The Liberal Gun Club Forum

lemur wrote:

highdesert wrote: Also keep in mind another stat from Dr Rosenberg, 60% of shootings are suicide. I strongly suspect that if you drilled down on his "unsafe" stats that they contain a large number of suicides. And demographic info which you mention has to be an important factor, especially age and socioeconomic level.

Another thing to keep in mind is the issue of correlation vs causation, which 99.92081836% of statistical studies published with great fanfare fail to address. (This figure is very precise, hence necessarily true.) Is it possible that dangerous circumstances make people likely to acquire guns, rather than guns making people's placid circumstances suddenly dangerous?

Exactly (at least in part) what I was thinking. I am more likely, given where I live, to be the victim of a violent crime. I live in an urban area near a large college campus. This time of year crime (including violent crime) spikes because there are a bunch of 18 year old kids who are unfamiliar with the area carrying around large sums of cash and mom/dad's credit card in a drunken stupor at 2 a.m. The University is within 2 miles of low income housing and public transit routes. I see the crime reports spike every year. My presence here makes me a more likely target of crime. It also provided my reasoning for purchasing a firearm. So if I am robbed at gun point tomorrow, was it because I own a gun or because I live in an area where random violent crime tends to be more prevelant.