You’ve got to admit that the NRA isn’t exactly a reliable source here, right? And anectdotal evidence is kind of…well, not something you can rely on.
Going back to your bit on Australia, you missed the next two charts on the same page.
Chart: Trends in homicide incidents
The figure shows that although there have been fluctuations from year to year, the number of homicide incidents has shown a steady decline since the inception of the NHMP in 1989. 2006-07 saw the second-lowest number of homicide incidents in the collection period.
So, while it’s not as apparent in the graph you used, they do indeed indicate that they believe that the policy in question is resulting in a downward trend.
Meanwhile, @silkox1 posted the information in that same thread that honestly is far more damning than I would have expected consider how many other factors there are in such things.
So at least you can’t deny that firearm deaths correspond nicely to firearm availability.
Similarly, I don’t think you’re going to argue that knifings and bludgeonings ramp up proportionately to firearm deaths. Nobody argues that because it’s much harder to kill people with such weapons, especially for somebody who is untrained and especially accidentally. They also don’t factor into suicides (Gun ownership is a statistical risk factor for suicides)
So ‘ownership in which guns provide a net value to society’ is greatly reduced, (again, unless you’re going to argue the statistical correlation between availability and firearm deaths or that we’d have rampant mass-knifings and knifeacides without them). The suicide risk ALONE is enough to eliminate the value statistically (not anecdotally… but there are reasons why we don’t use anecdotes in the data biz, they mislead people)
So that leaves…what scenarios exactly? Ones where somebody used a gun to prevent an actual murder, right? Not stopping a robbery or a house break in, because people don’t break in to murder you except… (and I will allow for this)…
…there are people who are being stalked by people who are willing to murder them…so battered women and the like.
How large a band of the gun ownership population are these poor women? Are they being properly marketed by the NRA? Or are they not considered a profitable group? What percentage of purchases are they?
I mean…think about it. What’s really going on here?
