Re: Ove Interest?

On 3/5/2025 11:07 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 3/5/2025 11:38 PM, John B. wrote:

On Wed, 5 Mar 2025 19:31:40 -0600, AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org> wrote:
>

>
Ownership of a firearm is one thing but being readily
accessible and ready to fire is another. Under many local
ordinances, firearms must be locked, which greatly stymies
defense when decisions are final in less than a second.

 Which reminds me of John's personal tale of a real home invasion. That paragraph may explain (in part) why his gun did him no good at all. Only the most fearful homeowner would keep his gun on his person just in case someone burst into the home.
 

Then there's software. Most firearms owners do not get
regular range time and so will more probably fumble away
decisive time or even shoot themselves than successfully
defend under sudden, immediate attack and under a wave of
adrenaline.

 Right. And even most target shooting for sport would probably do little to prevent that fumbling, because it doesn't usually involve super-fast grabbing the gun out of storage, quickly loading it, then quickly hitting a target. Practicing skills is a highly specific exercise.
 

And then there's negligence and yes, sadly, would-be
defenders do shoot relatives and other innocents after
hearing a bump in the night.

 And it's not just mistaking innocents by mistake. I'm sure that a much larger percentage of intra-household shooting victims are shot deliberately. A thug of a husband gets furious at his wife and blows her away.
 Good points in those three paragraphs.
 

So while I'm generally supportive of firearms for self
defense, especially home defense, I recognize this is a
varied, complex and unclear area in many aspects.

>
I came across this study just the other day
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199310073291506
a total of 420 home killing of which 209 were committed by firearm and
211 by other means.
>
Now, any killing is a terrible thing but one has to view with some
skepticism someone that ignores the major cause of death to emphasize
the minor cause.
>
Can his motives be viewed as impartial, or simply a means of
emphasizing his own opinions.

 You're dancing away from the question at hand. I said all the data I've found indicates a gun in the home makes the occupants less safe, and more likely to be shot by that gun.
 Your source said the same:  "After controlling for these characteristics, we found that keeping a gun in the home was strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of homicide (adjusted odds ratio, 2.7; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.6 to 4.4). Virtually all of this risk involved homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.
"Conclusions: ... Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance."
 You don't seem to realize that you've yet again corroborated my position. You're failing at logic, John.
 

We can agree that the subject, as with anything covering large numbers of humans who have random behavior, is complex.
But overall, negligent/malicious domestic firearm incidents combined* is two magnitudes smaller than successful home defense by firearm (209 vs a quarter million or more per year)
For which reason, as I said, peruse your situation and make your decision. There are no absolute rules here.
*two utterly different things lumped together.
--
Andrew Muzi
am@yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971