From: [t--wa--s] at [eng.umd.edu] (Thomas Grant Edwards)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.usa,talk.politics.guns
Subject: Gun facts was RE: Japanese Student Killed in Lousiana.
Date: 18 Jun 1993 04:40:39 GMT

Washington, D.C., a gun-banned city, is not safe!  Maryland and Virginia,
where you can own a handgun, is much safer.

<someone else wrote>
>> My now-deceased aunt was assaulted and raped in her home by an intruder -
...
>If you ask me it is a good thing that she did not have a gun. 

"Crime Control through the Private Use of
Armed Force" by Professor Gary Kleck that appeared in the 2/88 issue
of *Social Problems*. The American Rifleman had a short review of
this article in the 7/88 issue entitled: "Armed Citizens & Crime
Control" by Paul H. Blackman, Ph.D.

"Robbery and assault victims who used firearms for protection were
less likely to be attacked or injured than victims who responded in
any other manner. Only 17% of those using guns to resist attempted
robbery and 12% using guns to resist assault suffered any kind of
injuries. 25% of robbery victims and 27% of assault victims who did
not resist were injured anyway."

Attack, Injury and Crime Completion Rates in Assault Incidents

Method of            % Attacked     % Injured    Estimated
Self Protection                                 Num Times Used(a)

Used gun                23.2            12.1       386,083
Used Knife              46.4            29.5       123,062
Used other weapon       41.4            25.1       454,570
Used physical force     82.8            52.1     6,638,823
Tried to get help
or frighten offender    55.2            40.1     4,383,117
Threatened or reasoned
with offender           40.0            24.7     5,743,008
Nonviolent resistance,
including evasion       40.0            25.5     8,935,738
Other measures          36.1            20.7     1,451,103
Any self-protection     49.5            30.7    21,801,957
No self-protection      39.9            27.3     6,154,763

Total                   47.3            29.9    27,956,719

Notes: (a) Separate frequencies these columns do add totals in "Any
self-protection" row since a single criminal incident can involve more
than self-protection method. Sources: Analysis of incident files of
1979-1985 National Crime Survey public use computer tapes
(ICPSR,1987b).

"Dr. Kleck estimates "there were about 8,700-16,600 non-fatal, legally
permissible woundings of criminals by gun armed civilians" annually,
and "the rest of the one million estimated defensive gun uses, over
98% involved neither killings nor woundings but rather warning shots
fired or guns pointed or referred to."

------
You make the decision whether she should have had a gun or not
------

>in deciding how to respond to a menace
>to society there needs to be some reasoning about what is effective.

Yep.  The stats show that at least gun control does not reduce crime, and
that an argument can be made that an armed citizenry is an effective
crime deterrent, but we only have two data points where the citizenry of
an area were effectively re-armed.  We need more.

>Take Prohibition for example.
...
>...so far we have
>felt that allowing drugs is worse than drive-by shootings.)

Guess what?  Drug and gun prohibition _both_ contribute to crime. 

-Thomas