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Monday, April 4, 2022

Guns For the Good Guys

     People who engage in mass public shootings are deterred by the possibility that law-abiding citizens may be carrying guns. Such people may be deranged, but they still appear to care whether they will themselves be shot as they attempt to kill others…

     One prominent concern about leniency in permitting people to carry concealed handguns is that the number of accidental deaths might arise, but I can find no statistically significant evidence that this occurs. Even the largest estimate of nine more accidental deaths per year is extremely small in comparison to the number of lives saved from fewer murders.

John R. Lott, Jr., More Guns, Less Crime, Second Edition, 2000

2 comments:

  1. 6 in 10 gun deaths are suicides. Half of all suicides are by gun. How many suicides would there be if that gun wasn’t so handy

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  2. Where does Lott get 9 deaths? There are 487 accidental deaths per year and 20% of the 100,000 wounded people are accidental. That’s 20,000 accidentally wounded people.
    https://lawcenter.giffords.org/facts/gun-violence-statistics/

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