A 25-year-old Missouri man says he mistook his mother for an intruder before shooting her to death at their home’s back door.
Prosecutors have charged Jaylen Johnson with manslaughter and armed criminal action in connection with the shooting death on Thursday of his mother, Monica McNichols-Johnson.
McNichols-Johnson’s shooting death came less than a year after another shooting in Missouri saw Ralph Yarl, then 16, get shot on 13 April by 84-year-old Andrew Lester after ringing the wrong doorbell while picking up his siblings.
If only his Mother had a Gun she could have Protected herself from her Son who had a gun and accidentally Shot her! That’s literally the ONLY way she could have saved herself!
With two guns, she would have been twice as safe!
An armed society is a society where people are looking for someone to shoot.
From across the pond, it seems wild how bad it spiralled out due to capitalism. You guys got sold on the idea of having to defend your own house at any point of time… Leads people to have fantasies of being in such a scenario to use their custom piece to end a fool!
Are we really surprised it ended this way?
“You guys”
I’m armed. Not seeking any victims. Have a nice day.
Be honest. You’ve had dreams/thoughts of killing someone in self defence.
Honestly no. I have better things to dream about. I have lived in the ghetto, and fallen asleep to the sound of gunshots and sirens. I have a wife who I love, and I want to make sure she doesn’t come to any harm. I’m sad for you that you think guns are only weapons for mass murders. Maybe someday you’ll realize self-defense is a valid reason to own guns. Be honest, could you live with yourself if your home gets broken into and your spouse or child gets killed and you stood there looking around doing nothing because you weren’t armed?
I doubt you’re being honest in your question but I’ll answer it anyway.
Could I live with myself if my wife died due to a home invasion? Yes, of course I could. I’m not at fault for her death so why wouldn’t I be able to live with myself?
The fact that you came up with a situation where you think violence is the solution answers my initial question of you dreaming about killing someone in self-defense. You didn’t think you were going to prove yourself a liar in your response did you?
You obviously made up your mind before ever posting or reading my response so there’s no point in continuing this conversation. Dreaming of something and preparing for the worst are obviously different but my words are wasted on you.
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Great point, I’ve reconsidered my entire worldview thanks to your clown emojis. You’re really doing God’s work here.
Of course, being mentally prepared to do what one has to in the case of preventing loss of life or great bodily injury, the only things armed self defense can legally be used for, isn’t exactly the same thing as pulling a Berkowitz. Most people who own them are prepared to, but hopeful they’ll never have to, use it, and mischaracterizing them as insane nutjobs is unlikely to win any favor in debate. Don’t get me wrong those people do exist, but conflating them with normal gun owners is a mistake, and one you’re free to make.
While most gun owners are not insane nut jobs, the actual problem people are trying to point out is that everyone acts in poor judgement or overwhelming emotion sometimes. I might swear loudly at myself; someone having a loaded gun handy might end someone’s life. There’s a difference.
The other issue that people don’t talk enough about is the inherent conflict between keeping a deadly weapon secured and keeping one ready for defense.
I think the world might be better if we stopped pretending we’re all exactly the same.
Thankfully, you must be wrong, or with 600,000,000+ guns for 300,000,000+ people we’d all already be dead.
But it’s not as simple as whether we’re all the same. Owning a deadly weapon means that anything going wrong potentially kills someone. Most of the time they didn’t deserve it.
You’re afraid of a threat that magnified by your fears and misperceptions. I’m afraid of your “self-defense” or your lack of securing your weapon.
Be different all you want, but it’s a problem when it kills innocent people. Where are their rights?
“Most of the time they didn’t deserve it” eh?
Well, all gun deaths per year including accidents, murder, and suicide, hover around 60,000/yr.
However, even by our most conservative estimate, conservative in this case meaning only using verifiable police reports and completely discounting the most common type of armed defense: defensive display, Harvard has estimated “the good guy with a gun” being effective 100,000 x/yr.
Clearly we can see that 100,000 defensive gun uses is 40,000 more than 60,000. This indicates quite clearly that actually “most” of the time it is deserved, as “most” of the time by 40,000 it is self defense.
You’re afraid of a threat that magnified by your fears and misperceptions
I really hate that I have to say this, but literally no u.
I’m afraid of your “self-defense”
Well don’t attempt to kill me or someone I care about in my presence, simple as. Think you can handle that? Should be pretty damn easy tbh.
or your lack of securing your weapon.
Well don’t make people leave them in the car to come into your store, the only time mine are less secure than I’d like are when the law requires it to be.
Be different all you want, but it’s a problem when it kills innocent people.
If a man is stabbed in the park do you feel guilty for having knives in the kitchen? Unless I’m the one who does the bad thing I will not feel responsible for it, I am not responsible for the actions of another sentient being.
Where are their rights?
They have them. Just because rape exists, do you think a woman has no right to her body? Similarly, just because murder exists, that doesn’t mean the murderer wasn’t trampling the murdered’s rights, actually that’s literally the exact reason murder is called “a crime.” And the reason legal self defense is a thing, too, your right to self defense is to secure your right to life, specifically.
I wouldn’t dare assume what’s in someone’s head and I try hard not to mischaracterize anyone. I just wanted to know if that person ever dreamed of killing someone, and while my comment didn’t provide context, I was wondering how happy they’d be if they did. I get the impression that some people that want guns for self-defense are ‘itching’ to kill someone and are using self-defense as an excuse. I read that a girl got shot because her basketball landed in someone’s yard and the person killed her. While not the norm, without proper healthcare, including mental health, having the right to use a gun for self-defense is a recipe for disaster. Plus, the ‘stand your ground’ laws seemed deeply flawed, though this is coming from a Canadian that doesn’t have the right to use deadly force to defend my property.
I wouldn’t dare assume what’s in someone’s head and I try hard not to mischaracterize anyone.
Be honest. You’ve had dreams/thoughts of killing someone in self defence.
These two statements are conflicting.
I just wanted to know if that person ever dreamed of killing someone,
You could have asked them, but you instead told them how they feel.
I get the impression that some people that want guns for self-defense are ‘itching’ to kill someone and are using self-defense as an excuse
As I mentioned, those people do exist, but they aren’t the norm and conflating them with just a normal dude who doesn’t want to use it but will if forced won’t make you friends with those normal people.
I read that a girl got shot because her basketball landed in someone’s yard and the person killed her.
Which isn’t legal. Maybe in Texas idk about them, but in most of the country that’ll buy you some prison time unless it landed in your living room and she kicked your door in to get it back.
without proper healthcare, including mental health, having the right to use a gun for self-defense is a recipe for disaster.
For you maybe. I’m fine, and for all I know so is that other person you first replied to. Not that those things wouldn’t be cool, but the need for them does not invalidate the need to defend oneself. In fact, the fact that we don’t have those may well contribute to why we do sometimes need to defend ourselves, tbh. In the meantime the best you can do is evaluate that for yourself, if you can be safe and use it only when you have to, great. If you doubt your ability, making the decision to not have one is a good one and I couldn’t fault you.
Plus, the ‘stand your ground’ laws seemed deeply flawed, though this is coming from a Canadian that doesn’t have the right to use deadly force to defend my property.
Neither do Americans with SYG nor Castle Doctrine. Castle Doctrine says you have no “duty to retreat” in your home or vehicle, meaning if someone breaks in while you’re inside, you do not have to run away before responding to the threat. Stand Your Ground extends this to any place you are legally occupying. That said you still have to abide by all other laws at the time, including but not limited to “deadly force is only legal to use in defense or prevention of death or great bodily injury.” Not “property.”
If you really weren’t seeking any victims, you wouldn’t be armed.
Great argument. Perhaps you’d like to tell me my favorite color next? Or which religion I should follow?
Is Missouri the new Florida?
This is a sad story, but as a former Missourian it’s not super surprising.
There’s anger and distrust that’s festering there. A societal anger, not a personal one. It’s a personification and personalization of national politics.
I can’t describe the relief it is to not live in that environment anymore.
I am incredibly lucky.
Yet another reason to ask questions first.
Knowing your target (and what is beyond it) is one of the core rules of gun safety.
Positive identification. Always.
Not owning a gun is my favourite gun safety rule.
To be fair it could have been a cop and they don’t ask questions first either before unloading multiple magazines worth of ammo so 🤷
Living with a handgun owner particularly increased the risk of being shot to death in a domestic violence incident, and it did not provide any protection against being killed at home by a stranger, the researchers found. - Guardian Article April 7, '22
The relationship of Americans and our guns is such a weird, religious-level issue. Just bizarre people. And some of them are friends of mine. The people, not the guns.
The relationship of Americans and our guns is such a weird, religious-level issue
What assault rifle would Baby Jeebus use?
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I’ve heard this claim before and haven’t really been able to dig into it. One question that came up through that article related to this paragraph:
The study focused only on homicide risk and did not examine how living with a handgun owner might increase or decrease the risk of being victimized in other ways, including by nonfatal assault, home invasion, or property theft.
This sounds like something like a home invasion that would have ended in a homicide but didn’t (due to a gun or other reasons) wouldn’t be counted. The cases that are due to a gun would seem especially important.
My friends around the world who aren’t Americans,
The above is what it’s like trying to talk about gun control with people here. Most of my experience isn’t crazy gun nuts strutting around strapped because of some fucked up interpretation of the thought behind the 2A. It’s people giving reasonable, at least superficially, arguments about why their guns aren’t part of the problem. I say it’s religious because it’s all faith in the face of facts. Or fear in front of facts really.
Meco did literally the opposite of what you’re accusing them of: rather than take a claim on faith, they questioned. That’s the polar opposite of religion.
Sounds like the issue could use more research. It’s too bad there’s a law prohibiting federal funds being used to study gun violence
That was about an unlinked study of exclusively Californians, which skews things sufficiently so as to be almost wholly unapplicable to the rest of the country.
Ah, yeah. You got me. Gun violence is not a problem at all in the rest of the country. Typical elite coastal thinking, amiright?
Out here in the midwest we aint no fruity city boys. We tell that bullet to fuck off like a man and it don’t go trying to go into us.
What.
jesus.
Jesus, penetrate my soul. Come into me and fill me with your hot white spirit. Find my holes and fill them with your power. Make my limber body bend over to your will so I may avoid these bullets. Let the only thing that go so deep inside me be your passionate love. Pull my hair a little and spit on me, Jesus.
I didn’t say that, I said your citation was worthless from a national perspective. You want to complain that the gun lobby and/or red states prevent useful studies like the reported one, go for it, but please don’t act like a news article about a study which can’t even bother citing its source is good data just because they come to the same conclusion that we do.
The article provided the study’s author and university, so a very easy search leads right to the study. The article also specifically mentions that the study followed Californians. I don’t see how posting this article takes away or misrepresents the study or that the article presents a conclusion different from the conclusion. People who live in California really aren’t all that different from people who live in Iowa.
It’s hard to get a national perspective when our laws prohibit using federal funds to study gun violence
The article pointed out shortcomings in the data, but did not consider the state to be one of them
I’d love to hear your explanation for how it skews things sufficiently. I’m going to take a stab in the dark and guess you’ve never been to California or if you have never outside of LA/SF/SD
I’m an American and have lived here all my life, in more than one state, and I will never understand why people think you’re a different kind of person if you come from Vermont than if you come from Oklahoma.
Haha, yeah man, some times I use big words to give myself more credibility too.
What is wrong with some people? The chance of someone with intent to cause bodily harm trying to break into a residence when someone is home is essentially zero.
That’s why you’ve got to grab your cool guns and start blasting immediately – you might never get another chance.
It’s low but nonzero, and depends on your exact location.
But what’s wrong with them is the constant stoking of their fear by Fox News and similar media, that tells them that the illegals are breaking into their houses to steal their wives and rape their jobs, or something.
Nearly
600,000900,000 burglaries occur yearly in the US, with 27.6% occurring while occupants were present and 25% of those incidents involvingan assaultviolent crime on the occupants. (https://insurify.com/homeowners-insurance/insights/burglary-statistics/) That comes to37,500~62,100break-in assaultsvictims of violent crimes from break-ins in the US per year, divided by 123.6 million households in the US comes to a 1 in3,2961,990 chance of a household’s occupants being assaulted in a break-in each year. That’s68%roughly as many incidents as being injured or killed by a firearm anywhere in the country each year as tallied by the GVA. Hardly zero, unless you also mean to minimize US gun violence.Though either of these stats are hardly able to be applied broadly across the entire country given their driving force of poverty and its extreme regional & local disparities.
Edit: Actually those 600,000 burglaries only account for 69% of the US population. The actual number is ~900,000 nationally, bumping the math’s number of violent crimes including assault, robbery, and rape experienced in homes up to ~62,100 or 1 in 1,990, surpassing being a victim of broad gun violence as tallied by the GVA when removing instances of justified self-defense.
I feel like you’re minimizing the part where it’s 0.03% by contrasting it with what you take as the given that individual gun violence is a likely threat in most of the country.
Gun violence can be a problem without it being a specific actionable concern for the majority of people.
It’s why it’s not contradictory to think we should work to reduce gun violence, and also not find it necessary to be armed in anticipation of imminent violence.you take as the given that individual gun violence is a likely threat in most of the country
I don’t. As I said, poverty & organized crime is a driving factor in both burglaries & gun violence moreso than any other metric and heavily skews those statistics between localities. Many regions will have rates 3-4x that. I also feel like you’re minimizing the part where it’s 1 in
33001990 per year, which applied over even just 50 years comes to1.6%2.5% of people experiencing it in their lives. Hell, the total burglary number of600,000900,000 is nearly thrice the rate of house fires in the US.It would absolutely be inconsistent to cite gun violence stats as a cause of concern for the average person (2) (3) while dismissing being assaulted in a burglary, nevermind being burgled at all, as an essentially zero chance.
As an interesting point of reference, UK home break-ins occur at a rate of 578,000 yearly for a population with just 27.8 million households. That works out to 2% of households yearly being burgled, and per the first source over half of those occur while someone is present in the house (twice as often as happens in the US). Here’s another source citing a 1.27% rate of domestic burglary for the year ending in June 2023, and that’s vs the US rate of 0.728% (1.7-2.7 times higher). I can’t find any sources for what percentage of these break-in lead to assaults on the occupants, but for even the more conservative number of 1.27% from earlier and 50% of those being occupied homes, a rate higher than 6.90% of those occupied burglaries leading to assault would place the odds of being assaulted in your home in the UK higher than in America. This article working off of 2020 ONS data cites that of the 64.1% of incidents where someone is home 46% were aware and saw their burglars, and of those 48% reported being threatened and 27% reported force or violence being used against them. Plugging that into the most recent rate of 1.27% being burgled, that comes out to a 1 in 989 chance yearly of being a victim of violent crime by burglars in your own house, double that of the US.
I wonder what’s different about American households that so dramatically shifts both the number of break-ins as well as how/when they occur. Poverty certainly plays a role, where the UK’s poverty rate after housing expenses is twice that of the US (22% vs 11%). Doesn’t explain the nature of the break-ins though.
Edit: See math from earlier post, actual number is 1 in 1,990 yearly, or a 2.5% chance of experiencing violent crime in a home invasion over 50 years. Also makes the rate of burglary nearly thrice the rate of house fires in the US. Updated the math throughout the UK paragraph to match.
I don’t want to ruin your little gish gallop, but the act of “home invasion” is fundamentally different in the UK and the US.
You and your little pro-gun cult friends have ensured that criminals have easy, widespread access to handguns, turning “somebody stole my iPad” into “somebody stole my iPad and then shot me in the spine”.
You’ve had over 20 years to prove your bullshit claims of “guns prevent crime” and not only are crimes not significantly prevented, you’ve created a massive excess of far more serious crimes.
the act of “home invasion” is fundamentally different in the UK and the US
Yes, I alluded to this by rhetorically asking why US burglars are half as willing to break in while an occupant is home. Still wondering why that would ever be.
turning “somebody stole my iPad” into “somebody stole my iPad and then shot me in the spine”.
Household burglaries ending in homicide make up 0.004% or 1 in 25,000 break-ins, and with national firearm injury rates being roughly double homicide rates that should mean roughly 1 in 8,333 break-ins leave the homeowner injured or killed to guns. That would math to 108 households in 2021 with occupants killed/injured by guns in 2021, or over 1 in a million yearly odds. Compared to the near-identical odds between the 2 countries of being assaulted or having other violent crime done against you if you see the burglars (27% vs 26%), it’s a weird edge case to focus on while dismissing the entire collection of crime it’s a minuscule subset of.
Also wild to see “you’ll be shot while complying” in this argument, normally it’s people saying anyone practicing self-defense thinks they’re Rambo and that they’d be better off just ascribing best-intentions to the assailant and giving them what they want.
Again, the point of this isn’t to say that concern about gun violence is wrong or nutty, it’s to argue that concerns about violent home invasion are even less paranoid than that.
That would math to 108 households in 2021 with occupants killed/injured by guns in 2021, or over 1 in a million yearly odds.
You are being extremely disingenuous when you say that since you’re only counting household burglaries. And I’m sure you know it.
The truth is that 2021 was the deadliest year in U.S. history for guns, with 2023 close behind.
Let’s look at some actual numbers.
In 2021, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC. That figure includes gun murders and gun suicides, along with three less common types of gun-related deaths tracked by the CDC: those that were accidental, those that involved law enforcement and those whose circumstances could not be determined.
In other words, the CDC doesn’t track all gun deaths.
(CDC fatality statistics are based on information contained in official death certificates, which identify a single cause of death.)
Meaning that even the gun deaths the CDC tracks are not a complete record of those types of deaths.
In 2021, 54% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides (26,328), while 43% were murders (20,958), according to the CDC. The remaining gun deaths that year were accidental (549), involved law enforcement (537) or had undetermined circumstances (458).
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
And you would have us believe that only 108 of those happened in someone’s house?
Also from that study:
The U.S. gun death rate was 10.6 per 100,000 people in 2016, the most recent year in the study, which used a somewhat different methodology from the CDC. That was far higher than in countries such as Canada (2.1 per 100,000) and Australia (1.0), as well as European nations such as France (2.7), Germany (0.9) and Spain (0.6). But the rate in the U.S. was much lower than in El Salvador (39.2 per 100,000 people), Venezuela (38.7), Guatemala (32.3), Colombia (25.9) and Honduras (22.5), the study found. Overall, the U.S. ranked 20th in its gun fatality rate that year.
But hey, a lower gun death rate than El Salvador, so there’s nothing to worry about.
You are being extremely disingenuous when you say that since you’re only counting household burglaries. And I’m sure you know it.
I’m literally commenting on how the person above me claims American firearms ownership makes “the act of “home invasion” fundamentally different in the UK and the US.” by “turning “somebody stole my iPad” into “somebody stole my iPad and then shot me in the spine”.” Household burglaries is the context of the conversation.
you would have us believe that only 108 of those happened in someone’s house?
No, I am claiming that ~108 incidents (could be 1 or more victims per) happen by a burglar’s hands. You know that, you just said I’m being deceitful for limiting it to those parameters, and now you’re lying about them.
the CDC doesn’t track all gun deaths
Correct, and I haven’t cited CDC data. As I’ve said many times now, I’ve cited Gun Violence Archive’s numbers, whose sole mission is to catalog as high of numbers as they can. Their 2016 combined homicide & suicide stats exceed your source’s numbers at 38k. I’ve also been using the higher number of ~60k deaths & injuries from someone else’s gun per year instead of ~45k combined homicides & suicides.
Because in a discussion of someone’s claim of “essentially zero” risk of harm from someone in a home invasion, the actual risk is currently very close to the widely-agreed-upon, internationally-lambasted, domestic-politics-dominating risk of harm from another’s gun. Or hey, we’ll count what you purposefully do to yourself as well and say it’s 2/3 of the way there.
I really don’t understand how saying “home invasion isn’t a boogeyman, being harmed from it is as likely as gun violence” has been interpreted as “you’re saying gun violence is a boogeyman” other than everyone here taking the top comment at face value and losing all basic literacy when the circlejerk stops.
reported being threatened and 27% reported force or violence being used against them.
Even assuming all your stats were true, how many of these people reported being killed? You’re not defining what that force or violence includes, but most of them don’t call for deadly force as a response.
More than 11,000 burglaries in 2021 involved assault
That’s a direct quote from your article so where does the “37,500 break-in assaults” number come from when it’s 3x higher than what your source lists?
Furthermore,
In 2021, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S.,
Meaning you’re 4x more likely to be shot by someone than assaulted during a burglary
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
Meaning you’re 4x more likely to be shot by someone than assaulted during a burglary
You’re wasting your breath. Gun owners are extremity selective about the statistics they choose to care about.
If they’re supplying them, they’re usually bullshit and if they’re demanding them, it’s usually sealioning. Their fixation on numbers vanishes the moment those numbers don’t say what they want.
He can vomit up all the numbers he wants but if guns actually solved the problem, America would have the lowest crime rate in the world. Instead, they have crime rates that are practically identical to countries with comparitive levels of wealth and education.
Only in America, there’s a layer of murder on top of every crime, because “responsible gun owners” keep arming criminals with their unsecured firearms and dogshit laws.
If they’re supplying them, they’re usually bullshit
No need for hypotheticals here, we’ve got hard examples of stats & studies that either are or aren’t bs. Although the only bit I talk about on gun violence is from the GVA, but you’re welcome to call them BS if you wish.
there’s a layer of murder on top of every crime
At ~20,000/year, it’s 1 in 17,500 people. Or 1 in 6,180 households to keep comparisons equal.
The point of the comparison isn’t to downplay gun violence, as should have been evident by how I’m arguing an equally-likely violent home invasion isn’t something to dismiss.
where does the “37,500 break-in assaults” number come from when it’s 3x higher than what your source lists?
Specifying assault specifically was a mistake on my part, as I said the math came from the article’s citations on all violent crimes experienced by occupants during break-ins multiplied against the year’s 583,000 burglaries. Of that 26% number, 18% is assault while 6% is armed robbery and 2% is rape. I’m not sure where the article’s 11,000 claim comes from, as that number is uncited and would represent a substantial decrease vs the numbers they have citations for, which showed consistent values year-to-year in the mid-2000s though at a significantly higher overall rate of burglaries at 3.7 million/year. The closest number I can think of would be if they’re just counting specifically aggravated assault, which using the cited percentage of occurring in 4.5% of occupied break-ins would come to 10,125 instances in 900,000 break-ins.
And actually, re-reading the article shows the 600,000 burglary number only accounts for 69% of the US population whose law enforcement reports numbers to the FBI, real numbers from the FBI are 900,000 for the past couple years making that number’s discrepancy even worse with the math’s number of 62,100. I’m not able to find any more recent data on either a % or a hard-number of home invasions resulting in assault or other violent crime victimization, if you have any please share.
Meaning you’re 4x more likely to be shot by someone than assaulted during a burglary
Coming at me citing suicide stats in a crime discussion, nice! And not even applying them correctly, using the number of deaths as a stat for being shot at all. I already referenced a more accurate, if still flawed, number by summing injuries & deaths from the GVA above.
Coming at me citing suicide stats in a crime discussion, nice
Suicide victims aren’t even cold before the pro-gun community sweeps them under the nearest rug, desperately hoping that if they’re quick enough, nobody will notice that means reduction is extremely effective in suicide prevention.
You’re still more likely to be shot by someone, it’s just the “someone” might be you.
But it’ll never be one of your kids with one of your guns, will it buddy?
You’re still more likely to be shot by someone, it’s just the “someone” might be you
Pardon me for not considering actions I have control over in a discussion on the likelihood of violence one doesn’t have control over. And again, I’m citing larger numbers for gun violence victims than what they are citing incorrectly.
But it’ll never be one of your kids with one of your guns, will it buddy
At 1 in ~2000 odds (10 in 10,000 suicide rate, 50% firearms for ages 10-24), or literally the exact same odds that I’m saying a person should be prepared for based on their consequences, those are absolutely odds I would act to minimize if I lived with a minor or anyone suffering mental health issues.
Just here to point out that it’ll never be your home, will it buddy?
Pardon me for not considering actions I have control over in a discussion on the likelihood of violence one doesn’t have control over.
You have control over who you vote for. I suspect you don’t vote for the politicians who will reduce suicides.
Bernie -> Hillary -> Bernie -> Biden since I’ve been eligible to vote, so just barely. You realize about 1/3 of gun owners vote left, right?
Your first link is some insurance company corporate website that has no reason to be truthful. The second link won’t reveal its sources unless you pay, but also shows that violent crime is far less of a problem now than it has been for decades.
So your fearmongering isn’t even supported well by your unsourced data.
Every number I pull from the article is backed up by a separate primary source they provide. Their citation for overall burglary numbers, as linked (little blue 1), is from the FBI’s crime tracker. Their citation on the specifics for burglaries, including % where the owner is present and stats on violent crime victimization as part of burglaries, comes from a DOJ report that they link. The # of US households was just me googling and pulling the first result, but census data puts it at 125 million.
The 2nd source is just using FBI data as well, extrapolating the reported crime amount from the reported population over the whole population. The official FBI number of 673,261 burglaries divided by .75 (% of population those account for) gives 897,681, and the FBI’s chart over time (counted in burglaries per 100,000 population rather than households) does indeed show that burglaries, as with all violent crime, have gotten considerably safer over the past 10-20 years.
Still far from 0, and still more common than the crime that’s America’s blight onto the world.
Suicides, school shootings, gang gunfights and other major problems caused by the massive amount of gun ownership in this country is also far from zero. But that doesn’t seem to concern you.
It’s probably naive of me, but I keep hoping that if we had better data on that, it would persuade at least some.
The chances of that breakin are essentially zero. Even if it happens the chances of defending yourself are very low, and if you’ve properly secured your deadly weapon, pretty much zero. Meanwhile the chances of accidentally or in fear harming or killing someone inappropriately are much higher, and if the weapon is ready for defense, harming an innocent is even more likely.
Can we put numbers to that and prove it to convince at least some? Or is it a religious topic?
There is tons of data. People don’t give a fuck about data that doesn’t tell them what they want to hear.
The number one killer of children in america is guns, the second is cars. Yet the anti-gun & anti-car dependency movements are struggling. Nobody gives a fuck about dead kids until they know them personally.
Can we put numbers to that and prove it to convince at least some? Or is it a religious topic?
You replied to a thread where I literally did
Never happened to you so the scenario is invalid?
I’ve had armed men break in my house on Christmas Eve. Fuck me, I had a bear wonder in my dog door, laughably on Christmas Eve again. Had a wolf hybrid come in another time. He was my buddy though, knew him.
I hope you’re never helpless and defenseless.
Don’t leave us hanging. Was the wolf hybrid on Christmas Eve too?
Then on Christmas Day he was opening his presents and boom, out jumps a mountain lion.
Yes. Then there was the year the vampires came…
Did you have a child die screaming and terrified on their classroom floor at the hands of a legal gun owner? Were you ever hunted in a mall by a teenage extremist with a semi-automatic rifle?
Actually fuck it, did you even shoot the “armed men” or dog-sized bear, or did it turn out you didn’t even need your guns in the bullshit you just made up.
I hope you’re never helpless and defenseless
That’s very clearly not true.
Believe it or not, this is not the first time on Lemmy someone has justified owning a gun to protect themselves from bears.
And this statistic still stands:
There have been 67 fatal black bear attacks (and they would be the only ones small enough to come through a dog door) in North America since 1900. Most of them were defensive attacks.
https://wiseaboutbears.org/about-us/bear-attacks-2/
There’s a very easy thing to do if there’s a bear in your house that doesn’t involve shooting it- leave and call animal control.
It also means you don’t have to get rid of a bear carcass and clean bear blood off the carpet.
Isn’t it funny how they always have this self-aggrandizing reasons for owning a gun? They’re always “defending their family” (until their child uses their gun to blow their brains out) or “preventing tyranny” (when they’re not enthusiastically voting and funding fascists).
It’s never just “I own guns because they’re fun”, it’s always the hero fantasy. I guess if they were honest, we wouldn’t tolerate the endless bullshit they cause.
There are gun owners who just say, “I own guns because I think they’re cool” or whatever. I’ve met them before. I even have a friend like that. He’s fine with gun regulations, he just thinks guns are cool and (before he moved out of California), he liked to go out to the desert and shoot cans. He had no hero fantasies. He didn’t even keep his guns easily-accessible. I have a lot more respect for people like him.
I know they exist (because I’ve also known them) but you’ll never find one on the internet because the more horrific the social cost of American gun laws grows, the more grandiose the justifications for doing nothing need to be.
Imagine telling victims of gun violence “sorry, we can’t make a token efforts to make sure gun owners aren’t unhinged domestic abusers because some people think guns are fun and we don’t want to inconvenience them”.
We’d have gun regulations in a heartbeat if these “problem pretending to be the solution” gun owners were honest about why they want guns and when they’d use them – it’s why they lie about it in the first place.
I wonder if the armed men looked anything like this.
I had a bear wonder in my dog door, laughably on Christmas Eve again.
What was it wondering about?
STATISTICALLY it’s invalid. Even your examples are not applicable because it sounds like they didn’t want to cause you any bodily harm, they just wanted a house to easily rob of Christmas presents. Same thing with the bear and wolf, it didn’t come in there wanting to hurt you, it just wanted food.
In both of these cases the best defense isn’t shooting at an unidentified figure in the distance on an assumption that it’s someone coming in with an intent to hurt you
I explained the Castle Doctrine to my daughter not too long ago. I just love explaining to her why this sort of thing happens in America.
At least you don’t have to explain to her that some people feel better living as a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth.
You’re right, because she already understands that.
: )
How is he being charged then? I don’t get it.
He killed her in her own home. You understand what castle doctrine is, right?
It’s her home. Castle doctrine only applies to people who have unlawfully entered your home. If you don’t want to be legally shot by someone invoking the castle doctrine as a defense, don’t unlawfully enter their home.
I hate when Missouri ends up in the news for stupid things. I promise, we aren’t all idiots.
Oh yeah? Name 3 things that is great about Missouri!
No seriously, I’m asking because I have a friend who feels the same way, and I want to go, “Well, you still have (3 things here)” and cheer them up.
The Italian food in STL is top notch, Lake of the Ozarks is fantastic, Mark Twain Ntl forest is gorgeous, the Katy trail linking towns and wineries from STL to Jefferson City is very special, and they never get wildfires or droughts :)
That’s amazing. Thank you!
Hey, cool. I’ve seen Lake of the Ozarks mentioned online a few times but had no idea where it is (and hadn’t tried looking)
Target id is very important. Weapon lights are important. This shit will haunt him for the rest of his life.
Bet he gets off with a warning after crying himself some Rittenhouse tears during the trial
Hey you know how I avoid never accidentally shooting someone? Not owning a gun. Gun makers hate this one trick but they can’t stop you.
Considering we don’t have any real clue as to the exact setting and situation… Yeah we know he thought there was an intruder… But… There’s a lot we don’t know. I’ll wait for the details before judging
Yeah I’m gonna go ahead and judge. Whatever the reasoning, the guy is at best a negligent idiot.
Give us a scenario where he didn’t have time to ask “who’s there” before shooting his own mother.
What if the burglar had shot first, huh? Check ma- oh wait. … Nevermind.
You know what’s crazy? These tube things you can put in your pocket. They take a battery, you press a button and light comes out the front! Doesn’t even stop until it hits something you maybe wanna see. It’s nuts, I tell ya.
Know what’s crazier? They sell these things you speak of with mlok attachments for (and yes I know they’re trying to ban handguards as “barrel shrouds”) handguards for (and yes I know they don’t like “assault rifles” either) your AR. And preventing this is literally the point of those.
Not only are you right, there’s legit solutions marketed for this lol.
Or just don’t own a gun because the chances of someone breaking into your house trying to harm you are unbelievably small.
This guy certainly shouldn’t.
