Skimming the paper, it looks like they paired shooting victims with demographically similar control subjects. While the overall conclusion seems plausible (gun possession causes an increase rather than decrease in risk of being shot) this approach seems really hard to do correctly. Are you familiar enough with their methodology (and with the causative pitfalls involved) to discuss it?
>"A fisherman was attacked by a shark after he hauled it into his boat to pose for a commemorative picture.
>Angler Stephen Perkins, 52, got more than he bargained for when he hauled the fish on board his boat 'Serenity' off Lundy Island, Devon.
>As he was preparing to unhook the fish, it sank its teeth into his wrist leaving him needing re-constructive surgery. It has earned him an unlikely place in history as the first documented case of a man being bitten by a Blue Shark off British waters."
And if we include dead sharks -
>"There have, however, been several people injured by sharks on land including a landlady in Kent who was hit by a set of shark jaws which fell off the wall of her pub and a man whose arm was trapped inside the jaws of a dead shark he was transporting on ice after he stopped his van suddenly sending the carcass flying through the air, snapping its jaws shut on his arm."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/3350690/Man...
This is honestly one of the most hilarious counter-examples I've ever read.
Nahh, if I was doing that I'd probably have pointed out that per capita, people are twice as likely to be shot to death by a toddler in the US as by a cop in the UK.
I was merely taking the golden opportunity to be very silly about sharks.
Have you just had those waiting around for the perfect moment or did you just go out and find them?
Say hello to Darwin for me.
Taking your shark tank metaphor, some people believe it‘s simply not possible to remove guns from a society, which is untrue as well, as the recent example of Australia shows.
Heck, lots of people in Germany used to have a gun in WW2, while in 2011, German police shot a whole of 85 bullets in total. Which, incidentally, is exactly one bullet less than Texan police emptied into a single, unarmed suspect after a car chase in the same year. Well, you get what you vote for.
I am neutral / undecided on the gun ownership issue but simplifying and using misleading information doesn’t help anyone.
Switzerland also has a lot more social security than the US. I agree that it's more complex than "guns are bad", but using Switzerland as an argument for gun ownership is just glossing over the details to come up with an artificial example where gun ownership doesn't result in increased violence.
Though I do not concede the use of the word "artificial" as correct in your sentence, bringing in the Swiss data point is incredibly relevant in response to a claim that "Actually, no, study after study shows that the amount of guns in a society is strongly correlated to its homicide rate, both directly as well as indirectly."
I don't know how much statistics can help with decisions (like "Should I own a gun?") when so much of the "on the ground" events depend on the character of the person carrying.
[1] Not to brag, but uh, he can shoot the pips out of a playing card while riding by on horseback. He enters contests and such. ;-)
Things I noticed in the paper:
However, compared with control participants, shooting case participants were significantly more often Hispanic, more frequently working in high-risk occupations1,2, less educated, and had a greater frequency of prior arrest. At the time of shooting, case participants were also significantly more often involved with alcohol and drugs, outdoors, and closer to areas where more Blacks, Hispanics, and unemployed individuals resided. Case participants were also more likely to be located in areas with less income and more illicit drug trafficking (Table 1).
Okay, so it's more likely for people to be shot in poorer neighborhoods, and especially when they're in the vicinity of things that generally involve gangs and other organized crime groups. Carrying a gun, especially an unconcealed one, may be an indicator, intentional or not, of alignment with a party here. Not unsurprising, unfortunately.
In the cases of unprovoked, one-sided violence, or the threat of it, (such as kidnapping, armed robbery [including "pickpocketing"], I think I would probably want to have some ready form of self-defense, be that being physically fit and knowing MMA, carrying around one of those Hello Kitty shank things, carrying a concealed knife, or running some flavor of concealed-carry (please, oh please, do not stick your gun in your purse / backpack).
On average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. Although successful defensive gun uses are possible and do occur each year, the probability of success may be low for civilian gun users in urban areas. Such users should rethink their possession of guns or, at least, understand that regular possession necessitates careful safety countermeasures. Suggestions to the contrary, especially for urban residents who may see gun possession as a surefire defense against a dangerous environment, should be discussed and thoughtfully reconsidered.
Okay, so people who think that having a shooty-bang is a sure-fire way to not get shot have another think coming. And? The 4.46 times as likely to get shot statistic feels a little bit off, and I personally think that it needs more unpacking. What percentage of those individuals affiliate with syndicated crime? How many people in the list were involved somewhere in the process of procuring or consuming drugs? These feel like huge stats that are just missing.
Personally, what I would like to research is how many times that guns have reduced the number of casualties in bad situations.
There are some definite no-nos, like assault-weapons. And if you want to regulate, instead of prohibit, you have to invest into a good gun culture, which we really don't know anything about. That would be a big social engineering challenge.
There are some advantages, like lone-shooter type events becoming much less insidious, which don't cost as many lives as say sedentary life-styles, but being powerless in those (improbable) situations makes us very insecure. That insecurity is very erosive and tiring; but on the other hand, if gun-carry was implemented, and we didn't have a good enough culture, you'd get "casual" shootings, where what would have been a fist fight turned into a gun fight.
There's also the argument about whether or not to treat adults as inherently competent. Prohibition, i.e. complete deregulation, all in all seems to me like a quick hack; of course, the other side of the coin is that good regulation is really hard. I'm somewhat torn, but leaning towards regulation. To me it seems like one of those decisions that isn't easy, because it's not win-win-win across the board, but it's worse if you don't do it.
Of course this is mostly fantasy. I don't think we'll see gun-carry in the West any time soon. We're used to complete delegation of personal-security and the shift, at this point, would be counter-cultural.
What part of the West are you talking about? It's super common in vast swathes of the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_policy_in_the_United_...
Militarization of police in USA is good example. They will always outgun you.
Anyone who thinks that firearms purchased through their local gun store will do anything to stop a truly tyrannical government is living in a fantasy.
Police and soldiers (should) have different goals and tools.
We haven't (thank god) had a situation in the USA where actually shooting at law enforcement is a good idea. That is, where you're literally at war with the government and trying to replace it with another one, which will in turn recognise your actions as not against the law. On the other hand, things like home invasions happen daily.