Five family members, including three kids, were found dead in an Ohio home Thursday evening in what police are calling a “domestic dispute that turned deadly,” according to a news release.
The incident is being investigated as a quadruple murder-suicide, police said.
This is all very easy to say, but have you ever had to defend yourself against an adult who actually meant to harm you?
Yes I have, several times.
And, no, it’s not easy to say. This comes at the hand of decades of research and real-world observations by thousands of people and agencies and the data they’ve collected. What’s easy is to just think that having a gun will solve all of your problems and make you safe. What hard is to acknowledge the facts: it statistically will make your home far more dangerous.
If the true goal of organizations advocating against civilian gun ownership (and publishing statistics you cite) were to save lives then educators, in recognition of the fact that about half of households own at least one firearm, would actually ensure children could at least make a gun safe (properly unload) instead of the abstinence approach that is taught today in every school.
I have advised several people AGAINST buying firearms for self defense, Knowing they would not train adequately to become proficient. Guns are not a blanket solution, but a baseball bat or knife? By any unskilled user? Like two 200-300 pound dudes breaking down the door of a 100 pound person whose never received martial arts training would be better off with a bat? That is hilarious and absurd. With that being said it’s a much lower bar to get proficient enough with a firearm that one can handle it safely and stand a good chance of defending themselves against even multiple attackers. As for the statistical dangers yes but two things: zero guns obviously means zero gun suicides, and if your objective is to produce quickly communicable punch lines, it’s easy to manipulate statistics to suit your aims - virtually every number used by people who favor complete civilian disarmament is cherry picked once you dig down into to sources and see what is included and excluded from those figures.
It’s funny you mention suicides:
From Pew Research:
So who is it who’s “manipulating statistics” by acting like preventing/massively reducing the 54% of gun deaths (26k+ and trending upward) is not something we should be trying to accomplish?