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Re:Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of Ameri... by tshaddox on Thursday May 26, 2022 @12:18AM (#31514482)
How often do people use guns to defend themselves against violent crime, and how often do people kill themselves or others with guns (accidentally or intentionally)?
Re:Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of Ameri... by zmgsabst on Thursday May 26, 2022 @12:45AM (#31514684)
Defensive uses:

500,000-3,000,000

Suicides:

24,000

Murders:

14,000

- - - - -

Defensive gun uses:

https://datavisualizations.heritage.org/firearms/defensive-g...

Suicide and murder:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_S...

Re:Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of Ameri... by gbhn on Thursday May 26, 2022 @01:22AM (#31514916)
There are roughly a million violent crimes a year. It is not credible there are 3x as many defensive uses of firearms that are somehow being missed.

The page you reference indexes a few thousand over several years. Seems likely an undercount as the page claims but not by that much by probably a couple orders of magnitude.

Re:Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of Ameri... by jka on Thursday May 26, 2022 @04:25AM (#31515999)
As far as I can tell, the 500k-3m figure is from an unpublished[1] report that was commissioned by the CDC - further validation could be helpful.

There is also separate disputation of the figure in a report[2] by Harvard's Injury Control Research Center.

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/16/the-s...

[2] - https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-thr...

Re:Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of Ameri... by epicureanideal on Thursday May 26, 2022 @01:51AM (#31515090)
> There are roughly a million violent crimes a year

Source? Seems low.

Re:Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of Ameri... by zmgsabst on Thursday May 26, 2022 @01:56AM (#31515133)
Those numbers are (roughly) in line with FBI statistics, from 500,000 to 1,500,000 depending on if you include assaults.

https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/ucr.asp?table_in=2

Re:Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of Ameri... by zmgsabst on Thursday May 26, 2022 @01:53AM (#31515107)
Sure — I’m willing to believe a lower number; that was just what I found.
Re:Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of Ameri... by seoaeu on Thursday May 26, 2022 @01:45AM (#31515051)
Your first link shows 2400 documented cases since 2019 which is more than I’d have expected. But clicking through those examples… many honestly don’t seem that sympathetic. Stuff like “shootout between X and Y, but Y shot second so it was self defense”. Or “X fatally shot Y with no witnesses to contradict his self defense claim”.