciating pain in the remaining 50%, and if the effect could not be predicted, would we call this drug 'a suitable option for a headache'? I think not, even though it may work for many people. All (or close enough to all) drugs can have terrible side effects, but the risk of these is typically very low for drugs available to almost anyone, and although you would be right to say that mild side effects can be quite common, e.g. ibuprofen causes side-effects in 25% of patients, apparently, the 'side effects' associated with firearms of death and serious injury are, clearly, of considerable gravity. [1] Considering the severity of the 'side effects', to continue the metaphor, of guns and the prevalence of these, as stated in the previous report, create a compelling case against the suitability of guns, and therefore the AR15, for home defence. "Firearms are without a doubt, the most suited tools for self defense in general because they are effective against multiple attackers in a rapid manner, and use lethal force." Well, who's discussing firearms in general now? Petty jabs aside, I return to my previous point. Though they may be effective in certain situations, they are used to disastrous effect in the considerable majority of cases. If (lets say) 90% of the time putting a gun in your home is going to lead to suffering, when you intend the opposite, this is clearly not a suitable choice 90% of the time. Having a rabid St. Bernard dog in your home might prevent burglary, but Kujo is clearly unsuitable, because in all likelihood he will bite you too. My cited study is outdated? You can't have your cake and eat it. While reading a criticism of Kleck's conclusion of "over 2 million", I realised that the report I was reading was published in 1997.[2] Kleck's work must of course be even older than my 1998 study, and it appears to have been conducted between 1993 and 1994. Furthermore, I shall elaborate on the criticism, albeit through quotation. "One check on the credibility of these DGU estimates is made possible by the detailed follow-up questions included in both these surveys... From the NSPOF, we estimate that 322,000 used a gun to defend against a would-be rapist. But that is more than the total number of rapes and attempted rapes estimated from the best available source, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)!6.... Our closer examination of the DGU reports in the NSPOF suggests that almost half of the incidents appear to contain some internal inconsistency, or otherwise do not make sense" So by extrapolating the results from the survey using the same method as Kleck did, it appears that guns prevented an incredible amount of rapes, and furthermore, the respondents appear to contradict themselves quite regularly. They also discuss the 'false positive' which can produce some seemingly bizarre results. "In a total of almost 65,000 screening examinations (mammography plus physical exam), 1115 women were "positive" and followed up with biopsies. As it turned out, 983 (92 percent) of these positive tests were false, in the sense that they were not confirmed in the follow-up. Yet this result is not an indictment of mammography-indeed, the false positive rate was only 1.5 percent. But that was sufficient, given the rarity of the true positives (less than 0.3 percent) to ensure that most positive results would be false" As you can see, if the incidence of false positives is significantly greater than the incidence of the true positive, results can become misleading. I came across this report in a website which actually contains even more articles, with titles such as "Most purported self-defense gun uses are gun uses in escalating arguments and are both socially undesirable and illegal", and "Few criminals are shot by decent law abiding citizens". [3] A recent metastudy, by an author who contributed to the previous report, found that "scientific studies indicate that the health risk of a gun in the home is greater than the benefit" and that "there is no credible evidence of a deterrent effect of firearms or that a gun in the home reduces the likelihood or severity of injury during an altercation or break-in".[4] We must remember that using a weapon for 'home defence' necessarily involves keeping a gun in the home, which is why this has been the focus of my attack. With regards to hunting, I think hunting accidents are actually quite rare, and so I do not think I will be criticising the AR15 for hunting purposes, after all, I know very little about hunting and yet I know that the AR15 is a good choice - was it not a gun "modelled on the AR-15" (the two guns appear identical, to me) that was used by the Beltway sniper?[5][6] A fine, if immoral, display of accuracy. [1] http://www.drugs.com... [2] http://home.uchicago.edu... [3] http://www.hsph.harvard.edu... [4] http://ajl.sagepub.com... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org... [6] http://en.wikipedia.org...