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Re:Pistol sights by vkou on Tuesday June 13, 2017 @04:21PM (#14548266)
Accidents and domestic violence can be attributed to ~6% of gun deaths. Looking at just the former, there are at least 500 fatal accidents/year.[1] These are just clear accidents - there are also accidents which are prosecuted, and convicted as homicides - and accidents which are categorized as homicides, but are not prosecuted.

The number of justifiable gun homicides (Self-defense) is closer to ~250/year. [2]

So, your gun is indeed twice as likely to kill someone in an accident, then a bad guy in self-defense. (Never mind that not all of those justifiable homicides prevented violence against your physical person. Killing a burglar who wanted your stereo is lumped in the same category as killing someone who wanted to murder you.)

I don't have much of a horse in the legislature of gun control, but for most people, planning on using their gun for self-defense is a bit like becoming an alcoholic to reduce your risk of heart disease.

[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/

[2] http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable15.pdf

Re:Pistol sights by dfsegoat on Tuesday June 13, 2017 @05:18PM (#14548731)
> but for most people, planning on using their gun for self-defense is a bit like becoming an alcoholic to reduce your risk of heart disease.

This is a ridiculous conclusion. Sorry, you can't just take numbers from one study, and divide by another to approximate relative risk or odds ratio. That isn't how public health statistics and policy works.