This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
You're ignoring the cases where pulling the gun does win an argument. The argument being something classic like "I think you should give me your wallet" "Well, I disagree."
In 90+% of Defensive Gun Uses, in every survey I've ever seen, the gun isn't fired. Presenting the gun defuses the situation. In many home invader incidents, the criminals flee when they hear the distinctive sound of a firearm. Private legal guns save more lives than they take.
I'm aware. The problem is that these surveys overwhelmingly rely on self-reports, which are notoriously dodgy, and the fact that some guy thinks he justly defended himself by brandishing a firearm doesn't mean that he did. In many cases it 'defuses the situation' in the sense that when somebody pulls a gun you decide that the disagreement you were having with your loud neighbor isn't worth continuing. In other cases, it's just some fearful individual jumping (or shooting) at shadows.
That seems... incredibly unlikely. Per the CDC, in 2019 there were: approx. 14k firearm homicides, approx. 24k suicides, and 486 accidental deaths, and approx. 20k non-fatal injuries (not counting people shot by LE, which is outside the scope of this argument; also not considering assaults or other gun crime that doesn't result in injury).
In 2019, the FBI reports 386 justifiable homicides by civilians. Now, that doesn't include people acquitted on self-defense grounds, but acquittal rates aren't that high and acquittals are dominated by people who got off because their lawyer successfully argued they didn't do it rather than a successful self-defense claim. It's not a great start, with accidental deaths outnumbering verified self-defense homicides. But as you note, most claimed DGUs don't involve anyone getting shot.
The problem is that this still entails the claim that brandishing a firearm or similar DGU averted almost 40k murders in 2019 (or merely ~14k if you completely discount suicides). That's an extraordinary claim. Even taking the homicides-only number, it suggests that the US homicide rate would be almost 75% higher but for defensive civilian firearms usage (34k vs 20k in 2019). It's also impossible to substantiate, since the only evidence we have are self-reported survey responses and no real counterfactual. If there are supposed to be thousands of attempted murders being averted, you'd think they'd leave more of a footprint.
More options
Context Copy link
He's already taken those 90% into account, calling them "unreported assaults" committed by the defensive gun user.
Oh well in that case...
This is a very hostile paraphrase. @Skibboleth suggested that people who report defensive gun use on a survey are going to believe that they had a good reason to do so. That doesn't necessarily mean that this belief is correct in all cases.
This is what he said:
Right. @Skibboleth says that he concluded that "many (if not most) reports" look to him like cases of
"Many if not most" of 90% is not 90%, and he didn't just call them "unreported assaults" and drop the mike, he backed up that belief.
Personally, I think he has a reasonable point: I doubt that every one of those non-lethal interactions was actually a case of successfully defusing a mugging / home robbery / etc. and I suspect that quite a considerable fraction of them was two people in an argument, one guy escalates by pulling a gun, and then he justifies it to himself later because 'who knows what that guy would have done to me if I hadn't frightened him off'.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link