2nd amendment proven to benefit US citizens

[Gary K]

In the following article from Breitbart a researcher into gun usage in the US has confirmed his research that defensive gun use in the US is greater than that of guns being used in the commission of crime. He ran across the raw data of a huge survey done by the CDC back in the 1990s that confirms his research. The CDC had never published this data or even admitted that they had done the study. In other words, they most likely suppressed their findings because it didn't support the anti-gun narrative.

You can download a pdf copy of what Kleck found in the CDC study in the hyperlink titled "CDC Findings". Click on that link and when that page opens click on the "Open PDF in Browser" button. It didn't open the file in my browser, but it did download it. There is another hyperlink in the Breitbart article titled "reaffirmed" that takes you to a previous article by Breitbart on this story in which another hyperlink titled "Politico Magazine" takes you to a story where Politico reports his findings and then tries to destroy what he says by giving all kinds of supposed refutations of Kleck's original findings.

You can find the rest of the article here: http://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...confirms-2-million-annual-defensive-gun-uses/

An unpublished Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study confirms Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck’s findings of more than two million defensive handgun uses (DGUs) per year.

Since the early 1990s, Kleck has maintained that there is a minimum of 760,000 DGUs annually. That is his low estimate; Kleck and research partner Marc Gertz have contended the actual number is closer to 2.5 million.
Kleck reaffirmed his numbers on February 17, 2015, explaining that while plenty of naysayers have criticized his findings, none have been able to offer empirical evidence to counter them.
Now, a CDC study conducted on data from 1996, 1997, and 1998 has been uncovered. The study, which was never released to the public, shows approximately 2.46 million DGUs per year.
Kleck summarized the CDC findings:

In 1996, 1997, and 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted large-scale national surveys asking about defensive gun use (DGU). They never released the findings, or even acknowledged they had studied the topic. I obtained the unpublished raw data and computed the prevalence of DGU. CDC’s findings indicated that an average of 2.46 million U.S. adults used a gun for self-defense in each of the years from 1996 through 1998 – almost exactly confirming the estimate for 1992 of Kleck and Gertz (1995). Possible reasons for CDC’s suppression of these findings are discussed.

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[The Barbarian]

Back in the late 80s, the National Safety Council did a long study on guns and safety. Using data on crimes and accidental shootings and NRA data on people who had used guns to shoot or scare off threatening people, the study showed that something like 20% of Americans lived in places risky enough that having a gun in the house was actually safer than not having one.

Given the marked drop in violent crime since then, it's a sure thing that the percentage is lower now. But it's not zero, and it remains a valid argument for those people in those relatively few places.

So a practical argument for guns, in some instances. That has nothing to do with the fact of the 2nd Amendment, of course, which is valid for anyone, anywhere.

And yes, it means that for most of us, having a gun in the house represents an additional risk.

 

[rexlunae]

In the following article from Breitbart a researcher into gun usage in the US has confirmed his research

Confirmed his own research, did he? Well, ain't that a thing?

that defensive gun use in the US is greater than that of guns being used in the commission of crime. He ran across the raw data of a huge survey done by the CDC back in the 1990s that confirms his research. The CDC had never published this data or even admitted that they had done the study. In other words, they most likely suppressed their findings because it didn't support the anti-gun narrative.

You can download a pdf copy of what Kleck found in the CDC study in the hyperlink titled "CDC Findings". Click on that link and when that page opens click on the "Open PDF in Browser" button. It didn't open the file in my browser, but it did download it. There is another hyperlink in the Breitbart article titled "reaffirmed" that takes you to a previous article by Breitbart on this story in which another hyperlink titled "Politico Magazine" takes you to a story where Politico reports his findings and then tries to destroy what he says by giving all kinds of supposed refutations of Kleck's original findings.

You can find the rest of the article here: http://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...confirms-2-million-annual-defensive-gun-uses/

Of course, it matters what you consider to be a bonafide defensive gun use. For instance, you hear a noise in the night, grab your gun, and run downstair, but you don't see anything. You go back to bed. Is that a DGU?

 

[Tambora]

Good article.
Thanks.

 

[Catholic Crusader]

Good article.
Thanks.

Agreed. Great article.

 

[Gary K]

Here is one reason the 2nd amendment is so important.

Police have no legal duty to protect citizens. Period. Not even when the person has filed a protective order against someone who has threatened them with violence. In other words, the SC, and other courts, have ruled that it is up to the American citizen to protect himself, his property, and his family. The police have no legal responsibility to do anything for the citizens.

This people, is what your government thinks of your value to the state. They take your taxes and then thumb their nose at you when you need the services your taxes were supposed to have paid for.

In light of the recent terror attack in Orlando, Florida many people are asking the question, “What can the government do to protect the people?” Everything from banning certain types of firearms to prohibiting people on the no-fly list from buying guns to immigration reforms has been proposed as possible government solutions.

However, did you know that the government, and specifically law enforcement, does not have any duty to protect the general public? Based on the headline and this information, you might assume this is a new, landmark decision. However, it has long been the court’s stance that, essentially, the American people are responsible for taking case of their own personal safety.
According to a 2005 ruling from the SCOTUS, the government doesn’t even have a duty to protect you if you’ve obtained a court issued restraining order. From a New York Times article on that ruling:

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm, even a woman who had obtained a court-issued protective order against a violent husband making an arrest mandatory for a violation.

The decision, with an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia and dissents from Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, overturned a ruling by a federal appeals court in Colorado. The appeals court had permitted a lawsuit to proceed against a Colorado town, Castle Rock, for the failure of the police to respond to a woman’s pleas for help after her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three young daughters, whom he eventually killed.

For hours on the night of June 22, 1999, Jessica Gonzales tried to get the Castle Rock police to find and arrest her estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, who was under a court order to stay 100 yards away from the house. He had taken the children, ages 7, 9 and 10, as they played outside, and he later called his wife to tell her that he had the girls at an amusement park in Denver.

A 1989 case found the same thing. Also from the Times:

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A 1989 decision, DeShaney v. Winnebago County, held that the failure by county social service workers to protect a young boy from a beating by his father did not breach any substantive constitutional duty.
Going back even further, to 1981, a federal court of appeals found the same lack of responsibility. From the Wikipedia page on Warren v. District of Columbia:
In two separate cases, Carolyn Warren, Miriam Douglas, Joan Taliaferro, and Wilfred Nichol sued the District of Columbia and individual members of the Metropolitan Police Department for negligent failure to provide adequate police services. The trial judges held that the police were under no specific legal duty to provide protection to the individual plaintiffs and dismissed the complaints.
In a 2-1 decision, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals determined that Warren, Taliaferro, and Nichol were owed a special duty of care by the police department and reversed the trial court rulings. In a unanimous decision, the court also held that Douglas failed to fit within the class of persons to whom a special duty was owed and affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of her complaint. The case was reheard by an en banc panel of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

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Given the fact that the government is not responsible for protecting the general public from common criminals, rapists, mass murderers and terrorists, then why do so many government proposed solutions involve limiting the general public’s access to firearms? It’s a question that is worth considering as we move forward with this discussion.
Sources:
– Warren v. District of Columbia
– Justices Rule Police Do Not Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect Someone (NY Times)