This looks like a good place to mention the latest Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Study (2007-2011; released earlier this month) on the subject: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fv9311.pdf (http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fv9311.pdf) The interesting thing about this study (which gun control advocates have been oddly quiet about; personally, I think you're missing an opportunity here) is not just that gun crimes are down 39% from 1993, but also that someone finally produced a fairly reliable number of DGUs. In the past, this has been a very elusive number ranging from over a million a year to mere hundreds, depending on the data used and how the numbers were crunched.
On page 12 we see that between 2007 and 2011, there were about 235,700 incidents in which the victim of a nonfatal violent crime used a firearm in self-defense. That is 58,900 incidents a year. I am not sure what 'nonfatal violent crime' means, but my guess is it just means no one- victim or perpetrator- died. Now, we can't say how many of these were over-reactions; the survey did not address that. All we have is Table 11, which shows that the majority of victims offered no resistance like good little noble victims, and more people used weapons other than firearms to defend themselves far more than they used firearms. Table 11 also shows that firearms were used by victims of violent crime about eight times more than by victims of property crime.
58,000 people a year is hardly what I would call a paranoid fantasy. Of course, this is for all cases of self-defense, not conceal-carry alone. That data is not tracked, although if we could come up with a viable number and assume the 0.8% figure applies universally, we could estimate how many DGUs are by CCL holders.
I will leave you with one more article to ponder: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34714389/ns/us_news-life/#.UagsVNLqm6M (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34714389/ns/us_news-life/#.UagsVNLqm6M)
"But Dr. David Hemenway, Ph.D., a Harvard professor of public health who has studied gun violence for years, said that when it comes to concealed-carry laws, neither side can make a legitimate claim about their effects on crime.
Hemenway said that the most definitive review to date — a 2004 look at research on the topic by the National Research Council — “found no credible evidence that passage of right-to-carry laws increases or decreases violent crime.”
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Date: 31/5/13 04:43 (UTC)On page 12 we see that between 2007 and 2011, there were about 235,700 incidents in which the victim of a nonfatal violent crime used a firearm in self-defense. That is 58,900 incidents a year. I am not sure what 'nonfatal violent crime' means, but my guess is it just means no one- victim or perpetrator- died. Now, we can't say how many of these were over-reactions; the survey did not address that. All we have is Table 11, which shows that the majority of victims offered no resistance like good little noble victims, and more people used weapons other than firearms to defend themselves far more than they used firearms. Table 11 also shows that firearms were used by victims of violent crime about eight times more than by victims of property crime.
58,000 people a year is hardly what I would call a paranoid fantasy. Of course, this is for all cases of self-defense, not conceal-carry alone. That data is not tracked, although if we could come up with a viable number and assume the 0.8% figure applies universally, we could estimate how many DGUs are by CCL holders.
I will leave you with one more article to ponder: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34714389/ns/us_news-life/#.UagsVNLqm6M (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34714389/ns/us_news-life/#.UagsVNLqm6M)
"But Dr. David Hemenway, Ph.D., a Harvard professor of public health who has studied gun violence for years, said that when it comes to concealed-carry laws, neither side can make a legitimate claim about their effects on crime.
Hemenway said that the most definitive review to date — a 2004 look at research on the topic by the National Research Council — “found no credible evidence that passage of right-to-carry laws increases or decreases violent crime.”