The resources in this Debate are referring to the overall question of “Are guns effective for self-defense for most people in general? ” This differs from the question of “Are guns effective for self-defense in certain situations and/or when used by certain people?”
At CRGI, we want to help provide the tools so that you can decide.
The Pernicious Myth of the Good Guy With a Gun
A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013
The Daily Show tests if a good guy with a gun can stop a mass shooting
Gunfight or Flee: New Study Finds No Advantages to Using a Firearm in Self-Defense Situations
Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun
LESS GUNS, LESS CRIME- DEBUNKING THE SELF-DEFENSE MYTH
Myth #2 - Guns aren't effective defense weapons
PRIORITIES FOR RESEARCH TO REDUCE THE THREAT OF FIREARM-RELATED VIOLENCE
CDC Study Ordered by Obama Contradicts White House Anti-gun Narrative
The study that gun-rights activists keep citing but completely misunderstand
CDC Study: Use of Firearms For Self-Defense is ‘Important Crime Deterrent’
Gun Threats and Self-Defense Gun Use
Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self-Defense Gun Use
Gun and self-defense statistics that might surprise you -- and the NRA
Combat veterans shoot down NRA ‘fantasy world’ of ‘good guys with guns’
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The Pernicious Myth of the Good Guy With a Gun
A group of sheriffs are calling on their constituents to arm themselves against crime and terrorism. Here's why they're wrong. -
A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013
In 2013, the president signed into law the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012, which granted the attorney general the authority to assist in the investigation of “violent acts and shootings occurring in a place of public use” and in the investigation of “mass killings and attempted mass killings at the request of an appropriate law enforcement official of a state or political subdivision.”1 To provide further clarity on these threats, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2014 initiated a study of “active shooter” incidents2 . The goal of the FBI study is to provide federal, state, and local law enforcement with data so they can better understand how to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from these incidents -
The Daily Show tests if a good guy with a gun can stop a mass shooting
It has been said millions of times after a mass shooting: The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. On Thursday, The Daily Show's Jordan Klepper put the theory to the test. He trained on the basics of using a firearm and got a concealed carry permit that's valid in 30 states. Then he participated in mass shooting simulations to see how, exactly, he would hold up in such a scenario. -
Gunfight or Flee: New Study Finds No Advantages to Using a Firearm in Self-Defense Situations
A recent study published in The Journal of Preventive Medicine offers new support for the argument that owning a gun does not make you safer. The study, led by David Hemenway, Ph.D., of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, examines data from the National Crime Victimization Survey — an annual survey of 90,000 households — and shows not only that so-called “defensive gun use” (DGU) rarely protects a person from harm, but also that such incidents are much more rare than gun advocates claim. -
Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun
Crime victims used to be ignored by criminologists. Then, beginning slowly in the 1940s and more rapidly in the 1970s, interest in the victim's role in crime grew. Yet a tendency to treat the victim as either a passive target of another person's wrongdoing or as a virtual accomplice of the criminal limited this interest. The concept of the victimprecipitated homicide' highlighted the possibility that victims were not always blameless and passive targets, but that they sometimes initiated or contributed to the escalation of a violent interaction through their own actions, which they often claimed were defensive. -
LESS GUNS, LESS CRIME- DEBUNKING THE SELF-DEFENSE MYTH
One of the most common assertions in defense of firearm use is the argument that guns are used millions of times a year in self-defense and are therefore effective crime deterrents. There are two theoretical mechanisms that could explain this effect: 1) an attempted crime may be stopped due to the presence of a firearm; 2) a potential crime may be deterred due to a criminal’s caution in pursuing areas with high firearm ownership rates. As it turns out, neither of these explanations bear out in the data. -
Myth #2 - Guns aren't effective defense weapons
The 43: 1 Myth claims that "Guns aren't effective defensive weapons, and are '43 to 1 times' more likely to kill their owners or family members than they are useful to defend against criminal attack." -
PRIORITIES FOR RESEARCH TO REDUCE THE THREAT OF FIREARM-RELATED VIOLENCE
Individuals use firearms legally for a variety of activities, including recreation, self-protection, and work. However, firearms can also be used to intimidate, coerce, or carry out threats of violence. Fatal and nonfatal firearm violence1 poses a serious threat to the safety and welfare of the American public. Although violent crime rates have declined in recent years, the U.S. rate of firearm-related deaths is the highest among industrialized countries. In 2010, incidents in the United States involving firearms injured or killed more than 105,000 individuals; there were twice as many nonfatal firearm-related injuries (73,505) than deaths. -
CDC Study Ordered by Obama Contradicts White House Anti-gun Narrative
In January, following the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, President Obama issued a “Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence,” along with 22 other “initiatives.” That study, subcontracted out to the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, was completed in June and contained some surprises for the president. -
The study that gun-rights activists keep citing but completely misunderstand
Few issues divide people like guns. Just consider the starkly split response to our piece this week about how the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still had not resumed researching gun violence, two years after President Obama ordered the agency to do so. -
CDC Study: Use of Firearms For Self-Defense is ‘Important Crime Deterrent’
“Self-defense can be an important crime deterrent,”says a new report by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The $10 million study was commissioned by President Barack Obama as part of 23 executive orders he signed in January. -
Gun Threats and Self-Defense Gun Use
Guns are not used millions of times each year in self-defense We use epidemiological theory to explain why the “false positive” problem for rare events can lead to large overestimates of the incidence of rare diseases or rare phenomena such as self-defense gun use. We then try to validate the claims of many millions of annual self-defense uses against available evidence. We find that the claim of many millions of annual self-defense gun uses by American citizens is invalid. -
Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self-Defense Gun Use
Guns are rarely used to kill criminals or stop crimes. In 2012, across the nation there were only 259 justifiable homicides1 involving a private citizen using a firearm reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program as detailed in its Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR).2 That same year, there were 8,342 criminal gun homicides tallied in the SHR. In 2012, for every justifiable homicide in the United States involving a gun, guns were used in 32 criminal homicides. 3 And this ratio, of course, does not take into account the tens of thousands of lives ended in gun suicides or unintentional shootings that year.4 This report analyzes, on both the national and state levels, the use of firearms in justifiable homicides. It also details, using the best data available on the national level, the total number of times guns are used for self-defense by the victims of both attempted and completed violent crimes and property crimes whether or not the use of the gun by the victim resulted in a fatality -
Gun and self-defense statistics that might surprise you -- and the NRA
As was predictable, some of the NRA crowd blames the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, the murdered pastor of Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, for the deaths of eight parishioners Wednesday because as a South Carolina state legislator he supported stricter gun control -
Combat veterans shoot down NRA ‘fantasy world’ of ‘good guys with guns’
Combat veterans spoke to The Nation’s Joshua Holland in hopes of confronting the “lies” peddled by the NRA and their corporate masters. “I think there’s this fantasy world of gunplay in the movies, but it doesn’t really happen that way,” said retired Army Sgt. Rafael Noboa y Rivera. “When I heard gunfire [in Iraq], I didn’t immediately pick up my rifle and react. I first tried to ascertain where the shooting was coming from, where I was in relation to the gunfire and how far away it was. I think most untrained people are either going to freeze up, or just whip out their gun and start firing in that circumstance.”
