A team at the University of Pennsylvania "analysed 677 shootings over two-and-a-half years to discover whether victims were carrying at the time, and compared them to other Philly residents of similar age, sex and ethnicity." You are going to be totally stunned by what they found: "[P]eople who carried guns were 4.5 times as likely to be shot and 4.2 times as likely to get killed compared with unarmed citizens. When the team looked at shootings in which victims had a chance to defend themselves, their odds of getting shot were even higher." One small caveat: There is no indication of how many of the shooting victims "had it coming."
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
11
Such a snotty word when you spell it with an S.
Come now. If they were wearing a short skirt, then they had it coming. Sheesh, everyone knows that.
So, would cops be safer without their guns?
Well, I can't seem to get the actual study... but does this include those carrying with a permit or those just "carrying?" It seems it was just anyone. I wonder hpw this would be with those who had firearms and permits (which include training). Certainly, it shows guns + assault = bad news... but it's also not exactly a convincing study re: legal gun ownership.
I'm as terrified of guns as the next urban liberal weenie, but seeing as this study (I'm assuming) encompasses an urban area I'd bet that this result is not dissimilar to stats that just came out about Baltimore's on-the-surface spectacularly high crime rate. Turns out that if you create an average murder victim and average murder suspect here in Baltimore, they'd have nearly identical arrest records (both in quantity of arrests/convictions and the charges behind them). In short, a huge majority of killed and killers in Baltimore are in the drug trade for a living.
I note that the Philly numbers are normalized for age, race, and sex, but not for arrest record. I'll bet that most of the people carrying in a city like Philly, legally or otherwise, are involved in criminal activity, and are about equally likely to shoot or get shot in the course of their job. The divide in cities is reinforced by the fact that many city-dwellers who are not themselves involved in criminal activities are liberal urban weenies like myself who have little or no contact or experience with any kind of legal gun culture.
The study is gated but id expect the explanation of the result goes something like this: most of the people who get shot dead are violent criminals(either by cops or other violent criminals) and violent criminals tend to carry firearms with a greater frequency than non-violent criminals.
It is not like if I went out and bought a gun I would suddenly become 4.2 times more likely to get my head blown off(by someone else at least. I am clumsy and retarded to the point I would never trust myself with a gun)
Plaxico Burress definitely would not have been shot had he not been carrying.
It's science!
Because I carry a sandwich to work, I'm 4 times more likely to be crushed on the subway.
To quote Joe Piscopo's beloved character in the oft-overlooked Johnny Dangerously (1984): "Guns don't kill people. I kill people."
Who doesn't want to be shot in Philadelphia?