Maybe it's been posted before but a documented source of firearms used in self defense

This article summarizes the scientific literature on the health risks and benefits of having a gun in the home for the gun owner and his/her family. For most contemporary Americans, scientific studies indicate that the health risk of a gun in the home is greater than the benefit. The evidence is overwhelming for the fact that a gun in the home is a risk factor for completed suicide and that gun accidents are most likely to occur in homes with guns. There is compelling evidence that a gun in the home is a risk factor for intimidation and for killing women in their homes. On the benefit side, there are fewer studies, and there is no credible evidence of a deterrent effect of firearms or that a gun in the home reduces the likelihood or severity of injury during an altercation or break-in. Thus, groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics urge parents not to have guns in the home.

DanTex (2,590 posts) Thu Nov 1, 2012, 10:13 AM
31. The pro-gun position is comparable to things like global warming denial and militarism.

First, it glorifies violence. It also exploits paranoia and fear -- it's not a coincidence that the militia nuts are mostly far-righters. I've seen people on this board argue that using deadly force to protect property, even when there is no risk to life, is justified. Also, the dehumanizing of petty criminals ("thugs" as the gunners like to call them) is incompatible with a progressive view that, while holding people responsible for their actions, also understands that a teenager trying to steal a car stereo or a wallet is not some kind of sub-human animal whose life is worthless.

All this is all very similar to the attitudes of right-wingers towards war, and also towards things like torture. In addition to glorifying violence as a solution to problems, it also involves a simplistic "good guys versus bad guys" view of the world in order to avoid any kind of moral ambiguity.

The pro-gun ideology also puts public safety at risk for some phony concept of "freedom". The idea that lax gun laws make us safer because criminals will be deterred by armed citizens is an Ayn Randian fantasy. The idea that it's worth suffering higher levels of homicide and gun violence as a society in order to provide individuals the right to try to defend themselves is perhaps not quite so crazy, but it certainly has libertarian underpinnings. If you just look at what is in the best interest of society, it makes no sense to have gun laws so lax that even with a gun, you are more likely to be murdered than a person without a gun in a low-gun country.

And finally, there is the denial of reality. I've had many discussions with people here in the gungeon, all of whom seem convinced that every single gun violence researcher, that Harvard, Johns Hopkins, UCDavis, Duke, etc., and that the editorial boards of the peer reviewed journals are all somehow part of an anti-gun conspiracy. The refusal to to accept empirical reality, the silly cherry-picking of data to defend an ideological agenda, and the general distrust of science is pretty much identical to what I've seen from global warming deniers. In fact, right now there is an OP presenting a non-peer-reviewed article, published in a right-wing law review, written by two pro-gun advocates who have no evident background in science or statistics, and which contains serious factual errors. The article is masquerading as a "Harvard study" and is receiving rave reviews from the pro-gunners.

Progressives on the whole are more scientifically literate than that. It is not a coincidence that people who would put climate at risk to preserve the "right" to pump CO2 into the atmosphere are the same people who can justify enduring epidemic levels of gun violence to preserve the "right" to virtually unfettered gun access.