From: egreen@East.Sun.COM (Ed Green - Pixel Cruncher)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers.house
Subject: Re: Burglars and dogs and snakes, oh my!
Date: 31 Jul 1992 15:01:58 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, RTP, NC
Distribution: world
Reply-To: egreen@East.Sun.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: laser.east.sun.com

In article 92Jul30172324@next4.osf.org, macrakis@osf.org (Stavros Macrakis) writes:

[talk of killing burglers]

>You apparently value your precious property rights more than human
>life.  No civilized state or country imposes capital punishment for
>burglary, yet you arrogate the right to yourself.

Boloney.  Invasion of my home is more than burglary.  How do you know
it's not another Manson or Rameriz crawling in your window?

You have no way of knowing who/what the "other guy" is.  He could be
out of his gourd on PCP, he could be stark raving mad.  He could be a
black belt, or carrying a gun of his own.  This is true EVERYWHERE
(which it why it's pretty stupid to pull over and get in a fight over
traffic infractions), but when a stranger is breaking into my house, HE
has chosen to initiate the confrontation.  What do I know about him?
For one thing, I KNOW he is a criminal.  That is enough to warrant
prudent self-defensive action.

If running out the back door to call the cops works for you, by all
means, pursue that course of action.

>And of course you ignore the high rate of accidents around guns: there
>are more accidental deaths from home guns than deaths in self-defense.
>Not to mention that a criminal is more likely to attack you if you
>threaten him than if you run away.

Both of these assertions are either flat wrong or distorted...

* MYTH #3: "Since a gun in a home is six times more likely to kill a family
*          member than to stop a criminal, armed citizens are not a deterrent
*          to crime."
* 
*   This myth, stemming from a superficial "study" of firearm accidents in the 
* Cleveland , Ohio area, merely represents a comparison of 148 accidental deaths
* (and some suicides) to the deaths of 23 intruders killed by homeowners over a
* 16 year period[1]. Gross errors in this and similar studies -with even 
* greater claimed ratios of harm to good - include: the assumption that a gun 
* hasn't been used for protection unless an assailant dies, no distinction is 
* made between handgun and long gun deaths; a11 accidental fire-arm fatalities
* were counted whether the deceased was part of the "family" or not; a11 
* accidents were counted whether they occurred in the home or not, while self
* -defense outside the home was excluded; a1most half the self-defense uses 
* of guns in the home were excluded on the grounds that the criminal intruder
* killed may not have been a total stranger to the home defender; suicides were
* sometimes counted, and some self-defense shootings misclassified; and
* Cleveland's experience with crime and accidents during those years was
* atypical of the nation as a whole - and, indeed, of Cleveland since the 
* mid-l970s-. Moreover in a later study, the same researchers noted that 
* roughly 10 percent of gun killings by civilians are justifiable homicides.[2]
*    Research conducted by Professors James Wright and Peter Rossi[3], for a 
* landmark study funded by the U S. Department of Justice, points to the armed 
* citizen or the threat of the armed citizen as possibly the most effective 
* deterrent to crime in the nation. Wright and Rossi questioned over 1 ,800 
* felons serving time in prisons across the nation and found:
* 
*      *  85 percent agreed that the "smart criminal"
*         wi11 attempt to find out if a potential victim is armed.
*      *  75 percent felt that burglars avoided occupied dwellings
*         for fear of being shot.
*      *  80 percent of "handgun predators" had encountered armed 
*         citizens.
*      *  53 percent did not commit a specific crime for fear that
*         the victim was armed.
*      *  57 percent of "handgun predators" were scared off or shot 
*         at by armed victims.
*      *  60 percent felt that the typical criminal feared being shot
*         by citizens more than he feared being shot by police.
* 
*    Professor Gary Kleck of Florida State University estimates that annually 
* 1,500-1,800 felons are legally killed in "excusable self-defense" or "jus
* -tifiable" shootings by civilians, and 8,000-16,000 criminals are wounded.
* This compares to 300-600 justifiable homicides by police. Yet, in far more 
* instances, civilians use a firearm to threaten, apprehend, shoot at a  
* crimina1, or to fire a warning shot without injuring anyone.
*    Based on surveys commissioned by *handgun-ban advocates* (Cadde11, Peter 
* Hart Associates), Kleck estimates that nearly 650,000 Americans use handguns
* for  protection from criminals annually - with over 300,000 additional 
* protective uses of long guns. U.S. Department of Justice Victimization surveys 
* show that protective use of a gun lessens the chance that robberies, rapes,
* and assaults wi11 be successfully completed while also reducing the 
* likelihood of victim injury. Clearly, criminals fear armed citizens. 
* 
*  [l] Rushforth, et a1., "Accidental Firearm Fatalities in a
*      - Metropolitan County" 1oo Am. Journal of Epidemiology,
*      499 (1975)
*  [2] Rushforth, et a1., "Violent Death in a Metropolitan County "
*      297 N. Eng1and Journal of Medicine. 531 533 (1977).
*  [3] Wright and Rossi, Armed and Considered dangerous; A
*      Survey of Felons and Their firearms (N Y Aldine de  _
*      Cruyter,1986).                       
* 
* The above is from "10 Myths About Gun Contol"/Institute For Legislative Action


---
Ed Green, former Ninjaite |I was drinking last night with a biker,
  Ed.Green@East.Sun.COM   |and I showed him a picture of you.  I said,
DoD #0111  (919)460-8302  |"Go on, get to know her, you'll like her!"
 (The Grateful Dead) --*  |It seemed like the least I could do...

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