You are less likely to attack someone if there is the risk that person has a gun. Just like you are less likely to speed in your car if there's a cop driving next to you.
If someone is trying to rob/assault/rape/kill you, when you otherwise are unable to defend yourself against a superior-strength assailant, you may find a gun much more useful than a car. Hard to drive when you've been beaten to death.
So, just so I understand, bad guys all have guns. And you wish you could have one too, for protection against said bad guys. But why is a firefight preferable to a mugging?
Gun is also a tool designed and optimized for self-defense. You may be willing to accept being defenseless in order to reduce risk of very rare events but not everybody wants that. I, for one, would prefer to accept this microscopic risk and be able to defend myself if more frequent situation - such as home invasion, encounter with a violent criminal intent on harming me, etc. - arises.
This is one of the most naive takes that I hear often.
An assailant with a gun is prepared to do you harm. There is a 100% chance that they are going to have their gun with them and be ready. They are no more going to wait for you to prepare to defend yourself than the person with a knife is going to swing it widely in a way your corner self defense class is going to prepare you to defend yourself.
That’s like people saying they want guns to protect themselves from the federal government when a small town SWAT team could take them out without breaking a sweat. Let alone the federal government with the worlds largest military.
> The root causes are probably unrelated. But how easy is to obtain a gun definitely correlates with relative increase in muggings with a gun.
That's true. I also think that it's likely that a gun is a better defence against mugging than is, say, a knife or one's fists. A small woman can shoot a large attacker, when her fists aren't going to be much use and a knife wound may not stop him until after he's already killed her. Having a gun doesn't mean that one will be able to draw and use it, of course; indeed, one may just end up giving one's attackers another weapon.
But I think the odds are better armed than unarmed.
> It seems way more likely that people own guns when the likelihood of murderous break ins is high, rather than the idea that the same break in situations are happening and they're just getting into firefights and losing.
A person with a gun may feel like they can "handle" the intruder more than someone who is unarmed. If you're unarmed you may take the less risky action of barricading yourself in a room and calling the police.
This is a common argument, and while it has some merit, it also reeks of illusion of control bias. Guns make people feel safer because they feel more in control of their safety.
In reality, if someone is armed and has broken into my house, I want it to be absolutely clear to them that I am unarmed. I want them to know that they have no need to attack me, and that they should just take some of my stuff and get out (by far the most likely reason they're there), leaving me unharmed. The alternative possibilities sound much worse to me.
This is true in almost every situation where people talk about guns being useful against crime. I think I am more likely to harm myself, to incite the other party to harm me, to harm a bystander (maybe someone in my household), or to harm someone that I perceive as a much more serious and dangerous criminal than they actually are, than I am to successfully be a "good guy with a gun who stops a bad guy with a gun".
What self defense tool is as effective as a firearm, especially in hands of a smaller or elderly person? Any gun control measure that restricts firearms makes it harder to defend yourself. I'd like to think you can depend on the police but that's not always the case.
Self defense with a firearm can be part of a plan to avoid being the victim of violence, but it works a lot better in a society where crime is rare, serious crimes are likely to be punished, and the probability of profiting from major crimes is low. When skilled and motivated criminals attack unsuspecting victims, they tend to be successful even if the victims are armed.
Case in point, in 1986, Michael Lee Platt and William Russel Matix went on a crime spree in the Miami area. They started by murdering a man at a shooting range to steal his firearm and car. They then tried and failed to rob an armored car, murdering an armed guard in the process. Next, they robbed a bank. After a couple months off, they robbed another armored car, during which they stole a guard's rifle and murdered him with it. A couple months after that, they robbed and attempted to kill another man at a shooting range, using his stolen car in a bank robbery a week later.
All of the victims these criminals shot were armed, which did not dissuade them from initiating attacks. The armored truck guards were presumably trained, but not sufficiently to defend against attackers whose opening move was gunfire.
I would agree with you if and only if firearms were a good defense mechanism when it comes to citizens dealing with day-to-day crime.
Experience shows that, on such situations, firearms are good for attacking but terrible for defending. It all boils down to the element of surprise: the thief knows he's going to attack you, but you are not aware of it, giving you no adequate time to respond.
There are some cases of success, usually extensively mentioned by supporters, but the reaction is often conducted by a third party who arrived at the situation after the first approach, or when the criminal is distracted, which makes all the difference, since it transfers the element of surprise to the victim.
I would be more inclined to agree with lesser firearm restrictions if the government were talking more about training, prevention and awareness, with guns being used only as a last resort in a broader defense strategy. But, we know that's not what's happening. They just try to make us believe we should react if we will.
Aside from starting a gun race with the burglar and fearing losing your life altogether with your possessions, I never follow this reasoning. How is it worse facing without guns a unarmed intruder than facing with a gun a well armed one?
Getting a CCW involves training to use the gun properly to shoot assailants. People with CCWs are more likely to win a standoff than random criminals with stolen guns and no training.
If the assailant also had a CCW, he would know how stupid it is to approach someone else with a gun.
How does the proper defense scenario play out with a gun?
Someone pulls a gun on you to rob you, and you then pull yours out without getting shot? Once you do pull out your gun, do you shoot the robber(s)? I find it hard to imagine any of this working out very well.
Or is the possibility that you may be armed supposed to act as a deterrent?
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