Report: 2 shot at Calif. high school; shooter detained

[Predicto]

And again, *this* is ignored....

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

And for the sake of argument, I'm going to assume these figures are wrong. Let's cut that figure in half just to be sure there is no exaggeration.
Thats 81 THOUSAND times a year someone justifiably used a gun in self defense, be it by showing the gun, or firing it.

Just so you know, that particular study is highly controversial, at best. Here's a long (and admittedly hostile) discussion of that study. Despite its tone, it makes some seriously compelling points that appear to destroy the methodology of that study.

http://propagandaprofessor.net/tag/marc-gertz/

(edit - I should add that this appears to be extremely difficult thing for anyone to study accurately)

[twa]

What two countries?

Your talking about low numbers of teachers in each of the cases in this country, and it isn't clear how many you are talking about in either case (in reality, the number might actually be 0) so I don't think you can derive any useful data from this.

And at least the case in TX, there appears to have been no deaths in schools BEFORE the teachers were carrying guns so your looking at the same death rate over time (though the gun carrying teachers are relatively recent).

Israel and Thailand

you will never have useful numbers as long as those teachers armed remain on the down low
there have been armed teachers for decades w/o incident

Teachers can be both armed responsible citizens and teachers - they aren't mutually exclusive

[Predicto]

I often wonder how it is that I have lived to the age of 50, lived in the heart of a major city for decades, and I have never once needed to "show" a gun. Nor has pretty much anyone else that I know.

Yet almost every anonymous conservative on the internet has to do it mutliple times, and everyone they know seems to have to do it as well. Do they live in a different world than I do?

[twa]

I often wonder how it is that I have lived to the age of 50, lived in the heart of a major city for decades, and I have never once needed to "show" a gun. Nor has pretty much anyone else that I know.

probably never had a mass school shooting there either,hasn't happened here either

nothing to see here

[Corcaigh]

I often wonder how it is that I have lived to the age of 50, lived in the heart of a major city for decades, and I have never once needed to "show" a gun. Nor has pretty much anyone else that I know.

Yet almost every anonymous conservative on the internet has to do it mutliple times, and everyone they know seems to have to do it as well. Do they live in a different world than I do?

The logical conclusion is that manly men don't need to brandish weapons in order to be left alone and respected.

[Predicto]

In case people are too lazy or busy to read the link that I posted, I'm going to set out a few excerpts:

Unless you’re really heavily immersed in a gun propaganda website, I probably don’t have to tell you that there is a wee bit of difference between 2.5 million and 2.5 hundred. The question is, which is closer to the truth? No, strike that. The question is, how could a reputable researcher like Dr. Kleck, even given his apparent propensity for gun worship, have ****** up so royally?

I don’t claim to have a solid answer for that. I don’t believe he deliberately cooked the books, and even if he did, it hardly would cover the bases. There have been at least a dozen other “studies”, one by the Department of Justice, that also generated some preposterous projections. Granted, there was quite a range in the totals, with the lowest being 65,000. That, contrasted with the high of 2.5 million, is a point spread of 4000 percent, for crying out loud; and that, if nothing else, ought to raise a matador-size red flag about the challenges of obtaining accurate data on such a subject. But even 65,000 seems greatly overinflated.

So it appears that Dr. Kleck is not to blame. Instead, the probable explanation is that the respondents to such surveys tend to give consistently and wildly distorted responses. Why? Well, that might take an actual study or two to figure out. Prof. David Hemenway of Harvard has made some illuminating comments, which of course have been attacked ferociously by the gun lobby. He notes by way of comparison that among 1500 adults contacted at random, 10 percent claimed to have witnessed a UFO, and of those, 6 percent claimed to have had personal contact with space aliens. Which would mean that 1,380,000 American adults have encountered Klingons. And hey, 579,600 of those may have been hauling a heater. Hmmm… maybe so many DGUs are missing because they occur on the far side of the chronosynclastic infundibulum.

A 2004 investigation – one actually might call it a study - by J. F. Denton and Dr. W. V. Fabricius that examined shooting incidents over a period of 3.5 months in the Phoenix metropolitan area confirmed that of 81 shootings, only 3 were of a defensive nature; two occurred in a single encounter with two security guards firing at the same offender, and the third involved a family quarrel. The Kleck data would have projected 334 defensive shootings for the time frame and location. Denton and Fabricius illustrate the drawbacks of the Kleck survey by discussing another clash involving a drunken quarrel between two acquaintances, one of whom shot the other to death, which was ruled to be criminal homicide, but which Dr. Kleck would have misclassified as a DGU. Undoubtedly, there have been many cases that were misclassified.

Indeed, a close inspection of the Kleck data reveals some major thorns. As we mentioned, at least 36 percent of respondents stated they didn’t even notify police. Which makes you wonder whether the incidents really were serious enough to justify calling in the infantry. Furthermore, 46.8 percent admitted (the actual percentage could be higher) that the supposed offender neither attacked nor made a threat. So what made the hardware necessary? In more than half of the cases, the supposed defender admitted (the actual percentage may be higher) that the supposed offender had no weapon of any kind. And since 57.6 percent of defenders say they verbally referred to their guns and 75.7 percent brandished or showed their guns, that seems to indicate that about 25 percent only referred to them verbally. And this counts as a defensive gun use? I could do the same thing, but since I don’t even own a gun, the weapon du jour would be bull****, not a Glock.

In 8.3 percent of the cases, the subject claimed to have wounded or killed the offender. There is no breakdown of what percentage was killed, but let’s conservatively guess one percent. Most likely, the true percentage is much higher, especially given that there seem to be a great many gun incidents that are falsely classified as DGUs; and a higher percentage of fatal shootings means a lower number of DGUs. But even one percent of 2.5 million would be 25,000; and we should be able to verify this because gun deaths are a matter of official record. Oops. According to the FBI, there were only 232 justifiable homicides by firearm in all of 2010 – and this was an increase over recent years. No matter how you slice it, something in Kleck has to go.

Perhaps most interestingly, the subjects claimed to have experienced an average of about 1.5 DGUs each for a 5-year period; in other words, many of them said they were involved in multiple incidents. Talk about red flags. This supposedly random sampling that supposedly represents the typical American gun owner nonetheless seems to be comprised largely of people who live in the world’s worst neighborhoods. In contrast, this group of gun owners, in response to a query about how often they’ve drawn their weapons (which doesn’t necessarily mean a DGU) typically say once or twice in 15 years or 25 or 30 years; some even say “never”, although such an individual is probably not as likely to respond to this question at all.

All told, these facts shoot a big gaping hole in one of the gun culture’s prime tenets: that guns are used in self-defense more often they are used to commit crimes – some even claim ten times as often or more! In the Phoenix sample, however, the score was 78 to 3 in favor of the Offense. Granted, these were actual shootings and most defenders don’t open fire – but neither do most offenders. While there are only a few hundred confirmed DGUs per year, there are at least 400,000 gun crimes per year.

I don't expect people to take this commentary as a definitive analysis, but it does make one think.

[Pwyl]

In case people are too lazy or busy to read the link that I posted, I'm going to set out a few excerpts:



I don't expect people to take this commentary as a definitive analysis, but it does make one think.

fyi your quoted text has a profanity filter violation.

[Predicto]

The logical conclusion is that manly men don't need to brandish weapons in order to be left alone and respected.

More like, the logical conclusion is that some people who post on the internet (or answer anonymous surveys) may actually be using their guns for defensive purposes, but a whole heck of a lot more are claiming that they did, either because it makes them feel more badass or because they want the survey results to show that guns are needed.

Sometimes I think that "**** that Never Happened" is the most common currency on the entire Internet (well, except for Japanese tentacle porn...)

---------- Post added January-11th-2013 at 06:22 PM ----------

fyi your quoted text has a profanity filter violation.

thanks, cleaned it up

[RansomthePasserby]

I don't know what to make of those numbers. Maybe I've lived an extraordinarily sheltered life but I have never in my life been in a situation where I needed to rely on a gun to defend myself. None of my acquaintances or friends have had to either...

I've never been in that situation either, but I have friends that have. One of my friends was staying at his mom's house for the night to keep her company while his dad was on a business trip. I guess some crook knew the man of the house was gone, but didn't know my friend was there, because my friend heard someone trying to break in through the window. My friend grabbed his gun, flipped on the laser sight, pointed it at the intruder, and told him to get lost. The guy didn't hesitate to obey.

[Predicto]

I've never been in that situation either, but I have friends that have. One of my friends was staying at his mom's house for the night to keep her company while his dad was on a business trip. I guess some crook knew the man of the house was gone, but didn't know my friend was there, because my friend heard someone trying to break in through the window. My friend grabbed his gun, flipped on the laser sight, pointed it at the intruder, and told him to get lost. The guy didn't hesitate to obey.

I'm going to say this, um, gently.

Any chance the story was embellished a wee bit by your friend to make it more interesting?

I'm prone to doing that myself, almost everyone is, so I know how it can happen.

[RansomthePasserby]

I'm going to say this, um, gently.

Any chance the story was embellished a wee bit by your friend to make it more interesting?

I'm prone to doing that myself, almost everyone is, so I know how it can happen.

Probably a little. He's a cop though, so he's pretty confident when it comes to pointing guns at people.

[Predicto]

Probably a little. He's a cop though, so he's pretty confident when it comes to pointing guns at people.

Fair enough.

I seem to recall some stat that said that even cops don't pull their guns in the line of duty very often, and that is a huge part of their job.

[PeterMP]

Israel and Thailand

you will never have useful numbers as long as those teachers armed remain on the down low
there have been armed teachers for decades w/o incident

Teachers can be both armed responsible citizens and teachers - they aren't mutually exclusive

I don't think you are right. I don't think Israel arms the vast majority of their teachers (teachers on the West Bank are armed) and as I'm sure you know Isreali's also have mandatory military experience, and I'd be somewhat shocked if those that are armed aren't specially selected so I don't know how much that tells us about anything.

Also Isreal has much stricter gun laws than us;


http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/12...ht-wing-myths/

http://jewishpreppers.com/2012/12/ar...eachers-armed/

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/col...ph_littl.shtml

I can find less on Thailand, but it again it appears that in a small section of Thialand teachers are ALLOWED (not forced) to carry guns.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4651711.stm

This makes it sound like it hasn't even happened:

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/loca...d-for-teachers

"Mr Sermsak added that each of the three southernmost provinces had been granted the authority to consider issuing gun licences to teachers so that they may legally carry them in public."

That's dated 2012.

Do you have any reliable information on who actually carries guns, how many, and their trainng?
Do you think you or would have heard if a teacher shot a student in Israel or Thailand.

Where have their been armed teachers for decades? The article you posted before made it sound like in the TX case they were keeping the who and numbers on the down low for security issues (so the bad guys didn't have that info).

**EDIT**
It occurs to me if what appears to me to be true about the other countries is that they've decided that their high risk schools, which appear to be have a much higher risk than schools in the US can/will potentailly have teachers with guns. But not the rest of them.

Essentially, even there unless the risk is extremely high the risk of teachers with guns isn't worth it in those countries.

If the risk of school shottings was equal to what is in those parts of Thailand and Israel, I very well might have a different opinion (heck, I've already said we should treat high schools different than elementary schools because what I think are likely different risks).