Deltoid

Peter H. Proctor writes:

E.g., the original issue was whether Pistols are much less deadly than long guns because pistol fatalities are mostly proportional to the size of the permanent wound channel.

Doubly wrong. First, the issue addressed by my cites is your claim that handgun and knife wounds are equally deadly. You have yet to offer the slightest scrap of evidence for this claim. Second, you continue to go on with theories explaining why your claim is true. Unfortunately, your theories do not agree with actual observations of the real world. Should we modify the theories or the observations?

Thus, they kill by roughly the same mechanism as edged weapons such as knives.

So? Are you seriously trying to argue that this means that the mortality rate is the same???? How do you explain the fact that it is different?

This is in contrast to rifle rounds which can actually shatter tissue.

Sometimes. How important is this factor compared to all the other factors that determine mortality? You’d have to actually look at case fatality rates to figure this.

You quoted a JAMA article out of context re the unimportance of high linear energy transfer in gunshot wounds, implying this meant long gun wounds. In fact, If memory serves, this paper primarily concerned pistol wounds, making the very point I was trying to make in the first place.

You really are full of it today, aren’t you? Anyone who is under the misapprehension that Dr Proctor has the slightest shred of credibility can check JAMA v259 p2733. In the section on the misconception ‘”Kinetic Energy Transfer” as a Wounding Mechanism’ Fackler talks about the “temporary cavity generated by the AK-74 rifle bullet” and the “temporary cavity produced by the M16″. Apparently Dr P believes that the AK-74 and the M16 are pistols.

While I don’t do many autopsies these days, I trained at a hospital that has one of the largest transplant services in this part of the US. This goes hand in glove with the path department doing a lot of autopsies on people dying from all sorts of trauma— from gunshot wounds thru automobile accidents.

I see. The survival rate from the knife wounds and pistol wounds that you autopsied was the same, so you infer that the survival rate for knife wounds and pistol wounds in general is the same.

Frankly, I’d be more inclined to trust the opinion of a physician who had treated some live patients. I talked to a friend who saw quite a few knife and gun-shot wounds when he worked at an inner-city hospital. He told me that that knife wounds were much less serious since knives tend to push vital organs out of the way while bullets tend to plough straight in.

I know bullshit when I see it….

Me too. It usually follows the phrase “If memory serves”.

Scott Marshall writes:

Comparison of Murder Rate per 100,000 in Capital Cities

Amsterdam - 38

I don’t think so. Amsterdam has a population of 713,000, so this is 270 murders. If you look here you will discover that in the Netherlands there were only 228 homicides committed in 1990. Needless to say, it is impossible for there to be more homicides in Amsterdam (5% of the population) than in the entire country.

The figure you have quoted would seem to be for (attempted + committed) homicides. From here you find 2206 of these in the Netherlands. 90% of these were attempted homicides so it seems likely that the homicide rate in Amsterdam is about 3.8.

Chicago - 33.1 Stockholm - 15.9 Helsinki - 15.3 Copenhagen - 10.5

I think you’ll find the the homicide rates in Stockholm, Helsinki and Copenhagen have also been grossly overstated.

Jerusalem - 3.1 Sydney - 2

Steve Fischer wrote:

Place a large placard either in the window of your home/apt or on a sign on the grass saying:

THIS IS A GUN-FREE HOME

….. then let’s wait a couple of months and see how many of those homes get burglarized.

Martin Gleeson writes:

Here’s one for the anti-gun-control advocates. Put up a big sign saying:

GUNS KEPT HERE

and see how many of these homes gets burglarized.

Bert Hyman writes:

It seems that you’ve managed to miss the entire point of this little exercise.

Nope. I’m well aware of the pro-gunners claim that their guns protect everyone from burglary. Whether or not these claims are true is another question. Are burglars really that terrified of guns, or do they see them as just another particularly portable and saleable item that they can steal? NCVS data indicates that burglars steal guns about ten times as often as residents use a gun to defend against burglary.

So why don’t all of you pro-gunners put up signs? If you are right, then burglars will flock to the houses without signs, forcing even non-gun-owners to put up signs and you will have, at the very least, a moral victory. Hmmm?

On the other hand, in your disarmed society, there is no doubt in the criminal’s mind; all potential victims are equally vulnerable. In this situation, advertising is not necessary.

Oddly enough, it doesn’t seem to encourage the criminals — violent crime is less common on this side of the Pacific.

Peter Proctor wrote:

An equivalent wound is ( by definition ) an equivalent wound . Absent LET effects, it doesn’t matter much where it came from.

Oh, so your statement was a tautology? By “equivalent”, you meant of equivalent lethality?

Hole, I meant an equivalent hole. Pretty simple concenpt, actually. Surprised I have to explain it so many times…

Because it’s ambiguous and the meaning you seem to be using is not germane to the discussion. The important question is what the result of substituting knives or long-guns for handguns in shootings and stabbings. Will there bo more deaths, fewer deaths or about the same number? To this end one should look at the overall death rate from knife injuries and compare it with that for gunshot injuries. Guns turn out to be four times as lethal as knives. Of course, part of this difference could be due to the intent of the attacker, that is, knife wound mortality could be low because many attackers deliberately inflict superficial wounds. So we should also compare mortality for multiple penetrating wounds to the torso, which would seem to indicate some serious attempt to kill. For these sorts of wounds guns are still 3-5 times as lethal. Finally we can check with mortality rates for wounds to the same body structure (e.g penetrating heart wounds). We see the same pattern once again.

Further, because of their nature, it is considerably easier to shoot yourself with one kept loaded than it is with a handgun. But you probably don’t understand how that could be

Nope. Enlighten me. How is it easier to accidently shoot oneself in the trunk with a long gun?

E.g..: With the exception of external hammer guns, a long gun is inherently cocked when there is a round in the chamber. So, all that is between you and an accidental discharge is a safety and a 3-6 pound trigger. A revolver or a double action autoloader requires typpically a 12-15 pound pull to discharge in double action.

You didn’t answer the question I asked.

The rate was declining faster before handgun ownership increased. Canada had a similar decrease without the handguns. Other factors would seem to be much more important.

I haven’t seen your figures, but from other threads, I gather that you have had some difficulty getting statistical support for some of your contentions.

You are mistaken.

Here, again, are the numbers

Table 2.1 of Kleck’s “Point Blank” shows that handgun sales jumped dramatically around 1965 — from around 0.5M per year to 1-2M per year afterwards. This is presumably the reason for the increase in the percentage of households owning handguns from 16% in the early sixties to 25% in the late eighties. (Table 2.2 of Kleck)

Table 7.1 of Kleck shows that the fatal gun accident rate declined from 2.4 per 100k population in 1933 to 1.21 in 1965 and then to 0.57 in 1987. That is a decrease of 1.19 before handgun ownership increased, and a decrease 0.64 afterwards. The rate of decrease was slower after 1965 than before.

Greg Booth said:

From Phil Ronzone’s rkba.002 (US rates converted to rate per 100,000) from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1989 (109th edition.) Washington, DC, 1989. and Canadian rates from the Canadian Centre for Health Information.

Year   US accident rate   Canadian accidental rate.
1969  1.139               0.63
1970  1.174               0.61
1971  1.136               0.66
1972  1.163               0.47
1973  1.235               0.56
1974  1.222               0.55
1975  1.103               0.49
1976  .944                0.39
1977  .900                0.43
1978  .811                0.38
1979  .890                0.30
1980  .858                0.31
1981  .813                0.25
1982  .755                0.23
1983  .722                0.17
1984  .704                0.24
1985  .689                0.25
1986  .662                0.20
1987  .574                0.23
1988                      0.23
1989                      0.29
1990                      0.25
1991                      0.24

A handgun is four times as likely to be involved in an accidental wounding as a long gun.

Dr. Paul H. Blackman writes:

I believe the discussions on accidents with long guns vs. handguns sometimes vary from numbers of handguns vs. numbers of long guns, to numbers of the respective guns which are regularly stored readily accessible (loaded and/or unlocked). (Part of the reasoning being that if one assumes folks will keep a gun for protection, and will keep said gun loaded, which sorts of loaded guns will do more damage – are more apt to be involved in injuries, and, if involved, are more apt to do more serious harm.)

I have seen some discussion along these lines in Kates’ TLR paper. Unfortunately, Kates is grossly misleading on this topic. If you want to see whether handguns kept loaded all the time are safer than long guns kept loaded, then you need to know

1. What fraction of guns kept loaded are handguns

2. What fraction of injuries (or deaths) involving guns kept loaded are inflicted with handguns.

Fraction 1 is difficult enough to determine. Kates asserts that it is “90% or more” and that it is “85.2%”. I get a very rough estimate of about 80% from surveys of gun owners storage practices.

There just isn’t any data on fraction 2. Kates instead uses the fraction for handgun involvement in ALL accidental fatalities, which he asserts is less than 14%. This is clearly incorrect. People can still have fatal accidents with guns that are not kept loaded all the time. Moreover, Kates deliberately mislead his readers when he claimed that handgun involvement in accidental gun deaths was less than 14%. In fact, it is about 50%. Most of the time, the type of the gun is “unknown”. To get his “less than 14%” figure Kates makes the absurd assumption that NONE of these unknown guns are handguns. If we assume that the unknown guns are like the known ones, we discover that about half of fatal gun accidents involve handguns.

I don’t know where the four times more likely comes from. NEISS data would suggest handguns are involved in over half of accidental woundings,

about two-thirds

and other data would suggest that handguns comprise roughly one-third of the stock of privately owned firearms. Does that work out to four times the involvement?

Yes. Twice as many wounds, half as many guns, 2×2=4.