Quote:
Originally Posted by cmbdiesel
It goes to the argument of whether one is statistically safer with or without a gun in the home.
Although the number of incidents where the gun was successfully used as protection are far fewer than the incidents where the gun was used against the people living in the home, many rabid pro-gunners have argued that is due to a lack of reporting of said defensive success stories. (I seem to recall you arguing this)
Some of us believe that line of reasoning is false.
This story shows that even very minor incidents of home defense will make it all the way to national prominence.
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exactly.
To my mind, logically, there is an unmeasured element here, but it sure isn't successful gun defense of the home. Not reporting an attempted robbery simply goes against what most people would do. If you didn't shoot the person dead, then they are still at large, which is where calling the police comes in, and either way, you call the cops to report either the presence of a body, or the presence of assailants roaming the neighborhood.
Someone tries to break into my house, im definitely calling the cops, even if they run off realizing someone is at home. Maybe we should take a poll and see how many people would be fine with just running off some would be criminal, then closing their door and going back to bed? Just how likely is that? For me it stands to reason as extremely unlikely, not impossible, but not something that would produce a huge measurable statistic that would outweigh accident data.
The unmeasured element to me is much more likely to be unreported gun accidents where no one was hurt, which would only add to the imbalance and make it worse. When you look at the numbers, even though statistical data of misuse far outweighs successful home defense, all those cases of misuse are when someone gets hurt, and it ends up on the public record through the hospital or police.
The guy above reports driving off some people without firing a shot with his AR-15. If he was toying with the weapon with a round in the chamber and discharged it into a brick wall by accident, do you think he would have reported that?